Chapter 58: Is That A Prehensile Tongue?

Their footsteps echoed through the tunnel as they kept moving.

Somehow, without them knowing when, the air they breathed had changed.

Now, there was a thick scent of dried blood and damp stone hanging in the air.

The faint glow from the wall lit their path, but it still wasn’t enough to banish the darkness lying ahead and behind them.

Arlo, walking beside Noah, broke the silence.

“You know,” he said, voice low but casual, “Bullet Spiders are fascinating creatures. Vicious, yeah, but fascinating.”

Noah gave him a sidelong glance. “That’s one way to describe something that can shoot webs through bone.”

Arlo shrugged. “They’re more organized than you’d think. Most people don’t know this, but they have a sort of hierarchy.”

Leo glanced back, trying to act as if he wasn’t listening in.

“Each nest has a Patriarch.” Arlo continued. “Big, slow, bloated thing. He mates with the females and stays in the nest. Never leaves.”

“The females do the hunting and defending, while he, well, he keeps the nest going. Always getting the remaining females to lay fresh eggs.”

Galahad grunted. “Sounds disgusting.”

“And sounds randy too.” Arlo chuckled. “But it works. And the scariest part about them isn’t the numbers they bring to bear.”

He paused dramatically.

“It’s the cloaking.”

Leo raised a brow. “Cloaking?”

“Adult Bullet Spiders can camouflage.” Arlo said. “Perfectly.”

“They can blend into their surroundings so well you could walk right past them and never know. They do it while sleeping, and in combat. Makes them hard to track, and even harder to kill.”

Cal cursed under his breath. “So they could just… be waiting on the ceiling?”

Arlo grinned. “Exactly.”

Noah looked up instinctively.

“But,” Leo cut in with a smirk, “lucky for us, that’s not our problem. We’re in an E-rank monolith. Adult Bullet Spiders can’t enter. They wouldn’t be able to survive the pressure of staying in such a weak monolith.”

“I hope you’re right,” Bronn muttered, glancing around nervously.

“I am,” Leo said, sounding far too confident. “Besides, if an adult Bullet Spider was in here, we wouldn’t be walking right now. We’d be corpses stacked in a webbed corner.”

They fell silent at that.

The tunnel stretched before them, curling slightly to the right. Bits of old webs hung loosely from the walls, catching the dim light.

Noah didn’t like how quiet everything felt now.

“Let’s just hope,” he muttered, “this monolith doesn’t surprise us.”

Beside him, Arlo chuckled. “When has it ever not?”

“Another branch.” Cal spoke up from the front, and everyone focused their attention back on the tunnel ahead of them.

They were at another branch, with one leading to the left and the other to the right.

They took the path on the left.

As they trudged deeper into the monolith, they began to encounter water in the tunnels, and before long, it was sloshing around their ankles.

The branch they had taken had led them into a tunnel where the floor dipped lower, forming a shallow stream that trickled and rippled with each step they took.

The walls here were darker, almost slimy, and the faint glowing parts of the stone wall had dimmed to a pale hue, obstructed by the slime covering it.

No one spoke. The only sound that traveled through the tunnels were the quiet splash of their boots against the wet stone and the occasional drip of water from the ceiling.

Then, without warning, something lashed out from the darkness.

A thick, slimy tongue slammed into Cal’s shield with a wet clang, the force nearly knocking him off his feet.

Bronn’s shield shuddered a moment later under the same attack, the reverberating impact echoing loudly in the narrow tunnel.

“Contact!” Cal barked, trying to reorient himself as the tongue recoiled into the shadows ahead.

Everyone scrambled into motion, weapons drawn, tension shooting through the group like lightning.

“There!” Leo pointed, his eyes narrowing. “It’s an Acid Toad!”

From the edge of the dim light, a creature lumbered into view. Nearly the size of a full-grown man, it squatted low with bloated, lumpy skin that glistened with a slick sheen.

Its warty flesh seemed to pulse faintly, and a foul stench of decay and chemicals rolled from its hide.

Its eyes, bulging, glassy, and wide, gazed at them with an unnatural haze, while long, muscular limbs ended in webbed claws that dragged across the ground.

Acid steamed gently where it touched stone, leaving small pits in the rock.

Its tongue slithered back into its mouth like a whip curling into its sheath.

Cal grunted and looked down. “My shield, it’s smoking!”

He turned the metal slightly, revealing deep sizzling grooves forming across the surface. “We need to kill it now before our shields melt!”

“Cover your ears!” Galahad shouted.

There was no hesitation. Noah, Leo, Arlo, and Galahad immediately pressed their palms over their ears.

But Cal and Bronn couldn’t. Both stood with shields braced, arms occupied in shielding the group from another potential tongue strike.

The Acid Toad’s throat expanded like a balloon, its mouth stretching wide.

Then it let loose a deep, resonating roar.

Cal and Bronn staggered instantly, shields dropping slightly as the sound crashed into them like a physical force. Their knees buckled, disoriented and dazed.

That was the opening the toad had been waiting for.

With a sudden burst of motion, it leapt, its powerful legs propelling it high into the air.

It soared over the two stunned shield bearers, its glistening body shimmering in the air as it descended, mouth wide and hissing.

Noah’s eyes widened.

“Move!” he shouted, but it was already too late.

The Acid Toad was already upon them.

Noah’s eyes widened, a spell formation forming on his palm.

But he won’t be fast enough. He could only watch as the Toad got closer and closer, almost in slow motion.

And at the last second, a blue opaque barrier flashed into existence.

Leo’s Frost Shield crackled to life, forming a thick pane of jagged ice in front of him just as the toad crashed down.

The monster shattered through the shield like a hammer through glass, but it was enough to buy them the time they needed.

Leo dove to the side, tumbling to safety as icy shards exploded around him.

Arlo had his bow drawn, arrow nocked and mana flowing into the tip.

But as the toad’s thick, mucous-covered hide gleamed under the pale light, he cursed and pulled back.

“The skin’s too thick!” He yelled. “Leo, freeze the damn thing!”

Leo slammed a hand to the floor, and blue magic surged from his palm.

Ice exploded from beneath the toad, crawling up its legs, encasing them in jagged frost.

The beast struggled, flailing as the ice pinned its belly to the ground, then crept up its back.

But it wasn’t enough to hold it down.

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