Crazy… I was stupefied.

The lightning bolt shot by the demon lasted less than one second. But that second alone was enough to leave me completely shocked.

It pierced through the entire nest as though it was paper, moreover, it even killed the spider queen in the process!

Of course, there was no way I could see the spider queen from here, but now that the demon was occupying my body, I could sense whatever he was sensing.

Right now, I could see the entire nest clearly in my mind.

[What do you think, boy?] The demon grinned and returned the control of my body to me. [Amazing, right?]

I was in a daze.

“… Am I going to be this powerful after learning that move?”

[Of course not.] The demon immediately destroyed my illusion. [You need to train for a few years first if you want to wield that kind of power.]

I unconsciously nodded while gulping down a mouthful of saliva.

Once more, I realized how powerful the demon was.

Just now, he had used my body to unleash that attack, but the power he showed was hundreds of times greater than my strongest attack.

And it was taking into account the fact that he used my body when my mana pool almost completely exhausted.

But when I checked my mana pool once more, I was surprised again.

My mana had not decreased after the demon unleashed that attack. Quite the opposite, it had recovered a little.

“How…?”

[I did not use your mana to perform that attack. Instead, I borrowed the mana around us?]

“I see… Can I do something like that?”

[The current you? Impossible. But it will be possible in the future.] The demon replied indifferently. [Did you learn anything after seeing that attack?]

I fell silent for several seconds before nodding.

“The trick is to compress the lightning, right?”

[Not bad. Yes, right now, the lightning in your lightning seed is not powerful enough to perform a long-range attack. You need to increase its power. And the easiest way to do it is by compressing the lightning.

[It’s just like when the pressure of the water flowing out of the hose is not enough and you constrict the end of the hose to increase the pressure. The principle is the same. Do you understand?]

I nodded in answer. I think I do.

Let's see...

I called upon the lightning inside me and moved it to my hand. I then tried to compress it as much as I could.

But almost immediately, the lightning went out of control, sending an electric shock through my arm.

“Ugh!?”

I let out a groan of pain and held my arm with a twisted expression. My entire body became numb and twitched repeatedly due to the pain.

Fuck. That hurts like hell!

[Not as easy as it looks, right?] The demon crackled in amusement.

Dammed bastard.

It took almost one minute for the pain to disappear, but even then, my arm still felt numb.

“I guess I should be careful when practicing this technique. I will only practice it in the dream realm, at least until I become proficient in it.”

[Hehe, now you understand how amazing the dream realm is. Other people need to risk their lives if they want to learn something like this.]

I nodded. The demon is right.

I don’t really like the demon that much, and I have the feeling that he is using me for something that he is not telling me. But I must admit that I gained a lot due to him.

I guess I now understand why so many people in stories make pacts with the devil.

Even if you know that it’s a road to certain doom, it’s very hard to resist the temptation.

“Sigh, let’s go. We need to go back to help the others.” I spoke to the devil and left the nest quickly.

The others are still fighting against the spider swarm. I don’t know if they are in danger.

Perhaps, they need my help.

But contrary to my expectations, the battle had already finished when I returned.

Most of the spiders had been killed, including the Tier Six Spider that appeared suddenly.

And to my surprise, the one that killed it had been Andrew.

 

…

 

At the same time, at the center of the nest.

John was looking at the dead body of the spider queen with a heavy expression.

Several spiders lay dead around him, most of them killed by him.

But a couple of them had been pierced by a sudden bolt of lightning that carbonized their insides instantly.

“Who was it?” He asked himself with a frown.

Just now, he had been fighting against the spider queen and the spiders protecting it without success.

The spider queen was very cunning. It hid behind the other spiders the entire time, not allowing him to come close.

Every time he tried to bypass the other spiders to attack the queen, dozens of spiders threw themselves at him, forcing him to fight them instead.

John had killed over fifty spiders like that, but even then, more spiders were coming to defend the queen, stopping him from killing it.

Eventually, he realized that he had underestimated the situation.

Even though he was a Tier Seven Awakened and the spider was at the Sixth Tier, a tier lower than him, it was not a monster that he could kill alone in the current circumstances.

Quite the opposite, if he continued like this, he would eventually die here.

But when he was thinking about retreating, a sudden lightning bolt pierced through the battlefield.

John saw the lightning bolt pierce the spider queen, killing it instantly. The queen could not offer the slightest resistance.

It did not even manage to react.

John was sure that if the target of the lightning bolt was he instead, he would have died without realizing anything.

“… That is definitively not the power of a Tier Seven Awakened. At the very least, a Tier Eight, no, a Tier Nine Awakened is needed to release that level of power.”

But in the information John received before entering the dungeon, there was nothing about an Awakened of that level.

“The strongest Awakened trapped in this dungeon should be only at the fifth tier. Then, where did this mysterious come from? And why didn’t he show himself but instead helped me secretly?” John’s face was filled with doubts and fear.

A powerful but unidentified Awakened was very likely to be bad news.

He could be a notorious criminal, or he could be a powerful Awakened that was in this part of the city doing something secretive when the dungeon occurred.

“… Perhaps, he is not even human.”

That was the worst possibility.

“Well, I don’t think so. Otherwise, he would have not helped me. However, I should report this to the higher-ups either way. I just hope that this is not bad news.”