In the queen’s memory, Lohan saw and heard the account of one of the spider’s young, who, while exploring a deep crevice that had once been sealed by ancient rocks, ended up digging until he reached a small, strange temple hidden in the heart of the mountain.
The young spider returned to the queen with the news that an unknown and powerful energy was leaking from there.
Curious and driven by the instinct to protect her territory, the queen went to investigate.
The sight of the temple where the battle had taken place just moments earlier was terrifying even in the spider’s memories.
It was not a structure built by benevolent gods, but a black stone altar that seemed to devour the light around it.
At the center of the altar, an opaque gem pulsed with an energy that strongly resembled Lohan’s sacred light, yet distorted, as if it had been turned inside out.
The moment the spider queen touched that energy, her world collapsed.
A flood of evil, perverse, and deranged feelings invaded the creature’s mind.
Lohan felt the spider’s consciousness being corroded within minutes, her maternal instinct replaced by an insatiable thirst for blood; now under the command of that energy, the queen no longer saw the other monsters in the cave as neighbors or rivals, but as necessary sacrifices for her ascension.
At that point, even his own mind was under attack through his memories, and Lohan had to struggle hard to keep his consciousness and his own mind safe.
The first targets of the spider’s fury were the praying mantises and centipedes that inhabited the adjacent tunnels.
The memory showed the grotesque process of fusion, in which the spider used the temple’s energy to disintegrate the physical forms of the other insects and integrate their characteristics into her own body, becoming that chimera the guild had faced.
Her sanity had completely vanished, leaving only the will of an entity that seemed to hate everything around it.
The memory reached such an intense emotional peak that Lohan felt his mental barrier begin to tremble.
The creature’s hatred of light was so dense that it seemed like a physical substance trying to suffocate his core, which was merely watching the past memories.
With an effort of will, Lohan severed the connection, and his consciousness was hurled back into Slime’s body.
He awoke in the cave, his blue gelatin pulsing uncontrollably and his outer membrane gasping for air.
The effort to maintain his individuality against that flood of madness had been exhausting.
Lohan could still feel the "taste" of that darkness lingering on his spiritual palate, bringing a sensation that left him uneasy.
It became clear to Lohan that the transformation of that ordinary spider into that grotesque, deranged creature was caused purely by the energy it had devoured in that temple.
Although he hadn’t been able to obtain detailed information about the site’s origin or who had built it, the insight he gained was revealing.
The sensation that energy gave the spider was strangely similar to what he felt with his sacred light, but operating on a completely different level, as if they were two branches of the same origin.
Lohan was certain this wouldn’t be the last time he’d encounter something like this, doubting that this place was the only one in a world as vast as Elysium.
Lisa, who had been watching Lohan from a distance as he finished digesting, noticed the sudden change in his behavior.
She saw the Slime tremble and turn momentarily paler, with the golden light of his core flickering erratically. Concerned, she walked over to him, stepping away from the lively conversation with Alice and Dylan.
"Halon, are you okay?" Lisa asked through the mental link, her voice heavy with anxiety.
She noticed that he was panting and that his gelatinous form was taking longer than usual to stabilize into a sphere.
It took Lohan a few seconds to respond, as he stabilized his mana flow before transmitting his thoughts back to her.
"I’m fine, Lisa. I just got a surprise when I used memory resonance on that thing. That spider... it wasn’t born that way. It was corrupted by something..."
Lisa furrowed her fox-like brow, looking at what remained of the corpse that was being assimilated. "Corrupted? Do you mean there’s a source of infection in this cave?"
"Not just in this cave, I think," Lohan replied, finally managing to calm the pulsing of his core. "I sensed the energy that changed it. It’s like a distorted reflection of my holy light..."
Seeing that he was regaining his composure and that the immediate danger had passed, Lisa let out a sigh of relief. She sat down beside him, letting her white fur gently brush against his blue gelatin in a gesture of comfort.
"Let’s keep this information between us for now so we don’t scare everyone," Lohan remarked, noting that the group of Players was still busy dividing up the smaller loot items they’d managed to extract from the other monsters.
Lisa agreed and looked up at the cave ceiling, where system notifications were still floating in her message history. "You know, Hayes, despite all this mystery, we pulled off something really great today. The system just validated our achievement."
Lohan vibrated his membrane, curious. What do you mean by that?
Lisa gave a small, wry smile, a golden gleam of excitement flashing in her eyes as she showed the golden interface displaying the game’s reward for the achievement, which Lohan hadn’t seen yet.
"For killing the first Level 15 Elite and clearing that corruption zone, Astralis Requiem received a really good reward... which will probably help us a lot in Saturday’s battle," Lisa said, keeping the mystery alive and her voice low.
Lohan sensed her excitement, and his curiosity reached its peak. He forgot for a moment the queen spider’s hatred and focused entirely on his friend’s words. What kind of reward?
Lisa looked at the group, which was now ready to leave, and then turned her gaze back to Lohan, letting the suspense hang in the air of the cave.