Chapter 225: Punch Your Way Out
“Physically, she should be fine. But when her consciousness will recover is hard to say.”
Lillian let out a breath of relief.
“Thank goodness... Senior Eleanor is still alive.”
She rummaged through the small bag she carried with her, pulled out a little waterskin and a clean handkerchief, dampened the cloth, and carefully wiped the grime and cold sweat from Eleanor’s face.
At that moment, the continuous pounding from outside the door suddenly stopped.
Silence.
A brief, heart-stopping silence.
All five people in the room froze at once. Even their breathing grew lighter.
Ryan was on his feet in an instant and crossed to the crack in the door, pressing an ear against it. Vera and Rex also tensed again, ready to brace the door once more. Ilyss slipped soundlessly to the side of the doorway, her violet eyes fixed on the stone door. Her hands hung loosely at her sides, but tiny arcs of electricity flickered at her fingertips.
There was no sound outside. No impacts, no screeching, no scraping. It was as if that enraged giant beast had suddenly vanished.
Or... left?
No. The Seals of Enlightenment gave him a sharper warning than that. He could feel that huge, tainted source of Mana outside had not moved away at all. If anything, it was... gathering itself. Compressing. Building up in a far more dangerous way.
“Back off! Away from the door!” he snapped, retreating at once.
The moment the words left his mouth—
Thk! Thk-thk-thk!
Several gray-black spikes, as thin as hairs yet unbelievably tough, pierced straight through the heavy stone door without warning. Against those shadowy spikes, the door might as well have been rotten wood. They stabbed into the room, their tips glimmering with a purple-black sheen and exuding a thick, sweet, rotten poison.
They were not striking at random.
Their targets were clear.
They shot straight toward Lillian, who had only just retreated and was still half-kneeling on the floor, and toward the unconscious Eleanor lying beside her.
“Look out!” Rex roared, sweeping his greatsword in a broad arc to cut down the spikes flying toward Lillian.
But the shadow spikes were too fast and too treacherous in angle. He managed to knock aside only two. The third had already reached her.
Lillian stared in horror, ice elements instinctively gathering before her. But the shield of ice she raised in that hurried instant was far too thin.
Just as the poisoned spike was about to punch through it—
A short blade wrapped in silver-white lightning came from behind and struck the side of the spike with unerring precision.
The spike veered off course, skimmed past Lillian’s shoulder, and buried itself inches deep into the wall behind her, quivering.
Ryan.
He had thrown the knife while retreating. With the heightened perception and control granted by the Seals of Enlightenment, his body had already chosen the most efficient interception in that split second.
The spikes aimed at Eleanor were blocked as well.
At some point, Ilyss had moved in front of Eleanor. She spread both hands, and in an instant a net of pure violet lightning wove itself into existence, crackling softly as it expanded and caught the incoming spikes, knocking them away.
Lightning met shadow poison with a harsh, grating hiss. The purple-black glow on the spikes rapidly dimmed and vanished.
But the attack did not stop.
More shadow spikes shot through the door like a rainstorm, coming from every direction. Their targets were no longer limited to Lillian and Eleanor. They were covering the entire area in front of the door.
“Wind Wall!”
Vera gave a sharp cry and thrust both hands forward. A translucent green wall of rapidly spinning wind rose before the door.
The dense barrage of spikes struck the wall and was thrown off course by the chaotic currents, embedding themselves into the walls and floor around them in a rapid, staccato clatter.
But even that barrier lasted only a few seconds.
There were too many spikes. They were too powerful. The Wind Wall quickly thinned and began to fall apart.
“We cannot stay on the defensive! It will keep attacking until we run out of strength—or until it shoots through this door!”
It was Ilyss who said it. She maintained the lightning net with both hands, her violet eyes fixed on the battered stone door.
The silver patterns on the door had gone completely dark under the continuous assault of the shadow spikes. Thin cracks had begun to spread through the stone itself.
Ryan saw the situation clearly as well.
The Illusion Spider had changed its tactics. It was no longer trying to smash its way in with brute force. Instead, it was using this penetrating long-range attack.
The stone door would not hold much longer. They either went outside and fought it head-on, or they found another way out of here immediately.
“Vera, how long can you hold?” Ryan asked.
“At most ten breaths.” Sweat had already appeared at Vera’s temples. Holding a defensive wall over such a large area was no small strain.
Ryan’s eyes swept over the near-shattered stone door, then over the teammates beside him.
Vera’s Wind Wall was on the verge of collapse, sweat running down her face. Ilyss’s lightning net flickered under the constant pressure. Rex stood with his sword raised in front of Lillian and Eleanor, his muscles taut.
Outside, the storm of shadow spikes showed no sign of stopping. The cracks in the door were already spreading and linking together.
They could not hold.
If they stayed on the defensive, they would only be pinned to the walls of this room the moment the door broke. The Illusion Spider had trapped them in a narrow space and was using ranged attacks to wear them down.
Their only chance of survival was to drag the battle back outside—to the vast, far more dangerous web-lair.
“We cannot wait any longer,” Ryan said, his voice still clear through the screaming hiss of the spikes. “Once the door breaks, we will be nailed to the walls. We have to go out and fight.”
“Go out?” Lillian’s voice shook. “The whole place out there is covered in its web—”
“The web is also a path,” Ryan cut in, speaking fast. “Vera, can you compress the Wind Wall? Focus it in front of the door and hold five more breaths. Narrow the range of its attack.”
A flicker passed through Vera’s gray-green eyes. She understood instantly.
“I can.”
Her hands shifted, and the green wall that had been spread across most of the doorway abruptly shrank. It condensed in front of the crack and the main fractures, spinning much faster, forming a thicker barrier that temporarily slowed the spikes breaking through.
“Ilyss, prepare a wide-area lightning strike. Target the space three to five steps beyond the door. It does not need precision. We need an instantaneous burst of power and blinding light.”
Ryan looked at the black-haired girl.
Ilyss’s violet eyes narrowed. The small arcs of lightning flickering around her began to draw inward and compress into her palms, humming in a low, dangerous tone.
She did not ask why. She merely nodded.
“Rex, the instant the door opens, use a burst of force to clear the spikes and whatever strands of web are directly ahead. Open a path three or four steps long, but do not charge too far. Lillian, stay close to Rex. Use ice mist to cover our flanks and the space above us, so the spider cannot wrap us in fresh webbing. Lower the temperature as much as you can, too. It may interfere with the spider’s heat sense or scent tracking.”
His gaze passed over the two of them.
Rex let out a low growl, his greatsword shining with earth-yellow magical light. Lillian nodded hard, blue Mana already surging between her hands again.
“And then,” Ryan said, looking from Vera and Ilyss to Lillian and Rex, “Ilyss strikes first with lightning. Vera turns the Wind Wall into forward momentum. The three of us go out. The target is the spider itself. We force it into close combat and break the rhythm of its long-range attacks.”
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