Exploding spiders

The second level.

Reed had removed the bats and the goblins, and instead increased the number of spiders and slimes, turning the level contained four rooms, into a level containing only two.

He had also all but removed the distance between the rooms, leaving only a few metres from the end of one to the beginning of the other, while also thinning them to allow only one person at a time to walk through.

"Be very careful. I've heard that there is a pitfall somewhere near the middle of the room." He said, moving his vision over all of the spiders in the room, trying to find the best position for the fight.

"There are so many of them..." Tucker sounded a little scared, with good reason, with the changes Reed had made, there were now 10 of them, increasing their number by more than three times their previous amount.

"If you can get them to bunch up, I can take out most of them." Reed offered. This statement made John and Polter look at him.

"How would you do that?" John asked, and Reed could see that Polter had now on guard against him a bit more than before.

"How familiar are you with the doom spear spell?" Reed asked.

"Never heard of it." Was the reply given by John.

"Really? It's the best spell for horde destruction before tier six." Reed explained. There was a doom spear spell, but that required the mana reserves of at least a tier six mage. The spell that Reed was talking about didn't exist.

"It's fire magic, it'll take me nine seconds to prepare the spell, if they are extremely close together, I may be able to kill them all with it."

However, the three of them were not from this world, and neither had they spent time in the library, so naturally, they had no way to know that what Reed was talking about was a complete lie.

"What do you think?" He asked the group. 

John considered it, Tucker was still staring at the spiders, now joined by Polter, who was wondering whether or not Reed was trustworthy enough to let him prepare a spell that could very well kill them all.

"How many times have you used it?" For the first time, Reed heard Polter speak. "In battle? I've used it 8 times. Don't worry, I won't miss." Reed gave a reassuring smile. "Though I can understand your distrust, we can just deal with the spiders regularly."

Reed had used it three times, twice on a stationary target, once on the two-headed boss.

Polter didn't respond, but John did.

"Let's do it." He said.

"Alright, I'll start casting as soon as they start to gather."

Tucker snapped out of his trance. "Alright, I'm ready."

They all readied themselves.

"3, 2, 1, GO!" John counted down, then rushed into the room, aiming for a spider near the corner, with the other two following behind him.

Reed took off his gloves. 'Alright, let's do this.' He brought his palms together, and after three seconds, pulled them apart, an orange-white stream of fiery mana connecting them.

He turned his right palm to face the ceiling, and bent the fingers of his left hand to form a claw like shape.

The stream grew wider, thicker, before it turned into raging flames and moved to extend beyond his right palm.

He slowly drew his left hand backwards, making the stream of fire even longer, causing it to thin out slightly. He made the tip of the stream taper out into a bright orange point.

He forced the width to compress even further, causing the construct to be covered with thin, transparent orange film which started to glow.

Then he clenched his right hand into a fist, and the moment he did so, the glow increased greatly.

The result was a metre long, fiery construct, with a point.

"I'm ready!" He called out, and the flames in his hand glowed brighter as he assumed a javelin throwing position. "GET BACK!" He shouted, and waited for them to fall back.

Two seconds later, he hurled his flame spear directly into the middle of the group of spiders.

"COVER YOUR EARS!!!" He shouted, before doing the same.

The spear pierced through a spider's abdomen, into a second, before exploding with a loud boom, causing every thing within it's blast radius to be destroyed.

BOOM!!!

Reed was less affected by the sound, however, the others did not have his body, so they suffered some damage to their ears.

The sound was quieter than his gunshots, but at that time, his helmet had offered protection, he wasn't wearing his helmet now, but his physical upgrade had made him resistant to most things that would kill a human immediately.

He didn't know that at first, but this incident would make him run a few tests on himself.

As the echoes subsided, Reed was breathing heavily, and the other three were sitting on the ground covering their ears.

"MOVE!!" He shouted, and rushed forwards, drawing his swords.

His warning was heard, and John, Polter, and Tucker immediately moved out of the way, as a spider, with one of it's legs missing, attacked the place where they were a moment ago. Behind it, was another spider, with a rock lodged into it's head, it had only three functional eyes.

Reed killed the legless spider, before he stumbled backwards and fell to the ground, waiting to be attacked by the second one.

However the attack never came, as it was intercepted by John and Polter, who made quick work of it.

"Huff... Thanks... Huff..." Reed thanked them while breathing heavily.

"That was a hell of a spell!" John exclaimed, amazed at the amount of damage Reed had caused.

"Huff... Haha..." Reed let out a chuckle. "It better be, it takes almost all my mana to cast it." Not at all, just a fifth of his capacity, in fact. Reed sat up. "Give me a minute, I need to catch my breath."

John nodded, and the three of them moved to collect the cores.

Reed stared at Polter's back. 'He's dropped his guard after the show.' Reed slowed his breathing. 'Big mistake.'