Alderick and the Protection Agency reached the end of the Rocky Pass and were standing at the top of a cliff at the end of it. From there, they had a perfect view of the Eastern Plane. “That’s the village over there, near the forest.” Teiki said, pointing towards the village just ahead of them. Al looked towards the south, and saw a giant silhouette of a giant tree far into the distance. “That’s the World Tree.” Poku said, walking up behind Al. “The World Tree? I heard the it was supposed to be far to the South.” “It is, but it’s a tree that reaches the heavens. You can almost see it from anywhere as long as you have a clear view to the south.” Poku added. “Ah, yes. The World Tree. It is a tree with 3000 years worth of history.” Astragoth came up behind them. “It was from-” “NO! NO! NO!” Poku shouted. He covered his ears and made loud noises as he ran down the path. Astra watches as he ran off. Then looked over to Al. Sensing a long lecture of history, Al ran off after Poku. Astra then looked over to the other two. “Hmm, I wonder what’s the rush for those two?” Luna and Teiki just smiled nervously and then slowly walked after the two that ran off. Astra then followed suite.

Poku and Al reaches the village first as they were the ones running away from the group. The village seemed rather peaceful for one that requested aid from the guild. There was a large field filled with crops outside the village and on the other side of the village was a lumber mill. Seeing as how the lumber mill was the largest building, Al assume that was the village main source of income. The two debated whether to wait outside for the others or to go on inside first. While they were debating among themselve, one of the villager spotted them and walked over.

“Excuse me? Can I help you two?” He asked. “Good afternoon sir, we are adventurers that came here for a spider nest extermination request from this village. I am Poku Poku, and this here is Alderick.” Poku introduced themselves to the villager. “The guild only sent two members?” He asked, showing a concerned face. “Oh, no, theres a few more members, but we came ahead of the group. The rest will be here shortly.” “Oh, good. I will go inform the village chief.” The villager said, now seeming a bit happier to know that there were more coming, and ran back into the village, leaving both Poku and Al outside waiting.

Luna, Teiki, and Astra finally made it to the village gate as well. “Why are you two waiting here, and not going inside?” Luna asked. “Well, we didn’t want to go in by ourselves so we decided to stay here and wait for you three.” Poku answered. “Why did you two ran off in the first place?” Astra asked. Poku avoided Astra gaze, and tried to come up with an excuse. “We… uh… we both had to use the restroom?” Astra stared at Poku, as if not believing in his words. “We… already introduced ourselves to one of the villager and he went to get the chief.” Poku said, changing the subject. “Oh, ok. Good, then I guess we will wait out here for them to come back.” Luna said. They waited outside until a group of the villagers came out to greet them and invited them inside.

The group was brought into the village hall, and lead into the meeting room. There the village chief introduced himself. “I am Brian, the village chief. Our village discovered a spider’s nest nearby and they have been attacking our lumberjacks, severely hindering our progress in producing wood for the kingdom. We need you to destroy their nest so that we may continued.” “Very well. May we know of the location of the nest?” Luna asked. Brian and the other villager looked at each other in confusion. “Are you the leader of the group?” he asked. This time, Luna had a confused look on her face. “Is there a problem if I was?” she asked politely. “No, no… We just expected one of the males to be the leader.” This statement angered everyone in the group, and they were not afraid to show it on their face.

“My apologies, we didn’t mean any offense. It is just customary for our village that a male is the lead.” Brian said in a monotone voice, as if he wasn’t sincere in his apology. Luna calms the group down, and asked him to continued. “The nest is deep into the forest, and inside a cave. The spiders roam around throughout the forest, but once their nest is gone, they will either die or leave.” “Thank you. We will discus on how to deal with this matter by ourselves tonight and then go deal with the nest tomorrow.” Luna said, and then motion for everyone to leave.

There have been something that has been bothering Al since he first got to the village, and even more now after the meeting. He had noticed that he has yet to see any females in the village, and all the villagers that was in the meeting were males. This village also lacked children and the elderly. The village chief was rather young looking, late thirty at the oldest. Most village had a good mixture of everything, and yet this village mostly consisted of young adult males. And because of this, Al feels as if the village is hiding something from them. He looks over to Astra, and it looks like he too, felt that something was off about the village. Over Astra’s shoulder, Al sees a head peeking out from the door of a house. A small child from the looks of it. So there are childrens in this village. Al thought to himself. The child notice that he has been spotted and looked as if he was about to step out of the house when he looked like he was pulled back inside and the door closed. Al was about to walk over to investigate, but Luna stopped him, and motioned for them to go outside the village.

Once the group got outside, they all quietly set up camp some distance away from the village. Luna and Astra made Poku cook dinner for the group as a continued punishment from the previous day, while everyone else started their discussion about the village. “Did you guys find the village a little strange?” Al started. The group nodded. “We noticed it since even before we met up with the two of you who ran off.” Astra said. “Once we felt something strange from just the look of the village, we had our guard up. At the moment, it doesn’t seem like the villagers are planning to do anything to us. But on the other hand, it looks as if they are hiding something from us.” Luna added. “As a precaution, we will be stay a bit far from the village to camp out instead of sleeping inside of it.” The group started discussing more about the absence of females, children and the elderly in the village.

Al then notice that Teiki, although was a rather quiet person, was especially quiet today. “Teiki, are you ok?” he asked, reaching across to tap her on the shoulder. She turned and, to his surprised, purred at him. “Oh, at the moment, she’s not actually here.” Luna stated. “What?” Al asked in confusion, as Teiki had then bowed her head, seemingly asking for a head pat. “She’s not currently conscious in that body of hers. She is using a Beast Master skill called Kindred, which let’s her control the body of Chad, and vice versa. I asked her to look around the village before we caught up to you two.” Al then glance back at Teiki, or in this case, Chad, who was now looking at him, still eagerly waiting for the head pat. He hesitated, but gave into the shadow cat’s request. “What are you doing?” Teiki asked, moving her head away from his hand, again, surprising Al.

“Oh, you are back?” Luna asked. “So what did you see?” “It is strange. I did find a few children and womens in the village, but they are all in houses on the edge of the village, near the forest.” Teiki replied. Al, now feeling a little awkward, scooted a little farther away from Teiki, but in the process, moved closer to Astra. Teiki noticed Al moving closer to Astra, and a grin showed on her face. Astra and Al notice the grin, and both scooted away from each other. “What else?” Luna asked. “Although the way the villagers are acting is suspicious, I don’t think they will do anything to us as long as we complete the task.” Teiki replied. “Ok. Since we aren’t here to investigate the village, we will leave it here. We will continued with the spider’s nest extermination, and once done, we will report it back to the guild.” Luna said, closing down the discussion about the village and it’s villagers.

After the group ate, they started discussing on how they plan to deal with the spiders. The group eventually decided that the formation they will take will be to have Astra in the front, Luna and Teiki will take the center and Al and Poku will cover the rear. With Astra in the front, he can deal with majority of the spiders that could come from the front that are too close for the two archers, while Poku and Al can protect them from the rear and on the sides. Luna and Teiki can shoot any enemies they see from any direction.On the other hand, Chad will stay near both of them to help protect them in case any spiders get through. They decided to go to sleep early so that the following morning they can get up and head into the forest and find the cave before it was midday. Hopefully they can clear the nest and return to the village before evening.

Early the following morning, everyone checked their gears. After a light breakfast, they set off into the woods in the direction of the nest. The forest itself wasn’t crawling with spiders. It was a rather small simple forest, with some vegetation but not overgrown. There were many pathways that split off in every direction. The group passes by a number of tree stumps from previously cut down trees. Although the group has not come across anything dangerous, they stay alerted. All of a sudden, Teiki stopped the group. She pointed to the left of their current position towards a large bush that was rustling several feet away from them.

Everyone drew their weapon and got ready for anything that may pop out from there. Shortly after, a giant spider walked out from the bush. It had a grey exoskeleton, with hair on the legs. It was a large spider, almost the size of an average dog. It walked out in front of them and turn to face them. Everyone tensed up as they realised it wasn’t a normal Giant Spider they had thought they were going to be facing, but a variant of it. A normal Giant Spider would be brown, and hairless. The variant is a faster and more poisonous version of a Giant Spider, and typically more aggressive and had lived for quite awhile already.

The group then was about to attack the spider when all of a sudden, the spider turn and continued to walk it’s path, ignoring the group. “What was that?” Poku asked. “That’s weird. Spiders are aggressive by nature and would attack people on sight, or run off if it feels it can not win the fight. But this one seemed calmed, as if it has no interest in us.” Teiki stated. “That’s fine, for now we will take advantage of this. Poku, go and kill it quickly before it can call for aid.” Luna said. Poku nodded, and rushed towards the spider.

Poku was about to reach the spider when it suddenly turns towards him. He hesitated, cautious of the spider’s bite. Again, the spider stared at him, then turn to continued on its way. Taking this chance, Poku strikes down hard on the spider. It squeal out in pain, and leaps away from Poku. It stopped and then stare at Poku, as if in confusion to the attack. Poku rushes the spider again, and the spider then turns and attempted to run away, only to be mounted by Poku and then stabbed multiple times. It was only able to take a few steps before succumbing to his attacks.

“That is strange.” Al stated. “Why didn’t it tried to attack you when you approached it? And then even more strange that it didn’t retaliate once you attack it.” “I don’t know.” Poku replied, getting off the spider, and then stared at the corpse. “Something doesn’t seem right.” Poku then looks up to see that they were near the end of the forest. He could see the bottom of a cliff from where he was. “Hey, I think we are almost at the cave.” The group walked up to him to see what he was staring at. Seeing the end of the forest, the group then ran out of the forest.

“The cave must be near here then.” Luna stated, and started looking around for the entrance. Astra spots something in the distance and called it out. “Over there!” He ran towards it and the group followed. There was webbings everywhere. They follow it down the opening, and eventually reached a cave completely covered with webbing. “This must be the entrance to the cave the villagers talked about.” Al said, looking around to see if there were any other spiders nearby. The group paused for a minute, and then after confirming that they were ready, lit their torches and lanterns, and made their way into the cave.

Inside the cave was completely dark and damp. There were webbings everywhere, but there was only one path, so they had no choice but to follow it. They spotted a few more variant spiders, and like the previous ones, only stared at them. When one of the spider seemed to have creeped closer to the group, Luna shot an arrow towards it, penetrating it’s skull. Once she shot that arrow, the rest of the spider screeched out, and charged the group. They were fast and agile, dodging the arrows from both Teiki and Luna. Only one or two got hit, but only the first spider died so far. As they reached the group, Astra started to cut them down with the support of Al’s Boost: Agility. Poku stayed in the back in case any spiders creeped up behind them. After a short skirmish, the spiders were killed, mostly from Astra, as the path was too narrow for Luna and Teiki to be able to shoot once they got too close.

“I think thats all of them that was around here.” Astra said after the fight was over. Just then the group heard more screeching coming from deeper inside the cave. “It seems like the screech from the first group was a call for aid.” Poku stated. “It would seem so.” Astra replied. “Come on, let's go deeper inside to see if there’s a area with a bigger opening.” Luna told the group, and they all rushed deeper inside. As they ran in, the path gradually got bigger, but Al notice that there were pathing from the ceilings, where spiders could jump down from and alerted the group, and they came to a stop.

“What should we do? Should we head back towards the entrance?” Astra shouted, as he fought some of the spiders that had appeared. “No.” Luna shouted back. “We won’t be able to clear the nest if we just wait outside for them. Who knows how many other entrance into the cave there are.” “If we go too deep inside, we could get surrounded.” Al stated. More spiders jumped down from the ceiling, cutting the group’s discussion on what to do. One jumped down right on top of Teiki, knocking her down. It tried to bite her, but was knocked away by Chad. Teiki got back up, and started shooting at the spiders that were making their way down. “There’s more coming in from the entrance, we have no choice but to go in deeper now.” She shouted, once she heard more skittering coming from where they just came in from.

The group fought their way in deeper. “If we can find an open clearing, Teiki and I can start clearing more of them.” Luna shouted as they ran through. “Do you think there’s going to be an opening?” Al shouted, trying to keep his Aura of Agility active as they run. “The path is slowly getting wider, so there’s a good chance of an opening.” Teiki answered, trying to shoot the spiders chasing them. “We are close!” Poku shouted. “I sense a large room ahead.” The group now a little relieved to hear that there’s an open room for Luna and Teiki to fully be able to utilised their skills. As they ran close to the room Poku talked about, Luna came to a halt. “STOP!” she shouted. Everyone else came to a halt.

“What’s wrong?” Astra asked, peeking behind the group at the oncoming spiders. “We have to go NOW!” Luna looked back towards the spiders. “I sense an incredibly strong individual near the room!” Some of the spiders caught up to them. Al and Poku intercepted them and cut them down. Astra looked at Luna with a worrying look. “At the moment, we will be overrun by the spiders if we don’t get into the room so that the two of you can support us. We have to take the chance.” Luna hesitated, then agreed. The group then continued on towards the room.

“We are near the room!” Poku shouted. “It’s just ahead of us!” The group made it into a large open room in the cave. Al turn to look behind them, and to his surprise, the spiders had stop chasing them. This gave him a very bad feeling. “Quick, search the room for every possible opening so that we can know where they will be coming in from!” Teiki shouted. The group started looking around frantically for any opening. “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!” shouted a voice from above them.

The group looked up, and saw nothing but darkness. The ceiling was too high for their torches to lit up. “WHO ARE YOU? AND WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE?” shouted the voice onces more. Then from the ceiling came a large shadow slowly making its way down. It looked like a much, much bigger spider coming down. “Damn, it’s possibly the queen of the nest!” Astra alerted the others, and brandished his swords towards it. The large spider has now reached the ground, letting the light from the torches reveal it.The large spider had a black exoskeleton. And to the surprise of everyone, in place of the head, was a female human torso. It wasn’t just a spider queen, It was Arachne.