Vaile let out a small laugh as he finished discussing the plan with the nameless spider. He had indeed come up with a fairly good one, as the spider had anticipated, and now he and the gaggle of cultists that were part of his experiment were making their way out of town and towards a certain cave. While the experiment was already a resounding success, he had been of the mind lately to simply keep it going. This was not because he found religion in the form of the Spider Cult, oh no. No, he was continuing it because, like the type of gamer that he was, he just couldn’t bring himself to stop now that he was on a roll.

Like a good MMO Player, he found grinding towards as much of a 100% completion as he possibly could to be a decent way to get his brain to release the ‘happy chemicals’. Every time some new cultist found their faith in what he already knew was a dumb thing, he got a surge of dopamine, and by now he was nearly finished with this town’s conversion. The board was nearly fully set, and the cultists here had already sent missionaries out to spread the cult even further, with Vaile donating a heaping helping of Charisma Buffing potions to smooth any rough parts.

He could barely keep himself from smiling as he and the nearly 1000 strong mob of men and women descended upon the entrance to the old headquarters of the cult. He did feel a bit wrong doing this, but lately he had found himself more of the mind to help his Tamed Beings and their followers with pretty much anything they desired, regardless of the unethical or immoral nature of it. Perhaps it was a bit of a give and take, where the myriad Tamed Beings gained a kind of freedom and intelligence from their connection with him and he, in turn, gained a more… unethical kind of morality from them.

As for why it was so immoral, well, the majority of the Tamed Beings that he had connections to were of a darker sense of alignment. And as for the majority of those that weren’t, those were of a more neutral alignment, morally speaking, so he essentially had a whole lot of devils on his shoulders whispering temptations into his ears, with a mere dozen or so angels doing the same, but advocating for a more moral way of doing things.

The current actions he was taking were, in a way, a mix of both good and evil. Sure, he was spreading a cult of evil spider worshipping crazy people around like the plague, but at the same time, he was trying to make both the cult and the target of their worship a bit more tame compared to what it once was. And as for right now? Well, he was bringing a bunch of people to do something about a gang of men and women who engaged in animal cruelty, so that was technically a moral thing to do, right?

Well, he’d leave that can of worms for more dedicated philosophers down the line. There was no sense in trying to wrap his head around that when odds were that he would find himself written about both in flattering and unflattering ways decades or even centuries later. He would act, and he would let the future generations decide whether his actions were morally reprehensible or not. It was better for his mental health to just not think about things, and so he didn’t.

But right now he had to direct the mob, and with the weapons at the disposal of the Exterminators, he would either need to use a living wave or some better tactics than that. Then again, what better way to drive home the point that those who were loyal to the big fucking spider that was underground were better than those who weren’t than to show off his own power and pretend that the nameless spider was the one to grant it to him?

Vaile metaphorically rolled up his sleeves and directed the mob to form a makeshift arena in which he could fight. Once the bug-hunters came out, he would show both them and the mob exactly what true power really was.

…

“That was a nice bit of catharsis!” joked a member of the Exterminators as he and his fellows walked back to the surface. The new gadget had worked wonders, and it would make their job a whole hell of a lot easier going forward. If all they needed to do in order to kill those monsters was to set up one of those fog machines, then they would have a much easier time from now on.

“Hold it.”

Their commander held out his arm to block their movement. They could feel it too. Something powerful was up ahead, just beyond the mouth of the cave. Whatever it was that was up there was absurdly dangerous and wanted to make that known. It wasn’t even trying to hide its power, so it wasn’t a spider or any normal monster that they had ever dealt with. The gang steeled themselves, readied their weapons, and moved forward in a way that would allow them to cover each other. If whatever was up there struck at the lead, they would drown it in magitech fire.

They reached the opening where the cave ended and the surface began, and to their shock, they saw thousands of cultists encircling them.

“WEAPONS FREE!” their leader shouted, but before they could fire their weapons were damaged by something slamming into them at high speed. Their firearms shattered in their hands and the force of whatever destroyed their guns continued into their bodies and launched them backwards a bit, sprawling the lot of them out on the ground with bruises and sore wrists.

“Now, that isn’t very neighborly of you.” Said a voice that sent feelings of utter disgust and gut-wrenching sickness through them. “And here I thought you would be of the mind to try and show the Spider Cult the ‘power of your great and noble cause’. You don’t mind doing that, do you? I have a few people here who would love to show you how wrong you have been to deny the righteousness of their faith.”

All of their eyes locked onto the man in red, white, and a mask that had his hands on his hips, showing how he had absolutely no sense of concern regarding his foes. The man in ornate garments then snapped his fingers, and the air behind the Exterminators shimmered before a bunch of giant spiders appeared from literally nothing and nowhere. They were now boxed in, with man-eating spiders behind them and an angry mob of crazy cultists in front of them.

“So,” said the man in ornate clothes and a mask in a voice that somehow sounded both like that of a stereotypical handsome hunk but also like how fetid septic waste and rotting corpses smelled, “care to gamble on which is better; you and yours or the cult that you hate so much? A few matches between members should be enough to show which group is better, so what do you say? If you win, we’ll not only let you go free, but we’ll let you kill us all. How’s that for a wager, eh?”