Chapter 234: Spider Demigod

"Fire! Give it everything you've got!" Sinuoli shouted. His subordinates no longer held back as they had when dealing with the previous one, and all manner of ranged weapons rang out simultaneously.

"Boom!"

"Crack!"

"Whoosh!"

A massive volume of projectiles forced the two giant spiders that had just charged out of the sea of fire to slam on the brakes. Compared to the smaller kin beneath their feet that didn't even reach their bellies, these two behemoths bore the brunt of the heavy firepower.

Even more miserable than them were the Savage Orcs and Forest Goblins on their backs. The palanquins, built from wood and stone, plastered with totem poles, and painted with primitive pigments depicting the roaring, monstrous faces of the Savage Gods, could provide no protection at all.

Watching that scene of wailing ghosts and howling wolves, Sinuoli suddenly thought of the tank cavalry of the Soviet big brother from his past life. Hanging archers on the backs of behemoths undoubtedly increased the killing efficiency of the beasts, but this wasn't a game where models didn't drop no matter how you hit them.

The giant spiders had developed some intelligence over their long lives; they could sense that the things in the hands of the Dwarfs before them were a greater threat than the sea of fire behind them. These two giant spiders wavered slightly; with their strength, where in this world could they not roam free?

But things were not as simple as the Dwarfs had thought. A creature covered in yellow-green stripes, half again as large as those two giant spiders, appeared.

In height alone, it was comparable to a Bone Giant, but this thing was supported by eight articulated limbs. By volume, it was nearly double the corrupted leviathan seen earlier in the city of Bordeleaux.

"Brood Queen!"

The term popped into the Dwarfs' minds in unison. They had long been aware of its existence, so they did not panic.

On the back of this Queen Spider was not a messy saddle-palanquin, but something resembling a Shenkan. Although crudely made, one could still discern the outline of a spider inside.

Sinuoli could feel an alien, unprecedented Divinity emanating from this Shenkan. This power was mixed with wildness within its Divinity; compared to what he had encountered before, it was relatively impure and not refined enough.

In terms of quantity, Sinuoli intuitively felt it was equivalent to the Lady's power and the power of Gork and Mork possessed by the likes of the Fay Enchantress Moji'anna and the Green Prophet Wuerzhage-Lv Xianzhi, perhaps even slightly inferior.

But unlike the power bestowed by superiors that could be taken back at any time, this was entirely self-generated. Because the root lay within itself, this power could grow continuously; it went without saying that bestowed divine power could not be actively strengthened.

By this reckoning, the Queen Spider before him could already be called a Demigod. Combining data from this life and his previous one, Sinuoli realized that two things were essential to becoming a god in this world: Godhood—the function a god represents; and sufficiently strong power.

A Demigod is a powerhouse who only satisfies one of these two conditions. However, a Demigod is generally considered to be one who possesses sufficiently strong power but has not yet condensed a Godhood; Snorri Whitebeard Grimbrindal is one such example.

His power was strong enough, but the faith pool of the Dwarfs, a race with a sparse population, had already been carved up by his parents and brothers.

Father God, Mother God, God of War, God of Death, Rune Smith God, God of Engineers, Ore Shaper.

Their Authority already covered most of the Dwarfs' daily lives, and the remaining scraps were not enough for Snorri Whitebeard to condense his own Godhood.

The Lord of Undeath Nagash was the same, but in the End Times, his power was greater, directly devouring the Human God of Death Morr and the gods of Nehekhara, allowing himself to obtain a greater and broader Godhood.

The Queen Spider before him took a different path, first condensing a Spider God Godhood. However, because its believers—the spiders—almost all lacked intelligence, the so-called faith was more of a reverence for the strong, and thus its divine power had never been able to grow significantly.

Yes, it was still very powerful, but this power came more from its natural strength as a Queen Spider rather than its supernatural power as a Spider God.

All of this improved only after the Greenskins of the Southlands discovered it. Although the Greenskins still had their main gods—Gork and Mork—to worship, at least these were intelligent races capable of providing it with more faith. The Greenskins taking its offspring to wage war everywhere could also be considered a contribution to the spread of its faith.

A miraculous halo spread out from the center of that Shenkan, and the Dwarfs discovered that the spiders across the entire battlefield had undergone eerie changes. Their compound eyes were blood-red, as if they no longer feared death; the fangs in their mouths seemed to have grown longer and sharper.

"They, they are faster too!" the Dwarfs exclaimed, and some had already darted or leaped over the shield wall in the front row. The spiders had received an all-around enhancement, and they were fighting for their own god!

"Fight! What are you standing there for! Shoot at that Shenkan!" Sinuoli roared. This was the one bad thing about Dwarfs, or perhaps all intelligent races would encounter the same problem: they would freeze when encountering things beyond their understanding.

Sinuoli's order was carried out, and his clansmen came to their senses and fired, but the Shenkan was wrapped in a shield of solidified divine power, and the projectiles only stirred up ripples.

Sinuoli did not believe in evil. He added his remaining Level 5 skill points to Storm Hammer, maxed out this most commonly used skill, and unleashed it. The Warhammer, bolstered by both Runes and skills, made the Shenkan's shield wobble, but that was all.

"Fellows! The Ancestor Goddess protects us! Fight, kill these beasts! Take back the fortresses of the Golden Age!"

Sinuoli stood before the anvil, boosting morale. He knew that if the single-target skill Storm Hammer was useless, there was no need to try Thunder Strike or the Rune of Wrath and Ruin. If that Shenkan could not be destroyed, what remained was a desperate close-quarters melee.

The spider swarm pushed forward against the dense firepower. They fell in droves, but more surged out from the burning webs. A charred stench floated across the battlefield, but no one had time to feel nauseated.

While striking runes to buff his clansmen, Sinuoli sent out the Knights. They certainly had good armor, but using them to hold the line was undoubtedly a waste.

These men rode their warhorses, taking a detour from the ridge, carrying incendiary bottles to throw into the core area that the fire had not yet covered.

The Ironbreakers in the front row were very resilient. Although the impact of the giant spiders and large spiders caused no small amount of losses, with the help of Sinuoli's Veto Rune and the Oath and Steel Rune, they maintained the battle line.

The ranged troops were constantly reaping the lives of the spiders, and the Artillery could occasionally knock down a large spider or leave a hole in a giant spider that constantly oozed foul-smelling bodily fluids.

These were all its children, grandchildren, and sources of faith. The Brood Queen slowly raised its forelimbs.