Nothing happened; it was quiet and peaceful.
Since it was still early morning, the inside of the tavern was bright with sunlight streaming through the open windows.
After checking their surroundings, they let out a silent breath of relief. No danger seemed to be around.
They took a few steps inside the empty tavern and found most of the chairs and tables flipped over randomly, almost as if the people inside had left in a great rush and panic.
Eric was busy checking what drinks the bartender racks had from afar. Even though he was not a fan of drinking, he still had tasted almost all liquor around the Earth at least once. Just then, Livy gently nudged him on the shoulder. He turned to look where she was pointing and was startled.
There was someone—a human—sitting at a corner-side table, looking the other way.
Eric, Lyria, and Livy couldn't see the man's face, but they were certain the weird presence of a Mana Wielder was coming from this guy. However... this guy was clearly dead, as a 'weird' rotting smell was also emitting from him. As far as their knowledge went, dead Mana Wielders didn't release such a weird presence, so it was quite strange.
According to Eric's rough guess from observing everything so far, this village was still fine up until a month ago. But for whatever reason, everyone had evacuated, as there was not a single foul smell of rotting flesh—not even a dead body, skeleton, or drop of blood anywhere.
Even though Eric was not an expert, the smell coming from the silently sitting, dead Mana Wielder almost seemed like it had been a year since he started rotting, as the smell had gone quite faint.
He wasn't too surprised that the corpse still had his backside, including hair, intact, as Mana Wielders took a lot more time to decompose normally. He also wasn't surprised by how the Mana Wielder was sitting straight with his spine erect, as that could also be normal.
No matter what, they still needed to check on this corpse, as there could be some notes or clues to inform them about what might have happened to this village.
Lyria and Livy hesitated. They suddenly wanted to leave this tavern, they were having a bad feeling about this place, but they still followed behind Eric quietly.
Eric steadily moved around the tables and chairs while making as little sound as possible. The moment he arrived and laid his eyes upon the corpse's front condition, his breath halted, and all his hair stood on end.
Lyria and Livy, who were on both sides of Eric, saw the same scene. Instantly, their blood froze, their faces grew sickly pale, and even their breathing paused.
The front side of the corpse—whether it was the eyes, mouth, nose, cheek, throat, shoulder, chest, arm, or abdomen—had various sizes of tiny to large grotesque, honeycomb-like gaping holes. The entire skin and flesh of the dead Mana Wielder was like a horrifying landscape of porous craters.
That wasn't the worst. Some very tiny to slightly larger red spiders crawled out of these holes. Then, for a short moment, they all paused before starting to come out in hordes—like water tank leakage—pouring from all the holes: eyes, cheeks, mouth, nose, throat, chest, shoulder, and so on. They crawled out in dozens to hundreds, almost as if the corpse was home to hundreds of tiny red spiders.
Even Eric had the desire to throw up whatever was in his stomach. He never thought there would be a day when even he would be so creeped out by something.
Lyria and Livy felt their skin crawl watching this horrifying, nightmarish sight.
And these waves of spiders were charging straight toward them at a dreadful pace.
Before Lyria could even snap out of her horror, she subconsciously took a step forward and used her Absolute Gravity to 'blast' all the spiders away. She wasn't able to use her full strength due to how frozen her blood felt, but it was enough to push all the tables and chairs to the other side of the room, including the hollowed-out corpse.
She then started gasping for breath.
This was far more terrifying and chilling than Abyssal Grinner's grinning image, Soulweavers' ghastly faces, or realizing that all of Whisperwood's villagers were ghosts all along. None of these came close to the horrendous experience of watching a gouged-out Mana Wielder corpse filled with countless red spiders.
Livy, who was frozen solid from the previous traumatic visuals, suddenly Mudskipp-ed to her side, waking her to her senses.
She subconsciously glanced below and noticed a fist-sized red spider had tried to ambush her out of nowhere.
Before she could grasp the situation, she swiftly created a sword with her WaterJet Dual-Wield and, with a short panic cry, slashed the spider in half.
Before she could breathe a sigh of relief, she froze again—then slowly, very slowly turned to look upward, toward the ceiling—as she suddenly realized where the spider had ambushed her from.
As she glanced up, her breath and soul fled in horror, but she still managed to utter some words between gasps: "Above... above..."
Lyria and Eric whipped their heads upward, and what they saw made their blood truly run cold.
Numerous red spiders squirmed right above their heads, covering the entire ceiling. They varied in size, but among them, the most terrifying of all was a giant spider—several meters in length, pure deep red in color, with tiny strands of red hair along its eight long legs. Its two large, round eyes stared at them emotionlessly.
Lyria and Livy nearly fainted due to how appalling the visual in front of them was. However, soon after, they saw something that sent shivers down their spines and woke them up completely.
From finger- to head-sized red spiders had started dropping from the top—almost like a red snowfall.
Lyria once again came to the rescue.
Before she herself realized it, she at once raised both hands upward and used her entire limit to blast the entire roof away, along with all the countless small to large spiders. Even the gigantic hairy red spider was blasted away without being able to resist.
"Absolute Gravity!" She even had to scream to bring out her entire strength from her frozen body.
After the entire upper floor of the tavern was blasted off, they finally came back to their senses.
Livy's face was still pale, but she soon grew furious. She swiftly pulled out two swords from her ring and, while activating the Fire Runes on them, slashed vertically, producing two thick fire slashes in midair.
She roared with rage, "Let's kill them! Let's kill them with fire!"
"Calm down, Liv," Eric said, ignoring the loud booming noise of the whole upper room of the tavern crashing onto some nearby building.
While watching the few remaining red spiders running away from the crumbling tavern to outside, he spoke in a calm tone: "These are Crimson Tide Spiders, a Mystical-type Mana Beast. They have great resistance to fire and all elements; in fact, they are weaker against water. These creatures reproduce in huge numbers, have brilliant sneak ability, and many more. The previous big one should be a Newborn Rank 1, and I think there should be more."
After all, a single Newborn Rank 1 couldn't take over such a large village.
Hearing Eric's calm voice, both Lyria and Livy calmed down. The previous jittery feeling also disappeared, and they finally started thinking clearly.
The details of Crimson Tide Spiders appeared in their minds—then they were speechless.
This was another very unique creature found rarely in the world and was very troublesome to deal with, as not only did they travel in huge groups, but they could also communicate and command other spiders through telepathy or something similar.
"What do you think we should do next?" Eric asked after noticing both girls had calmed down.
Lyria thought for a moment and answered confidently, "Since this village's Mana Wielder was in such a... condition, and the village being so silent, I believe the entire village is already dead. Since so, then we should fight and kill! These kinds of situations are perfect for our training and gaining experience—especially when no other living humans are around, and we can use our abilities freely."
Livy agreed. She wanted nothing more than to throw countless hydro bombs at these sneaky, disgusting bastards and blast them all into bits and pieces.
Eric also agreed. The reason he gave them the choice was to make them feel confident in taking their own decisions by themselves in the future.
He turned toward Livy: "Liv, your ability will come to great use. Although those smaller ones can't even bite through our skin, I don't want to get bitten."
"Leave this to me." Livy declared confidently. "Though it would be great if we can find some water source nearby."
Lyria agreed; she was also thinking the same: "There is a large river we saw while coming to this village. It's going from south to east of this plateau. However, going that far, not many will probably chase after us, so let's find something like a pond or lake inside this village."
The wide river was quite a few miles away from the village, while the smaller water channels weren't enough to gather enough water in a short time.
Just as Eric and Livy were about to nod, they suddenly heard some strange noises that sent goosebumps through their skin.
They quickly looked outside the destroyed tavern to find the source.
Since Lyria had blown away the entire rooftop, the building was nearly naked, and all four walls had mostly collapsed—thus, they could now see outside clearly. After noticing the mayhem that was brewing, they felt the name 'Crimson Tide' was truly fitting for these spiders.
Countless red spiders had gathered and mostly surrounded the tavern from all sides, while more were still pouring out of nearby buildings like some red waterfall. Hundreds of thousands—perhaps a million. They really looked like a tide or flood that would soon engulf them all.
They remembered one of the skills these Crimson Tide Spiders had:
**Swarm Intelligence:** The smaller spiders accompanying the Rank Spider act in a coordinated fashion, as if controlled by a single mind. This swarm intelligence allows them to overwhelm adversaries and perform complex tactics, like encircling and cutting off their enemies' escape routes.
"Absolute Gravity!" Lyria roared, opening up an escape route. "Let's go!"
Livy and Eric swiftly followed after Lyria as she blasted all the mortal spiders away. Her ability was not just for show—with the power she was using, dozens to hundreds of them were turning into new paint for the streets and walls. Even a Newborn Rank 1 Crimson Tide Spider, which tried to ambush them by leaping off a building, was thrown toward the sky by her ability.
Before that Newborn Rank 1 could fly too far, Livy whipped her Water Jet Whip, slicing it in half.
"Where should we go? They seem endless!" Livy remarked, ignoring the giant spider's corpse that fell behind them.
Eric shrugged while sprinting a step behind them: "Ly, you are in charge. I will follow your decision until a Rank 2 shows up."
Lyria, who was at the front, nodded and then pointed toward a large wooden structure—which seemed like a big warehouse or perhaps a huge stable—"I think I saw something like a pond further behind that warehouse. Let's go."
Eric and Livy followed Lyria's lead as she smashed open the closed door of the big warehouse with a punch and was about to dash toward the other end—but then she suddenly came to a screeching halt.
She gasped audibly while staring at 'something' in front of her.
Eric and Livy also stopped.
Lyria and Livy's expressions rapidly changed while watching what was in front of them. They held back their nausea and the desire to vomit from the disgust they were feeling.
This was a much more horrible sight than any past ones.