The spider that had ducked behind a conveyer belt for golem parts leapt towards the group, one of the mages sent a spray of glittering metal towards it. The creature whirled out of the way, but mid-dodge, Ethan sent another blast of lightning into the creature. This time, the creature didn’t dodge fast enough. The blast of lightning caused the creature’s limbs to twitch and spasm uncontrollably.

  Doll and Alice took that moment to try to hit it with a beam of light, but the other third evolution spider leapt out of the ground and dragged the spider away before Alice could enhance the beam of light. The regular, unenhanced beam of light still caused a few burns to appear on the spider - but they were superficial wounds. They wouldn’t actually slow the creature down much.

  Meanwhile, the horde of spiders set upon the group of mages like piranhas that had smelled blood. The mages in the group, along with Allira’s shadows, quickly set up defensive lines to deal with the spiders.

  To Alice’s delight, the golems didn’t attack the group, or retreat. Instead, many of the more combat-ready golems moved to assist the Mages and Allira’s shadows. With the addition of the golems, the lower levels of the fight entered a temporary stalemate. The monsters had a variety of dangerous and unpredictable Perks available to them, which meant that they posed a threat to anyone who got careless. However, the Mages that had come with Alice and the Immortals to the heart of the System were here for a reason. They might not have been Immortals, but they were all competent combatants. They were capable of maintaining a reasonable defensive line, even against the overwhelming numbers and unpredictable nature of the monster swarm - though Alice suspected that if the fight went on too long, that would change as Perks and mana ran out.

  Unfortunately, not all of the golems moved to assist them. Some of the less combat-ready golems started to grab ruined sections of the room and use them as scrap materials to repair others, which was understandable - at least they were trying to ramp up the production rate of reinforcements, which would help if the fight took longer than anticipated. However, a few of the golems simply rushed out of the room, as if the fight no longer had anything to do with them. A few monsters near the door leapt onto these golems and started eating, turning these golems into nothing more than scrap metal and food.

  Alice had no idea what these golems were supposed to be doing. Perhaps they were supposed to fetch materials, or perhaps they had simply tried to return to their regular tasks. Either way, nearly a sixth of the golems in the room rapidly disappeared as they tried to ignore the fight and got devoured as a result.

  Her analysis of the lower-level combat lines quickly faded to the back of her mind as she scanned the room for the third-evolution spiders. The two were completely invisible now - strangely enough, even Alice’s various types of mana perception couldn’t pick up their presence. Alice wasn’t sure whether that was the result of the spider’s {Adrenaline-Rush} type Perk, or if it had been an aspect of the shadow spider’s stealth that it hadn’t had time to use during their last encounter. It could also be some other ability entirely, which the group had yet to encounter.

  “Allira, stop supporting the Mages and flood the area with light! I can’t find the higher evolution spiders!” Yelled Ethan.

  A moment later, Allira stopped humming the song that summoned her shadow spiders, and began to hum a new song. Light started to flood the room. The Mages and golems battling the spider swarm nearly buckled as Alira’s support vanished, but after a few moments of strain, they managed to adapt to the new gaps in the battle line.

  Luckily, the move wasn’t in vain. The moment Allira’s illusory light flooded the room again, Alice saw the spiders that had vanished from sight.

  The two creatures were walking straight through solid objects, as if they didn’t exist at all. both spiders were walking towards Alice and Doll by moving underneath the floor - as if the solid steel and rock there were illusions. Alice grimaced. The spiders were clearly able to identify which members of their group were threatening, but incapable of responding well to a surprise attack. If the spiders had actually ambushed her and Doll, they might have died before the other Immortals could have responded. Alice wasn’t sure how well her {Adrenaline Rush} and {Enhanced Senses} Perks would match up against whatever Perk the shadow spiders had.

  “Ethan! There!” Alice yelled, as she pointed out the shadows spiders. “They’re moving through the floor! Underneath us!”

  “How deep?”

  “About two meters below the floor’s surface!”

  “Got it!” yelled Ethan, before he pulled out an object Alice had never seen before. She had a few fractions of a second to realize that it was some kind of consumable enchantment, before Ethan hurled it right at the spot Alice had indicated. Before the object even hit the floor, he pulled out his father’s old sword, and swung it right towards the object.

  The consumable enchantment he had tossed at the floor erupted into a blaze of mana. It looked like a screw from Earth, made entirely of mana, had materialized out of thin air. Stone and metal melted as the enchantment dug straight towards the spiders, quickly hollowing out the area they had been hiding beneath and exposing them to the air once more. Then, a column of flames descended upon the spiders - but before it could connect, the {Adrenaline Rush} spider’s body lit up with mana again, and the two spiders dove deeper into the earth. Alice groaned in frustration.

  How many times could this spider activate its {Adrenaline Rush} esque ability? Alice could only use her {Adrenaline Rush} once before it entered cooldown. This creature had already used its Perk three times during this fight, and Alice had no idea if it could use it more times afterwards. Either way, the two spiders still weren’t dead, despite Ethan using an expensive-looking consumable enchantment and an extremely expensive ability from his Artifact sword.

  Alice pointed out the presence of the spiders again, and Ethan kept an eye on Alice’s finger - but he was forced to divert part of his attention back to the lower level battlefield as a wave of spiders nearly breached the defensive lines. Alice gritted her teeth.

  Was there some way she could deal with them? Alice tried to figure out some way to manipulate beliefs and turn the situation around, but she couldn’t think of anything that she could accomplish with her limited mana and the belief of only the expedition members. She couldn’t think of any more widespread beliefs she could draw upon either. With her belief manipulation, Alice could amplify things that already worked, such as light harming the spiders. However, trying to change reality at whim was entirely outside of the bounds of how strings of belief mana worked - they needed the backing of real beliefs to do anything at all.

  The spiders hadn’t changed targets - the moment they dodged Ethan’s fatal strike, they had continued making their way towards Alice and Doll. Alice glanced at the battlefield again, and searched for a way to change things. Her eyes caught on Myra, who was… painting a harp?

  Alice blinked in total confusion.

  “Allira! I’m going to empower your shadows! Summon them again in a moment and abandon the light! It’s not doing enough against the real threats here!” said Myra. “See if you can do that giant mouth thing and get the fast one before it escapes!”

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  Allira gave Myra a thumbs up in response, before the omnipresent illusory light disappeared. A new set of shadows appeared. Alice lost sight of the spiders again. She hoped that Myra and Allira knew what they were doing.

  “Shine the light in that area,” said Alice, as she amped up Doll’s light cannon more. She didn’t quite succeed in revealing the spider monsters again - but she could see tiny flickers of motion now, even if they were subtle and hard to detect. It would have to be enough.

  As Myra began to strum her harp, Alice did her best to amp it up with belief mana. To Alice’s surprise, Myra’s music had a far more obvious, visual quality to it than Allira’s illusions. Instead of creating a massive, illusory scene, every note that Myra played literally appeared in midair as an illusory, neon-colored musical note. These neon musical notes drifted towards Allira’s shadow like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, while Allira sang her own song.

  Allira’s shadow started to glow neon colors as well. It was nowhere near as potent as the light source that Allira had previously provided with her singing, but it was still powerful enough to leave a faint glow that trailed after each of Allira’s movements.

  A moment later, the neon coloration disappeared, as Allira’s shadow wormed its way towards the faint flickers of motion underneath the floor. A ripple of mana and light dove beneath the surface of the earth, before a massive snapping sound resounded through the battlefield. A moment later, Alice grinned as she heard the unearthly shrieks of a monster.

  A moment later, Alice saw the two spiders leap out of the ground and back to the surface - but one of them was now missing three legs, and a small part of its abdomen. The spider with a variant of {Adrenaline Rush} had been badly wounded by Allira’s musical maw.

  Before Alice could finish smiling, the spider leapt towards Alice and Doll, heedless of its injuries.

  Alice immediately felt {Adrenaline Rush} kick in, followed by {Enhanced Senses}, and time slowed down. The spider’s mouth expanded like a snake’s, as it surged towards her and Doll.

  Myra and Allira’s new strategy had injured the monster, but not killed it. Doll’s light cannon wasn’t pointing in the right direction, so the first thing Alice did with her slowed-down perception of time was redirect it using kinetic mana.

  The light started to fry the spider, and its body came into contact with the beam of light - but Alice quickly realized that it wouldn’t be enough. The spider was moving far faster than it should have, especially given how much her perception of time changed after her two Perks were activated.

  Shutting the monster off from its minions and interfering with its knockoff Perk wouldn’t be enough to change the battle. She needed a new trick fast, or she was going to become food in seconds.

  First, Alice used her and Doll’s clothes as handles and hurled them out of the way of the spider. She maintained control of the light cannon using kinetic mana. A moment later, the spider crashed into the spot where they had been standing. A few parts of the System’s base building material cracked as the spider’s maw sawed through stone, earth, and metal like they were made of wet cardboard.

  The spider didn’t react to missing its target at all - its five remaining legs bounced off of the floor as it launched itself towards them again. Ethan finally reacted, and sent a blast of lightning after the spider, but the spider contorted itself as if its limbs were made of rubber and ducked beneath Ethan’s attack. His lightning bolt slammed into a wall of the System, where it dissipated into thin air. The other third evolution spider took this as an opportunity to ambush Ethan, and Ethan was forced into focusing on his own battle a moment later.

  Alice and Doll were on their own, and Doll was clearly struggling to keep up with the speed this battle was happening at.

  Alice thought back to her last successful fight. When the Immortals from the Sigmusi empire had tried to detain them during their journey to the System, Alice had managed to successfully flood an area with mana, enough to force a weaker Immortal through a baptism.

  In that case, could she do the opposite? Monsters needed mana to continue existing, and Alice had a pure mana seed.

  She tried to act on her idea, by using her pure mana and her tendrils to drain an area of mana. It was partially successful - Alice did, indeed, manage to suck a huge amount of mana out of the area.

  Unfortunately, that was where the success ended. The moment Alice created a huge void of mana, the mana from their surroundings flood in to fill up the gap. Alice repressed a grimace of frustration. Mana sometimes acted like a gas, and sometimes didn’t - and this seemed to be one of the cases where it had physical properties similar to a gas.

  The spider tried to pounce at them again, and Alice narrowly tossed her and Doll out of the way. {Adrenaline Rush} would end soon. Alice needed a way to break this stalemate. Doll finally managed to drag an item out of her pocket, before she hurled another light-bomb at the spider. It released several rays of light, which mildly scorched the spider’s exterior - but didn’t inflict any substantial damage again. Worse, after the spider recovered its footing, Alice realized that all of the damage had only hit one side. The spider had clearly reacted before Doll even finished throwing the weapon. It could sense danger before it arrived. Paired with its exceptional speed and its ability to duck inside solid objects, the spider was nearly impossible to kill.

  Then, Alice got a new idea.

  These shadow spiders were linked to the conceptual idea of shadows. They got hurt by light as they evolved, creating a small downside in exchange for their enhanced abilities.

  If that was the case, since Alice could already boost other things by manipulating strings of belief mana… what if she manipulated the shadows themselves and tried to tie them to a different concept? Monsters past a certain stage of evolution clearly had major ties to the conceptual side of reality, but Alice could also influence the conceptual side of reality. What if she just tried to swap out a few aspects of ‘shadows’? Would that mess up the connection these spiders had to their most powerful ability?

  Alice tried her best to focus on the way most people, culturally, perceived shadows. Dark, dangerous, unknown, and cold. Then, Alice decided to focus on the cold aspect of shadows - and then amped it up.

  This time, Alice didn’t need to make do with a half-baked solution. After all, in this world, there were still millions of people who subconsciously perceived shadows as being dark and cold. She wasn’t drawing on the vague beliefs of twenty people - she was drawing on the weight of cultural perception from an entire, massive planet’s worth of people.

  The spiders here might be well-equipped to handle the dark, but Alice was hoping that they were nowhere near as well equipped to handle being dunked into arctic temperatures as the ‘unknown’ side of shadows was weakened - since Alice was betting that was where their ability to phase through physical objects and move at near-teleportation speeds came from.

  “Ethan! Help me cool the room down and keep us warm!” Yelled Alice. A moment later, she saw Ethan add his own mana to her attempts at controlling the room temperature. He helped her freeze most of the room, while warming up the area right around the humans.

  In seconds, the room’s temperature plummeted to arctic levels. For a brief moment, Alice felt like she had just jumped into a bath of ice water - and that was even through the {Extremophile} Perk keeping her closer to a stable temperature. The other mages in the room gasped in shock as the cold wormed its way through their exposed flesh and into their bodies.

  Fortunately, Alice’s gamble worked. The shadows influenced by Alice’s belief mana manipulation churned and bubbled, almost as if the laws of physics were fighting with each other - and then, the room got brighter and colder, as all of the shadows in Alice’s surroundings turned into patches of cold, bright ice. The nature of whatever laws of physics Alice had just warped made her head hurt - but the two third-evolution spiders were forced back into the room. Myra and Allira continued their musical performance, and another maw of shadows opened up below the five-legged spider. It tried to dodge into the shadows again - but Alice had already wiped out all of the nearby darkness and turned it into ice. The creature’s five legs skittered on the floor, before the maw of shadows closed around its head and snapped shut.

  It died.

  Allira panted in exhaustion, and the maw of shadows dissipated into thin air. Allira continued singing, but it looked like she was running on fumes - she could barely even muster a few shadows now, and Myra also looked like she was running low on Perks and mental energy. Alice locked her gaze onto the final third evolution spider, who was still locked in battle with Ethan.

  The biggest threat had been dealt with, but there was still one more monster left to deal with, plus the horde behind them. And the Immortals in the group looked like they were dangerously close to being tapped out.

  Final Chapter of the year: Those of you who have been around for a while probably already know this, but I take the last week of each year and the first week of each new year off as vacation time. Basically, the week of Christmas and the week of New Year’s. This is the FINAL CHAPTER of 2025 - I will see you all again on January 9th-ish, assuming I don’t change what day of the week I release chapters for whatever reason. Also assuming you don’t read my other story - if you do, I will see you a bit sooner, assuming I don’t get struck by lightning or something during my vacation. In any case, have a lovely holiday season, whatever holidays you may (or may not) celebrate this time of year, and I’ll hopefully see you all again in 2026. There should be a lot of exciting stuff in 2026, assuming things work out and timelines don’t get thrown out of whack, but we’ll have to see. Ahem. Anyway.

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