The silence in the basement was a living thing. It was absolute, heavy, and filled with the unified, predatory intent of hundreds of creatures. Aryan stood at the bottom of the stone stairs, a lone island of light in a sea of encroaching darkness. The soft glow emanating from his fingertip cast long, dancing shadows, making the web-filled chamber seem to writhe and breathe around him.
From the edge of the light, the first spider crawled into view. It was larger than he had expected, nearly the size of a grown man's hand. Its body was a glossy, chitinous black, its eight legs long and needle-thin, moving with a horrifying, jerky grace. Two glistening fangs, dripping a clear, viscous fluid, clicked together with an audible 'chit.' Its eight ruby-red eyes were devoid of anything but a cold, gluttonous hunger. It was a perfect, little killing machine.
Then another appeared to his left, and one more to his right. Within seconds, his circle of light was surrounded by a vanguard of these creatures, their chittering and clicking creating a low, unsettling hum.
His mind, the legacy of Amit the engineer, filtered the chaos into cold data. Targets: Shadow Weavers. Individual strength: negligible. Primary threat: overwhelming numbers. The variables were clear. The best strategy presented itself with brutal logic: area-of-effect crowd control to neutralize their numbers, followed by targeted elimination.
The lead spider let out a sharp, piercing hiss, and that was all the signal needed. The assault began.
It wasn't a disorganized charge. It was a wave of black death surging from every direction.
They poured from the shadows, a crawling carpet of chitin and fangs, their red eyes burning with malice. They moved with an unnatural speed, scuttling across the floor, down the walls, and even upside down from the web-choked ceiling, their movements a three-dimensional assault designed to overwhelm and disorient.
Aryan remained perfectly still, a statue in the heart of the storm. His breathing was even, his heart a slow, steady drum. Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford. He watched the closest spiders, now only a few meters away, and tracked their paths. He let them get closer, compressing their numbers into a dense formation before him.
Now.
He raised his left hand, palm outward. He took a half-step back, settling into a low, stable stance. The knowledge of the Gale Palm flowed through him, as natural as breathing.
He drew a measure of Qi from his dantian, an amount he had never used before, and channeled it into his arm. A faint, swirling vortex of energy, visible only to his heightened senses, gathered in his palm. The air in front of his hand grew heavy, compressed.
"Gale Palm," he whispered, the words like a soft breath in the chittering darkness. He pushed his palm forward.
It wasn't a strike that connected with anything physical. He pushed against the air itself.
A low 'woomph' of displaced air erupted from his hand, a pressure wave felt more in the chest than in the ears. The front rank of spiders vanished in a chaotic blast of force. Their light, chitinous bodies weren't just pushed back; they were violently thrown, like a handful of black pebbles flung through the air, becoming projectiles themselves. They slammed into the spiders behind them, creating a chaotic pile of thrashing legs and clicking mandibles. Thick webs hanging from the ceiling tore under the force, raining down in dusty, sticky clumps. A clear path, three meters wide and five meters deep, had been carved through the advancing horde.
The system panel flickered into his vision.