The group leader erged first onto the leaves.
It was an imdiate relief.
The air was fresher here, untainted by the musty sll of old silk and spider territory. Visibility much better with actual sight lines extending beyond arm’s reach. And they could move more freely without worrying about turning down the wrong tunnel, about getting lost deeper in a maze with no exit.
But he stopped, surprised by what he saw rather than the expected normal canopy.
The leaves were enormous and carpeted the ceiling almost perfectly.
"Now we just need to find Patinder," the leader said, scanning the area for any sign of movent or disturbance that might indicate another team’s passage.
The canopy of these trees was like giant palm trees, but their leaves were enormous and flat, like so aquatic plants expanded to impossible scale. They created sothing like a flat green floor remarkably regular in surface, with few gaps between one leaf and another that missed little sunlight.
Natural platforms...
It was almost like walking on a spongy green floor that shouldn’t exist at this height.
"This is... strange," one of his companions comnted, stepping cautiously onto the nearest leaf, testing its weight-bearing capacity before committing fully.
"But better than those damn tunnels," the leader responded, venturing farther out with growing confidence.
"Much better," another comnted enthusiastically, jumping from leaf to leaf with the agility his feline beast provided.
The air above the leaves was filled with black clouds that flickered with intermittent light.
Fireflies.
Thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, floating orderly in the sa spot almost covering the sky. Their lights created a hypnotic spectacle of brilliant greens and yellows that pulsed in the air like fallen stars that had sohow reversed gravity, beauty that seed out of place in what now seed wrongly nad spider territory.
"They’re beautiful," soone murmured, montarily distracted from their mission by the unexpected display.
"They’re just small iron rank insects," the leader dismissed the observation, focusing on the navigation of the place rather than its aesthetics. "Ignore them and let’s continue."
They began moving faster, jumping from leaf to leaf with growing confidence in the strange surface.
One of them stopped to look down, wanting to see if he could detect anything in the tunnels below, if Ren’s group was visible through gaps in the silk. Bracing his hand on a leaf to stabilize himself while leaning forward for a better view.
The attack ca from below the leaf.
Dozens of long legs like spears pierced the leaf in a perfect spiral pattern, seeking whatever had been "resting" on the surface and triggered the response.
The student scread, jerking back just in ti to avoid the spear-legs piercing through him. The "lances" retracted as quickly as they’d appeared, and the leaf closed the holes made in it as if it had shape mory, the full leaf was made of small triangular sections and those where the legs had penetrated were sticking back together seamlessly.
"What was that?" he gasped, staring at the leaf with renewed horror, heart pounding so hard it hurt.
As if in response to his question, sothing moved visibly just below the surface.
A segnted body, long and sinuous, with countless articulated legs that ended in sharpened points designed for piercing rather than walking.
And there were more under the leaves.
Many more beneath each platform they’d thought was safe ground.
Under almost every leaf, waiting patiently for sothing to rest on the surface, ambush predators that had perfected stillness over evolutionary millennia.
"Don’t stop on the leaves," the leader shouted, his voice tense with realization of their mistake. "Keep moving."
But it was difficult not to stop when footing grew uncertain. The leaves weren’t always large enough or positioned well enough to jump between them in continuous motion. And when those who could tried using their beasts to fly or propel themselves higher, to bypass the leaf platforms entirely...
The fireflies reacted to proximity.
Not individually in scattered confusion... Not in disorganized chaos.
But like a single coordinated swarm with collective intelligence.
Dozens of them converged with the sa purpose, their bodies glowing more intensely until light beca painful to look at directly. And then they launched their energy in a synchronized attack.
Lightning bolts of light.
Thin, precise beams that combined with each other while traveling, fusing into thicker, more powerful rays. Simple attacks becoming devastating through cooperation.
One of the students was struck in the shoulder. The impact launched him backward, smoke rising from his clothes where concentrated light had burned through fabric and seared flesh beneath. The sll of burned at filled the air.
"It’s too much for Iron rank... They’re elental fusing and attacking together!"
Chaos erupted as the group tried defending themselves simultaneously from legs surging from below and light rays striking from above, caught between two beast types that had evolved to work perfectly in their environnt.
The leaves were extrely resistant to light, their structure absorbing the attacks without apparent damage, natural defense perfected through thousands of generations. But human flesh wasn’t nearly so resilient.
"Retreat! Back to the tunnels!"
The group had to fall back to their lucky tree while they withdrew in disorder, so wounded and limping, all terrified by the ecosystem they’d thought would be easier to navigate than web-filled passages.
Assumption proving massively wrong.
The canopy wasn’t escape from danger.
It was just another trap in a forest full of them.
♢♢♢♢
Underground - Pursuing Group B
"We have a mole," the leader of this group had declared with the confidence of having the ’right tool’. "We should go below."
It seed logical when you thought about it.
Spiders built in the middle levels where most prey traveled.
But underground, in natural tunnels carved by water and ti, with a Silver-rank Mole to dig when needed...
Surely they’d be safer away from the webs and their eight-legged architects.
They found an opening, a gap where silk didn’t completely cover the forest floor. Descended into darkness using one of their beasts for illumination in the almost complete blackness, light barely pushing back shadows that seed hungry.
The tutor and watcher sighed deeply...
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