1.8

Harold didn’t know what he was expecting when he started to walk behind the spiderling once more. All he knew, was that he definitely wasn’t expecting what he ended up seeing

Limbs, body parts of all kinds, were simply strewn about as chaff, all around the cavern. It had apparently been a victory for the spider queen that they knew, for it was her spiderlings that were dragging away the body parts on the ground.

“What is… all this? Why aren’t the spiderlings unified? Aren’t you all of the same species?” When the spider queen had explained the situation, Harold had at first thought they would be seeing some infighting, maybe some skirmishing between different broods. But this… this was war. Subterranean war he had never seen on any scale, much less as large as this.

The spider queen appeared, lumbering through the tunnels, at least reaching the battlefield. “EACH BROOD MOTHER BELIEVES THEMSELVES SUPERIOR, HOLDING THE ABILITY TO LEAD OUR BROODS TO CONQUER THE ABOVEGROUND WORLD. ONLY I REMEMBER THE TRUTH.”

Without commenting on how cryptic the last part of the message was, Harold tried to steer the conversation to something more useful. “How do should we distinguish your brood from the others? Perhaps with pheromones or trails you can tell who is your own, but we have no such luck.”

“MMM, INDEED. MY BROOD IS MARKED BY A FANG ON THEIR CARAPACE. YOU, CHILD, COME HERE.” She gestured to one of the nearby spiderlings. “IF YOU SEE THIS MARK, YOU WILL KNOW THAT IT IS ONE OF MINE. IF NOT, KILL IT AT YOUR LEISURE.”

“Ok, got it. Should we just follow a certain tunnel to a battlefield? Or are we aiming to kill a brood mother?”

“HAHA! YOU JEST! YOU… ARE JESTING CORRECT?”

“Uhhh, n-no. I don’t think so?” Harold stumbled over his words. Somehow, hearing the spider queen laugh was even more terrifying than hearing her howl in anger. It made her… human, and yet the voice she emitted in his mind kept reminding him that she most definitely was not.

“FACING A BROOD MOTHER, EVEN THE WEAKEST OF OUR KIND IN YOUR CURRENT STATE WOULD BE SUICIDE, HUMAN. I BELIEVE THE LAST GROUP OF HUMANS I FOUGHT CALLED ME A… WHAT WAS IT AGAIN? AH, A RAID BOSS. UNDOUBTEDLY A STATION BEFITTING RESPECT IN YOUR SOCIETY?”

“Yeah, uh, sure. It’s ah... it’s only for the most prestigious of beings, ones that require large amounts of resources and manpower just to defeat, even when they’re alone.”

He wasn’t necessarily lying either. Raid bosses in the games he had played were incredibly tough creatures, and he was terrified of waltzing into another raid boss spider queen, especially one not as inclined towards leniency or mercy.

“VERY GOOD, VERY GOOD. NOW TAKE THE LEFT MOST TUNNEL. YOU SEE IT? YES, THAT ONE. THAT WILL TAKE YOU TOWARDS ONE OF OUR CURRENT BATTLEGROUNDS. LEVEL, BRING ME THE HEAD OF THE POISON QUEEN AND I WILL GUIDE YOU TO THE SURFACE.”

The spider sounded much too smug, and to Harold, it seemed that she was just happy that she had given concise orders to her lessers. “Waitwaitwaitwaitwait, you’re sending us off fight WHAT?”

“THE POISON QUEEN, ANOTHER BROOD MOTHER. HER BROOD ARE NORMALLY LARGER THAN MY OWN. LESS NUMEROUS THOUGH, MARKED WITH A RED HOURGLASS ON THEIR CARAPACE. NOW GO. I TIRE OF SPEAKING IN THIS MANNER.”

Once again, the finality in her tone left no room for discussion, but inwardly, Harold was halfway to losing his shit. ‘She’s looking for us to go fight giant black widow spiderlings? Is she insane?’ One look at Amber told him she was feeling the same way. But with the queen’s fang spiderlings behind them, there was no direction to move except forward, into the tunnel, and towards death’s door.

#####

They crept through the tunnel, this one much more expansive than the others, perhaps due to the spiders’ tunneling, perhaps just through random chance. What it did mean, was that the two of them would have a difficult time funneling their opponents into any kind of single file fight.

The passage could fit three of the Fang Queen’s spiderlings lengthwise, side by side, with some squeezing. Unfortunately, it also meant that two spiderlings could probably fight simultaneously in this passageway.

Looking back at his companions, he slowly touched a finger to his mouth. There had been some movement in the tunnel system up ahead.

He brought his hammer up above his head, its soft glow, emitted from the green crystals it was made of, illuminated several feet in front of him. ‘Better than nothing.’ He thought.

They edged forwards once more, Harold bringing up the front with his heater shield on his left, his right holding his war hammer forward to bring light to the tunnel. Behind him were two Fang brood spiderlings, relatively strong creatures, each at level four. Finally, Amber brought up the rear, with Rocky sitting on her shoulder.

A familiar skittering broke everyone out of their melancholic stupor. It came from up ahead. Those were not friendly spiderlings.

[Lvl 8 Black Widow Spiderling]

[Lvl 9 Black Widow Spiderling]

Not daring to move forward, Harold stayed firmly rooted in place, peering nervously into the dark tunnel ahead.

On the ground, what looked like a spindly leg briefly darted in and out of the light projected by his hammer. He tensed, bracing his shield for a strike. When none materialized, he held his position for several moments before slowly walking forward once more.

It was in this manner that the group gradually cleared their way through the hallway, pausing every few moments whenever the sounds of chittering or movement became audible, only resuming when it became clear that no attack would materialize.

A scream shocked Harold out of this, if not comfortable, then at least sensible pattern. He turned to see Amber desperately trying to beat off a large monster with her staff, falling back behind their two spiderling escorts in the middle of their column. The two fang spiderlings jumped at the larger spider, which he now recognized as having the red hourglass on its carapace.

Amber ran towards him as their fang spiderlings covered her. “BEHIND YOU!”

Harold turned abruptly, just in time to catch the enormous maw of another black widow spiderling as it attempted to barrel its way through him. He hit it once, a relatively light blow to the side of the head, his hammer bouncing off the carapace. Damn. It was impossible to get a good swing off while also bearing the heater shield, which obstructed the arc of the hammer blow.

Luckily for him however, the spider had just as much luck trying to bite its way through his barrier of wood and steel. It backed off a bit, as a boxer would after a particularly brutal exchange. It tried to circle around him, but Harold moved to match it as it tried to get around his left, to the exposed underbelly of his group.

He could still vaguely hear the spiderlings and Amber fighting behind him, struggling to fell the enormous black widow assaulting their little convoy’s rear. Yet none of that mattered when the spiderling he faced came at him once again.

He approached it with a bash this time, trying to use his momentum to stun it momentarily, enough to move his shield out of the way and bring his hammer down. No such luck. For having such an enormous body, the black widow was surprisingly nimble, jumping backwards as his shield came forward.

It countered, darting to his right and forwards, looking to strike him from his right side, the area unprotected by his heater shield, still stuck mostly on his left.

It lunged, and he stumbled backwards, the fangs of the widow leaving a thin, liquidy residue on his armor. ‘Venom!’

He righted himself as the black widow looked for another angle. “THEIR FANGS HAVE VENOM, BE CAREFUL.” He had no way of knowing how far behind him Amber was, nor could he waste time to look. Instead, he shouted his warning and refocused on the task at hand.

‘Do these things ever get tired?’ The black widow was back to looking for an angle. Given a brief reprieve, it was only now that Harold started to feel the burning in his muscles, his arms were heavy, and his weapons continued to weigh on him. He had to hit the spider now, or it could afford to wear him down, as it carried nothing but the carapace molded on its front.

Blocking out any distractions, any wayward thoughts, he resolved to bait the spider in. He darted forward lightly, as if to try to bash the spider with his shield again. Anticipating its response of darting to his side, he quickly reoriented himself, jamming the spider into the wall with the edge of his shield. He bashed again, and again, and again, not daring to move the shield from between him and the spider.

Swing. He had to swing. He brought his hammer down, raining relatively light blows on the spider’s carapace, and seeing no response, he dropped his shield to his left, using both hands to swing his war hammer as hard as possible, cracking the black widow’s carapace and shattering its brain to mush.

Picking his shield up once more, he turned to see a scene of carnage. The black widow that had appeared behind their group was still alive, its mouth holding the remains of a spiderling’s leg. What remained of that spiderling had been left strewn about in parts. The remaining fang spider and Amber looked on in horror, as the black widow spat the leg out.

It rushed them, using the same trick its friend had used on Harold, baiting a lunge from the remaining fang spiderling, dodging to the side, and then sinking its fangs into it, killing it.

Now that it was closer, Harold could see that his party hadn’t been idle as he fought off the black widow up front. Even now, the remaining monster was limping, a leg had been shorn off, likely a successful lunge by the now dead fang spiders. There were two holes, one on either wall at varying heights. Amber’s handiwork, he presumed.

She raised her staff for another shot, a swirling mana bolt forming in front of her staff’s orb, before rocketing its way towards the black widow spiderling. Unable to dodge while still committed to killing the final fang spider, the black widow tanked the mana bolt head on. The shot sheared away part of the carapace along with two of its right legs, leaving it hobbled and uncertain.

Harold moved forward to prevent escape, he had no qualms about killing it here, but chasing it into the dark and terrifying tunnel, in place for another potential ambush was far from his list of priorities. The spider tried to crawl up the wall, presumably to get to the ceiling, where only Amber’s mana bolts could reach.

Bashing his shield into the monster as it tried to climb, it fell on its back. He struck its two remaining legs on its right side, severing them from the torso at the joint. Now unable to rise, the spider could do nothing as he brought his hammer down repeatedly, until it was little more than a pasty pile of mush.

“Do we keep going?” Amber whispered behind him.

“I… think we should. If these were just guards, I want to know what we’re up against when we have to fight the brood mother.” Harold remained shakily on his feet, but he felt the fatigue begin to catch up with him.

They stumbled forward, as slowly and cautiously as they could manage. Through sheer luck and providence, they encountered no other black widows on their trek down the tunnel. As they approached an opening, presumably another cavern, Harold noticed a small group of gems on the wall. Then another. As they continued onwards, the familiar green light flooded his senses more and more as the pair made their way towards the cavern entrance.

They didn’t walk in, for doing so would have been suicide. They peered out from the tunnel. The cave looked identical to the cavern where they had awoken, covered in the bright lights of the green crystals that had allowed them to gain their classes. Hundreds of spiders were in the cavern, and the brood mother sat in the middle, unmoving, commanding her children from her elevated position in the center of the room.

Harold decided that they had seen enough. Gently pulling Amber along, they hobbled their way back through the tunnel, past the corpse of the spiderlings, both their allies and their black widow foes, and returned to friendly lines.

The Fang’s brood mother made no attempt to engage with them as they trudged past their throne room, made no comment about the noticeable absence of her brood with them. They continued, exhausted, to a small, isolated cave near the storage room where they had first geared up.

Harold rolled out some bedsheets on the cave floor, cuddled up with Amber, and proceeded to check his notifications.

[Congratulations! Level Up! Level 5 Gem Soldier]

[Congratulations! Level Up! Level 6 Gem Soldier]

He turned to ask Amber what her gains were looking like, but saw that she had already shared her status.

#####

[Amber Liddle]

Age: 24

Race: Human

Class: [Elemental Mage, Level 5]

Constitution: Human

Achievements: N/A

Titles: N/A

#####

When he questioned whether she had gotten new skills for her fourth and fifth levels, she just shook her head. “Huh, guess we’ll be stuck with three skills each for a while.” With that, they gradually dozed off, and the sound of light snoring filling the small room.

Unbeknownst to them both, someone else had also received a level that day.

[Congratulations! Level up! Level 2 Noble of Stone]

[Skill learned: Steel’s Aura (Passive) - Exudes an aura of power to all beings in your vicinity, counteracting mental and soul based attacks; skill amplified on allies]