Fin stood, steadying himself behind the purple rocks. The fight raged nearby. Hana and Mary darted in and out, their blades leaving shallow cuts on the spider’s thick legs.
Gary swung his hamr with tiring predictability, each blow slightly less forceful than the last. Susan held her ground, shield scarred, absorbing heavy hits but being pushed back inch by inch.
Lucas’s energy blasts were becoming less frequent, his breathing ragged. Joe’s daggers still flew, but his accuracy wavered.
They were losing. The spider, though wounded, was relentless, fueled by primal rage.
Fin watched, his mind clear, the chaotic rush replaced by cold focus. He saw the patterns, the openings they missed, the spider’s montary shifts in balance. He waited, the silver core a steady warmth within him, the other core thrumming quietly beside it, hungry but controlled.
The mont ca when the spider lunged aggressively at Susan, overextending its reach, putting imnse weight on its forward legs as it tried to crush her shield. For a fraction of a second, its flank was exposed, its attention locked entirely on the tank.
Fin moved.
He didn’t charge wildly. He flowed forward, staff extended to its full polearm length. Three swift, ground-eating strides brought him alongside the distracted beast. He didn’t aim for the head or the tough carapace. He drove the tip of his staff directly into the fleshy joint connecting one of the spider’s thick mid-legs to its thorax – a spot montarily vulnerable due to the creature’s lunge.
The tip sank in. Contact.
Instantly, he ignited his Absorption.
There was no uncontrolled surge this ti, no ntal fog. He felt the connection lock, a channel opening. Power – raw, tainted with the spider’s venomous nature – began to flow into him. It was faster than before, a stronger current, yet he remained anchored, processing it, filtering it through his core.
He didn’t let go. He held the staff firm, pushing deeper into the joint, maintaining the connection even as the spider shrieked, realizing sothing was terribly wrong.
"What the hell is that?" Joe gasped, lowering his daggers as he saw faint, green energy swirling around Fin and the point of contact.
The spider frantically tried to pull away, dislodge the staff, but its movents were becoming sluggish. The purple glow of its carapace seed to flicker, dimming slightly. Its legs wobbled.
"He’s... draining it?" Lucas whispered, eyes wide, stopping his energy casting.
Hana stared, recognizing the impossible. Mana absorption on this scale, from a living creature? It wasn’t supposed to be possible.
Fin felt the power flood him. It wasn’t clean like Juliana’s, carrying the spider’s toxic essence, but his core handled it, refining what it could, storing the rest. He felt stronger, the fatigue from the earlier fight vanishing, replaced by potent, borrowed energy.
The spider matriarch shuddered violently. Its legs buckled one by one. The chittering weakened to a pathetic hiss. Its multiple eyes dimd, losing focus. With a final, ground-shaking tremor, it collapsed onto its side, limbs twitching feebly before falling still.
Silence descended, broken only by the ragged breathing of the Hunters.
Fin pulled his staff free from the spider’s joint with a wet squelch. He stood over the massive corpse, taking a deep, steadying breath.
He exhaled slowly. The breath plud visibly in the heavy air – a faint, grey mist tinged with an unnatural, silvery sheen, carrying the faintest whiff of ozone and venom.
He looked down at his right arm, the one holding the staff. Faint, intricate lines, like glowing silver circuits or ethereal veins, had appeared beneath his skin, tracing paths from his wrist up toward his shoulder.
They pulsed with a soft, residual light before slowly fading back to invisibility.
He felt the surge of absorbed power settle within his secondary core, contained but potent. He hadn’t lost control. He’d taken the power, used it, and stayed himself.
The rest of the team slowly approached, weapons still half-ready, their exhaustion montarily forgotten. They stared first at the enormous, drained husk of the spider, then at Fin.
Gary whistled low. "Kid... what in the blazes was that?"
Susan lowered her shield slightly, her expression a mixture of disbelief and grudging respect. "You killed it. Just... sucked it dry?"
Fin t their gazes, his own eyes clear, the manic energy gone. "Sothing like that," he said simply. He flexed his right hand, feeling the residual power hum beneath his skin.
Gary lowered his hamr, wiping sweat from his brow with a grimy forearm. "The dungeon report ntioned you had so kind of energy absorption." He stared at the spider husk. "Didn’t say you could do that."
"Nobody ntioned draining a Rank 6 sub-boss dry in thirty seconds," Joe added, nervously adjusting his grip on his daggers. "That’s... that’s not normal absorption."
Susan stepped closer to Fin, eyeing his right arm where the silver lines had faded. "I saw it. Lines under your skin. Like circuits. What is that?"
Fin instinctively pulled his sleeve down slightly, though there was nothing visible now. "I don’t know, that never happened before."
Hana crossed her arms, her analytical gaze sharp. "The reports detailed absorbing residual mana, ambient energy, cores. Nothing about direct, rapid draining of a live, powerful entity. The scale is unprecedented." She paused. "And dangerous. For you, as well as others."
"Seed pretty handy just now," Gary grunted, nudging the dead spider with his boot. "Saved our asses."
"Handy, yes," Mary spoke, her voice quiet but firm. "But uncontrolled power invites disaster. You lost yourself earlier. Charged in recklessly." She glanced at his back where the needle had struck him. "That almost got you killed. This ti..." She tilted her head, studying him. "This ti felt different. More focused."
Fin nodded slightly, acknowledging her point. "Learned my lesson," he muttered.
Lucas pushed his glasses up his nose, fascination overriding his exhaustion. "The energy transfer rate must be imnse. Is there feedback? How do you handle the overload? Does the target’s nature affect the absorbed energy?"
"Enough questions, Lucas," Hana cut in, though her own curiosity was evident. "We’re still in hostile territory. Scavenge what you can from the spider, quickly. We need to find a way out of this zone or figure out what’s blocking the exit." She looked back at Fin. "We’ll discuss your... ability... in detail later. For now, focus."
Fin nodded, turning his attention to the spider corpse. The others moved in as well, Susan and Gary beginning the grim task of harvesting valuable parts – venom glands, carapace shards, maybe even a core, though Fin suspected his drain might have consud it.
He felt their eyes on him occasionally, a new awareness in their glances. He wasn’t just the D-rank rookie anymore. He was sothing else, sothing powerful and unknown. And that, he knew, could be just as dangerous as any monster.
---
Miles away, deeper within the twisting, purple-tinged tunnels, hidden within the warped architecture of the dungeon, the spider humanoid girl materialized from a patch of absolute darkness. She landed silently on a ledge overlooking a vast, web-filled chasm.
Her eyes, gleaming with an unsettling intelligence, were wide with rembered shock. She replayed the final monts of the fight – the sudden surge of power from the human boy, the visible drain, the rapid collapse of the Matriarch.
The Matriarch was strong, one of the Queen’s favored guardians for this territory. For it to fall so quickly, drained like prey... that was not part of the plan. That human’s ability was far beyond the simple mana manipulation common among intruders.
She touched the small blowgun still held loosely in her hand. The poison should have incapacitated him, made him easy pickings for the Matriarch. Yet he’d recovered almost instantly.
Another anomaly.
A faint, cruel smile touched her lips again, but this ti it held less amusent and more calculation.
This changed things.
"Direct energy absorption... potent, controlled, and resistant to my toxins," she whispered into the echoing silence, her voice like dry leaves skittering across stone. "How fascinating. And how problematic."
She glanced back in the direction the Hunters had been, though they were far beyond her senses now.
"Her Majesty is going to need to hear about this one."
With a final, sharp glance around the area, she stepped back, lting into a shadow that detached itself from the wall and flowed silently away, vanishing into the oppressive darkness of the dungeon.
Reviews
All reviews (0)