Finally, after almost six months of constant skirmishes against monsters and having to eat their disgusting meat we reached our destination. Right now we were standing at the roots of an enormously huge tree, one that with diameter exceeded our city multiple times, and we were about to start the final fight of the expedition.

Our people have rested enough, and my students were brimming with enthusiasm, so there was no reason to postpone this battle any longer. Our strategy was to blast the entrance to the spider nest with fire magic to burn away the traps and kill the weaker spiders, but if everything went well, about half of them should be exterminated.

The mages started their casting, and the warriors were protecting them in a case any monster showed up, but it seemed like no monster noticed us. I too, got ready for any unexpected circumstances to arise, I probably wouldn’t care about the soldiers, but I can’t let any of my students get hurt.

Well, they are not weak, so if they get hurt it would be either from their own blunders or something unexpected, and the latter appeared, only then I would take action. But for now, let’s enjoy the fireworks, the inferno magic our mages will use is not something you get to see every day or even in your lifetime, as it requires to have multiple mages supporting one with necessary skills which are kind of hard to get.

Fortunately I have a pyromaniac student that’s well versed in any kind of fire and explosion magic, so the only skill I had to teach her was the cooperation skill. I wasn’t worried about interruptions, as there was a relatively small amount of monsters here comparing to the rest of the forest, so the only thing we would have to fear would be the spiders noticing us.

Speaking of spiders, it was a bit weird that we were still not attacked by them. I mean if there was a creature that was most aware of something that close to it’s nest, then it probably would be a spider, so why we could channel our attack like that was a mystery to me. It was a bit too late when I noticed that we’ve fallen into their trap.

The inferno magic was launched successfully, but instead of razing the entrance of the nest, it was stopped by stupidly huge wall of ice. What was terrifying, was the fact that the combined effort of about fifty mages and using of advanced magic was actually unable to melt that ice completely. They only managed to go about halfway through it.

I have to say I panicked a bit there, that’s why the force I used in my own spell might have been a bit too excessive, but as soon as I launched my own inferno magic the wall literally evaporated, leaving a small figure behind it visibly confused. I was confused too, since it couldn’t be a spider no matter how you looked at it, the figure looked like a human instead.

I didn’t have time to ponder on it, as the spider army started pouring out of the tree’s entrance. I didn’t want to steal experience points from them so I abstained from fighting, but I closely monitored the humanoid figure that presumably erected the ice wall before. That kind of magic required immense amount of mana and even bigger amount of skill, there was no way that creature was a weak one.

I actually doubted they would have problem facing a young dragon alone, if I weren’t here, maybe that one could wipe the whole expedition out alone. They were certainly wary of me, and even though they joined the fight, I could feel the pair of eyes focused solely on me. That was another sign that they were strong, to be able to ignore your enemies and observe a completely different target during an intense fight.

If they targeted my students, I would certainly interfere, but as I didn’t like to help the government’s lackeys, I left the soldiers to their own accords. Well, that and the humanoid thing definitely had no intent on killing anyone. They certainly were protecting the spiders, but that was all. Were they sent by the goddess so the spiders wouldn’t lose too badly?

I tried to get a closer look at them, but they wore something like a cape that was most likely enchanted with the sight inhibition, I couldn’t see their face at all, but judging by the figure, it could be a child. What would a child do on a battlefield, I had no idea, but if it was a monster that evolved into a humanoid form, then it would certainly make sense.

The queen also made a move, joining her children on the battlefield, and was immediately intercepted by my students including Arthur the hero. As expected, the staring of creating another one of the royal spider was too big for her, and now she was even weaker than me. I really wanted her to survive, but the caped guy said that her death is our only salvation, so I’m really conflicted.

I’m not even sure why did I believe his words so easily, but it’s too late to have doubts, the fight already started and I had to watch out for my students. They were able to overpower the queen, but it was still a bit hard for them to deal any significant damage

They were doing okay, but that’s only before the caped figure interfered. In the span of seconds, they had my students covered in spiderwebs from head to toe, and from the looks of it, not a single one of them was able to break out. That settled it, the humanoid figure was definitely an evolved spider, the question was whether it was the queen’s child or not.

We might have chosen our resting place when we decided to go on this expedition.