Floof answered my question with a loud, roaring bark. It was no longer the normal bark of a dog. The force of it had been enough to rattle everything in the garage. But more importantly, it woke everyone up.

  “Stay inside, we have company coming!” I ordered, making for the door before whatever was coming tore its way into the building.

  “What’s going on?” Ash yelled, sitting up and looking around, confused.

  “Just listen to your dad. I think the Queen is on the way, and she's a little angry,” I heard Ralph reply just before I closed the door.

  I had suspected it was her, of course, but it was nice to have the confirmation. I could still feel her approaching, even though there was nothing apparent to show where she was coming from. Next to me, Floof took several deep, loud sniffs of the air, pointed his nose towards what was left of the street, and growled.

  Whatever he was looking at, I couldn't see it. While there was the vague sense of a mana signature, either I wasn't powerful enough to fully locate it, or something else was going on that I didn't understand. Likely, it was a combination of the two.

  I walked forward, calling out to the street. “So are you just going to keep skulking around out there, or do you want to actually fight?”

  As a general rule, if your opponent can see you and you can't see them, they already have all the advantage. And that meant whatever pomp and bluster I could maintain was only to my benefit.

  How the hell did I use to do this so often?

  Floof's growls grew more menacing as we stepped off the yard and onto the remaining asphalt. There was an odd sense of pressure, one pushing down on everything that grew stronger as we walked down the road. I assumed it was an aura ability of the spider, but it could have also been a magical field being woven by its guards.

  The second case was a lot more worrying than the first. It meant that not only did I have this hidden spider queen to contend with, but I'd also need to hunt down whatever casters it had hiding in reserve somewhere. And I really didn't want to spend forever hunting down this group to the very last spider.

  “Nice trick. It won't be enough,” I said, forcing more confidence into my words than I truly felt. Not that I expected to lose this fight, but I was worried about the potential collateral damage.

  I hadn't initially been planning to use this area for any sort of long-term base. But that plan was rapidly shifting, now that I had seen more of the changes to the environment around us. Finding the rest of our family was going to be even harder than I had initially expected.

  Beside me, Floof let out another one of those horrible roaring sounds he had made inside the garage. This time, I spotted the ripple of the force through the air as it crashed against something invisible in the middle of the road. That was one way to find her, I suppose.

  Sadly, it was a way that let her know she had been found. And damn, was she fast. There was at least 30 feet between us, and she managed to cover them in less than the blink of an eye.

  A loud clash rang out as I caught her bladed arm with a strike at the last possible instant before it reached Floof's flesh. Sparks exploded from the impact, her exoskeleton being strong enough to prevent the sword from just lopping the arm off.

  “You killed so many of my children! This was meant to be my world. It was my time!”

  The spider suddenly shrieked with rage as four more of her arms shot out at me.

  “You attacked my family first,” I replied, catching two of the arms with the flat of the sword, and just barely managing to dodge out of the way of the other two.

  I wasn't normally one for a lot of talking during a fight. For one thing, it was difficult to maintain a conversation and focus on keeping yourself alive. But right now, the more I kept her attention on me, the easier it would become for Floof to sneak around behind her.

  “This was my time. The empire had assured my place!” The intensity of her screams made her words nearly incomprehensible, but somehow I still managed to pick up their meaning. Translation skills could be useful like that.

  “Yeah, well, shit happens. This is my planet, and you're not welcome.” Her head shot out at me as I finished speaking. I hadn't only hit a nerve this time, I had trampled on one. I felt drips of something hit my neck as I threw myself out of the way.

  The pain, accompanied by the horrible smell, told me it had been her venom. Considering my arm wasn't still back to one hundred percent, I was incredibly glad that I hadn’t been bitten just then.. She couldn't say the same thing , though.

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  While she had been failing to attack me, Floof had latched on, hard, to her abdomen. His teeth cracked through the exoskeleton with a hard crunch, followed by a yell of pain out of her.

  Her head turned away from me, ready to strike her new attacker, giving me exactly the opening I had hoped for. I pushed myself forward, lifting my blade and body up,and swung my sword back down hard at the exposed pedicel, the connection point between her upper and lower body.

  Several bolts of bright blue electricity ripped through the air from a distance, arcing directly into my body, throwing me back a dozen feet before I managed to land the blow.

  “Floof, protect yourself!” I yelled, struggling to get my feet back below me.

  The pressure had decreased after the counterattack on me, which likely meant that it wasn't an aura, but that it was her bodyguards attacking from a distance. Hopefully, I had used up a good pool of their mana in soaking those attacks.

  My teeth may have been rattling, but it hadn't been enough to do any permanent damage. Luckily, the easiest path of resistance for the energy had been straight through the runic blade, which had a far greater capacity for handling magical electricity than my body did.

  “Gonna have to do a lot better than that,” I bellowed out as loudly as I could. “As soon as I'm done with her, I'll be tracking down each one of you.”

  In truth, I hoped it wouldn't have to be as soon as I was done with her. What I really needed was for them to run in fear, and be a problem for me later instead. Even if that wasn't what I had wanted at the start of this, it had become the better option.

  A loud yelp of pain came moments before Floof's form flew past me, crashing into the ground somewhere behind me. All I could do at the moment was hope he was okay. With him off of her, that meant I didn't have the time to check on him.

  Instead, I was forced to ignore the poor dog who had been so much of a help through all of this. All I could do was charge forward at the creature who had been the cause of almost all of our pains since the integration had started. By the time my sword hit another one of her arms, it was with an unbridled rage that had spread across me.

  Another blast from a magical attack hit me. But this time I kept my feet planted firmly on the ground, and forced the sword even harder into the limb I just struck. A sharp, brief rending sound, and the spider had seven legs left.

  The moment the leg hit the ground, the annoying pressure disappeared. That was one way to invoke terror in your enemy: maim their leader.

  “You dare cut your queen? I will drink your fluids while your heart still beats.”

  She wasn't yelling anymore. These words came out in a quiet, angry assurance, something that I was sure had scared plenty of her victims shitless.

  On the other hand, I was not one of her subjects. I wasn't some scared, hapless stand-in that had been selected for her to hunt. I had fought a Hellspider Queen deep in her own lava pool nest. Now she had been someone worthy of my terror.

  “You are not my queen.” The cold fury in my tone actually caught her off guard, causing her to stumble backwards, away from my wrath.

  It didn't help her escape Floof's. As he sped past me, his teeth bared, I knew that my worry for his health had been entirely unfounded. Several loud crunching sounds came from the leg he managed to grab hold of.

  Not wanting to let the dog show me up, I charged in to join him. While some of my anger had calmed at seeing him okay, there was still plenty left for the spider. I brought the sword down three times as hard as I could, each time cutting off another leg.

  She flailed about, desperately trying to fling Floof off while also striving to get her fangs into my flesh. But with every leg lost, it became that much more of a losing battle. Finally, I brought the sword down for one last blow.

  As her head caved in, I felt something.I hadn't scared all of her bodyguards away. At least one of them had seen this as an opportunity for a promotion. And now that the queen was dead, they had been given the perfect chance to stab deeply into my stomach.

  Before they could rip the blade free, I twisted hard, cracking their arm off, leaving it stuck inside of me. It was the best option between two terrible ones. If it had come free, I would have bled to death before I had a chance to kill my new attacker.

  “Floof… need… help,” The words came out, far slower, and in more of a whisper than I would have liked. There was only one real chance I had of living through this, and I needed to finish the battle for that.

  I put all my strength behind one last sword thrust.

  And I missed.

  Floof did not. The final spider's head exploded in his mouth as I collapsed to the ground, watching the notifications flit across my vision.

  __________

  Enemies Defeated

  Funnel Brood Queen [200 Experience]

  The Funnel Brood Queen is the highest level in the first stage of the Funnel Brood's evolutionary path. They're able to reproduce and seed their own colonies, choosing which type of brood is required and laying those eggs. Their strength and their venom are some of the most potent within the funnel brood. Their furious rages often cause foes to flee before them.

  Further Information Locked.

  Funnel Blade Dancer [100 Experience]

  No Further Information Unlocked.

  Faction Leader Slain

  Rachnia Consortium [250 Experience]

  Title

  Early Regicide

  Rarity

  World

  As the first person on the planet to kill an enemy faction's leader, you have been rewarded for your prowess. Equipping this title multiplies all of your attributes by 1.5 when fighting a faction leader.

  __________

  “Really? They're all gone? I'm so sorry to hear that, boys. I wish I had been there. Hell, I wish you hadn't been forced to wander the woods alone like that. We must have only missed you by hours,” Ulrun said, after Adam and his brother had explained what had happened to them.

  “As far as we know. We haven't really felt safe enough to go back and try to explore for survivors yet,” Alecks replied.

  “Well, at the very least, you two aren't alone anymore. You're with us, and we'll survive this together, one way or another,” Ulrun replied, as his wife leaned in and swept them both into a hug.

  Memories of Adam Miller before he found Earth