The terrain shook at a large mass of dirt and rock ripped itself from its moorings and began to condense. What was previously tens of tons of matter compressed itself into a humanoid shape that was just a smidgen taller than Vaile, gradually gaining more and more humanoid features as the Higher-Tiered Elemental of Earth formed a vessel for itself to occupy. What was once a featureless humanoid made of hyper-compressed dirt, stone, and other earthen materials was now something that looked to be a perfectly androgynous human made of that same material, complete with eyes, a mouth, a nose, and ears.

At this sight, Vaile wiped mental sweat away. He had hoped that the Elementals that he had Tamed would either be as inhuman in appearance as they were in-game or would be utterly disinterested in trying to bed him, but this was a good option as well. He just hoped that Elementals were as disinterested in love and lust as he hoped. Either that, or he hoped that they would have muted emotions. Or whatever worked without him needing to sleep with the mass of compressed materials.

The grumbly voice that emanated from the statuesque and androgynous humanoid form was equally as non-binary, much to Vaile’s secret joy.

“What is thy bidding, my Master?”

Vaile was almost enticed to echo the line from a certain very old internet video, but he answered in a different way instead.

“I need a large underground area excavated, I need to be in there as well, and I need it cut off from the outside, and I need it as fast as possible.”

To this, the Elemental asked a one-word question.

“Why?”

And Vaile answered this as quickly and succinctly as he could, not using his voice but pointing behind the Elemental towards the glitchy kaiju thing in the distance. The Elemental did not turn around. As Vaile suspected, the Elemental could see in a completely perfect sphere around itself, and with a simple, “Oh. That.” The ground beneath Vaile opened up and swallowed him whole.

…

She must have passed out and been spirited away to this dark place deep beneath the surface by Vaile. Also, Vaile must have done something, as she felt as though she had an almost boundless amount of stamina and mana. Of course, she knew that she didn’t actually have near-infinite stamina or mana, but compared to how she remembered feeling at the start of her fight with the blurry creature…

What concerned her was the fact that she felt that the entity was still around, just a few hundred meters above the top of the cut-off underground place that she was in. Thankfully, the creature up there seemed to be rather indecisive and wasn’t trying to actively tunnel down towards her. Then again, the air in this pocket was limited, so if she tried to hide down here for too long, both she and Vaile would quickly suffocate to death.

“Then, this is the end, isn’t it?”

Her pessimistic telepathic declaration was countered by Vaile, who spoke up and gave her some degree of hope.

“I wouldn’t count on defeat being certain just yet. We both still have one collective card to play, although I don’t particularly like breaking my word like this.”

“Oh?” She asked, letting that glimmer of hope attempt to pull her from abject despair. “And what ‘card’ would that be? There is nothing that either of us can do to defeat that thing, so why bother trying?”

Vaile merely shook his head and walked over to the edge of the underground pocket where he sat down and leaned up against the wall.

“Defeatism won’t win this battle, and it will take a hell of a lot of power to do much of anything to that glitchy thing. I wanted to use this carrot as a reward for you and the cult meeting my expectations, but it would seem to me that that particular course is now and forever lost to both of us. As a result, we must use that particular carrot now, unless, of course, you would prefer to die in what I can only assume would be a brutal and horrific fashion.”

She mulled this over in her head. What could he possibly be suggesting that they do? What was this ‘carrot’ that he was mentioning, and what did vegetables have to do with fighting that unstoppable entity up above them? She was a pure carnivore, damn it! She literally lacked the ability to even digest vegetables to begin with, so what could a single carrot do?

Was it some kind of equipable item, or was it some kind of weird-looking sword? She couldn’t even use her limbs to lift a sword, especially one large or powerful enough to do any damage to that thing up there. Besides, what could a vegetable sword do that multiple tens of thousands of tons of material couldn’t?

She sighed and spoke her mind.

“First off, I am a strict carnivore, so eating a vegetable would do anything positive for me. Secondly, do my limbs look like they can wield a vegie-sword? Lastly, I have no idea if this ‘carrot’ is some kind of item or whatnot, but I do not think that it could give me nearly enough of a boost to defeat that thing above us.”

Vaile looked at her askew, almost as if he was looking at someone whose words he was unable to understand.

“I can’t tell if you are being serious or if you think you’re making a joke. Do you really not know the phase ‘The Carrot and The Stick’?”

If she could express confusion on her arachnid face, she would have, but sadly for all present, she lacked the ability to move much of the surface of her body. Exoskeletons were more inflexible than skin and musculature, after all. Vaile picked up o the confusion easily enough, regardless, and let out a defeated sigh.

“It is a term used to describe the acts of reward and punishment. A pack animal, such as a donkey or mule, would want to eat a carrot, which is the reward for good behavior and for following orders. The stick would be used as negative reinforcement, teaching the animal that if it behaved a certain way that it would experience pain. Now, tell me, what reward did I promise to give you if you managed to take control of this country without going to war with it?”

…

For what felt to Vaile like an eternity, the nameless giant spider stood stock still as it mulled over what he had said. He swore up and down that he could practically hear that one particular bit of music from that old game show playing as the seconds ticked by. He was about to answer the question he had posed himself, but the spider beat him to it. He couldn’t read her expression, or lack thereof, but he had a feeling that what was plastered on her face was a look that mixed joy with a newly ignited fire of hope.

It would seem that the dying embers that were being smothered by despair had rebelled inside of her and now a conflagration was raging, threatening to incinerate the fear and doubt that had threatened to drive her to suicide. A smile formed on Vaile’s face as he spoke a single word, or rather, a single name.

He admitted that he wasn’t the best at thinking up names but seeing as this was an event where the world was at risk of being destroyed by an anomalous entity that rendered all it touched into a state of quantum uncertainty that inevitably ended in either erasure or destruction, he had one part of the name hammered down. And, given the only thing standing against this destruction was a spider who could possibly be just as destructive after this, he had a vague idea of what to use for the rest of the name.

And so, he spoke, and reality trembled as a Raid Boss-level creature was obliterated and in a violent metamorphosis, something entirely new took its place, purging away the old form it had to become something new. A one-word sentence birthed this new godly being, and that word, that name was…

“Arachnaerok.”