After a more in-depth analysis, the System had determined that the entire forest was no doubt the body of the Transforming Spider. Jin could not bear himself to spread the news out to the rest of the group here.
"Should the Demon Exorcist Trainees wandered too long in the forest, it would eventually be eaten by the Spider." The System commented.
"You mean the spider will appear to consume them?"
"No. If the predictive analysis is true, the appearance of the forest will consume them when they are caught off guard." The System stated and warned Jin not to mess around with this particular Transforming Spider.
"So… any damage done to the forest is equivalent to hitting the spider?" Jin asked as he changed his Bam and Boo now into combat gloves. They looked like a gauntlet made out of many small bamboo poles sewn into it. Hence it does not restrict the movement of the user at all. Unlike the usual combat gloves that Meomi or even Xue Ping, the Prancing Puma Cultivator had used, Jin was able to modulate his Maqi even smoother with Boo while Bam had the ability to amplify it creates damage to a certain extent.
"Not necessary. Based on the Magic Eye drones, the System observed that some of the forests consisted of normal trees and bushes. Should User wish to inflict damage, it had to be wide scale."
"Then I guess it's unfair for the cultivators to search for something hiding in plain sight," Jin said as he generated his Maqi and stored them within Bam and Boo for the moment. Claire noticed that Jin was being all anxious when she was documenting specific behaviours of the trainees. So, she decided to stop and calm him down.
"Jin, you do not to be too concern of them, they should be able to take care of themse-" Claire noticed his chi was awfully dense that it nearly got to her.
"Jin? What's wrong?" Claire knew that the dungeon supplier would not do something as stupid as to kill the trainees but she felt something was off about him.
"I am sorry but for the 'search' part. I will be interfering for them. Send them a chi transmission to take cover." Jin said as his hands felt awfully heavy with the accumulation of Maqi.
"Jin, why are you doing this? Doing so will significantly deduct marks from them. And you were the one who proposed this." The dungeon supplier did not say anything else, and Claire sighed as if she found his actions improbable. Was he so insistent of messing the examinees that much?
"No, it's my mistake. I did not regulate the search part properly for this dungeon. I only found it out when I saw the forest. They would not be able to find it without my help." Jin apologised sincerely by giving a bow.
"Guys, your new team leader demands all of you to take cover as quickly as possible. He would be helping you to get the demon out for you to slay." Claire shook her head as she announced it to all of them.
The exorcist trainees were confused as to what was happening and listened to their ex leader's instructions for the moment. Rong activated his cultivation, and a silhouette of a massive, hairy ox demon covered the entire group within its embrace. Meanwhile, the Astral Panda Cultivator raised his hands up and shot a blast full of Black Panda Fire energy towards the sky.
Both the exorcist trainees and Claire saw the immensely powerful chi rising up to the sky. The beam of Black Panda Fire energy seems like it hit a pinnacle in the sky. Moreover, the beam energy scattered, fanned, and spread the Black Panda Fire like a geyser emerging the ground throughout the entire forest.
"Is he copying the western magic, Fire Storm?" Claire raised her defence with a spherical chi barrier as well and witness how the projectiles of fire rained down the entire forest.
"Is he going to burn us alive?! Or just showing off? Course…if it's both!" Before Lian could finish her words, she screeched at the incoming fiery projectile that slammed onto the body of the Ox Demon Silhouette. But like an umbrella shoving the raindrops off the waterproof cloth, the shield silhouette protected the trainees from the onslaught on projectiles.
"Everybody still okay?" Rong said as they could see he was trying his best to defend the entire group from the indiscriminate showers of black fire.
"You will soon understand why," Jin shouted at Claire in reply to her outstanding question. True enough, the forest itself seemed to give a horrifying scream that echoed throughout the entire area. The whole group could not believe it when the ground shook and broke down as what it seems like a big hairy pillar rose from beneath them.
Their eyes were nearly blinded by the sheer size of the pillar only to be triumphed by an insectoid body emerging out from the centre of the forest. "This is no pillar! It's a freaking spider leg!" Lein shouted as he commanded Rong to pull back along with the Ox Demon Silhouette shield. The trainees then finally saw the full picture. With legs taller than a high rise building, a spherical body was the only thing that connected all the pillar looking legs.
It then finally revealed its gem like eyes not from the front or from the back but from the bottom of its spherical body. The legs then produced a fog mixed with some magic which extinguished the Black Panda Fire that was spread all around the forest.
"Unlike previously when I captured it, I believe the spider has gotten smarter and decided to pose a challenge to our trainees by imitating itself as part of the entire forest." Jin tried to keep up with the lie for Claire and told her to make it an exception so as to not penalise the trainees unnecessarily.
" I see, as the circumstances, this 'kill' part could take a lot of effort too. Very well, I will write an excuse report for the 'search' portion." Claire said as she told the students that this was the Transforming Spider Jin was talking about.
"Fuck me. This is way above our level!!" Rong exclaimed before Su Zhen emphasised to the Ox Demon Cultivator that Jin managed to catch it, so it should be doable for them. (He did not!)
"Damn, does that mean that Grade 8 is really way stronger than all of us combined? I do not believe it! Guys, let's show him that we can bring this down. Size is just a matter of perspective!" Lein said as he ran towards the pillar leg to show an example for the team.
"Ahhh fuck, fuck, fuck!!!" Rong retracted his Ox Demon Silhouette shield and began swinging his hammer as hard as he can. "Intermediate Hammer Arts! Rocket Hammer of Ao Ye! " Rong continuously placed his chi into his stick while swinging it horizontally. He was spinning his hammer round and round until he had sufficient momentum and subsequently used that technique to propel himself towards the upper portion to the pillar leg with his hammer ejecting an intense amount of steam to create airlift.
"Intermediate Hammer Arts Combo! Rocket Hammer Slam!" Rong's injected even more chi into his bull horned Hammer as he now changed the trajectory of where his hammer was facing before it ejected a ton of steam to create a forceful collision. Not only that, because of his consecutive use of a particular Hammer Arts' technique, it allowed Rong to execute an Arts Combo which had an accumulative effect of the techniques to be even more deadly.
Arts Combo was different from the combination of techniques that cultivators used together as a team, mainly because it was a series of moves that create a grand move finisher. (That was how video games adapted from the cultivations.) The Arts Combo from a set of techniques allowed the cultivator to amplify their chi that was used and thus increasing the damage output.
The only thing was that not many cultivation styles had Arts combo in their repertoire because it is straining for the cultivators that used them too. Unless one is skilled enough to fire off three to five cultivation moves in one go, most cultivators would also stray from Arts Combo and instead learn the techniques as individual attacks.
Rong's attack connected and smashed a part of the pillar leg which made the pillar leg of the Transforming Spider to tremble ever so slightly. However, the hairs on the spider's leg retaliated by extending itself like spikes to hit Rong.
Thankfully, Lein managed to catch up and destroyed the hair spikes with a single Thunderclap technique before grabbing Rong from mid air and pulling him down to earth.
"Appreciate that, Bud," Rong said as he took a breather from the attack as his heart pounded madly when he saw the spikes coming out.
"Be careful, this is not like those small fry demons that Grandma Yuan kept to train us." Lein, who was a Grade 10 cultivator by training diligently and gained his cultivation through several bouts of enlightenment, did not know how to proceed when they saw the hair spikes retracting back into its leg.
"At the very least, the dent is still there. This demon is killable." Rong said while he lifted his hammer again and insert more chi.
"Can you guys stop dashing to every problem that we see?" Su Zhen shouted at them as she and Lian finally caught up with them. "If brute force can solve everything, we would not be in this predicament in the first place.
"What should we do then?" Lein had decided to pass the responsibility in coordinating the team to Su Zhen.
"Remember how Jin told us about its gem eyes? He said hit it to find its true nature." Lian said, but the two male trainees were not getting it.
"Sigh, Su Zhen and I believed that the transforming spider had transformed into this gigantic large …spider to scare us. Something like a defensive mechanism against other predators. If we hit the eyes, we might be on to something." Lian explained to the group.
"However, this is just a conjecture. The transforming spider might be this big in the first place. We do not know and do not have enough information to get by in order to make a proper judgement." Su Zhen remarked as the pillar leg still stood tall and steady, not making a single move at the trainees at all.
"I see, but how do we get up there? It is literally more than what my Rocket Hammer can offer." Rong said as he held his Bull horned hammer tightly.
"I can aid with that, but it might do some damage to you since it is not a refined technique." Lein offered a solution by utilising one of his Lightning Dash movement skill to complement the Rocket Hammer technique. "After which, Su Zhen can use her substitution technique to replace me and Rong with her and Lian. Our little fox would then use Su Zhen as a platform to jump and attack the gem eyes."
"Why me? Su Zhen could have done it all by herself." Lian said as she was slightly scared of heights.
"Because you have the highest probability to attack the gem eyes if it decides to protect itself. You saw how your True Strike did wonders against Jin." Lein tried to encourage her.
"Yeah, then in the second match, he totally could not block that," Lian said with a tinge of regret in her for not putting her best against Jin.
"Highly likely a fluke," Rong interjected to make Lian not think about the past. "You guys remember how much she owned Lein in a one to one fight. If not for his imperfect lightning dash attack in that last round before we fought with Jin, Lian could have won that fight." Lian stopped him before he said more and told him to focus on the issue.
"I agree with the plan, shall we execute it?" Su Zhen said, and the rest acknowledged it, all going to the centre of the spider before the Transforming Spider did anything out of the ordinary.
However, the nearer they traversed towards the bottom of the spherical body, the fog somehow became thicker, and the stench was worse. It was to the point that the trainees felt they were being slowed down, pushed down by the fog.
"Why can't I move?" Lein tried his best to walk further in, but his body was not listening to him. He tried to look back but found it extremely difficult to do so. The rest of the other trainees felt the same way as well, and they soon found out their whole body was stuck within the thick fogs. Lian, on the other hand, tried to expend her chi to get her Three Tails out. (Every two grades of cultivation allowed her to get one to simulate a tail out.)
But instead of being able to move, Lian felt even more restricted and to the point of suffocation. But that also allowed them to reveal the true nature of the fog because of the chi being consumed within the area.
It was essentially a massive collection of cobwebs that had transformed into a fog. "What the hell is this….!" Lian tried to speak, but she could feel the gossamers tightening its grasp on her.
Su Zhen, the White Demon Snake Cultivator used her chi to release the snake that was in inhibiting in her whip so that it could chew or at least assist Lian to break out from the 'living' cobwebs. But, similar to Lian, the moment Su Zhen used her chi, the living cobwebs aimed for her as well and the snake whip was also immobilised by it too.
"Now I understand what was with the odd stench…and why this spider did not bother moving despite our *breathes* attempt to attack its legs," Lein said, and it looked like a desperate situation for the trainees as a whole.
—-
"Can I assist them now?" Jin crouched upon a branch and saw the entire group being devoured by the fog of living cobwebs.
After a more in-depth analysis, the System had determined that the entire forest was no doubt the body of the Transforming Spider. Jin could not bear himself to spread the news out to the rest of the group here.
"Should the Demon Exorcist Trainees wandered too long in the forest, it would eventually be eaten by the Spider." The System commented.
"You mean the spider will appear to consume them?"
"No. If the predictive analysis is true, the appearance of the forest will consume them when they are caught off guard." The System stated and warned Jin not to mess around with this particular Transforming Spider.
"So… any damage done to the forest is equivalent to hitting the spider?" Jin asked as he changed his Bam and Boo now into combat gloves. They looked like a gauntlet made out of many small bamboo poles sewn into it. Hence it does not restrict the movement of the user at all. Unlike the usual combat gloves that Meomi or even Xue Ping, the Prancing Puma Cultivator had used, Jin was able to modulate his Maqi even smoother with Boo while Bam had the ability to amplify it creates damage to a certain extent.
"Not necessary. Based on the Magic Eye drones, the System observed that some of the forests consisted of normal trees and bushes. Should User wish to inflict damage, it had to be wide scale."
"Then I guess it's unfair for the cultivators to search for something hiding in plain sight," Jin said as he generated his Maqi and stored them within Bam and Boo for the moment. Claire noticed that Jin was being all anxious when she was documenting specific behaviours of the trainees. So, she decided to stop and calm him down.
"Jin, you do not to be too concern of them, they should be able to take care of themse-" Claire noticed his chi was awfully dense that it nearly got to her.
"Jin? What's wrong?" Claire knew that the dungeon supplier would not do something as stupid as to kill the trainees but she felt something was off about him.
"I am sorry but for the 'search' part. I will be interfering for them. Send them a chi transmission to take cover." Jin said as his hands felt awfully heavy with the accumulation of Maqi.
"Jin, why are you doing this? Doing so will significantly deduct marks from them. And you were the one who proposed this." The dungeon supplier did not say anything else, and Claire sighed as if she found his actions improbable. Was he so insistent of messing the examinees that much?
"No, it's my mistake. I did not regulate the search part properly for this dungeon. I only found it out when I saw the forest. They would not be able to find it without my help." Jin apologised sincerely by giving a bow.
"Guys, your new team leader demands all of you to take cover as quickly as possible. He would be helping you to get the demon out for you to slay." Claire shook her head as she announced it to all of them.
The exorcist trainees were confused as to what was happening and listened to their ex leader's instructions for the moment. Rong activated his cultivation, and a silhouette of a massive, hairy ox demon covered the entire group within its embrace. Meanwhile, the Astral Panda Cultivator raised his hands up and shot a blast full of Black Panda Fire energy towards the sky.
Both the exorcist trainees and Claire saw the immensely powerful chi rising up to the sky. The beam of Black Panda Fire energy seems like it hit a pinnacle in the sky. Moreover, the beam energy scattered, fanned, and spread the Black Panda Fire like a geyser emerging the ground throughout the entire forest.
"Is he copying the western magic, Fire Storm?" Claire raised her defence with a spherical chi barrier as well and witness how the projectiles of fire rained down the entire forest.
"Is he going to burn us alive?! Or just showing off? Course…if it's both!" Before Lian could finish her words, she screeched at the incoming fiery projectile that slammed onto the body of the Ox Demon Silhouette. But like an umbrella shoving the raindrops off the waterproof cloth, the shield silhouette protected the trainees from the onslaught on projectiles.
"Everybody still okay?" Rong said as they could see he was trying his best to defend the entire group from the indiscriminate showers of black fire.
"You will soon understand why," Jin shouted at Claire in reply to her outstanding question. True enough, the forest itself seemed to give a horrifying scream that echoed throughout the entire area. The whole group could not believe it when the ground shook and broke down as what it seems like a big hairy pillar rose from beneath them.
Their eyes were nearly blinded by the sheer size of the pillar only to be triumphed by an insectoid body emerging out from the centre of the forest. "This is no pillar! It's a freaking spider leg!" Lein shouted as he commanded Rong to pull back along with the Ox Demon Silhouette shield. The trainees then finally saw the full picture. With legs taller than a high rise building, a spherical body was the only thing that connected all the pillar looking legs.
It then finally revealed its gem like eyes not from the front or from the back but from the bottom of its spherical body. The legs then produced a fog mixed with some magic which extinguished the Black Panda Fire that was spread all around the forest.
"Unlike previously when I captured it, I believe the spider has gotten smarter and decided to pose a challenge to our trainees by imitating itself as part of the entire forest." Jin tried to keep up with the lie for Claire and told her to make it an exception so as to not penalise the trainees unnecessarily.
" I see, as the circumstances, this 'kill' part could take a lot of effort too. Very well, I will write an excuse report for the 'search' portion." Claire said as she told the students that this was the Transforming Spider Jin was talking about.
"Fuck me. This is way above our level!!" Rong exclaimed before Su Zhen emphasised to the Ox Demon Cultivator that Jin managed to catch it, so it should be doable for them. (He did not!)
"Damn, does that mean that Grade 8 is really way stronger than all of us combined? I do not believe it! Guys, let's show him that we can bring this down. Size is just a matter of perspective!" Lein said as he ran towards the pillar leg to show an example for the team.
"Ahhh fuck, fuck, fuck!!!" Rong retracted his Ox Demon Silhouette shield and began swinging his hammer as hard as he can. "Intermediate Hammer Arts! Rocket Hammer of Ao Ye! " Rong continuously placed his chi into his stick while swinging it horizontally. He was spinning his hammer round and round until he had sufficient momentum and subsequently used that technique to propel himself towards the upper portion to the pillar leg with his hammer ejecting an intense amount of steam to create airlift.
"Intermediate Hammer Arts Combo! Rocket Hammer Slam!" Rong's injected even more chi into his bull horned Hammer as he now changed the trajectory of where his hammer was facing before it ejected a ton of steam to create a forceful collision. Not only that, because of his consecutive use of a particular Hammer Arts' technique, it allowed Rong to execute an Arts Combo which had an accumulative effect of the techniques to be even more deadly.
Arts Combo was different from the combination of techniques that cultivators used together as a team, mainly because it was a series of moves that create a grand move finisher. (That was how video games adapted from the cultivations.) The Arts Combo from a set of techniques allowed the cultivator to amplify their chi that was used and thus increasing the damage output.
The only thing was that not many cultivation styles had Arts combo in their repertoire because it is straining for the cultivators that used them too. Unless one is skilled enough to fire off three to five cultivation moves in one go, most cultivators would also stray from Arts Combo and instead learn the techniques as individual attacks.
Rong's attack connected and smashed a part of the pillar leg which made the pillar leg of the Transforming Spider to tremble ever so slightly. However, the hairs on the spider's leg retaliated by extending itself like spikes to hit Rong.
Thankfully, Lein managed to catch up and destroyed the hair spikes with a single Thunderclap technique before grabbing Rong from mid air and pulling him down to earth.
"Appreciate that, Bud," Rong said as he took a breather from the attack as his heart pounded madly when he saw the spikes coming out.
"Be careful, this is not like those small fry demons that Grandma Yuan kept to train us." Lein, who was a Grade 10 cultivator by training diligently and gained his cultivation through several bouts of enlightenment, did not know how to proceed when they saw the hair spikes retracting back into its leg.
"At the very least, the dent is still there. This demon is killable." Rong said while he lifted his hammer again and insert more chi.
"Can you guys stop dashing to every problem that we see?" Su Zhen shouted at them as she and Lian finally caught up with them. "If brute force can solve everything, we would not be in this predicament in the first place.
"What should we do then?" Lein had decided to pass the responsibility in coordinating the team to Su Zhen.
"Remember how Jin told us about its gem eyes? He said hit it to find its true nature." Lian said, but the two male trainees were not getting it.
"Sigh, Su Zhen and I believed that the transforming spider had transformed into this gigantic large …spider to scare us. Something like a defensive mechanism against other predators. If we hit the eyes, we might be on to something." Lian explained to the group.
"However, this is just a conjecture. The transforming spider might be this big in the first place. We do not know and do not have enough information to get by in order to make a proper judgement." Su Zhen remarked as the pillar leg still stood tall and steady, not making a single move at the trainees at all.
"I see, but how do we get up there? It is literally more than what my Rocket Hammer can offer." Rong said as he held his Bull horned hammer tightly.
"I can aid with that, but it might do some damage to you since it is not a refined technique." Lein offered a solution by utilising one of his Lightning Dash movement skill to complement the Rocket Hammer technique. "After which, Su Zhen can use her substitution technique to replace me and Rong with her and Lian. Our little fox would then use Su Zhen as a platform to jump and attack the gem eyes."
"Why me? Su Zhen could have done it all by herself." Lian said as she was slightly scared of heights.
"Because you have the highest probability to attack the gem eyes if it decides to protect itself. You saw how your True Strike did wonders against Jin." Lein tried to encourage her.
"Yeah, then in the second match, he totally could not block that," Lian said with a tinge of regret in her for not putting her best against Jin.
"Highly likely a fluke," Rong interjected to make Lian not think about the past. "You guys remember how much she owned Lein in a one to one fight. If not for his imperfect lightning dash attack in that last round before we fought with Jin, Lian could have won that fight." Lian stopped him before he said more and told him to focus on the issue.
"I agree with the plan, shall we execute it?" Su Zhen said, and the rest acknowledged it, all going to the centre of the spider before the Transforming Spider did anything out of the ordinary.
However, the nearer they traversed towards the bottom of the spherical body, the fog somehow became thicker, and the stench was worse. It was to the point that the trainees felt they were being slowed down, pushed down by the fog.
"Why can't I move?" Lein tried his best to walk further in, but his body was not listening to him. He tried to look back but found it extremely difficult to do so. The rest of the other trainees felt the same way as well, and they soon found out their whole body was stuck within the thick fogs. Lian, on the other hand, tried to expend her chi to get her Three Tails out. (Every two grades of cultivation allowed her to get one to simulate a tail out.)
But instead of being able to move, Lian felt even more restricted and to the point of suffocation. But that also allowed them to reveal the true nature of the fog because of the chi being consumed within the area.
It was essentially a massive collection of cobwebs that had transformed into a fog. "What the hell is this….!" Lian tried to speak, but she could feel the gossamers tightening its grasp on her.
Su Zhen, the White Demon Snake Cultivator used her chi to release the snake that was in inhibiting in her whip so that it could chew or at least assist Lian to break out from the 'living' cobwebs. But, similar to Lian, the moment Su Zhen used her chi, the living cobwebs aimed for her as well and the snake whip was also immobilised by it too.
"Now I understand what was with the odd stench…and why this spider did not bother moving despite our *breathes* attempt to attack its legs," Lein said, and it looked like a desperate situation for the trainees as a whole.
—-
"Can I assist them now?" Jin crouched upon a branch and saw the entire group being devoured by the fog of living cobwebs.
