Re: Butterfly (Reincarnated as a Butterfly)

Adon's mind struggled to process what he was seeing as a new world unfolded itself before him.

The real world, his hard-working brain reminded him. Mental magic was still active, accelerating his thought processes and pushing him toward conclusions and further activity rather than stunned stillness. It was still shocking to see all of reality rapidly change around him, but he would not be paralyzed by it for more than a fraction of a second.

They were not out of the woods yet, after all. Even as the projectiles hurtled through the air toward the spider monster—Adon could now see and confirm that it was indeed a spider monster, giant and hideous with strange features he had never seen before—he could sense that the monster was struggling to get its brain back to its normal functioning.

Before it could regain its focus and perhaps re-impose its illusions, Adon wanted to get a solid picture of what the world actually looked like without illusion magic in effect. With his Impeccable Memory, he would at least have a snapshot of how things had been, even if he could no longer accurately perceive them. He had already observed that things had radically changed when he broke the illusion, but at first, all he saw was the ceiling, since in the moment of his psychic attack, he had been turned to face the spider monster and the false sun.

Adon now saw that the ceiling had no artificial sun; that had been one of the facets of the level generated by illusion magic. The light source for the floor was instead a thick layer of glowing lichen that grew all along the ceiling and resembled some similar stuff Adon had seen on previous floors.

Before he turned to look further through the room, Adon observed the spider's appearance more carefully for a moment. Its body, which he had initially simply categorized as "hideous" in his mind, had a more intricate appearance than he had given it credit for. The exoskeleton was colored in varying shades of brown and reddish-brown. It was fuzzy in the pedipalps, and its limbs were spiky all over, reminiscent of a cactus. It was inartfully designed, but Adon guessed that its appearance was well suited for camouflage in certain environments. Among dry, fallen leaves, for instance—if the fallen leaves were large enough to look similar to a spider of this size.

The limbs ended in long, thin, toothpick-like structures that looked ready to break off inside of any victim the monster chose to stab with them. The head featured eight eyes that seemed to stare in all directions at once, as if daring anyone to attempt to sneak up on it.

The better to see the whole floor, too, of course…

Though the monster had collapsed into its web, unable to move properly in these key seconds as it regained full control of its mind and body, Adon could tell that the eight foot long spider would be quite a commanding presence there when it was in full control of itself.

And there was something else.

Adon knew he did not have the ability to actually sense intelligence from a simple look at a creature—and he was not trying to probe deeply into the spider's mind just now—but he felt the intelligence of the monster nonetheless. This creature was cunning. That was the impression he got from staring into its cold, glossy reflective black eyes.

As intelligent as a human? More? Adon could not say for certain. But that was where his mind went. Of course, the creature had to be quite intelligent to manipulate its adversaries as it already had.

He threw an Identify its way, wasting a moment just to see if he could get a single bit of usable information before he would undoubtedly have to fight it.

Enhanced Portia Jumping Spider (Female).

Enhanced, huh? Adon thought. That word reminded him a little too much of "mystic" in this context. And jumping… that will make it hard to pin it down, I imagine.

Adon forced himself to look away from the deadly monster for a precious moment or two, knowing it would not be able to attack him immediately. He still felt uneasy at taking his focus off of this massive predator for even a moment, but he was able to control the feeling. There would be a part of his brain tracking how well the spider seemed to have recovered from the psychic shout with each passing fraction of a second.

His eyes took in the vast landscape all around him, perceiving the full reality of the floor for the first time.

Then he was glad he had looked away from the spider monster.

The floor was less confusing than it had appeared. By manipulating their sense of the room, Adon guessed that the spider had intentionally sought to make them give up on finding the correct exit. There were far fewer tunnels than Adon had perceived dug into the walls before. Part of this was because the walls were in much worse shape than Adon had realized. Almost all of them had caved in, leaving vast gulfs of dark, empty space where there was no more stone.

The level looked unstable, ready to collapse.

A quick look confirmed the same thing below them. The floor had all of the many holes the knights had been straining to avoid the last day or two, but in addition to those massive pits that they could fall into, Adon could see that the cliffs that the group had been climbing up and down were actually worn away except in a few key places that had remained as paths for both humans and ants to climb up and down.

It looked as if the various digging species of the level had been hollowing out the ground beneath them for a long time.

He couldn't fathom how the spider must have subtly shaped the illusion so that the humans would not attempt to climb through a space that was simply hollow. Then, even if Rosslyn and the Dessians might have lost a knight or two to accident, the game would have certainly been given away.

What does it mean? Adon wondered. That this is what the spider was hiding…

His train of thought was sidetracked slightly as the projectiles from below finally reached the spider's height. Arrows, a javelin, and a pair of daggers all struck in the area where the spider was, though half of them missed completely. They had not been aimed precisely, seeing as the knights had been unable to see the spider at all when they loosed their attacks.

Those that struck, however, stuck fast in the spider's body.

Adon turned to get a better look and confirmed that the Portia was hurting. The mana-enhanced weapons had left their marks. A dagger stuck out of the base of one of its legs, and two arrows sticking out of the lower abdomen added a little more to the spiky quality Adon had observed about the creature's exoskeleton already.

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But the injuries were not serious.

That much was obvious. And even as the knights began to reload their weapons below, the giant spider started moving again. Back in control of its body, it shifted away from the center of its web, quickly slipping off to the side and then maneuvering to the underside of the web—attempting, Adon thought, to use the silken structure as a shield against further projectiles.

I need to cut this web down, Adon thought. No, burn it.

He began rapidly charging up mana and simultaneously converting every bit of mana he pulled from his core into fire magic. His body had not been put much to the test that day, magically, and Adon was ready to unleash his full reserves of mana on this monster that had tried to frame him for betraying the group.

Foolish insect! A cold and hostile voice flooded Adon's mind. He did not need to guess whose it was. Damn you for revealing my hiding place… but you are too late!

Adon felt a terrible sense of foreboding. At almost the same time that he received the spider's harsh, hissing words, he could feel a message shoot from the monster past him and toward the ground level. He could not understand it or stop the telepathic transmission from going out, but he recognized that a message had been sent. And from the strange, terse, unclear contents, Adon guessed that this message was a specialized communication meant for the spider's allies: the Gold-Digging Ants.

I have to finish this quickly, Adon thought. Before the ants do whatever the Portia just told them to…

He threw the first burst of flame up at the spider. It jumped back as if afraid of the fire, which was interesting in itself—but not important in that moment. Adon had not been trying to burn the spider itself. A moment later, he had the satisfaction of seeing his desired result achieved.

The web caught fire.

Adon could feel the spider's rising panic from beneath the web as it recognized what was happening. It quickly turned its back and squirted fresh silk—liquid silk—from its spinnerets onto the place where Adon had ignited its web. There was a sizzling as the substance stuck and began to put out Adon's flames, but Adon simply threw more fire onto the web, hitting it from multiple directions. He could control his fire mana with Telekinesis now, like Rosslyn, so there was no reason not to overwhelm the spider with unpredictable bursts of combustion.

It felt like there was a time limit to the fight now. As the knights below waited for Adon to burn away the webbing and make the spider vulnerable to their projectiles again, Adon knew that there were probably things being done by the ants, unseen, that would endanger the party.

The monster spat what Adon guessed was acid into his direction, and Adon responded by simply flaring his fire magic up at it. The acid and flame collided in a hiss of foul-smelling steam and smoke. The spider's attack was neutralized, and Adon did not let up in burning the spider's web from all other directions.

There were a few seconds of conflict in which the spider spewed liquids from both ends, trying to put out Adon's fires—trying to buy itself time, Adon knew. But it was ineffective.

The whole web took flame, almost in a single instant. Adon could see the fire slowly beginning to spread to some of the lichen all around as well. It was turning into the underground equivalent of a forest fire.

A moment later, the monster swore telepathically into Adon's mind and began rushing out from under the side of its web.

Adon took aim for another, hopefully final, burst of fire—and then the air seemed to vibrate all around him.

What is that? he thought.

Then, at the edges of his vision, he saw it happening. The edges of the floor—the ground level of the floor where the humans were standing—began collapsing. It started near the walls that had already collapsed, but Adon could see the ground caving in on itself in a widening pattern, drawing steadily closer to the positions of his allies. Rocks started to fall from the ceiling at the same time.

The butterfly dodged out of the way of one stone as he attempted to get a lock on where to point his next burst of fire to kill the spider. The creature was trying to scuttle away, having apparently induced its minions to destroy the entire level and therefore perhaps to take the humans with them.

Adon threw a burst of flame the spider's way, only for it to throw itself to the side—and be slashed through three of its legs by a beam of solid light from below.

Ahhhhhh!!! The creature let loose a deafening telepathic bellow before it fell free from the ceiling, tumbling downward into the seemingly bottomless black abyss that had now opened up below, where an ordinary valley had once been.

So that was what she was preparing, Adon thought.

He had recognized, with his enhanced speed of thought, that this beam was one of Rosslyn's light magic attacks. The really energy intensive one that had caused her to collapse after using it before. She had been charging mana when he observed her little group preparing ranged attacks, but she had been the only one not to launch one, until just now.

Hopefully she has more mana left today…

The situation had become quite urgent, of course, so it made sense that she had ended the fight as quickly as possible.

"Go get the spiders!" Adon heard Rosslyn's voice yell from beneath him. He checked the positioning of those on the ground, and he saw that though the floor was still slowly caving in—both the ceiling falling down around them and bits of floor collapsing—the humans were doing well at finding places where they could still stand.

The Gold-Digging Ants were attacking them now, but the knights and their leaders remained in good order, defending effectively—as frequently as not simply pushing the ants away, into impossible to survive falls.

Adon rushed off to where the spiders were, not looking back. This level would shortly not exist. He did not know what that would mean—if it would be a failure to clear it that would somehow prevent them from advancing—but he was certain he did not want to leave his friend and his brother trapped here.

He poured mana into his wings and transferred Evolution Points straight into his Stats to boost his mana as he flew, silently thanking the Goddess that he had not tangled with the spider for longer. His mana reserves were still mostly intact. He had a feeling he would need every bit of that energy to escape the floor with his friends.

Mental magic continued running as he flew, helping him to dodge around falling chunks of ceiling with super-butterfly reaction speeds—in the back of his mind, Adon noted, not for the first time, that this power was the only way he had yet discovered to react and move at a speed semi-comparable to Rosslyn and William—and also to think about what was happening around him in a broader strategic sense.

So the spider could have ordered the entire level collapsed like this anytime it wanted? he thought. It doesn't make sense. If it could do that and survive, then why wait? We would have definitely all died if it destroyed the floor back when we were holed up in that cave, hiding from the ants. If it wouldn't have survived a floor collapse for sure, why resort to it so quickly once we'd discovered its position? It was before I even did much of anything to it. Something isn't adding up…

He tried to think of explanations.

There's no chance this whole collapse is an illusion, right?

But that explanation was easy to dismiss. After Adon broke the illusion the first time, he was confident that the spider had never fully regained its focus. Its mental state had been agitated grievously for the last several minutes before it plunged to its doom.

There was something Adon was missing. Perhaps it was no longer important—he had seen the spider go falling catastrophically into the endless void, after all—but then, perhaps it was something that would teach him more about the nature of the dungeon and the thought processes of the dungeon core.

Adon saw his friends, and his mind abandoned all abstract inquiry to focus on the present moment. Goldie and Samson were already under attack.