As soon as Hazel and the others saw the message panel informing them of their brief intermission, everyone took a collective sigh of relief before immediately using the time they had to rest. Meanwhile, Hazel went over to the border of the queen’s range with Chegyaeyi to make sure that they didn’t lose the second wave opportunity.

  While within the range of the spider queen’s detection, Hazel and Chegyaeyi watched the other players either rest or clean up the spider corpses scattered all over the area. There were so many dead spiders that a putrid smell enveloped the entire area around them. It became so unbearable that Hazel had to cover her nose to avoid smelling it.

  “Well, the first wave went pretty well,” Hazel declared, taking note of the aftermath.

  “Indeed,” Chegyaeyi said, staring at the scene as well. “I’m assuming your plan to split the spider swarm up worked then?”

  “It certainly did. If the entire swarm came at us, then we wouldn’t have lasted even a minute against these things.”

  The only reason Hazel’s group survived against the spider swarm was because only a portion spider horde attacked them. And she could tell that even dealing with a small group of the swarm was still enough to tire them out from the onslaught of attacks they hurled at the spider army.

  Hazel didn’t keep track of the time, but she figured that it took them a good ten or so minutes to deal with this horde. Maybe even longer. Considering how haggard everyone was, she feared that they wouldn’t be capable of enduring the second wave of the swarm. And it was the second wave that mattered.

  During the first wave, they only went up against Spider Infants. Neither the Spider Sentinels nor more importantly, the Web Weavers weren’t present in the fight. Which likely meant that they would show up in the second wave.

  The spider infants were extremely weak, only being as dangerous as they were because of their numbers rather than their individual levels. Even Chegyaeyi proved that they were easy to deal with if only one or two of them tried to attack them. But an entire swarm of infant spiders? That would be too much for anyone if confronted by such a thing.

  There was also the issue of Hazel not leveling up despite killing so many. When she pulled up her status window to check her current progress, she was disappointed to see that she hadn’t gained a single level from killing so many infant spiders. Though, that wasn’t all that surprising due to the level difference between her and her enemies.

  Since she was over level twenty, taking down monsters barely past level two or three obviously wouldn’t give her a lot of XP. Sure, she should be able to achieve another level up if she kept this up, but that was only if she was alone like before.

  The only reason Hazel was level 23 was because she not only took down all of the queen’s spiders that were sent, but she also did this alone. Neither Nycteris nor Astrid assisted in that battle. Which meant she took all of the XP for herself.

  Sadly, this wasn’t possible in her current situation. A lot of players were getting their fair share of kills and most importantly, XP. Because of that, Hazel hardly got enough to even make a difference.

  Aside from that, her skills, however, did improve. However, it was mainly Curse Bomb making it to Rank 3. According to its description, the curse damage was now around 15%. With this kind of effect, she’d be able to deal with the spider swarm a lot better than before.

  While Hazel wanted to plant more bombs, she found it difficult to do so because of her current position. If she left the range of the spider queen, the second wave would likely get canceled, leaving Astrid and the others to deal with her portion of the swarm, which wasn’t an ideal situation for any of them.

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  As she waited patiently for the next wave to commence, Hazel contacted Astrid to see how it went on her side while checking up on Zoe and the others.

  [Hazel Thatcher: How did it go on your end? Had any trouble with the swarm?]

  [Astrid Skogr: Not as much as I feared, so it looked like your plan to split the swarm up worked perfectly.]

  A small grin formed on Hazel’s face as she was filled with confidence and pride.

  [Hazel Thatcher: Was there any doubt that it wouldn’t have worked?]

  [Astrid Skogr: Are you sure you want me to answer that?]

  [Hazel Thatcher: Ha ha...anyway, how are Zoe and the other two? Did their groups fair any differently?]

  [Astrid Skogr: According to John, their swarms were manageable as well. All of them handled their portion of the spider horde.]

  Hazel sighed heavily, feeling relieved that the others did well against the swarm like her.

  [Hazel Thatcher: Is your group able to proceed with the second wave?]

  [Astrid Skogr: More or less. We’re currently just cleaning up the spider corpses blanketing the area.]

  [Hazel Thatcher: Yeah, same here. Since we have less than ten minutes to spare before the second wave occurs, that should be enough time for us to recover and get ready.]

  [Astrid Skogr: Yeah, though I’m assuming the second wave won’t just have the spider infants, right?]

  [Hazel Thatcher: If I’m right, then the spider queen could be sending the sentinels and web weavers this time.]

  [Astrid Skogr: I don’t think the low-level members of our groups will be able to handle them.]

  [Hazel Thatcher: Which is why only players with an evolved class like you, me, Zoe, and the others are going to deal with the sentinels. As for the web weavers, I have no idea what they're capable of yet, so I don’t know how to handle them yet.]

  [Astrid Skogr: Well, let’s hope they’re easy to deal with like the infants.]

  [Hazel Thatcher: Something tells me that isn’t going to be an option for us.]

  [Astrid Skogr: Guess we’ll have to see, then.]

  Finishing their conversation, Hazel dismissed the chat room before placing her attention back on the streets in front of her, patiently waiting for the second wave to begin. Switching her vision, she also monitored her group’s progress in cleaning up the spider corpses, noticing that a good majority of the bodies were already disposed of.

  Knowing that they had very little time, the group was hard at work in getting rid of any hindrances that could cause problems for them during the second wave. Other players were also setting up barricades of cars on the street in front of the interstate bridge. At first, Hazel was confused as to why they were doing this before remembering how they previously set up a firewall to keep the spiders that survived from moving any closer to the interstate.

  They were likely setting this car barricade up in an effort to preserve the mages’ mana for attacking the spider army. That way, they won’t be wasting it to create a wall of flames and could simply use the car wall to hold off the remaining spiders that get past the spell and arrow barrage.

  Although this was a good strategy, Hazel knew that the spiders could easily climb over the wall, so she couldn’t see much of a point in making the wall like this when the wall of flame was much more effective in keeping the remnants of the swarm at bay.

  Putting that thought aside for now, Hazel decided to use her time wisely and ultimately set more curse bombs. Since her curse damage had increased upon reaching rank 3, that meant they would cause more destruction and the like for the second wave. And right now, they needed that knowing what was in store for them.

  While she was still stuck within the range of the spider queen’s detection, that didn’t mean she couldn’t work her way around it to recreate her little cursed minefield. Which was where Telekinesis came in handy.

  As soon as she created a watermelon-sized curse bomb, Hazel then cast her Telekinesis spell on it and placed the ball of condensed curse energy into position. She then repeated the process with the rest of the bombs, taking momentary breaks to somewhat replenish her mana before continuing.

  As soon as she was done placing the last curse bomb into position, another message panel materialized before her very eyes, signaling her about the next wave.

  [The Second Wave will now commence!]

  It didn’t even take a second after the message was displayed before Hazel felt the rumbling once again. She then turned over and faced the direction where the spider swarm was coming. A moment later, another black sea was presented as it made its way over to her and the rest of her group again.