While the Griders held a decently big celebration at the front, Ning and Dahlia weaved through the crowd, finding a way to get to a back door.
“C’mon, just teleport us,” Dahlia said.
“I need to know where I’m headed to teleport. Mostly I teleport to the sky, but this time, I don’t want people seeing us,” Ning said.
“Sigh, alright,” Dahlia said. The two of them sneaked around the place and soon were behind the house.
“What do we do now? Do we use our divine sense?” Dahlia asked.
Ning looked around at the back half of the house, trying to find any clue he could. Unfortunately, there were none.
“I can see a single cobweb,” he said as he looked around. “There’s nothing behind right?” he thought and sent his divine sense into the woods that lied behind the Grider family home.
“Nope, no spider there, so it has to be inside,” they thought and started sneaking in. Ning directly teleported to the furthest end with Dahlia and started looking for places to go.
“Where could they be keeping the spider?” Ning asked softly. The house was mostly empty, so they were successfully able to search most of the place.
The sounds of celebration that came from the front of the house were enough to give them an idea of just why there were none back here.
“Grandmaster,” Dahlia called. “I don’t think the spider is anywhere here. What about the underground? I think there’s a dungeon there.”
“A dungeon?” Ning asked in surprise and sent his divine sense down there. “Oh, look at that. There really is one.”
He grabbed Dahlia by the wrist and the both of them disappeared. When they reappeared, they were inside the dungeon checking out the whole thing.
“Look!” Dahlia shouted as she pointed somewhere. “Cobweb, just like you asked,” she said.
Ning turned to look and saw the cobwebs. He got closer and saw their color as well. “Silver,” he thought. “It’s here.”
Dahlia got defensive and ready to fight. The dungeon gave a very gloomy aura, and it looked like anything could attack them at any time.
“No need to be on guard. I’m here, aren’t I?” Ning said with a chuckle. “Besides, if he wanted to harm you, you would’ve already been dead.”
Ning pointed towards the ceiling right atop Dahlia, who turned around to see 8 massive eyes staring directly at her.
“A young man and a young woman, both in my dungeon. How peculiar. Tell me, humans, how did you stumble upon here?” a raspy voice directly spoke into both of their minds, which scared Dahlia a little bit.
The clicking sound the spider was making on the outside, made her feel uncomfortable.
“A green spider with black and yellow eyes, with a silver leaf on its back. You really are a Silverback Forest Spider, aren’t you?” Ning asked as he looked at them.
“Oh,” the spider spoke into his mind again. “You know what species I am. That hasn’t happened before. Tell me, humans, why are you here?”
“I have a question for you instead actually. I hope you can answer me first,” Ning said.
“I do not believe you are in a place where you can make such demands, young man,” the spider said.
Ning simply smiled and let loose a little bit of his aura before hiding it away. However, that was enough for the spider to change its stance.
All eight of its pupils dilated with fear as it immediately crawled far away in fear.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Ning said.
“Then why do you hide your strength, stranger,” the spider asked.
“Uh, Ely did say that. Man, I should stop hiding my strength; it causes way too many misunderstandings,” Ning thought.
The spider was in a very defensive stance with its butt ready to throw out some webs to entangle the two of them.
Dahlia was still a little fearful of the spider, but she was also amused after seeing it fear Ning as much as it did.
“When did you escape the tomb? Do you have a time frame?” Ning asked.
“Who are you? How do you know that?” the spider started getting more and more suspicious and scared at the same time. “Are you one of them?” it asked.
“One of… who?” Ning asked in confusion.
“You don’t look like them. You don’t have the same aura,” the Spider said.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Ning said.
“Them!” the spider exclaimed as it pointed to a dark corner of the room. Ning looked to the side and saw a massive cobweb.
He waved his hands and the cobwebs flew off, revealing two balls of webs. He sighed and threw some fire on it, and the ball of webs immediately started burning.
Before they could completely destroy it, however, Ning stopped the fire and brought what remained forward. Inside them were two men, each wearing a blood-red cloak, with their eyes open wide and their body half rotting.
“Who are these people?” Dahlia asked as he stopped herself from vomiting at their corpses.
“They are the three- well now two people that came for me,” the spider said.
“Three? There’s another? Where?” Dahlia asked.
The spider clicked its mouth and answered, “in my stomach. I wanted to eat these two too, but the first one’s blood tasted disgusting.”
Dahlia put a hand on her mouth as she was overcome with shock. “You’re a monster,” she said.
“I was just hungry. Besides, I’m a guard,” it said. “I kill intruders, and occasionally eat them. I wanted to eat these too, but… who would have known that there was blood that tasted this bad.”
“Their blood huh?” Ning said as he walked forward and made a small cut on the corpse’s cheek before drawing out a bit of black blood.
He took out some herbs and mixed them with the blood. The herbs all immediately turned black and fell onto the ground.
Ning’s eyes went wide. “That is not the blood of a human or a beast. This is something different,” Ning said.