Chapter 24 Mantra

The other spider was done with its meal and was being pressured by Venion. He did this to make sure that Lucas had enough time to deal with his opponent first, before going to the next. Standing up, he looked at what he had left. A broken sword, a tiny bit of energy, and another unlit torch. He couldn't do a whole lot with those leftover tools, so he looked at Venion in a pleading manner. "Are you ready for the next one?", Venion said playfully, it seemed that the deaths of the soldiers didn't bother him in the slightest. They are replaceable after all.

"Give me a second.", Venion frowned a bit at that comment, but respected his wishes, "If it takes too long I'll just release the spider! I'm not going to stand here for 5 minutes."

Now that he had gained a bit of time Lucas approached the dead spider, a few of its legs were still twitching and moving a bit. Rigor Mortis was kicking in, combined with the fact that the spider already looked hideous made the scene creepy. Yet it didn't bother Lucas anymore, his mind had come to the conclusion there was no reason to be scared anymore. His mental state was hardened after killing two of those creatures. Taking the hilt of the broken sword in hand, he started to cut off one of the legs.

He didn't have a good grasp on it since it was kicking around, and making a decent weapon out of it was also not possible. After all, he didn't have much time, and he didn't know how to make weapons in the first place. But he did know magic really well, whether that came from his long studies or the influence of the strange red-eyed being inside him didn't matter, it gave him what he needed to survive.

Using the same principles for muscle strengthening he let his mind focus on gathering energy charged with elemental components. This time, he didn't use the earth element, rather, he let fire dominate the energy before letting it flow throughout his arms. He planned to make a flaming spear that could easily pierce the spider's defenses.

The energy got to his hands, he just had to let it flow into the leg. There was only one problem, he didn't have the most proficiency in controlling his energy in the first place, let alone in the outside world. His hand started to catch fire, and some of the heat was transferred to the leg, but it wasn't enough. Lucas still had his heat vision on, bright colors were covering his sight.

Enduring the pain of having your hands being cauterized he kept trying to force it through the magic gateway on his hands. The heat was smoldering, the very few hairs on his hand started to melt. He could hear the tiny sparks, smell the burnt hair enter his nostrils. Yet he didn't stop, if he were to fight fairly against such a beast without any decent tools, he needed to make appropriate sacrifices.

In the end, it did work, even if his energy was now depleted, he held an almost melting steel spear with a seared hand. Screaming a battle cry, he brute-forced his way to the spider. The creature was still busy with Venion's suppression, but its instincts kicked in before using its front legs to assault Lucas.

The spear pierced through the spider, like a hot knife through butter, but he barely missed the head, giving the spider a second chance. If he waited long enough it would bleed to death, but the spider wanted its revenge no matter what. Even with a spear stuck in its sides, it moved toward Lucas. He knew what he had to do, he just needed to calm himself down. He waited while the spider came ever so close to him. He waited, waited, and then! The fangs were back and tried to bite at Lucas, he could probably dodge in time, yet he stood still, waiting. The moment he was about to lose his own head, did Lucas shove the hilt of the sword into the monster's mouth.

Swords need to be sharp, this makes them brittle as well; but hilts were just clumps of iron. The fangs tried to bite it into pieces, but it was struggling. That tiny half-a-second moment was more than enough for Lucas to succeed in what he wanted to do. The monster was busy with the sword, if left alone it would use its legs again. Reaching forward with his burnt hand he grabbed the monster's face. It was distracted so he had the perfect opportunity. He clamped his hands and its eyes and squeezed as hard as he could. The spider screeched for its life, yet it didn't last very long. IT moved every part of its body, kicking and slicing, but completely missed its target, it couldn't see and the pain made it even worse.

Seconds passed and the screeching dwindled, slowly the monster's face was a mess of melted parts, burn wounds, and popped eyes. "To use earth and fire strengthening to create a smoldering hand, impressive to come up with on the spot."

He quickly placed his hand on the cool ground to try to get rid of the heat, his energy was already depleted so the fire and earth energy particles would also dissipate leaving his hand without any protection from the heat. The pain was immense, but Lucas didn't complain, he was used to enduring it.

Venion strolled to where Lucas was lying on the ground, panting and pushing his hand on different spots on the ground. Venion casted a single Light spell and all of Lucas' suffering and pain went away. His hand was restored and the scratches closed up without leaving any scars.

"I have to say I'm impressed by your determination and creativity, but you still lack a lot of wits. You have just injured yourself pretty badly to kill two weak spiders, while you could've reached the same result by making use of your wit.".

Lucas didn't completely understand, he was also still processing what had happened, during his fights it always feels like he was losing most of his emotion, so he could focus on proficiency. Seeing Lucas' ignorance, Venion casted a simple air spell that Lucas could have definitely used, the spell landed on a stalactite, severing it from the ceiling. It fell right on the dead carcass of the spider, completely penetrating the body.

"As a mage, we need to be smarter than anyone else, we need to be stronger than anyone else, and we must be the most cunning of them all. Remember this Lucas, these are the guidelines for any good mage. This is our mantra, our creed!"

Searing that mantra into his mind, he was questioning what he was doing and what his future would look like. Then he noticed something that was off, 'If you need to be extremely cunning, why is he helping us?'

'To make us feel sympathy, to rely on him, to see him as our master, or something even worse.'

Seeing that Lucas was lost in thought, Venion got bored and moved on, "Follow me, Lucas, it's time to show you what a real mage can do."

Excitement bloomed out of Lucas, wanting to see the power that a first circle mage could do, but then he remembered something. "Master, aren't you scared that when there are a lot of spiders they'll start using magic?"

Venion looked pleased with how he was addressed but then showed a completely dumbfounded look, "What are you talking about? Only intelligent beasts can use magic, spiders are too stupid to even think, where do you get these sorts of ideas?". Luckily Venion wasn't waiting for an answer as he shrugged it off and moved on, seeing it as an ignorant question. 'So he doesn't know?'

'No he does know that intelligent beast can use magic, but it seems that the world of nature is still hiding a lot of secrets'