Chapter 27: The Royal Guard and the Limits of Focus

As Se-hyeon had deduced, the subterranean facility was indeed an ancient ruin. The complication, however, was that a terrifying brood of monsters had completely claimed the historical site.

“The Laboratory of Alchemist Kaltraven, turned hatchery for the Defeated Queen Spider seeking vengeance? Talk about a mouth-filling title,” Se-hyeon muttered, scanning the cavern. “And they weren’t kidding about it being a hatchery. Are all of those things eggs? There are so many…”

True to the system’s description, the vast majority of the sprawling chamber was packed tight with glistening, pulsing spider eggs. At a casual glance, there were easily more than a thousand of them stretching into the darkness.

“Don’t tell me those eggs count toward the monsters I have to wipe out to break the lockdown…” Se-hyeon murmured, analyzing the constraints.

As he stood in contemplation, a sharp, fracturing noise echoed through the stone chamber.

Crack!

One of the massive, leathery eggs split open. From the ruptured membrane, a grotesque, multi-legged hatchling dragged itself into the light.

“Huh? Is it hatching right now?”

The newborn spider shook off its embryonic fluid, locked its multiple compound eyes onto Se-hyeon, and immediately scurried forward with terrifying speed.

“Kieeeeek!”

Whether it viewed him as its very first meal or simply recognized him as an intruder didn’t matter. The reality remained unchanged: the newborn was hostile.

“Not a chance!”

With a casual flick of his wrist, Se-hyeon launched one of his hovering Shadow Orbs directly at the oncoming hatchling.

Boom! “Kiek!”

The hatchling was obliterated in a single, explosive blast.

But its death rattle triggered a chain reaction. Suddenly, the sound of fracturing shells erupted from every corner of the laboratory.

Crack! Snap! Shatter!

Se-hyeon let out a long, heavy sigh. “Haa. Of course. That means every single one of these things counts.”

The system’s warning to eradicate “all spiders within the laboratory” literally included the thousand-plus unhatched eggs.

“Well, look on the bright side,” Se-hyeon reasoned, his eyes tracking the clusters. “Since they’re all packed tightly together, dropping area-of-effect damage will be a breeze. Shadow Orb!”

Fighting a thousand fully grown, agile giant spiders simultaneously would be a logistical nightmare, but a field of stationary targets was an entirely different story. Even though a few dozen eggs were fracturing concurrently across the room, the overwhelming majority were still trapped inside their shells.

Instantly manifesting a swarm of 30 Shadow Orbs around him, Se-hyeon initiated a ruthless pre-emptive bombardment.

Screeech! Boom! Crash! Bang!

He prioritized the sectors where active hatching was taking place. Within seconds, rows upon rows of eggs were consumed by a cascading wall of dark, concussive explosions.

Rumble! Crash!

Hundreds of hatchlings met their demise before they could even witness the outside world. Se-hyeon was relentless, constantly conjuring and firing massive volleys of orbs like an automated artillery battery. In less than ten minutes of continuous, methodical bombing, more than half of the hatchery was reduced to smoking craters and scorched paste.

Suddenly, a resonant system alert chimed in his mind.

[More than half of the Giant Spider Eggs have been destroyed.]

[Peltriana, the Defeated Queen Spider Seeking Vengeance, has emerged!]

As the notification vanished, a massive, towering shadow dropped from the vaulted ceiling of the laboratory.

“KIEEEE-EEEE-EEEE-EEEE!”

The screech was a piercing, bone-chilling shriek that vibrated through the stone floor. Looking at the widespread destruction of her nest, the gigantic Queen Spider immediately entered a state of pure frenzy.

“Ho, so the sub-boss finally shows her face?”

According to the lore provided by the system, she had been defeated by the true master of the Spider’s Forest, meaning her power baseline was technically lower than the zone’s final boss. Even so, she held the title of a Queen. At the bare minimum, her threat level was far above an Elite—in practical terms, she possessed boss-tier statistics.

‘This is perfect,’ Se-hyeon thought, his eyes narrowing as he evaluated her massive silhouette. ‘She’ll serve as an excellent benchmark to gauge the difficulty of a true D-rank dungeon boss.’

Up until now, he had intentionally avoided tackling dungeon bosses out of an abundance of caution, choosing to maximize efficiency and safety. But trapped inside this sealed ruin, he had no choice but to kill her to escape. If he could easily dismantle an entity of Peltriana’s caliber solo, it would prove beyond a doubt that D-rank dungeon bosses were well within his lone farming capabilities.

“KIAAAA!”

Enraged, the massive arachnid charging forward, her heavy scythe-like legs gouging deep tracks into the stone. Se-hyeon immediately cast Wind Boots, preparing for high-speed engagement.

Whirrrr!

The moment his boots hovered a few inches above the stone floor, he shot backward, establishing distance.

“You can wait your turn, Your Majesty. I need to finish cleaning up your children first.”

Se-hyeon prioritized clearing the remaining eggs over engaging Peltriana directly. If he let the hundreds of surviving eggs hatch while trying to manage a boss-tier fight, the sheer volume of small, agile targets swarming his blind spots would become an unnecessary headache.

Screeech! Boom! Crash!

Utilizing the incredible velocity of his Wind Boots, Se-hyeon danced around the laboratory, easily evading the massive Queen’s lunges while systematically dropping dark ordnance onto the surviving egg clusters.

Watching her unborn lineage being systematically erased, Peltriana’s fury broke all boundaries.

“Kieee! Kiaaaa!” Pshaaaaak!

The Queen snapped her mandibles, unleashing a massive, wide-reaching torrent of thick webbing across the chamber. Se-hyeon tilted his body mid-air, avoiding the projectile stream entirely.

Splat! Thwip!

The pressurized silk missed him but splattered heavily across a vast section of the cavern floor, forming a sticky, un-traversable mire.

“Whoa, that’s a massive web,” Se-hyeon noted, looking down. “I definitely need to avoid a direct hit from that.”

For a conventional ground-bound hunter, missing the projectile wouldn’t mean they were safe; merely stepping onto that coated stone floor would have glued their boots to the ground, sealing their doom. But for Se-hyeon, who was gliding effortlessly through the air without touching the ground via Wind Boots, the floor hazard was completely irrelevant. As long as he didn’t take a direct hit mid-air, her primary crowd-control mechanic was useless against him.

‘The floor traps don’t affect me, but the projectile spread itself covers a massive area. I need to watch her animations closely.’

Since a single direct hit could ground him and strip away his mobility advantage, he kept a sharp eye on her movements while continuing his demolition work.

“But first, the eggs.”

Boom! Crash! Rumble!

Maintaining hyper-vigilance toward the Queen’s positioning, Se-hyeon swiftly liquidated the remaining clusters.

It took another twenty minutes of high-speed evasion and precision firing before the last remaining egg in the laboratory was reduced to cinders.

‘Finally, all the eggs are gone!’

Considering it took him less than ten minutes to wipe out the first five hundred, clearing the second half had taken twice as long. However, considering he had to dodge the frantic, lethal assaults of a boss-tier monster the entire time, the delay was unavoidable.

“KIEEEE-EEEE-EEEE!”

Realizing that every single one of her precious offspring had been completely exterminated, Peltriana, the Defeated Queen Spider, officially entered a state of absolute berserk wrath.

VROOOOOOOM!

Along with a piercing, maddening screech, a visible, suffocating aura of dark mana erupted from Peltriana’s massive frame.

‘Oh? Destroying her nest forced her straight into Phase 2 empowerment?’

Typically, a boss monster’s phase transition or enrage trigger occurred when their health pool dropped below 50%. Yet, Peltriana had skipped the health threshold entirely, forcing an instantaneous power evolution out of sheer psychological rage.

“Suits me fine,” Se-hyeon smirked, his eyes cold. “Now that the extra baggage is taken care of, I can focus entirely on tearing you apart.”

With the eggs cleared, there were no secondary distractions left. He only had to focus on a single target.

“Sanctuary Declaration!”

Se-hyeon deployed his premier domain spell. It was a massive, dual-purpose territory magic that severely crippled enemies while heavily amplifying the statistics of allies within its borders.

Flasaaash!

The moment the divine sanctuary manifested across the ancient laboratory, a surging tide of raw vitality and power flooded Se-hyeon’s veins.

“Kieee…?”

Peltriana suddenly faltered, her skittering legs slowing down. Her attack power, defensive metrics, attack speed, and movement speed had all suffered an instantaneous, massive drop under the domain’s oppressive law. Before she could comprehend the source of her sudden weakness, Se-hyeon invoked his next spell.

“Dark Chains!”

Clang! Clang! Clank!

From the stone floor beneath her, heavy, ominous iron links saturated with dark energy erupted like striking vipers, wrapping tightly around Peltriana’s massive torso and pinning her to the ground.

Raaaaattle!

Caught off guard, the Queen thrashed violently, attempting to shatter the dark restraints through sheer physical mass.

“KIEEEE! KIIII!”

However, the magical chains didn’t just bind her torso; they wound tightly around all eight of her massive legs, pinning them flush against her abdomen. Her frantic struggles amounted to nothing more than a helpless, stationary writhing.

Swish!

Exploiting her total immobilization, Se-hyeon executed a high-speed dash, repositioning himself flawlessly directly behind her rear flank.

“Shadow Orb!”

With her legs pinned to the earth, she was physically incapable of turning around to face him. For the next five minutes, her blind spot was a completely uncontested firing range.

Whirrrr!

Instantly manifesting a battery of 30 Shadow Orbs, Se-hyeon unleashed the entire volley point-blank into her unprotected rear carapace.

Screeech! Boom! Crash! Bang! Rumble!

Given her massive physical footprint, twenty-seven of the thirty orbs scored direct, devastating impacts, while the remaining three or four detonated against the stone floor right beneath her abdomen. Even the missed shots delivered full concussive splash damage, ensuring that all thirty orbs transferred their maximum destructive output directly into her health pool.

“Shadow Orb!”

Whirrr! Bang!

The moment his first volley dissipated, Se-hyeon instantly conjured a second wave, maintaining a relentless, unbroken rhythm of destruction.

CRASH! BOOM! RUMBLE!

Anchored securely in her blind spot while she remained utterly helpless, his artillery bombardment became an industrialized execution.

Bang! Crash! Boom!

A third volley followed. Then a fourth. The catastrophic bombardment of Shadow Orbs continued without a single second of respite, scaling all the way up to a tenth consecutive wave.

BOOM! RUMBLE! CRASH! “KIEEEE! KIAAAA!”

Ten full rotations of his maximum output meant Se-hyeon had channeled a staggering 300 Shadow Orbs directly into Peltriana. While roughly 270 were perfect, direct penetrations, the sheer volume of raw, unmitigated damage was catastrophic from the opening seconds of the fight.

More importantly, Sanctuary Declaration had already stripped away 33% of her total defense. Under this amplified shredding effect, Peltriana’s massive boss-tier health pool suddenly plummeted straight past the 50% mark before she could even land a single blow. She had stood completely still and lost more than half her life.

Clatter…

As the five-minute duration expired, the Dark Chains dissolved back into the shadows. The secondary effect of the spell triggered immediately, siphoning the stolen lifeforce back to the caster.

[Dark Chains has siphoned a total of 3,300 Health.]

[1,650 Health is transferred to the caster.]

[Your Health is currently at maximum capacity. Excess siphoned health is discarded.]

Though the healing went to waste since his health bar hadn’t budged a single millimeter, the tactical objective was achieved. Now free from her iron bindings, the heavily damaged Queen Spider went utterly ballistic.

“KIAAAA!” Crash! Shatter! Boom!

Using her four rear legs for terrifying propulsion, she began tearing across the laboratory chamber at blistering speeds, using her four massive front scythes to slash at the air in a blur of lethal kinetic force.

‘Whoa, she’s fast!’ Se-hyeon noted, his eyes tracking her velocity.

If Sanctuary Declaration hadn’t shaved off 22% of her movement speed, her raw velocity would have been nearly un-trackable. Even with the debuff, her retaliatory speed was immense, creating a highly volatile combat environment.

“Too bad for you, I’m still faster, you bastard!” Se-hyeon shouted.

Backed by the speed multipliers of both his Wind Boots and the Sanctuary’s environmental buff, Se-hyeon glided through the air with elegant, effortless precision, dodging her massive, razor-sharp scythes by mere inches.

Swish!

Simultaneously, he maintained a constant ring of 6 active Shadow Orbs around his body, firing them in a steady, unrelenting stream of counter-attacks while on the move.

Boom! Crash! Bang!

The battle of attrition ground on. By the time Peltriana’s total health pool was whittled down to roughly 30%, the monster suddenly halted her advance.

“KIAAAA!”

She reared back on her hind legs and let out a piercing, resonant roar toward the ceiling. Concurrently, another system text flashed across Se-hyeon’s vision.

[Peltriana, the Defeated Queen Spider Seeking Vengeance, is summoning her Royal Guard!]

‘A Royal Guard?’

As the text faded, ten massive, heavily armored spiders materialized out of ripples of distorted mana, forming a defensive phalanx around their Queen.

Whirrrr! “Kieeeek!” “Kiaaaa!”

Se-hyeon’s expression hardened as he analyzed the newcomers. Each and every member of this ten-spider Royal Guard possessed the distinct aura of an Elite monster. These weren’t standard fodder hatchlings that he could pop with two or three simple orbs; these were high-health, heavily armored variants.

“Tch. Summoning ten Elites out of nowhere? That’s a total cheat code,” Se-hyeon grumbled.

Suddenly, he went from a clean, isolated boss fight to a chaotic, eleven-versus-one gauntlet. Even though Sanctuary Declaration was actively reducing their offensive, defensive, and speed parameters across the board, managing a boss-tier entity and ten elite-tier guardians simultaneously on a solo run was an immense psychological and physical burden.

‘I need to drop the Royal Guard first!’

Although Peltriana only had about 30% of her health remaining, her raw hit-point pool was still substantially larger than that of an individual Elite guard. If he left the guards alive to run interference, they would constantly block his vectors. Deciding on a strategy, Se-hyeon resolved to wipe out the escort before finishing off the Queen.

Swish!

Committing to the plan, Se-hyeon accelerated into a high-speed slalom, weaving directly through the gap between the charging arachnids while launching his orbs.

Screeech! BOOM!

His Shadow Orbs targeted the Royal Guards with pinpoint precision. However, the Elites responded with terrifying coordination, moving in tandem to cover each other’s blind spots while retaliating against Se-hyeon.

“Kieeeek!” “Kiii!”

Instead of rushing him in a mindless, disorganized swarm, the Royal Guards moved in a highly structured, tactical pincer movement, systematically attempting to cut off his evasion routes. They were clearly operating under the direct telepathic command of the Queen.

‘Look at these bastards. They’re actually trying to box me in.’

Of course, Se-hyeon wasn’t about to let himself be cornered easily.

Swish!

Every single time the pincer threatened to close, he utilized a sudden burst of speed from his Wind Boots to slip through the micro-gaps in their formation. When the angle was too tight to escape cleanly, he concentrated his Shadow Orbs on a specific guard’s legs, shattering its chitinous joints and collapsing its posture to force a temporary opening in their line.

Crash! Bang!

‘Khh… this is definitely pushing it. If I don’t thin their numbers out fast, this could turn ugly.’

Though the memory transfer from the ancient High Mage Zephyrus allowed him to utilize these advanced spells with instinctual familiarity, he hadn’t yet achieved the absolute, transcendent mastery that Zephyrus possessed through centuries of live combat.

As the minutes ticked by under intense pressure, a sharp, throbbing ache began to pulse behind his temples.

Trying to track the lethal movements of a boss-tier Queen, charting the tactical pincer formations of ten coordinated Elites, maintaining high-speed flight mechanics, and individually micro-managing the vectors of multiple floating Shadow Orbs was pushing his cognitive processing limits to their absolute redline. The sheer mental overload was manifesting as a severe, splitting headache.

Worse still, his lack of offensive variety was starting to show its limits; relying entirely on a single tier-1 spell like Shadow Orb as his sole source of damage was turning what should have been a swift execution into a grueling, exhausting marathon.