Chapter 164 - Rubys Ability (1/2)
Ruby and Leona were standing back to back while the dog size spiders circled them. The luminescent light in the cavern allowed them both a decent range of vision so that nothing excaped their eyes. The thing they were both sort of weirded out by was that Laz was just sitting there watching them, completely at ease. In fact, the dog sized spiders seemed to completely ignore him as he sat there, petting the little spider. Ruby wanted to yell at him to help them out, but didn't. She understood why he was doing this and knew that calling for him would defeat the purpose. As for Leona, she had been keeping an eye on Laz even more than Ruby and she noticed how at one point, one of the dog sized spiders had approached Laz, but seemed to think better about it and turned away.
What she didn't know was that when that happened, Laz was going to take action to scare it away, but saw that the tiny, palm sized spider seemed to have jumped with the larger spider approached as though getting it's attention. The larger spider then ignored Laz and focused on the tiny spider for a moment before turning away. After it had left, the spider turned around and looked at Laz while waving a tiny leg at him, as though telling him it was no problem. Laz couldn't help but laugh at this cute little guy and pet him some more. Then he turned his attention to the girls.
As Ruby and Leona stood back to back, the ten spiders stood in place while watching them. In essence, both girls were actually in the late-early stage of Condensing while the spiders could at most be considered having just entered into the early stage of condensing. The difference between the two was enough were both sides being equal, the girls would be able to win without a problem. Or, that should be the case when you consider their amount of energy versus the spiders. The biggest thing to remember though was that there level's weren't far enough apart and the spiders far outnumbered the girls at five to one. As spiders, they were naturally more in tuned with their instincts and were used to hunting as a group. They also were in their element in the cave and therefore had a big advantage here. If you consider that besides her speed, strength and claws, Leona didn't have any other advantages and Ruby was still a big mystery since she never shared her abilities with Laz, the girls were actually rather out classed. They could win, but they would need to be very careful about it.
Luckily for them, Ruby had rather good battle instincts and Leona had undergone training with Laz so both girls knew the importance of not being seperated. As such, a stand off had developed. Just after a minute of no action, one of the spiders grew restless and jumped at Leona, sending it's entire body at her. With her back covered by Ruby, Leona met the charge with her claws, using one hand to swat the spider away while slashing with the other, causing a line of cuts to appear on it's body. Seeing their comrade fail, the other spiders started attacking as well. a couple jumped at them while others ran along the floor, trying to go for their legs. The girls held them back briefly, but they both ended up having to move away from eachother to do so. Seeing them seperate, the spiders grouped up and cut them off from eachother.
Ruby reacted first, switching from defense to offense and attacking the ones in the air. After deflecting one with a slash of her blade, she spun and kicked off the other one. Before the ones on the floor could reach her, she jumped and stabbed down, completely impaling the next closest one. Due to her jumping forward, she left he back exposed, allowing one of the runners to jump at it. Just before it was going to hit her, she bent backwards, looking like she had no bones in her body. As the spider missed and passed over her, she sprang up quickly and stabbed at the spider flying over her, causing a deep gash that made it's insides burst out. In mere moments, Ruby had successfully killed two of her five attackers.
Laz was shocked to see her move like this as it made almost no sense. First, even if she was limber enough to arch herself backwards like that, how the hell was she able to shoot up with such strength? He really wanted to know more about her abilities now.
Leona wasn't in a passive position either. Knowing that she didn't need to defend Ruby's back anymore, she jumped forward and launched her own attacks, pouncing on the closest spider and jamming her claws through it's head before jumping off, avoiding the sneak attack by the runner. Leona repeated these actions of pounce, hit and run, managing to kill three of her attackers before the last two backed off. It's important to remember that although the spiders were fast and could move in any direction, and strong enough to be able to shove their legs into the hard stone floor, they still weren't very adept at handling things attacking them from above. It was becuase of this that Leona was successful.
As Leona faced off against her two final opponents, Ruby was slashing away at her final three, but she was running into a problem. The underside of the spiders were pretty fragile, but after having successfully landed an attack on the one jumper, they stopped jumping at her. As she tried to lock them down enough to stab them with either the sword or the knife, they would be able to move out of the way faster than she could attack. Ruby wasn't as fast as Leona in this aspect. And trying to chop at them with either blade was less than effective as well since their skins were so hard that although it could draw blood, it only barely broke the surface. Also, her constant attemptes at stabbing them caused her blades to hit the floor more than once, sending sparks flying. A few times wouldn't have made a difference, but due to Ruby's enhanced strength, just the couple of times she did it weaked the survival sword enough that when she missed again, the entire blade ended up shattering on contact. With nothing more than a few inches left on it, it was now useless. And the knife wasn't looking much better.
Seeing that she could no longer use the weapons in her hands, Ruby's eyes gleamed with a sharp light. Laz, who had been watching on and getting ready to act, relaxed at this sight. Ruby then threw away both the broken blade and the knife and stared at the remaining three spiders. If spiders had eyes like normal people, one would have been able to tell that their eyes suddenly glossed over. But because they just had eight black eyes, the only thing one could tell by looking at them was that their eyes seemed to relax a little as their bodies swayed. Sudden;y, before they could react, Ruby sprang forward with incredible speed. Unlike Leona who was literally jumping and pouncing with great speed, Ruby actually shot forward as though a bullet out of a gun. She had discarded the weapons but it seemed like her fingers had taken on a rather pointed shape. In contrast to Leona's claws, Ruby's fingers didn't seem to grow out, but just became amazingly pointed. As such, when she encounted the first of the three spiders, she folded her hand into a blade shape and swung down. The force of her strike caused the spider to collapse on the floor with a large gash in front of it's head. Turning around to face the other two, Laz finally saw Ruby's face. It looked strangely mesmorizing with her pointed pupils, almost as though her eyes could steal your soul. Even Laz blanked for a quick moment before recovering himself. He also noticed that there seemed to be strange patterns on her skin.
Ruby repeated the same tatic over and over again, finishing off the other two spiders in the same way. Neither spider chose to move or dodge, just standing there and swaying a bit as though they had lost all their senses. By the time she finished with her remaining two opponents, Leona had finished the other two spiders.
Seeing that the enemies were all dead, both girls collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily. The fighting itself had only last about half an hour this time, same as last time, but their nerves had been much tenser and they had to continuously utilize the energy in their bodies to maintain their top fighting state. Despite the smoothness of it all, both girls had been slashed at various points, causing dozens of rips and tears in their clothes, along with small gashes that further stained the already battered clothing. Seeing the fight finished though, they both looked at each other and laughed. They had won.