[Ruins of Archades Imperial Palace: Central Corridor - 3F]

Roughly an hour and quarter had passed since Hecate had started her hunt.

During that time, she used a Return Crystal and returned to the Safety Area to sort her loot three times. And each time she did, she had to recast the clone, as the previous ones had been left behind and disappeared before long.

But with this, her Mana Clone skill proficiency increased rapidly.

Now the clone's activity range has increased, from 10m at Lv1, 15m at Lv2, into 25m at Lv3.

Although, the increased range was meaningless at the moment, as Hecate's clone control was still limited by the Spell Remote Activation skill, which was still at Lv1 with a range of 10m. However, the 10% reduction in MP maintenance costs really helps with MP management. And it won't be long before Spell Remote Activation will level up too.

In addition, the skill Precision Mana Control was also leveled up to Lv5, which gave Hecate's mana control another improvement, such as increased responsiveness to her thought commands. To put it more clearly, it was like adding additional RAM to a computer.

Now the control over mana has become smoother and fluid, without glitches and significant delays.

Regarding the maximum number of clones increasing by 1, Hecate couldn't say much at the moment, because she was still trying to get used to controlling one clone for now.

And back to the present.

Starting at the third floor, the atmosphere was completely different than the previous floor.

On this floor, even though it bore some resemblance to the previous two floors, it was an incredibly large space with an extremely high ceiling, decorated with spider silk here and there. It was as if the floor itself had been transformed by some kind of force after being turned into a dungeon.

The floor's large size seemed to allow several giants to pass easily, as could be seen from the footprints of some of the giant creatures at the ground, wall, and ceiling.

Another thing was, the floor was somewhat filled with purple poison mist, which was continuously neutralized by the glowing Superior Saintess Necklace. If anyone other than Hecate was on this floor, they would likely receive continuous DOT damage the second their skin touched the air here.

"Hehe, such a petty trick won't work on me." (distorted voice)

Still invisible, Hecate controlled the clone to take the lead.

Since the room was so large, traveling between floor areas would normally be tiring and time-consuming. But of course except for Hecate who has the Superior Saintess Necklace which grants her almost inexhaustible stamina.

After spending several minutes walking without encountering mobs, she simply decided to use the Dash skill.

It did not take too long before she found the mobs of the 3rd floor.

[ ⁑ ][Spider Egg Sac - Lv30] (×?????)
[ ⁑ ][Larva Spider - Lv80~90] (×?????)
[⁂][Veliperalocator Spider - Lv135] (×????)
[⁂][Adult Veliperalocator Spider - Lv143~150] (×???)
[✢][Archdora Tarantulla - Lv170~185] (×??)
[✢][Archmiga Tarantulla - Lv170~185] (×??)
[✢][Womb Spider - Lv195] (×2)

As expected, those spiders are mostly gigantic in size.

There were several new species that Hecate had never seen before, Archdora Tarantulla, Archmiga Tarantulla, and the Womb Spider. Overall, the Archdoras had gray fur and they seemed to be more geared towards physical skills, whereas the Archmigas had brown fur and they were geared towards magical skills.

As for Womb Spiders, Hecate wasn't even sure they were spiders anymore.

Their gigantic size dwarfs other spiders by comparison, with tentacles instead of spider legs that occasionally secrete egg sacs, which the Veli spider then retrieves to carry elsewhere. And after looking closely, the tentacles were filled with what looked like hair, which were ultimately also tentacles, but with eyes at each end.

Rather than spiders, they were like eldritch abominations.

KHEEEKK!! KHSSAAA! KHSSAAKKK!!

When the spiders sense someone intruding on their nest, they stop their activities and stare at the intruder.

Their size and sheer number could make weakhearted Players faint and be ejected out of the game. In truth, Hecate was also felt disturbed, but she was able to control her emotions just fine, thanks to the fact that she was currently invisible and all the pressure was shifted onto the clone.

And as if they had been ordered, the spiders started attacking the clone.

"Well then, let's the game started." (distorted voice)

With that said, Hecate manifested another Fire Lance in the clone, while she hid in a safe place.

♦♦♦

 

[Another Place]

Inside a cocoon, Arachnia suddenly opened her eyes.

She smiled viciously as she received the telepathic message from her descendant. Her humanoid eyes, which had yellow pupils with black sclerae, shone with a dangerous red light.

"Finally, that hateful human is here..."

After that day, Arachnia focused on raising her spider army and entered the cocoon to accumulate power.

This was the preparations for war with the Humans outside the dungeon, which Arachnia loathed very much. The preparations were supposed to last for a month, but who knew that hateful Human would suddenly decide to come back here.

This saves her the trouble.

"Let's take a look at that Human's appearance."

Even though it was a bit early, Arachnia decided to kill this Human first before starting her conquest, not knowing this Human figure she hated so much was an immortal existence called Player.

It seems that the human intruder has come to one of the birthing nest, so she used a skill called Shared Sense, to peek at the situation through the eyes of one of her progeny, the Womb Spider.

Womb Spiders were created by injecting unfertilized spider eggs with the blood of the forbidden one.

Originally, they were created just as an efficient means of reproduction. They have excellent fertility and can lay around 100 egg sacs every day, in exchange for the lives of the male spiders they mate with. However, since they have the blood of the forbidden one, the offspring they create will be strong, but their lifespan will be short, not long than 5 years.

But that's for different matter.

And so, Arachnia saw a little figure in cloak and mask stood bravely from the Womb Spider's tentacle eyes.

Unfortunately, she didn't realize that the figure she saw from the Womb Spider's eyes was just a clone and not the real body. If only Arachnia herself had been personally there and used the Life Sense skill, she might have been able to see another figure hidden in the invisibility lurking nearby.

"So that's what you look like? Very well, you shall pay for what you did with your DEATH!"

As soon as Arachnia confirmed the existence of the human, she gave her spider army on that area a killing order.

But soon, she realized that she had made a grave mistake, as she had underestimated the cloaked figure too much. The cloaked figure easily, and without exerting too much effort, killed every single spider that came charging.
  ­

SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!

  ­
The fiery lance that the figure held, was capable of slicing and piercing the tough spider carapace like a hot knife into butter. The scattered spider corpses increased in number with every swing of the lance.

It wasn't even a battle, it was a slaughter!

Arachnia couldn't help but gasp.

"Wha... What the hell is that human!!? Why is that human so strong!?"

Aren't humans weak and fragile creatures who can die with just one touch?

The carapace of Archdora Tarantulla reflects 50% physical damage, while the carapace of Archmiga Tarantulla reflects 50% magical damage. Their HP was over 350,000 at the very least, but right now they were as easy to chop as cabbage.

Moreover, she was unable to gauge how much stamina the human had, because the human moved nimbly without stopping, and could still swing the lance tirelessly continuously for so long without getting tired.

Arachnia couldn't help but became scared.

She realized that sending her subordinates to die any further than this was pointless. Perhaps even those on 4F were also powerless. In order to win this battle, she had to face this powerful foe personally.

However, the Cocoon of the Abyss must not break prematurely or she will have to suffer serious consequences.

"Go, my brave heroes. That human has used up so much stamina and must be very weak by now! CHARGE!"

Thus, Arachnia had no choice but to continue sending out kill orders, or death orders now.

Every time the spider corpses piled up, it felt like her heart was being slashed, especially when she saw the corpses of Archdora and Archmiga Tarantulas. They were like very close descendants, and each was like her grandson and granddaughter.

Nearly an hour later, every spider in the area gone, except for the Womb Spiders.

"I suppose this is it..."

Arachnia had given up hope at that point and was about to break the cocoon regardless of the consequences.

Even though she still had many spider troops in other areas, but she already knew that sending them out would be pointless. Anyway, stopping the cloaked figure until the strengthening process was complete proved impossible.

However, before she could crack open the cocoon, the cloaked figure disappeared, and for some reason about 60% of the spider corpses also disappeared without her noticing.

Unexpectedly, from start to finish, the cloaked figure did not attack the Womb Spiders even once.

If that happened, the Womb Spider's tentacles that contained a lethal paralyzing poison might be able to restrain the figure, or perhaps that was what Arachnia had hoped would happen. But after seeing what the figure was capable of, she had a feeling it wouldn't work either.

"... I'll just do Plan C."

Humans proved to be terrifying creatures.

Forget about declaring war, even dealing with this single Human was getting out of hand. It would be better to cut the connection with the Human realm, at least until she was ready to hatch from the cocoon.

Arachnia can only sigh in defeat.

♦♦♦

 

[Safe Area]

After the battle at 3F, Hecate collected all of the loot while remaining invisible.

Done with that, she used the Return Crystal to return to the Safe Area and logged out to go to the bathroom. It took about 15 minutes for her to finish her business and re-login to the game.

"That was refreshing!"

Hecate took off the mask and sorting all the loot in her inventory to the storage.

The harvest this time can be said to be very abundant. There are hundreds of spider corpses that can be processed into meat and other things, such as carapace, poison gland, and many others.

Not to mention that there are also Soul Essences included.

Normally, due to the gigantic size of the carcasses, Hecate would have to disassemble them to fit the maximum allowed size of 3m × 3m × 3m. In addition, their total weight would definitely exceed several tons, which far exceeded her current weight limit.

Since her STR stat increased drastically by 100 points from (1+24) to (1+124), she gained an additional weight limit of ~33 kg and an additional space inventory of 10 m³. Now her inventory space has become ~42 m³ while the total weight limit she can carry has become ~343 kg.

But still, it was far from enough.

Fortunately, she had something that solved the problem.

This scroll was included in the exchange list of the Solstreus Magic Academy Exchange Area. Hecate took some of them as samples before she returned to Rosenweil Kingdom. This spell would be invaluable for transporting purposes, so of course the scroll would have to be copied and mass-produced.

But naturally, that alone wasn't enough, so she also had to spent a total of 15 skill points to get a certain skill.

Mystical Penetration allows the next spell to penetrate a certain percentage of enemy defenses, includes Barriers and Wall spells, such as Fire Wall, Ice Wall, Safety Wall, etc. Meanwhile, Mystical Reverberation can change a single target spell like Firebolt into an AOE spell, but the damage will be spread evenly to the receiving target.

While both skills were good when used wisely, Hecate didn't like using them.

That was because Mystical skills couldn't be used together, and she preferred Mystical Amplification over the two. Mystical Amplification alone was enough to pulverize the enemy, exceeding the damage when spells were used with Mystical Penetration by a large margin. And since she already had AOE spells, Mystical Reverberation was of no use to her.

Until today.

With the Mystical Reverberation and Shrink Lv5 Scroll combo, she reduced the size of the giant spider carcasses to fit in the inventory. But still, the area affected by Mystical Reverberation was limited and she only got about 60% of the spider carcasses.

So it was a given to go back there once again later.

"But their reflection damage is quite surprising. Too bad it didn't work on me(clone) though."

Naturally, the fire lance that the clone used was classified as fire elemental attack.

Since Hecate was currently wearing the full Ignis set, her fire elemental resistance had already reached 300%. This meant that the fire damage dealt to her would not damage her HP, but rather be converted to MP.

Of course, this fire resistance also applied to the clone. And since for the clone MP equals HP, its HP healed every time the attack is reflected.

Apart from the loot, Hecate has also gained one level, which brings her current level to 133.

As usual, Hecate spent the unallocated Stat Points into INT, raising her base INT into 222.

The 3rd floor really an excellent leveling spot. Especially those Archdora and Archmiga Tarantullas. Each gives 60k and 68k EXP respectively when EXP Potions are used.

But still, Hecate couldn't help but wary with the Womb Spiders there.

For some reason, in Hecate's eyes they exudes a red aura that symbolized danger and bad luck. It seemed nothing good would happen if she were to attack them.

"They didn't move from their place anyway, so I'll just stay far from them and leave them alone."

Ten minutes later, Hecate finished moving the loot to storage.

It's time for a new round, and the clone has been recast. Hecate drank another Improved Invisibility Potion and rushed back to 3F. However, what awaited her was contrary to what she had expected.

"Wait, where are the spiders!?" (distorted voice)

The previously large mysterious space, filled with numerous gigantic spiders was no more.

What was in front of her was just an ordinary hall, just like 1F and 2F. There was some dried blood and broken furniture here and there, but not a single spider, or other monster in sight. Just to be sure, she went to the 4F, spent about 30 minutes exploring all the way to the throne room on the 5F, but found nothing.

And as she entered the throne room, she suddenly received a new notification message.

Hecate could only feel heartbroken.

Such a good leveling spot, suddenly gone without warning. She only got to explore one area only before it was gone for good. Not to mention that there were still mountains of loot that she had yet to claim.

The duration of the invisibility potion had expired but she didn't really care at this point.

Hecate took off the mask, sat down and leaned back on the throne chair. Then, she made the clone kneel on one leg, as if the clone was kneeling before a king.

"This actually doesn't feel so bad."

Although Hecate lost her prey, she got a palace (ruins) as a consolation prize.