Unaware of the upcoming trouble in the little town of Niailan, Punk had already made his way to the deepest part of the spider cave.
Inside the cave, there were no more pointy rocks hanging from the ceiling or wiggling purple mosses. The reason for this oddity wasn't natural; someone had purposefully cleaned everything from this place.
Punk cautiously took cover behind a raised rock and signaled No. 1 to do the same. Having already cast a sound-suppressing spell, their movements were silent. With this precaution, Punk could now discreetly observe the area. It was evident that someone had deliberately expanded and flattened the space, without scaring the snake away.
An invisible Mystic Eye secretly flew out from behind the rock, and with the system control and analysis, it flexibly avoided the three surveillance magic formations and situated itself in a position from where the whole Interior of the Spider Cave could be observed, and which was also located in a blind spot of the surveillance magic formations.
The entire cave interior area was the same as a basketball court, and dozens of magic light balls were suspended in mid-air, providing light to the whole area.
In the middle of the inner chamber lay a dense blanket. By looking at the paintings and weavings adorning its surface, it was evident that this blanket could be considered a genuine piece of art. The materials used in its creation were also notably valuable. However, over time, this "artwork," which once might have adorned the floor like a carpet, had grown dirty, even developing mold and decay.
The most shocking thing was the group of people in grey-red robes standing motionlessly on the rotting carpet. Strictly speaking, it was hard to say whether these people were humans or not. There were 50 of them from both sexes, and most of them were professionals of apprentice level. The most notable thing about these people was that all their upper body looked normal wearing robes, but their lower body was like a spider's body. Spider belly covered with carapace replaced their hips, and eight sharp limbs replaced their legs. These people looked like beasts that stitched together with giant spiders and humans.
Though Punk was far from them, he could still feel a strange and unpleasant energy coming from their bodies. These people had gone through some weird change, turning into a mix of human and spider for some unknown reason.
Now, all these people who were part-human, part-spider, gathered in an orderly line. They were praying and saying something while staring at a statue shaped like a spider, their hoarse prayers sounded very strange and vague.
The God they were worshipping was also a bit strange. Even if Punk searched through the knowledge in his memory, he still could not find a match with this God who looked exactly like a spider.
"Maybe it is an unknown god from another plane who accidentally received the divinity!"
Without continuing his unfounded suspicion, Punk simply ignored this unknown God. After all, in this multi-dimensional universe, unless one encountered someone who could break the laws of the universe, it was almost impossible for gods to descend on the Pheren plane directly, so a god's believers were only protected by the church of that God, and even if he destroyed an entire church, as long as he didn't get too arrogant and offended other churches, that God could do nothing but watch.
Not to mention this spider god, that was most likely an evil god, they wouldn't dare to show up even if they had a chance, let alone take revenge. So once their church was destroyed, they could do nothing but act like they knew nothing. This was the sorrow of all imprisoned Gods.
Punk didn't disturb these half-spider, beastly individuals, suspected to be followers of an evil god. He continued manipulating the Mystic Eye to observe the inner chamber.
In the innermost part of this chamber, there was a heavy iron door tightly sealed with an iron chain. Punk estimated that this door would likely lead to the core area of the spider cave.
In addition to the large iron door, there were also two or three other small doors on the surrounding walls. Punk guessed that these should be the living areas, and the pots and pans randomly placed in the corners and mountains of old clothing also proved his guess.
It seemed normal if One thought about it carefully. These guys had been transformed into such looks, and judging from their expressions, their mental situation was obviously abnormal. So, of course, It would be impossible for them to go out on the streets to buy groceries. Now all they could do was hide in the dark.
The thing Punk found most puzzling was that why would these people, despite all these inconveniences, be transformed into such strange half-spider beasts; after all, this beastly state didn't bring any special power.
After looking carefully through the Mystic Eye, Punk noticed that this change seemed to be only for appearance. Adding the awkward spider-like lower body didn't make them exceptionally fast or strong. Even the tough and flexible shell was just for show, and it wasn't as strong as regular steel plates.
In Punk's view, these guys seemed very weird and suspicious. After all, they obviously would not get rid of half of their bodies because they became tired of walking on two legs and wanted to try walking on eight legs. And then convulsively choose to live the rest of their lives as half spider beasts.
However, because this cave was equipped with some kind of prophecy blocking spell or magic formation, Punk had no way to obtain information about these believers through prophetic spells, so he could only make simple guesses. And one of his guesses was that these people were Guinea pig for the transformation experiments, and now they were kept at this place for further observation and research.
While Punk was thinking, the prayers of the half-spider believers seemed to come to an end. They stood up one after another, and using their eight inflexible spider legs, which were incapable of fully supporting their bloated spider belly, they started to move like a group of drunkards.
Punk decided to eliminate these believers before finding trouble with the unsuspecting "main boss."
He then took advantage of the fact that these guys had not yet dispersed to carefully look all the cracks and the corner one more time to make sure he didn't leave out any clues and dissipated the Mystic Eye spell.
Since he did not get any clues from the items, he simply decided to ask the livings. This group of apprentice-level guys would not be able to resist him anyway.
Although these pious believers might be very troublesome to interrogate, but Punk believed that there must be one or two of them who were afraid of pain and death, and they would most likely have some understanding about the situation inside.
After carefully inspecting the official-level mage armor on his body, Punk silently prepared another silent domain, and while holding it in his hand, Punk ordered No. 1 to get ready. Receiving Punk's command, the flesh golem tightened its muscles and became prepared to jump and block any believer from escaping or running toward the inner passage.
"Faith is a good thing. It has a strong ability to unite people... And now it will also help me to catch all of these believers in one go."
Finally, after an emotional sigh, Punk walked out from behind the rock!