Eldritch Creature's Guide

After Samiel left the destroyed Forest Troll colony, he decided to return to the Zephystrand City as fast as possible and, most importantly, to go to sleep. He was away for a long time already, missed his bed, missed his Magic Tomes and Grimoires and good food.

While Samiel was okey from the physical aspect, he still felt exhausted.

It wasn't physical tiredness but rather a mental one, stemming primarily from the fact that his body got possessed by the Outer God, and it was Crawling Chaos on top of that. Due to that, Samiel felt mentally very tired and wanted to sleep.

And thus, as he left himself to be carried on a wooden plank by his Undeads because he wanted to lay down, he suddenly felt an incoming Magical Beasts.

When he stood up, his eyes immediately found the threat and recognized them as the Monstrous Spiders, which attacked Zephystrand City about one year ago. He immediately became altered at this one because Yvraine told him something about Drider and Drows, who were probably orchestrating everything in the darkness.

Samiel immediately stopped the Undeads and recalled all of them to their storage space before he started stealthily following the Monstrous Spiders. It appeared that they were dragging some unconscious people with them.

He could see that there were some Humans, probably from one of the other cities.

'So they purposely avoided the patrols of the Zephystrand when they went hunting... it is clear that somebody is planning something nefarious... damm, that sounded clisché.'

Samiel, though, with this, it was clear that there were Drows in play with 101% probability. Previously they lacked direct evidence because the attacks of the Monstrous Spiders and Ettercaps could be just Drows releasing them onto the Zephystrand.

But this behavior was clear that they were hiding and planning something.

As Samiel followed after them, the Monstrous Spiders soon arrived at the small cave entrance, where Samiel saw a Drow already waiting for them; as he started using some spells on the Ettercaps behind him, which in turn were controlling tens if not hundreds of the Monstrous Spiders.

'Hmm... attacking them would be no wise; that would just alert the entire group.'

Samiel thought and decided to wait until all of the Monstrous Spiders entered the cave before he decided to make some slight noise to attract the attention of the Drow Warrior who was guarding the entrance of the cave; before he toom entered the cave after the Monstrous Spiders.

As he expected, the Drow Warrior decided to check out what was going out in the bushes and if there was somebody. While he came closer to Samiel's hiding spot, suddenly, an Ice Dagger pierced through his throat, and his mouth was frozen in a split of second.

Immediately afterward, Samiel used [Soul Devour] to assimilate the soul of the Drow. Right now, because he crossed the proficiency with the Ultimate Ability of 20%, he instinctively knew how to pull out some memories from the soul.

Though he couldn't get all of the memories, he could still get some of the important ones as he feasted on the soul of the Drow Warrior. Unfortunately for Samiel, it was male, weak male, which was a terrible combination in the Drow Society.

Drows were naturally matriarchal, where females ruled, and males were subservient to them. Typically the strong Drow males would either be married to some prominent Matriach if they were not part of her harem.

If they were Legendary Level Professionals, they would either leave the Underdark or remain there. Even though they had an unusual social hierarchy, most of the Legendary Level Drows would remain as part of it, be it because some of them were indoctrinated, or some of them were very powerful and still had superior status even to some Matriarchs due to their power.

From the memories of the Drow Warrior, he managed to find out that there were several tens of them under the leadership of Silver-Tier Drider. They were preparing to unleash a horde of more several hundred thousand Monstrous Spiders and Ettercaps once more at the Zephystrand City.

This Drow didn't know what they aimed to achieve with this, but he only carried out the order. Obviously, there were two people with the highest authority over the entire operation. One of them was the Drider itself, while another one was the messenger from the Underdark City who was right now on the 3rd Floor.

"Hmm... this is a bit predicament... it would be better to warn the Zephystrand... from the memories of the Drow, they won't be attacking for the next few months until they have at least 200,000 Monstrous Spiders and several thousands of Ettercaps to control all of those Spiders. And those madmen are even trying to bring some Frostbite Spiders from the 67th Floor."

Muttered Samiel as he resurrected the corpse of the Drow Warrior as an Undead and dropped him into his storage space. While he could control only 270 Undeads at the same time, he already started resurrecting everything for the future Undead Armies of his Liches and subordinates of his Death Knights.

Of course, he was resurrecting only those at or above the Steel-Tier, minimum of Level 20 standard.

After being done at this place, he marked the location of the cave in his mind before he sprinted towards the direction of Zephystrand City, because the situation was not good, and soon enough, the city would welcome the biggest Magical Beast Horde it had ever faced.

***

Zephystrand City, sometime later.

Walls of the Zephystrand City stood proudly and strongly in the distance as Samiel was nearing them. Tens of Mana Cannons were stationed across Wall, together with the Mage Towers, which were built all around the city, to create an excellent defense against the invaders.

Of course, after the past Magical Beast Horde, the security level of the Zephystrand City went up several times already, and now there were several times more soldiers than it was in the past.

After Samiel appeared before the gates of the Zephystrand City, he could see that there were some squired of the Silvermoon Knight Order already waiting for him, probably Yvraine ordered them to await his return from his hunt.

"My Lord."

All five of them greeted him respectfully. Even though all five of them were nearing the Bronze-Tier, Samiel could wipe the floor with them without even opening his eyes at the same time.

"Immediately bring me to Yvraine... and call Sarun."

He ordered as four of the squires were escorting him to meet Yvraine. At the same time, one of them sprinted quickly to inform Sarun Daragan about his return. Now that Sarun's father, Lanlaris Daragan, has returned back to the 91st Floor, Sarun was de-facto City Lord in the name of his father.

Soon enough, in great haste, they crossed the majority of the Zephystrand as they went directly to the Citadel through the fastest routes, as the squired of the Silvermoon Knight Order saw that Samiel seemed stressed and in a hurry.

It took them not less than fifteen minutes to arrive at the Citadel of the Zephystrand. At the same time, Samiel went directly to find Yvraine, who was spending time reading her Grimoire Elementia Magicae in the garden where the Moon Pond was located.

Or, as Samiel called, that thing with tasty water.

"You were right; Drows of the Underdark City are preparing enormous Magical Beast invasion compromising of more than 300,000 Monstrous Spiders, Ettercaps, and they are attempting to bring down even a few hundreds of Frostbite Spiders from the 67th Floor."

Samiel immediately said that when he saw Yvraine, to which she had just closed the Grimoire, it looked very grim hearing the situation.

First, hearing the number of Monstrous Spiders sent a shudder through her spine; even if most of them were just Iron-Tier and Steel-Tier, with a small part of them would be Bronze-Tier, it was still an overwhelming number.

The same could be said about Ettercaps.

But the Frostbite Spiderrs were different. They were native species of the 67th Floor and also lived in some worlds, which were innately "cold". Not only were they far bigger than the Monstrous Spiders, which said something about their size, but they were like their boosted version x10.

Not to mention, they were most Bronze-Tiers, so having a few hundred Bronze-Tier Frostbite Spiders, from which there should be even some tens Silver-Tiers, sounded catastrophic, even if Zephystrand's boosted up defenses.

"But on the good side, they have a very hard time with capturing some Frostbite Spiders, so there would be only a few tens of them."

Samiel stated that because from what he saw in the memories of the Drow Warrior, he knew that the Drows had an extra hard time finding the Frostbite Spiders, and they could probably bring down onto the 3rd Floor only a few tens of them.

"I will order someone to notify the Frozen Court that they have Drows from the Underdark operating on their Floor. This would solve some of our issues with this, but even then... the situation is not good."

Yvraine said, and Samiel had no choice but to agree with her. But on the other side, they had an advantage of defenses, and he knew that if they were careful, they could easily defend the City against even bigger odds.

Still, for Elves, they didn't like fighting battles which could result in high casualôities as that would be then hard to replenish.

"Indeed, if the Frostbite Spiders are out of the question, then the Drows would have only a few Silver-Tiers at their disposal, probably only one, and that would be the Drider. Though, the question is, why are they attempting to bring the Silver-Tier Magical Beasts into the 3rd Floor? Are they not fearing the breathing of the Tier Equilibrium Accords?"

Samiel questioned her, to which she just sighed.

"Those cowards of the Underdark will say that the Drow acted on his own, so until we can directly bring some hard proof evidence, it could not be counted as a breach of the Accords."

Yvraine scoffed as she explained this.

Tier Equilibrium Accords was an agreement sighed by the majority of the Transcendental Factions, and the most vital point was basically enforcing some sense of Order in the Tower.

Basically, the Tier Equilibrium Accords aimed to prevent situations like this. Though it only applied only to the Tower, outside it, it was null and void. Only some chapters would be applied in specific situations.

It was making use of statistics about common Tier across the Floors of the Tower. It forbade anyone, for example, from the 90th Floors, to lead armies of the Gold-Tiers and Legendaries to obliterate some faction on the 10th Floor.

Technically what the Drider and his coons were doing, attempting to bring a swarm of the Silver-Tier Frostbite Spiders to the 3rd Floor, where the average Tier, according to the Epochal Tiering Statistic done by The Guild, was the Steel-Tier, was a breach of the Tier Equilibrium Accords.

At least, technically.