Chapter 41: Spiders, Spiders, Everywhere

Alright what can I do to help make this safer for both me and my dragons. First off I need to make sure I do not get swarmed. I have seen too many horror movies where the valiant defenders are overcome by numbers. So I need a place that we can defend against large wave attacks. I also need someplace safe to retreat too and actually sleep in case this takes more than a single day. Alright construction time it is. I use my earth magic to reshape the tunnel into a funnel about 25 meters in. At the entrance I create a room that will easily be able to be blocked off as a last retreat and a few 1 meter high walls at the narrow end of the funnel for us to hide behind and fight from behind them if necessary.

My idea is to continue on alone and kite back a manageable number of monsters and have my little ones fight and level up until I feel they are at a level they can keep safe with me. My dragons do not have to be at an extremely high level because they can work together and that should act as a multiplier to both their damage and the level they need to stay safe. Now that construction is complete I talk to the dragons and get them to understand that they need to stay here and attack whatever comes running after me when I return. Or at least I think I got them to understand it.

Off I go into the creepy, dark, spider infested caverns of doom. Get a grip Mark, you are strong enough to deal with anything. I once again make a fireball and have it float over my head. This time though I increase its output. It is more for my own morale than a light source, I also feel I am less likely to have creepy spiders jump at my head if there is a burning ball of fire above it. I really am not liking this dungeon and I have not even met the spiders yet. Up ahead I notice a glow from a light source that is a different color than my fire light. As much as I hate it I command my fireball to remain in place while I sneak forward to get a look.

As I approach closer to the light source I realize that the tunnel is overlooking a cavern. In front of me I see an amazing sight. A veritable forest of mushrooms, many of which are glowing surrounded by insects and other animals. It is like a rainforest of mushrooms. The only thing from keeping this awesome sight as one of the top things I have ever seen in my life is the fact that the majority of moving things in sight are spiders. There are webs everywhere and it seems other than the insects of all sizes that I can see scurrying about, the rest of the ecosystem has been taken over by spiders. I see large ones that seem to be grazing in herds like deer, small ones that are acting like normal spiders catching insects, some that seem to be hunting in packs both the large spiders and other animals. It is if some twisted individual said I wonder what would happen if I created a world just for spiders? Would they evolve to fill every niche? In this case the answer was yes.

As a former science teacher I can appreciate the beauty and grandeur of what I see before me. As a person with minor arachnophobia what my brain is screaming is burn them, burn them all. I am unnoticed at this point because I am in a tunnel that is overlooking this vast cave. The cave itself must be close to a kilometer long and several hundred meters wide. All around the edges I see tunnel entrances like the one I am looking down on it from. Great this is why it is named Arachnid Warrens. This must be a small underground world where spiders fulfill all possible roles in an ecosystem. And with all of the tunnel choices I bet it would be easy to get lost.

There are only a few things keeping me from hurling as much fire magic as possible into the scene below me. First is the fact that I do not even know if mushrooms are flammable, it might be pointless to try and burn this place out. Second, is the fact that I might kill myself from smoke inhalation since I am in a closed underground area. Finally, I am not sure I could survive a swarm of spiders from a cavern this large if I pissed them all off at the same time. Ok, time to retreat a little and come up with a plan.

As I move back into the tunnel from which I entered I felt a small sense of relief. It wasn’t as overwhelming if I was not directly looking at it. I know that sounds silly, but it is true. Intellectually I knew that the cave full of spiders was still there, but without the visual I am able to calm down enough to start formulating a plan. The basic set up still has not changed. I need to draw some of the spiders into this tunnel and then eliminate them. The key here is to not draw to many. I can line the entire tunnel with traps so If I think I am about to get overwhelmed we can retreat to our hideout at the beginning of the tunnel.

This sounds like the start of a workable plan. As I start back towards where I left my dragonlings I start breaking off pieces of the tunnel wall with my earth magic in about 30 cm in diameter sections. Each piece is about the size of a dinner plate. I then use magic to engrave them with explosion and pressure magic. I am basically creating the magic equivalent of landmines. The only difference is that I will place them on all surfaces as I expect that some spiders will not travel just on the ground but crawl on the walls and ceiling also. I am not trying to kill them with the explosion, as a boom that big might destabilize the tunnel. I have been blown up enough. Rather I am trying to get them to turn into shrapnel that will pierce whatever crosses them. I should wound at a minimum several at once with wounds adding up over time hopefully killing them.

I reach my “hideout” and signal the dragons to follow me. I gesture and explain to them that they need to avoid the circles that I have placed all over the tunnel. They seem to understand or at least they don’t set any off. Whatever works. We reach the opening of the tunnel that leads into the large cavern and I use my Earth magic to create another set of defense bulwarks. Basically simple stone ridges to hide behind and protect us from distance attacks and being overwhelmed. Time to get this party started. Why do I always choose and say such lame lines out loud? Even my dragons are looking at me like I am weird. Oh well, it is too late to change things now.

I pull my ridiculously large sniper rifle out of my inventory and start to set up a shooters nest. I hope that I can take down a large portion of what comes at us before they even get to our tunnel. I also set up a mortar for more area damage to my right. All the different ammunition goes on my left. My first clip will be a mix of explosion, fire, ice, and lightning enchantments. I will carefully watch the results of the fire projectiles too make sure I am not going to start a giant mushroom forest fire which would smoke even us out. The mortar shells are just hardened rock with an explosion rune on top. This turns them into large scale grenades that go further than I can throw. Actually with my stats I can probably throw grenades just as far now and maybe with greater accuracy. I may have to try that in the future.

With everything set up I give the area one more inspection. Preparation prevents piss poor performance as my pappy used to say. I give my dragonlings their instructions which basically boil down to stay put until they get within 10 feet than go nuts. Retreat on my signal, remember to watch out for the magic landmines I laid down. I look through the scope of my magic sniper rifle and pick one of the very large deer like spiders as the first target. I slowly squeeze the trigger.

With a muffled whump, using air elemental spells to create this thing means I do not need a silencer, I send my first projectile down range. My favorite part about this magic weapon is that it runs on Magic. This means there is no exploding gunpowder or primer that give it a kick back. In fact, if there wasn’t a muffled whump it would be hard to tell that it even fired. If I remember right this should be an exploding bullet. Yep there it is. I blew off a single leg from one of the larger spiders. It is clearly hurt and also seems to have no idea what attacked it. This is perfect, a couple more like that and I should be able to start whittling down the largest of the arachnids.

Hold on something is happening around it. It looks like the surrounding spiders either smell the blood loss from the one I shot or somehow sense that something is wrong with it, because I see them starting to surround the wounded one and it does not look pretty. There it is, they actually turned cannibal and attacked one of their own when it was in a bad position. This could work to my advantage.

Over the next hour I slowly whittle away at the two larger sized types of arachnids. No matter what happens, whenever one is wounded the other arachnids would turn it and finish it off. However, after an hour there are fewer and fewer targets and those that are present are slowing down. They must be full from the buffet I have given them. I think that the numbers are low enough at least with the larger arachnids that my team of dragons and I can attack a little more closely and speed things up. I signal for the dragonlings to stay here and get ready and I cautiously enter into the cavern. I make sure that I am ready, MA 12 rifle out, sniper rifle put away, shotgun slung, and hammer on hip. Ok, I can do this, I lift the rifle and start shooting at one of the last groups of larger arachnids while walking closer. After 3 more spiders go down I am finally spotted and assessed as either a threat or as food because they start moving in my direction.

Mission accomplished, now I need to retreat safely and not wet myself from fear as I see very large spiders running towards me. I continue to pepper the oncoming horde with the MA 12 and walk backwards probably faster than I should. My nerves are starting to get to me. When the first spider gets within 25 meters of me, I say screw it and turn around and run back to the prepared defenses. As soon as I arrive I turn back around see that I have gained a few meters on them due to my stats, but they are still coming. I reload quickly and start shooting once again. Let the killing time begin.

For about 5 minutes there is no change. Spiders run towards us, I shoot MA 12, dragons shoot breath weapons, spiders die, and life is good. After that initial few minutes I start to notice that although we are holding the spiders back they are getting closer and closer to our fixed positions. I need to call for a retreat soon. When the first spider gets within 10 meters of our position I yell for the dragons to retreat. There are no arguments and I can see them turn to leave in the corner of my eye. I quickly grab 2 magic fire grenades from my inventory and send them towards the oncoming arachnids. I then turn and sprint as fast as I can, dodging the many magic landmines I set, back to the hideout I created.

I can hear the grenades cook off, then there is silence except for the horrible sound of skittering legs on stone, then random landmines that are triggered start to go off. The sound seems to be getting farther and farther behind me. Don’t look Mark, just focus and keep running. I have seen too many horror movies, as soon as I look back something will be there and I will die. Stay strong and keep running. There it is, the hideout, just keep running and then dive behind the rock wall for protection. Ready set jump, dive, spin, look and nothing. Nothing? What is going on I know I heard them behind me?

I realize that in the last 30 seconds I had NOT heard any explosions from the tunnel behind me. I had just kept running on instinct. I am going to wait another 5 minutes just to be on the safe side and then I am going to have to go and investigate. Man that was a long five minutes. We do not know what happened to the horde following me, but now we have to go and check. I signal my dragons to stay close and we step out carefully and explore. About 150 meters down the tunnel we run into the first of the bodies. It seems my magic landmines worked quite well.

The corpse is full of holes and it looks like the spider bled out. Beyond the first corpse the tunnel gets progressively more and more filled with dead spiders. Did we kill them all? That seems a little unlikely. Maybe we just killed all that ran towards the tunnel. That sounds more plausible. My dragons and I advance cautiously and after several minutes of picking our way through the dead carcasses we reach the tunnel entrance to the cavern. I carefully peer down into the cavern and see that there are almost no large arachnids left. In fact, we could easily avoid those few spiders that are left and move on. Nothing says we have to kill every spider even though my instincts scream burn them all.