The giant spider heaved as it spat venom at a building-sized abyssal monster. The glob of toxicity splashed against the mass of incongruent tentacles and legs, boiling through its body like potent acid before raining down on the much weaker creatures below. Anything unlucky enough to be hit by even the smallest drop instantly dissolved.

  But the abyssal monster was not to be outdone. Its tentacles lashed out, wrapping around one of the arachnid’s eight legs. It yanked itself forward and squeezed. A massive tremble rocked the giant spider’s body, throwing Elijah backward until he very nearly tipped over the edge. Even as the unmistakable sound of cracking carapace rose above the cacophony of the ongoing battle, he hooked his talons on a chitinous ridge, barely arresting his momentum.

  Still, it gave him an opportunity to see the chaos below. The mass of scales, chitin, and abyssal flesh, all tangled together and locked in mortal combat. There were no fancy maneuvers. No polished techniques. Just raw attributes and magical abilities. The vespirans and their allies favored wind and venom, while the abyssals were almost wholly reliant on physical attacks. Meanwhile, the dragons’ abilities ran the gamut of possibilities, ranging from fire to ice and everything in between.

  Though as Elijah hung there, he recognized that there weren’t nearly as many spells flying around as he might have expected. The clear culprit was the sheer cost for dragons to use their abilities. They were at least twice as powerful as normal spells, but the expense was similarly inflated.

  Incredible potency, but not a lot of stamina.

  The dragons had adjusted to that weakness by relying on their powerful bodies. In a melee, they were unmatched – at least one on one. The problem was that there were just so many enemies that it never came down to single combat. But they were more than holding their own.

  Another earthquake ripped through the landmass, and Elijah yanked himself upright, his talons and claws digging into the spider’s carapace as he launched himself back into the fray. The blue dragon hovered in the distance, watching and waiting to use his spatial powers to prevent Elijah’s escape.

  So, he plunged into battle, more than a few of the faceted leaves of his mind dedicated to figuring a way out. He’d tried the straightforward approach, and he’d failed at every turn. The other dragon was more powerful than him, and what’s more, his spatial magic gave him a distinct advantage. Elijah simply couldn’t reach his foe.

  The only answer was to change the paradigm. To throw everything into chaos.

  To that end, he sprinted through the mass of rotting vespirans and wasps, ignoring their weakened attempts at attacks. It was surprising how many had survived, but it didn’t take a genius to recognize that they wouldn’t live for much longer. They were too riddled with fungal infections. There was too much venom in their veins. They were already dead – they just hadn’t realized it yet.

  In his scourgedrake form, Elijah barreled through them. His claws lashed out, cutting through any reaching limbs. He ducked beneath arcing swords and dodged descending stingers. All in the name of speed.

  And in the Shape of the Scourge, he could really move.

  Thankfully, the blue dragon had difficulty targeting him in the melee. Every couple of seconds, a clump of vespirans would simply disappear. Sometimes, they left their limbs behind. Other times, they were sheered in two. But so long as Elijah kept moving among so many enemies, he was relatively safe from the spatial mage’s attacks.

  But the spider was enormous. Miles long and almost as wide. So it still took him a couple of minutes to weave his way through the mass of enemies until, at last, he found himself sliding down the steep slope of its abdomen. He leaped free, already transforming into the Shape of the Master.

  He hit the cephalothorax in a roll that ended with him leaping sideways to avoid a surge of ethera he interpreted as one of the blue dragon’s spells. Sure enough, a wasp that he’d narrowly missed disappeared a second later. His scythe appeared in his hand, and the blade neatly bisected another wasp as it tried to attack.

  Kicking off the carapace, he used Cloud Step and brought his weapon to bear against a hovering vespiran. It bit deep into the creature’s carapace, showering him with gore as his momentum took him steadily forward.

  But he was more focused on the ethera around him.

  He felt the ethera coalesce a second later, and he used a third charge of Cloud Step to suddenly change direction. Even as he fell back to the spider’s shiny black carapace, the air imploded behind him. Another surge announced another attack right on its heels, and Elijah managed to use the fourth and penultimate charge of Cloud Step to dodge it.

  Then, he hit the carapace at a run. Every time he felt the dragon’s spatial attack coming, he changed directions. At the same time, he wove his way through the ongoing battle on the spider’s back. Thankfully, among all the huge creatures – vespirans, abyssals, and dragons – he was easy to miss.

  Along the way, he built one charge of Heart of Fire after another, so when he finally reached his intended destination, he could activate Child of Fire at full power. Inflated attributes soared through him as he raised his scythe. To give himself a little more strength, he used Savage Might and flared Heart of the Tempest.

  He had no time to check his attributes, but based on what he felt, they’d more than doubled. Elijah used that to his advantage, bringing the Verdant Fang down with world-shattering force.

  The blade hit like a pickaxe, cracking the spider’s tough carapace in a single blow. It was barely more than a hairline fracture, but it was enough to prove that he was on the right track.

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  All around him, the battle continued. Creatures – many of them driven to madness by the Worldseed still pulsing within him – attacked. He defended himself as quickly as he could, dismantling the enemy with prejudice before resuming his work. Every time the blade of the Verdant Fang slammed into the spider’s carapace, the cracks spread deeper and further until, just as his buffs ran their course, he broke through the epicuticle. The next layer – the endocuticle – was still tough, but not nearly as much as the hard outer shell. As such, he didn’t need his buffs to get through.

  The third layer – the epidermis – was much thinner, and Elijah made it through that in only a couple of swings. Finally, he reached the hemocoel – the open body cavity containing the organs and musculature. The only problem was that the fluid within – called hemolymph – was under immense pressure.

  Elijah never anticipated that, so when it gushed out like a green-gold geyser, he barely managed to grab hold of one of the crater’s jagged edges before he was thrown into the sky.

  A few dozen wasps hovering above were not so lucky, and they were obliterated by the high-pressure stream of semi-viscous liquid that cut right through them.

  It took a few moments for the pressure to die down before Elijah managed to slip inside.

  Immediately, he shifted into the Shape of the Sea, and when he did, he was more than thankful for two major factors. First – the hemolymph counted as water, which meant that he was subjected to much-increased attributes. Second, his recent core advancement had affected the spell. Before, his drakelon form had granted him two-hundred attribute points in all physical categories – so long as he was in water. Now, that number in each attribute was more than doubled.

  It was almost as much as when he was under the effect of Child of Fire.

  He harnessed that power, raking his flippers through the viscous liquid and toward his true target. Immediately, he became aware that he was not alone. The spider’s organs floated like islands in the distance, but Elijah wasn’t concerned with those. Instead, he was horrified to find himself beset by swarms of wasp larvae.

  The things were far larger than normal, too. At least as big as a man. And they were equipped with sharp, lamprey-like teeth. Thankfully, in the sea, the drakelon was unmatched. And the inner world of the spider, which seemed even larger than it should have been, was close enough.

  Elijah lashed out with both his tail and beak-like mouth, ripping through the swarm of wasp larvae. His massive strength gave his jaws power, while his enhanced dexterity ensured he never missed.

  The larvae never had a chance to defeat him, but they did serve to slow him down.

  And given that the next earthquake sent the spider tumbling to the ground, churning its innards into a frothing tempest, Elijah knew he didn’t have any more time.

  He finished the larvae off, then rocketed forward, cutting through the thick, phlegm-like substance with ease. Using his training as a biologist, combined with the senses granted by Soul of the Wild, Elijah soon navigated his way into the spider’s sucking stomach. It was a specialized organ – basically a high-pressure pump – that was responsible for transporting the spider’s liquified prey into its digestive system, though in this case, Elijah found that it was a powerful river of questionable substances.

  He was reminded of his time in the Abyssal Glassworks. Back then, he’d been forced to avoid the current, lest he be swept away. Now, though – he had the power to fight the current and win the battle.

  Elijah pushed forward, using every ounce of strength he could muster. And gradually, he made progress until, at last, he broke free and into a forest of muscular pillars near the arachnid’s lungs. They differed significantly from what one might find in a human being in that instead of a couple of inflatable sacks, they were arranged into thin, shelf-like plates that resembled the pages of a book.

  As he wove his way through them, the biologist in the back of his mind reveled at the opportunity. He’d seen all of those structures under a microscope, but to find himself among them was an experience he would never forget.

  Of course, his path was complicated by more larvae, which he dealt with accordingly. Even as he ripped one apart, he couldn’t deny the sense of satisfaction that came with killing the vile creatures.

  But he couldn’t focus on that. Nor could he enjoy the opportunity before him. Not with the time constraint, which showed itself every time the earth shook. The spider had incredible balance, but it couldn’t hide the increasing severity of those earthquakes.

  Then, after tearing through a few more membranes, he reached his ultimate destination. And predictably, it was not unguarded.

  The spider’s brain wasn’t a single mass. Instead, it was a massive ring of ganglia wrapped around the creature’s esophagus. The tissue itself was pale pink, draped in shimmering white webs of nerve cords radiating outward from the center. Pulses of faint light arced through them, illuminating the massive larva that had latched onto it.

  The larva was at least as large as Elijah’s drakelon form, and it had woven tendrils of maggoty white flesh among the pink tissue of the spider’s brain. However, that leash was long enough that it could move freely through the greenish-gold hemolymph sea.

  And it was aggressive.

  The larva contracted its off-white body, then shot forward with enough speed that even Elijah’s enhanced reflexes didn’t save him from its wrath. It carved a deep gash in his flipper, sending a cloud of meat and blood misting into the viscous sea. Elijah ignored the pain, and his head darted out like a snapping turtle.

  He latched onto the larva, biting deep into its rubbery flesh. But despite Elijah’s massive strength, he didn’t break through. He growled, sending bubbles climbing upward, and shook his head like a dog with a chew toy.

  The larva undulated, extending massive spines that pierced the rough of Elijah’s mouth. A second later, a massive dose of toxin entered his bloodstream. Elijah countered it with a quick cast of Wild Resurgence, though he could feel his mouth growing numb with every passing second.

  He used his Mantle of Authority, nullifying some of it. But the venom was just too powerful to so easily counter. It did buy him a little time, though.

  Even so, he could feel his thoughts growing sluggish.

  With another snarl, he yanked, utilizing the entirety of his massive strength to pull the larva back the way he’d come. His flippers beat against the viscous hemolymph as he strained for more distance. The larva, recognizing the danger, tried to wriggle free. But the stingers it had extended worked against it.

  They acted as anchors that further supported the herculean grip of Elijah’s jaws.

  He pushed forward and, inch by inch, he stretched the larva’s tendrils to their limit. Then, suddenly, like a rubber band stretched too far, they began to fray. And finally, it tore.

  The larva went wild.

  Elijah bit down harder. Severed from its source of power, the larva could no longer resist his bite. It squished with satisfying gooeyness that was soon lost in the thick hemolymph.

  The second the creature died, Elijah shifted back into his human form and filled himself with healing spells. The moment he resumed the much less durable form, the pressure threatened to crush him. But he managed to cast a few more spells before resuming the Shape of the Sea.

  With the venom completely countered, he turned his attention to the spider’s brain.

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