Now that we had a rough idea why the spiders were so terrifying, we didn’t need long to think up a counterasure. The spiders had an obvious weakness. Their ridiculous speed and offensive power were reliant on their [Agility] and [Manifestation] stats. Both were temporary. If we kept them in a noisy environnt, they would beco very manageable foes. All we had to do was to stay away from them while they weakened. The creatures were smart, so I doubted our plan would work long term… but we didn’t need a long-term plan. We just needed to raid one or two buildings and get out alive. With any luck, that would help us progress fast enough to survive the fight for lives we would encounter in two worlds.
After finishing our planning, we spent two days recovering from our injuries. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough ti for to regrow my legs. However, we decided to push forward anyway. There were two reasons for this.
First of all, Felix didn’t need my help to heal up. With the help of his magic system, anything hand-shaped could work as a prosthetic. I had always thought that my ability to regrow limbs was exceptional, but Felix’s ability made wonder if I valued it too much. Felix only needed so tal manipulation and four hours to get a new set of hands. They weren’t perfect - in fact, they were a bit on the clumsier side. However, they were also made of so kind of magic steel. Everything they lost in agility, they more than made up for in strength. That was a terrible trade for a craftsman, but it was fine in the Market. Making big tools and objects required a lot of ti and knowledge. Right now, Felix was missing both of those things. We only had a month and a half left before we had to reincarnate. Thus, Felix’s personal strength mattered more, and his items mattered less here.
anwhile, after two days of recuperating, I was still missing both legs. I had healed the injuries to my head, since they seed potentially lethal if left unattended. That had left with little ti to actually rebuild my legs. After two days, I still needed soone to carry around. However, my fighting abilities weren't very reliant on my mobility. My contributions in most fights relied on extinguish, lightning bolts, and healing. While being carried around was unpleasant, it didn't actually weaken much. If I tried to use the Skill I had gained from the spiders, we would need too much ti between each exploration. We were already working under multiple ti constraints - needing two weeks between each fight would only make it worse. With that in mind, we decided that waiting for my legs to grow back was ti we couldn’t afford to waste.
Instead, we spent one more day preparing what we needed.
The spiders needed silence in order to power up. Anise had a bunch of grenades laying around. Originally, we had planned for Anise to toss the grenades at spiders during fights, but the spiders were too fast. They could dodge the grenades so easily that Anise couldn’t even harass the spiders. Thus, Felix repurposed the grenades a bit. He made the fuse longer, and designed them to make long, drawn-out bursts of noise.
Two days later, we returned to the edge of the spatial fair. I peeked inside while Felix held up. I then used my soul vision to confirm there were no enemies nearby. After that, we got started.
“Are you ready?” I asked Anise.
“I think I’m ready,” said Anise. “How about you two?”
Sallia and Felix nodded. “We’re ready to run,” said Sallia.
“All right, I’m throwing it on three!” said Anise. "Three... two... one!" Then, she activated and threw one of the noise bombs into the spatial fair.
Everyone turned and sprinted into the distance. My chin bumped into Felix's back as he dragged along like a sack of potatoes. A minute later, after we found another store and hid inside. We heard a crackling sound in the distance right as we finished cramming ourselves into a closet. The distortion between the Spatial Fair and the rest of the world muffled the sound, but I was glad to know our grenade had worked.
I activated my soul sight, and waited. Soon, three spiders crept out of the spatial fair. I suspected two of them were the sa spiders that had driven us out of the spatial fair last ti. Sothing about the way they moved just gave a sense of familiarity. Just like last ti, one spider guarded the entrance, while the other two started searching for us. The two spiders searching for us seed jittery, almost as if they had imbibed too much caffeine before starting their search.
The abnormality in the spider's movents put us on guard. I stared at the spiders as they moved out of the Spatial Fair, ready to start making distractions with Anise if needed. However, this ti, the spiders didn’t seem to have a very good idea where we were. Last ti we had done this, the spider tracking us had always moved in our general direction. It had obviously used so kind of tracking skill, even if it wasn't very accurate. This ti, the spiders didn't seem to have their tracking skill active. Both spiders started searching random buildings as the minutes ticked by. Occasionally, one of them clawed at the floor and walls of a shop, as if they were hoping we would jump out for them to catch. However, we’d had a few minutes to put so distance between us and the fair. There were a lot of shops for the spiders to search, and nowhere near enough ti for them to hit every shop. The spiders had little luck tracking us down.
After about ten minutes, the spiders stopped searching for us, and started to withdraw. We waited ten more minutes, before we crept back towards the spatial fair.
There were three spiders instead of one this ti, and I didn't have legs… but we had removed four Grades of their stats. I was full on essence, and our group was ready for a fight. If we caught the spiders after they were weakened, we had a better chance of winning than they did.
We re-entered the spatial fair twenty-five minutes after we had tossed the noise grenade, and I gave our area a cautious scan with soul sight. Then, I frowned.
There were no signs of any nearby souls besides the four of us.
Had the spiders gone into hiding?
For so reason, I had expected them to just sit inside of the spatial fair, waiting for us. But they were gone from the area.
I started to feel a bit anxious. The spiders weren’t stupid. They had demonstrated advanced tactics and cunning multiple tis already. What if they were hiding while they were weakened? In that case, in a few hours they would recover so of their strengthening boost, and then co after us. If that happened, we might be the ones to die instead of them. I could still rember the horrifying speed of a powered-up Wanderer of Lost Silence.
However, if we backed off now, we would have no way at all to make progress in the Spatial Fair. The spiders were smart, so they would definitely wise up to our tactics if we repeated this a few tis. They were already hiding, instead of waiting to die. What if next ti, they found so way to block our sound grenades, then ambush us when we thought we were safe? If that happened, we would die. We only had one chance to make this work before the spiders wised up. We needed to hit a store now, before we lost our only chance.
We crept along the silent streets of the Spatial Fair, as I humd a tune to keep us from entering complete silence. However, as we advanced, I started to notice that sound was becoming more and more suppressed. It felt almost like the silence in a blizzard. With every step we took, the world was buried in a wider and denser blanket of nothing. Even though I wasn't feeling cold, exactly, I still felt the urge to shiver. I had a strong feeling that the deeper parts of this Spatial Fair housed sothing far more dangerous... sothing that we weren't ready to provoke yet. I hoped that we weren’t making a mistake as I sang and our group marched forward.
Before I could settle into my feelings of unease, our environnt changed. 100 ters into the spatial fair, I nearly flopped out of Felix’s arms in surprise.
With no forewarning, a brand new structure appeared in front of our group, almost as if it had always been there. The sudden, wild change in terrain definitely didn’t inspire confidence, since I hadn't noticed it with my spatial vision. I was clearly far from truly mastering space, if I could sohow miss such a massive distortion of space. However, the mont I read the na of the shop, I felt my eyes widen in delight. We had entered the Spatial Fair to find ways to strengthen ourselves, and the shop in front of us definitely qualified. I read the sign in front of the store, and felt the urge to grin.
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