"How is this possible? You are only level 4..." Martin uttered, his voice trembling with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

Ayla frowned slightly.

What did he mean by "only level 4"? Was he implying that she was weak?

Her brows creased in faint displeasure as she studied him.

"Summoning hundreds of Fire Bolts... how could a level 4 core have such mana capacity?" he continued, his eyes fixed on her as if trying to unravel an impossible truth.

Understanding dawned on her. So that’s it. He was impressed by her ability to summon hundreds of Fire Bolts without emptying her mana reserves.

A slow smirk curved her lips. Ayla was too happy to show off her magnificence to this puny human.

Her core did not have the capacity to summon hundreds of Fire Bolts.

The mana within her was enough for perhaps twenty at most. She had never used her own mana for this.

While farming the slimes, she had discovered something far more interesting.

With her Pyromancy trait, she could manipulate the warmth in her surroundings.

At her current level, her control extended roughly twenty meters.

Within that range, she could gather and compress heat into precise points, shaping them into Fire Bolts without drawing from her own reserves.

Unlike the slimes, the spiders possessed warm bodies.

They were walking reservoirs of heat.

And she had simply used their own warmth against them. She opened her mouth to bless this human with her outstandingness.

But...

Krrrk...

The sharp clicking echoed again as more spiders poured through the tunnel entrance.

"Don’t run away. I will not eat you, I promise." Obviously, Ayla lied. She would eat his brain after she cleared these spiders.

They weren’t living monsters, but rather puppets of another high-level monster. That’s why she couldn’t get any experience points from them.

She was waiting for the main opponent to arrive.

Fire started gathering around.

Invisible currents shifted through the cavern as the ambient warmth twisted under her will. Then, in an instant, it condensed.

Hundreds of Fire Bolts formed and shot forward.

They pierced through chitin and flesh with brutal precision.

The spiders barely had time to react before their bodies ruptured, their internal heat turning against them in a violent burst.

One after another, they fell.

The pool churned as their corpses piled atop one another, legs twitching before going still.

The once murky water darkened into a thick red as blood spread and mixed with the slime residue.

A mound of dead spiders began to rise.

Martin’s expression changed.

Awe melted into something colder. Something closer to fear.

He stood frozen in the water, unable to look away as the woman before him continued the slaughter with detached ease.

Her ethereal body stirred his hormones, but the almost bored look on her face as she slaughtered the spiders cooled them just as quickly.

That was what unsettled him the most.

This was not a desperate fight for survival. It was not even a display of power.

It was casual.

Whenever her gaze drifted toward him, she licked her lips absentmindedly.

Each time, his body tensed.

The way she looked at him... it was familiar.

He had seen that same look before.

When he stared at a pot of roasted meat after days without food.

A predator assessing a meal.

Krrrk... Krrrk...

The sound changed. It grew heavier. Deeper.

The swarm at the entrance parted.

Something larger forced its way through.

The air thickened.

Ayla’s golden eyes shifted toward the tunnel, her interest sharpening for the first time.

The creature that emerged dwarfed the others.

Its body was bloated and grotesque, its abdomen swollen with pulsating veins that glowed faintly beneath translucent flesh.

Its eight legs dug into the stone with a grinding force, each movement accompanied by a wet, dragging sound.

A Feral Level 5 Bloodnet Spider Mother.

Ferals were different from Lessers. They had Traits, just like humans. This one was a spawn of an Apocalyptic difficulty Tunnel.

Its trait should be higher than B grade. Martin’s breath caught in his throat.

He still remembered how every retainer with him died by it and became its puppets.

"Run..." he whispered, though his voice carried no strength. "That thing... it’s not something we can fight..."

The Spider Mother raised its head.

Clusters of crimson eyes locked onto Ayla.

Then it moved.

A strand shot forward.

It was not ordinary webbing. It gleamed wetly, thick and dark, like stretched veins.

Ayla tilted her head.

The thread brushed past her shoulder.

A moment later, the corpse of a nearby spider jerked. Its limbs twitched, then snapped upright. Another followed. And another.

The dead began to rise.

Martin’s eyes widened in horror.

"The Bloodnet..." he muttered. "It controls the dead..."

When he turned to warn Ayla, the look on her face made him pause. It wasn’t a look a Level 4 Runner should have when they faced a Feral.

It was the look of a wolf staring at its prey.

’She’s crazy...’ he cried inwardly, turning around to run.

The Spider Mother shrieked. Martin felt a sharp pain in his legs, then his control over them was lost.

He fell helplessly into the water, his legs cut evenly from the knee.

"Aahhh..."

After making sure her prey couldn’t escape, the Spider Mother turned to Ayla. In its eyes, there was wariness.

Dozens of blood threads shot out, embedding themselves into the pile of corpses.

The mound trembled as the dead spiders lurched back to life, their bodies moving unnaturally under the creature’s control.

A tide of puppets surged forward.

Ayla watched.

Her expression remained calm, but something flickered behind her eyes.

Interest.

She raised her hand. The heat in the cavern shifted again. This time, it was not condensed into small points.

It spread.

The warmth gathered across a wider area, pulling from every source within her range. The water, the air, the corpses, even the living spiders. Everything contributed.

The temperature rose. The puppet spiders charged. Ayla exhaled softly.

And released.

A wave of heat burst outward. It was not a bolt. It was not precise. It was overwhelming.

The water at the surface began to steam as a sweeping surge of fire expanded from her position.

The advancing spiders were caught in it instantly. Their bodies ignited. Chitin cracked, even the blood boiled.

The threads connecting them snapped as their forms collapsed into charred remains.

Martin gritted his teeth as he pulled a healing potion and gulped it down. He shielded his face as the heat washed over him.

For a moment, everything was fire.

Then it faded. The puppet horde was gone.

Ayla blinked.

A faint notification flickered across her vision.

[Skill Created]

[Pyromancy Skill Acquired: Heat Surge]

[Heat Surge: Expands accumulated thermal energy into a wide-area attack. Damage scales with available environmental heat.]

Her lips curved slightly.

So this was how it worked.

The Spider Mother screeched again, louder this time.

It charged.

Its massive body crashed through the shallow water, sending waves outward. Threads lashed through the air, aiming not just for control but for restraint.

Ayla stepped forward. The threads closed in trying to pin her down.

She moved her hand.

The heat around the threads spiked instantly.

They burned mid-air, snapping before they could reach her.

Seeing all of its attacks became useless, the Spider Mother lunged with an angry screech.

Ayla gave it a disdainful smile. She wasn’t foolish enough to meet it head on. Rather she could try her new trick.

The space around the creature warped as she seized control of every trace of warmth within its massive body.

For a brief moment, the Spider Mother froze. Then its own heat turned against it. Its abdomen swelled.

Cracks spread across its surface.

And it burst.

The explosion sent fragments of burning flesh across the cavern. Thick blood splattered into the pool, turning the already red water darker.

Silence followed.

The heat slowly dissipated.

The only sound left was the faint drip of liquid from the cavern walls.

[You have slain a Feral Level 5 Bloodnet Spider Mother.]

[Experience gained: 100.]

[Do you want to consume the biomass? Y/N]

’Of course, yes.’

Martin watched in wide-eyed horror as Ayla’s head split in two.

A shining blue slime appeared instead of her brain. From this, a pair of tentacles rushed out as it devoured the brain of the fallen spider.