Risen World 113 Chapter 59: Making Their Way Towards The Ant Mountain

Joshua and Lilly watched for a while as Tank taught Cinder the ends and outs of using her aura efficiently. If she was able to do that when fighting them earlier than she would have been a far bigger threat with all of her abilities and probably could have shrugged off some of the bubbles if she could use her aura to strengthen herself a bit in defense against the attacks. At the moment Tank was showing her the basics while Joshua and Lilly stood off to the side and started to make dinner. It was getting quite late and at the moment the area was fairly vacant of any threats since everything was terrified of Cinder.

Throughout the night Tank continued to train Cinder, but stopped for a bite to eat when dinner was ready. Tank just ate his food right away, but Cinder wrapped her lizards up into a coc.o.o.n for a while and watched as they slowly cooked themselves and melted to the point where she could just drink from them with her fangs. It was a bit disturbing, but at least he didn't have to watch the lizards struggle inside the coc.o.o.n since they were already dead. Joshua was able to learn a lot about Cinder from Tank since he was the only one that could fully talk to her at the moment. Joshua and Lilly could only get a sense of her emotions and feelings through her aura. At this point she wasn't good enough with her aura to project her voice through it, but that would all come in time and probably a lot faster since she had Tank to teach her how to do it.

From what Tank had told them apparently Cinder's mother had dropped off all of her offspring all over the world after feeding them their father to eat. Apparently female spiders were far stronger and the dominant of their species especially after evolving. The mother didn't give up her own body for her children, but instead saved half of the father's dead body for them while eating the rest. Plus it would have been impossible for the baby spiders to even break through the mother's exoskeleton if she was as strong as Tank made her seem. So now there were several large and dangerous spiders all over the world, but their territories were fairly obvious do to their effects on their surroundings.

Of course Cinder was special and was the only variant in the large batch of babies, so the mother made sure to leave her in an area where she could thrive and grow up strong in. Of course she would have to leave once she got too strong for all the other creatures in the surroundings, but Lilly was lucky they found her before she reached level thirty-five and decided to move to another area.

Soon Joshua and Lilly decided to get some sleep, but Tank and Cinder stayed up training through the night. Neither had any trouble staying awake for multiple days at a time and they needed to train on how they would work together. At the moment they were exact opposites and if they weren't careful they could get in the way of each other. For example if Cinder drained the moisture in the air near Tank then his water based abilities would become much weaker. While on the other hand if Tank drew too much moisture around Cinder then her fire based attacks would weaken greatly.

In the end they would work together better if they took up their own s.p.a.ces and positions in a fight. Tank was more made for staying in one spot and dealing large amounts of damage in singular attacks while taking the brunt of the damage from enemies do to his high vitality. While on the other hand Cinder was better off weaving in out of the surroundings during a fight and using her high dexterity to pick opponents apart in multiple ways. They would have to fight together with that in mind and they spent the entire night practicing while Joshua and Lilly were busy snoring the night away.

Neither of them were all that worried about how the two would be able to fight alongside them since the two humans were both incredibly flexible in a fight. Lilly could synchronize with either of them and easily be able to fight alongside them based on whatever opponent they were up against. Joshua on the other hand had his aura shroud which basically made him perfect for fighting in any situation. He could even fight through Cinder's smoldering smoke for a small portion of time as his aura shroud protected him.

The next morning Joshua woke up to the sight of Cinder in a smaller size hopping through the trees around Tank making sure not to hinder his movements. Every now in then she would jump on top of his sh.e.l.l and the two of them would send out a combined attack where Cinder shot out extremely hot flames while Tank sent out a torrent of water. When the two attacks mixed the water would heat up causing it to turn scalding hot and it burned whatever it hit and caused a lot of steam to be generated. It was an interesting attack and he was sure the two giant beast could easily figure out more tactics to work together with, but for now it was time for a quick breakfast and a trip to the dungeon of this area.

Soon Lilly got up as well and the group settled down for a quick bite to eat before heading back towards the direction of the giant mountain that loomed over everything. For the moment Tank was back in the soul realm while Lilly road on Cinder who seemed happy about the situation. Now that she could control her aura she was able to keep the heat she generated from harming Lilly. Now Joshua actually had to go all out just to keep up with the fast moving spider that weaved through the trees at a pace that was far faster than any other creature Joshua had seen before. Even without running along webs Cinder was easily faster than Joshua and he had to use the occasional aura blast from his feet to keep pace, but it got them traveling through the forest far faster than they ever had before.

Along the way they had to stop and take down a centipede that surprisingly tried to ambush them. Apparently now that Cinder had controlled her aura and had shrunken down in size a bit the centipede thought it actually stood a chance in a fight. Of course it and everybody else quickly found out that it was incorrect. Without even dropping Lilly during the centipedes surprise attack, Cinder leaped over its a.s.sault and quickly stomped her eight legs into its back pinning it beneath her. She then bit into the frantically squirming enemy and injected it with some of her venom. The poor thing shrieked in pain for a good couple of minutes before its body finally shut down. Joshua could tell it had finally pa.s.sed when he could feel a slight surge in experience.

Cinder quickly wrapped the large bug up in a coc.o.o.n and then Lilly put it in her inventory so Cinder would have something to eat for later. Then they continued their race out of the bleak area of the forest and found themselves back in the area where beetles and bee swarms were the dominant force. Unlike the centipede though these bugs new to stay the h.e.l.l away from Cinder and fled the area the moment her presence was felt. Luckily it didn't cause any problems for other groups since people tended to stay away from the area do to all of the swarms.

A long the way Joshua made sure to take out any swarms that thought it was a good idea to try to take them on and it was an incredibly fast process with Cinder along for the ride. Before the swarms could even come out of their nest Cinder would surround the area with webs to restrict their range of flight while Tank would set out several bubbles in the air to make a mine field for any of the bees that were dumb enough to fly up into one. Then they would combine their next attacks. Tank would blast the nest apart killing several of the bees in the process while Cinder would quickly burn the remains with a combination of her fire magic and smoldering smoke.

By the end of their tag team attack all that was left was a dozen or so gravely damaged bees and a badly injured queen bee which Joshua quickly took down while most of the smaller bees died from flying into bubbles or getting caught up in Cinder's burning web. The process was even faster than before and if it wasn't do to the fact that there was probably more to be earned from the dungeon Joshua might have stopped to spend the next couple of days to grind another couple of levels. He decided not to because it wasn't challenging enough and they wouldn't get the most potential out of their levels if they kept killing swarms for too long. Plus they wanted to train Cinder and fighting these swarms definitely wasn't going to help in that regard.

After a while they finally came into a clearing where they could see the towering ant mountain in all of its glory. All of the trees nearby had either been torn down by people to make s.p.a.ce for a camping area or even more likely by the ants coming out to take them back into the mountain for their own use. That left open a pretty wide area where Joshua could see several groups outside either preparing to head inside the mountain or finishing up breakfast for the day. When Joshua and Lilly came into the clearing with a gigantic spider that loomed over everyone lots of people jumped up in fright and were preparing for battle. Soon they got even more nervous as Tank came walking into the clearing close behind. They had decided to bring him out as well since they were already close to the mountain and the two giant creatures could easily scare any groups away from annoying them.

When Lilly hopped down off of Cinder's back she petted her head to prove that both of the creatures weren't dangerous which got rid of some of the tension in the air, but several people were still awestruck by the size of the two creatures and Joshua chuckled when he thought how worse it would have been if they had let Tank and Cinder grow to their full size before coming into the clearing. Right now they were at about half that size and they were already causing this much of a ruckus. Joshua noticed that several groups looked like they wanted come over and ask if they wanted to join up together, but Cinder quickly put an end to that as she glared at them and got them to back off. Anyone that didn't take the warning got a shriek that scared the day lights out of them instead. Tank chuckled at the situation which got looks of surprise from the people that were more in tuned to aura or magic and could understand that he was laughing.

Another thing that Joshua took notice of was a group of people that stood out from the rest of the groups do to their large numbers and the look of most of them. Although a lot of explorers had tough personalities and odd behaviors this group of people all seemed to be on the thuggish side and were either messing with other groups trying to get on peoples nerves or going inside the mountain down paths that others had already gone. They were most likely members of the Raider's Guild that Jayce had told them about. They would be annoying, but after looking at their levels Joshua knew that he and Lilly would have no problems dealing with them if it came to it. Even now they were staying away from them a bit since they were afraid of how violent Cinder was acting whenever one of them got to close.

In the end they would most likely end up as nothing more than a nuisance so Joshua took his eyes off of them and looked back towards the giant ant hill in front of him. The thing was enormous, but all the paths that he could see were rather small, so Tank and Cinder were going to have to shrink down so that they could move around comfortably. One thing Joshua knew was that if there was a giant part of the dungeon above ground, then in all likely hood there was an even larger area beneath it. Just as Joshua was thinking of which way they should go to start exploring the place a rumbling sound came from the mountain that grabbed everyone's attention.