Return to Jorgaldur Volume I: the battle mage

Forgotten spell

He spent a long time thinking about how to get the spiders down from the ceiling, while dodging them, often relying on Earthen Wall to take shelter, but only a few seconds, since it was soon demolished. And using Mill, although it served to improve his affinity with the skill, had the problem that the poison was dissolving the spears. He tried wielding lower level ones, but their deterioration was faster, so they were unusable too soon.

Finally, he came to a solution, one so obvious that he would have banged his head against the cave wall. The last spell he had unlocked had been Gravity and, although mana consumption was somewhat high, it was also the ideal solution. It was so obvious, that he felt ashamed of not having had it in mind, but it is also true that he hadn't had the opportunity to use it, so he had practically forgotten it.

Before using the spell, he placed some spears on the ground, imbued in fire and secured with Stand. After that, he moved through the cave until one of them was in the right position. He then tried the spell he had learned with the mole-people, which somehow was in his spell list as Ceiling-fall and affinity 1/5. Although he still hadn't mastered it, it was enough to destabilize the other spiders a bit and confuse them.

He finally cast Gravity on his target, which wasn't able to react to the sudden weight gain, falling into the trap of spears and fire in which it got stuck, and in which it ended up dying with the help of an axe.

There were three left, but none of them stood again over the spear trap. They didn't quite understand the danger, but, somehow, they had learned to fear it. Eldi then decided to use Ceiling-fall and Gravity again against all three. Only one of them managed to stay on the ceiling, although its movements were extremely slow.

The other two had suffered a heavy blow, but nothing more. They were in perfect condition to fight on the ground, if not for from the excessive weight that was restricting their movements, and that wouldn't last much longer. The two spiders tried to climb the walls again, but one of them was stopped by Eldi, forcing it to defend itself.

The Cavern Spider blocked Double Edge with its legs, but it wasn't unscathed. Taking advantage of the situation, he decided to continue with a Double Edge rain, moving around to try to avoid the attacks of the spider that was on the ceiling, and to which the one that had escaped soon joined. There were only two, so it was much easier than before, in addition that Projectiles against me? was extremely effective when he couldn't dodge them.

Soon, two of the spider's legs were severed, causing it to try to flee again, and be pierced and immobilized by a spear. It was at the mercy of its enemy, who got rid of it not long after.

There were two left, so it was relatively easy to use Mill while burning the cobwebs that was preventing him from leaving, and taking refuge behind the unburned part of them. The cobweb itself protected him from the arachnids' poisonous projectiles, while they didn't dare to approach, thus allowing him to recover his mana and energy. Meanwhile, the effect of Air Conditioning continued to affect them.

When he returned, he immediately used Ceiling-fall and Gravity on both spiders. Although, this time, they managed to endure, their movements were restricted for a few seconds, making it impossible for them to dodge the rain of Javelins. After that, he used Almost Thor on one of them, which collapsed on the ground, burned and pierced by spears. One of the weapons pierced its head, dying almost instantly.

The other kept holding on to the ceiling, spitting poison, but little by little it was bleeding out. The third time he applied Gravity, it couldn't stand, so it fell, dying shortly after, and leaving its body and that of its companions at the mercy of the assistant, who also collected those eggs. After all, they were ingredients for some potions, and reducing the number of spiders seemed necessary.

After that confrontation, Eldi returned to what should be the main road, and didn't return to places with extreme density of cobwebs, as it wasn't his goal to get rid of all those nests. Of course, being aware that he could use Gravity eased his work against those which intended to eat his lamp.

The most serious problem he had was that he didn't know which path he should follow. More than once, he was back at a point where he had already been, which made those tunnels into a kind of maze where it was difficult to get one's bearings, since all the walls and spider's webs looked the same. Luckily, he had a map that was updating as he traveled inside the mountain, so he could know which paths he hadn't yet traveled.

While he was walking through another of the tunnels, he heard the sounds of blows. He went to check its origin, discovering two level 56 spiders fighting over the remains of a piece of meat. It was a bit strange, since that meat seemed cut with a sharp knife.

Taking advantage that they were focused on their fight, Eldi attacked them first with Abyss, then impaled them on the ground with spears. They could have escaped from the spears with some ease, but the high human didn't give them time for it, continuously immobilizing them with Abyss and using Shred while they couldn't move.

Once he had eliminated the threat, his assistant picked up the meat. In his inventory, he could see that it was the flesh of an animal called Great Wild Boar of the Woods, a being that could hardly end up at the bottom of that mountain, so that was even more strange.

At the end of the tunnel, there seemed to be light, in addition to hearing a strange and continuous sound. So he advanced with caution, finding that the tunnel ended up in the middle of the wall of a huge cave over twenty meters high. There was a big fall from there, but not only that. He didn't know what created the dim light that was illuminating the place, but he did know that, as far as the eye could see, it was full of spiders. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands.