I had no time to ponder on it, I had to jump into the fight or else my students would be in danger. I couldn’t just let my sentiment stop me from protecting them. The hooded figure reacted to my presence with terrifying speed, and even though I aimed for a surprise attack, they just dodged effortlessly.

I’m certain I can’t defeat them in speed so I will have to take some desperate measures to win. I think my overall strength is still bigger than theirs, but there’s no point in having it if I can’t land a hit, so I will have to use some tricks. Is this even possible to trick a spider? I have no idea but I still have to try or we will all die today.

Crap, talk about tricks, how could I not notice a trap laid out in a plain sight!? My feet are stuck, and the hooded guy is charging right at me! If I take a direct hit like that, I will most likely die! I have to use my magic to shield myself… or not. Well, that happens a lot when a spider evolves into humanoid form and isn’t used to movement on two legs, but they certainly tend to trip a lot.

This one landed rather gracefully after tripping on what I assume was some tree’s root, I was surprised they managed to trip on something with reflexes like that. Still, it saved my life and gave me time to free myself from the webs gluing me to the ground. I burned my favorite shoes a bit since I used fire, but that was okay since I would die if I didn’t do it.

In the single second I took to free myself, the hooded spider already collected itself and charged at me again, this time taking a different approach. If my jaw could do it, it would definitely drop to the floor as I saw two gigantic tigers made out of ice galloping at me with their huge fangs threatening to rip me apart.

Why tigers though? I would expect giant spiders, but definitely not the overgrown cats. Is this spider fond of them or something? Doesn’t matter, I have to use my fire again in a bit uncontrolled manner, and since we are in the forest it most likely will cause some problems, since this time, nobody is watching the spread.

My inferno fireballs collided head on with the ice tigers, extinguishing both them and themselves in the process, and even though the strength of ice surprised me, I exhaled with relief that they were enough to negate my fire. Even though I’m fighting for life of me and my students, it wouldn’t be good to enrage gods by destroying this forest too much.

Sending this expedition was already pushing on the limits imposed by them, so all the damage we do apart from necessary can lead to annihilation of our city. I sighed again, I was certain that I could defeat the spider before my eyes, but I wasn’t certain about the damage it would cause to our surroundings.

Still, I had to do it, I took two of the four rings off my fingers and put them in my pocket. In that moment, violent strength filled my body, and a massive amount of mana flowed into me. With two seals lifted, no matter how strong the little hooded spider got, its strength which was achieved in only about six months was incomparable with the one I got in my hundreds of years.

Now let’s take a look at the attack it was charging while I was taking off my seals.

…

…

…

WTF!?

Just what am I seeing right now?!

The trees around us stood up, their roots forming into a wicked parody of legs, their branches joining into massive arms and finally their crowns into something head like. Right now about twenty tree golems, with their sizes easily exceeding most buildings were rising from the ground and looking at me with hatred.

Don’t teel me the giant golem made of darkness supposedly sighted some time ago was also this spider’s doing. Just what did it have to go through to reach that level of strength. I was really starting to get curious about its stats, they should be somewhere in tens of thousands.

But why did I fell like it wasn’t right?

Crap, what was that? Something just flew right by my head, I managed to evade it, but it almost exceeded my attack prediction ability. I lost a bit of my hair length to that attack, a slash definitely came from the direction of the spider. So, even though I was attacked by it, why can’t I see any weapon in its hands?

Hmm, wait a second… are these strings? There was a strange glint when I looked at the spider’s hands and there definitely was something connected to them. Did it use thread as a slashing weapon? I had no time to ponder, because a dozen of giant wooded fists came crashing at me.

I had a hard time dodging, knowing that at any second I could be slashed in half by almost invisible thread, and because of that, I got grazed multiple times by protruding branches on giant’s arms. It wasn’t enough to draw blood, but the damage was accumulating and my clothes weren’t that good of an armor so they were slowly getting destroyed.

Huh, did I just see a glint of the spider’s face? Is she a girl? Why is she blushing?

Ahh.

My pants got destroyed.