The sound started softly, barely noticeable, but soon enough it grew loud enough to be impossible to ignore. When the sound seemed to be reaching its apex, spiders emerged from the inside of a dozen broken petrified trees. The Dune Spiders were not large, perhaps only two centimeters long, but there were so many of them.

Damion had thought he had seen a horde of Demonic Beasts with the Slash Rats in the Unstable Realm Breach or the stampede of Donetto Stone Bulls, but looking at the swarm of spiders, he now understood how wrong he had been. There were not hundreds, nor thousands, there were millions of them.

The sea of small spiders actually forced Damion to deactivate True Sight due to the number of F Rank tags he was seeing was clouding his normal vision. Since all of these Dune Spiders were low Rank, if he had not been pretending to be a Spatial mage, he was sure he could have killed them all with a few quick Frost Overs.

However, all he could do at the moment was teleport himself up in the air and keep himself there by using Blink to continuously teleport himself up as he fell. It was not as good as flying, but Damion did not want to bring out his Ice Sword, even if he made it small and hard to see, it was still an unnecessary risk.

Mage Abney cast several more Driving Rain spells, causing the area to start to flood. The water forced the Dune Spiders to cluster together to float, but the Demonic Beasts were still trying to make their way towards the team.

"When I yell jump, everyone jump as high as you can," Mage Phinn announced. The Lightning mage looked around and saw everyone appeared to be ready.

"JUMP!"

The entire team, except for Damion, who was bobbing up and down in the air with Blink, launched themselves into the air. As soon as they were clear of the water, Mage Phinn cast Lightning Bolt down towards the ground. The Lightning magic struck the water and instantly fried the entire swarm of F Rank Dune Spiders at once.

After a few moments, people started landing back on the ground from their jump. Damion was first, simply using Blink to move himself to a broken petrified tree stump, keeping himself out of the mud. Mages Phinn and Abney landed on the ground first. Knowing exactly what they had planned, they only jumped as high as they needed. Simon and Peter Beck landed next. The last to come down was Mage Young.

The brawny healer had done as Mage Phinn had commanded and jumped as high as he could. When the Light mage finally came back to the ground, he sunk knee deep into the mud from the impact and after digging himself out, the group had to wait for the healer to change his socks before they could move on.

"Are these even worth collecting?" Damion asked as he broke a part a few of the fried Dune Spiders.

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The remains of the creature basically turned to dust in his hands, and he could not find any traces of a core or imagine the charred brittle remains would be of any value.

"No. Even if they were, the F Rank Poison affinity cores are worthless, too small to be of any use. If it wasn't that F Rank was the lowest Rank, Dune Spiders would be even lower Rank.

"Are we heading to the champions next?" Damion asked.

He had briefly checked his quest log and saw his kill counter for C Rank beasts had only risen by four. He had expected at least another dozen in the sea of Demonic Beasts they had just killed, but evidently he was expecting too much from the A Rank dungeon.

"Almost. The next Demonic Beasts will be here soon. I recommend you don't try to fly your way out of this one, and that we move into the forest now. The petrified trees that are still standing will be of use."

From Mage Phinn's advice, Damion knew from his research of the dungeon the next set of Demonic Beasts that would arrive would be the Steel Bats. These unusual Demonic Beasts had a Metal affinity and instead of normal bones, had bones of Mithril. If it was not for the fact that the thickness of the metal in their bodies was extremely thin, the creatures' carcasses would be worth a lot of money. Unfortunately, like most flying creatures, their bones were hollow, thin and very brittle.

It would take several dozen carcasses of Steel Bats to get just one kilogram of Mithril. Still, the Demonic Beasts did provide a small but steady stream of the valuable metal to the markets in Saung. Even if they could not get a lot of the magic metal, the team was certainly going to make sure Damion collected every last piece of Steel Bat.

"I can hear them now," Mage Abney said.

Listening, Damion could tell she was right. He turned to look towards the sound and reactivated True Sight. Closing in on them he could see a number of Steel Bats flying towards them. To Damion's delight, as far as he could tell, all of them were C Rank. There were at least a dozen which meant he should be able to push his C Rank kill quest to the next stage.

"I'll take out as many as I can with Chain Lightning," Mage Phinn announced. "Keep your shields up when they get close. The edges of their wings are razor sharp and they like to try and slash necks."

After Mage Phinn issued his warning both Simon and Peter Beck raised their shields a little higher, while Mage Young lifted his into the air as if he was trying to taunt the Steel Bats.

The Lightning mage's first Chain Lightning spell took out a large swath of the Steel Bats, but they continued on and dove towards the group. Mage Abney blasted several with Torrent, but there were simply too many of the Demonic Beasts for her spells to do much. Another Chain Lightning dropped another large group of the flying creatures while the knights and Mage Young batted them away with their shields.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Damion began casting Earth Shard. The group knew he had an Earth affinity attack artifact, so he felt this was a good opportunity to get some practice in with one of his other affinities. Earth Shard was similar enough to Ice Shard that Damion was skilled enough to hit his targets more times than not. Still, his mastery of the spell was not as high as Ice Shard and his spells did not travel as far, limiting the number of Steel Bats he could actually kill.

Most of the Steel Bats focused on the knights and Mage Young. The Demonic Beasts seemed to be attracting to them from their swinging shields and weapons in the air. The flying creatures were not smart enough to realize the other mages, standing a short distance away, were casting spells and killing most of them. When the last of the Steel Bats fell to the ground, Damion quickly started gathering them up while mentally trying to calculate how much these Demonic beasts would be worth.

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