Inside the spacious room, the black stone walls were covered with white silk. Monsters that looked like fireflies were hanged from the ceiling while constrained by the silk, lighting up the room. Some of them were struggling to get out of the silk web that held them hostage. The ground was stained by blood, and the silk that covered the walls were damaged.
At the back of the room, away from the entrance were a bunch of human sized cocoon shaped balls of silk. Next to them were two people wrapped up in silk, lying on the ground unconscious. One of them was a burly bald man with big and intimidating muscles, and the other was a petite woman with short pitch black hair. Blood was coming out of the man's mouth and the woman had a bleeding injury on her face.
On the wall across the entrance of the room was a giant caterpillar with a really light pink body, fixing the damaged silk on the wall. It's head had a diameter as long as an adult man with a pitch black jaw, and it's body was six meters long. The three pairs of pitch black true legs in the front of it's body were so sharp that they left small scars as footprint on the stone. It's body was covered with nine blunt spikes on top and at the end of it's body was a big red circle that decorated it's back.
"Hey... That's not a spider. It's a damn caterpillar! This is going to be easy!"
"Noah, look at the scars on the wall and the two people back there. Do you think this is going to be an easy fight?"
"...Do you think they are the warriors we have been chasing?"
"Probably."
"...They were pretty strong people judging from the scars. Do you think you can win against this bug?"
"...Wait."
"Hm?"
"Look at that thing's top. There are nine spike, but they are clearly in pairs. One of them was probably slashed off and disappeared. The caterpillar isn't healthy right now. I should be able to handle it like this."
"Right... If you say so."
"You can start playing the violin. The silk on the walls should absorb the sound and stop it from echoing throughout the whole nest."
"On it."
Noah placed his violin and started to play an energetic melody. Corvin readied himself to attack the caterpillar from the back.
He felt his body getting stronger and his mind getting faster as Noah's magic started to show it's effects. He raised his sword and leaped towards the caterpillar with his magic. While he was flying towards the bug, the caterpillar finally looked at him with it's many eyes after finishing fixing the hole on the silk on the wall.
The caterpillar swung it's true legs and tried to stab Corvin. Corvin evaded the attack by changing his direction in air with magic and attacked the caterpillar's thorax.
Slash!
He cut straight through the soft body of the caterpillar with his sword and got rid of it's two legs. Normally, cutting something soft like this would be harder, but this time Corvin used his magic to stretch the soft body to make it easier for him to cut it.
Corvin jumped backwards as fast as he cut the legs off, and just as he predicted, where he used to stand was now stabbed with another leg.
"Four left!"
As Corvin was counting how many legs were left, the legs immediately disappeared.
"Huh? That fast?"
As Corvin felt something wrong from the legs disappearing immediately, he blocked an attack by instinct.
Clank!
"Huh?"
The front two legs of the caterpillar were back where they used to be. As Corvin blocked another attack from the pointy legs, he retreated with a jump and inspected the caterpillar for a second.
'There! One of the spikes on it's back are gone!'
Corvin raised his sword once again and leaped into the air, targeting one of the spikes. The caterpillar tried to stab him with a leg, and he dogded it with magic. But he used too much force, so he threw himself off to the side too much and could only attack at the tip of the spike with his sword.
He managed to cut a piece of skin off the top of the spike and he saw a shiny surface underneath the spike.
'Crystal? Are those spikes crytals?'
Corvin landed on the ground and jumped again. He jumped towards the spikes once again. The caterpillar attacked him with a stab again, but this time, instead of dodging it, he pushed himself less to be able to land an attack on the spike.
Corvin got stabbed at the right side of his abdomen, but he swung his sword towards the spike on the bug's back. The bug lifted it's mouth, and Corvin's sword suddenly came to a halt.
"What?!"
Fwip Fwip Fwip~
Corvin heard the sound of air moving. He looked at his sword and saw the air next to the blade gleam. No, it wasn't the air, there was a thin strand of silk that held his sword in place. He tried to move the sword, but he felt a bunch of thin silk stop his movements.
'This was a trap? No.... It shouldn't be easy to control this many strings for it... Are these crystals that important?'
Corvin ignored the pain of a thousand needles pricking his entire body, and forced himself to move his sword.
"AAARRRGHH!!"
The blade was able to cut the silk that held it in place, and he swung his sword to cut the strings that held his body as well. While the bug was swinging it's leg that was stabbed in his body to smash him into the ground, Corvin pushed himself off the leg with his magic and attacked the closest spike on the caterpillar as fast as he could.
SHATTER!
With a loud voice, the crystal inside the spike was shattered, and Corvin flew towards Noah with the momentum he had left.
As he got closer to Noah, Noah noticed the wound on his body. His music became a bit calmer and the wounds from the strings that covered Corvin's body started to heal a little bit faster.
Corvin turned back at the caterpillar which was trying to get it's leg unstuck from the ground.
'It got weaker after shattering the crystal? Hmm...'
Corvin took out his emergency gun from his belt. It was the same gun everyone was carrying in case of emergency. The gun had a double barrel and double trigger, because the gun couldn't fire from the same barrel without reloading the barrel by taking out the case manually.
'Two bullets on this one... We have four in total, and we have no spare bullets left, and I don't have the time to reload even if we had spares...'
Corvin pointed the gun at the spikes on the back of the bug. He ran away from Noah to not harm his ears since Noah's hands were busy, and then stopped at a distance he decided as safe. He aimed properly at the spike and slowly pulled the trigger.
Boom!
The bullet flew towards the crystal while leaving a light green trace behind with a loud noise, and the caterpillar turned towards the noise as a reflex, even forgetting to get it's leg unstuck.
Shatter!
The bullet hit the spike right in the middle with Corvin's magic guiding it into it's target, and the crystal inside the spike shattered into many pieces, causing the skin that covered it to become floppy.