The queen guarded both her prize of rotting corpses and the pale, white infants that clung to her back. A heavy thud at my rear caused me to spin in shock. The scorpions who had sensed my intrusion were all scrabbling at the invisible layer that separated my encounter with the outside world. Putting them out of mind, I pulled up the arachnid’s information.

Name – Mutated Scorpion Queen (Boss) (Level 14)

Description – Derived from the family Scorpius Whatthehellicus, this eight-legged monstrosity and its brood have thrown off the shackles of nature and become a colony that has but one goal; eat everything. Their rapidly increased reproductive system means they will overrun the surrounding jungle in days, and the wider lands in months. Unless you can stop it.

Weakness – Physical

Immunities - Poison

Any inkling I had about maternal nature vanished when her corrugated tail spiked one of her children and snapped like a whip, launching it at me. I dodged to the side and the infant exploded against the invisible barrier, its smear running down like bird shit on a window. Another rocketed towards me, and I rolled aside again while activating smite. I figured if she didn’t care about her babies, I wouldn’t either. The portal appeared and my beam lanced down, scouring dozens from her shell and inflicting a small amount of direct damage. She reared up, knocking more loose in her fury. Spying her exposed underbelly, I swapped to my crossbow and fired a shot directly at her abdomen. Though she didn’t care for her children, one of her brood dutifully jumped off and took the hit, blowing apart in a welter of white chitin and yellow pus. I fired again, and yet another of her offspring sacrificed themself at the tip of my magical bolt.

The queen’s front legs crashed down and her tail whipped in my direction, firing a torrent of green ooze. I slipped sideways and started running as the thin stream followed me. I could hear the hiss of corrosion as it hit the mud walls. Keeping ahead of it, I pelted a handful of torches in her direction. Swatting them aside with ease, she stopped with the spray and charged at me. I watched in dread fascination as a group of the pale infants poised on her head and back, ready to launch themselves into the fray. I made to dodge, but she changed direction as soon as my feet shifted. Left with no option, I activated holy shield. The offspring were already flying through the air as big momma hit my impenetrable barrier. They crackled like flies hitting a bug zapper, while the boss was punched backwards by the energy, her mandibles a ruined mess. I turned around and tried to climb out of danger with my spider hands, but the earth was too crumbly and just tore free in small chunks that clung to my setules. A torrent of acid spray coated my golden shell, and the timer was rapidly heading towards zero. I had to gain some ground to manoeuvre, so I charged the queen in turn, using the magical energy to force her back.

My swarm came off cooldown, and I called them forth just as my protective sphere collapsed. It had exactly the effect I’d been hoping as the cowardly parent retreated and shook off her remaining children to fight my furry minions. We left them to their battle, moving to the other side of the nest. Gore trickled from the queen’s ruined maw as she watched me.

My body was alive with waves of crawling ickiness at the sight, and I added to it by dropping Spidey directly onto her back. He followed my directions and began binding the corrosive-spurting tail with thick web. While she thrashed and struggled to throw off my companion, I ran in and hammered at her head with my kinetically projected shields. Each bash broke her carapace apart a little more, until she lashed out at me with her pincers to make it stop.

I rolled beneath the swipes, coming to my knees and thrusting upward with my sword. The blade crunched through the thinner joint at her elbow, severing one of the arms, which bounced off my head. I reeled slightly from the blow, and her other pincer clamped around my body in a rerun of my fight with Gutrender. The difference was my current enemy didn’t have the hydraulic power of the goblin king, and I managed to get my arms between the compressing claws, using my increased strength to pry them apart.

Spidey had moved on to trying to bite the queen, but her armour was too thick for his fangs to penetrate. In an attempt to slow her down I ordered him to go for the legs instead, and he scuttled around the side of her immense body.

Feeling something tear in the pincers, I dropped out of the damaged grip of the scorpion queen. Spidey was a blur, wrapping layers of silken threads around her limbs. With several of her legs out of commission, she began to list sideways, unable to move in any direction with purpose. I used her frustration to my advantage, darting in and chopping at the thick chitinous plating of her crippled arm. After a few savage blows it flopped, hanging on by some meat and stringy tendons. Now defenceless, I had no qualms about ending the fight. She tried to move her head away from my raised sword, only to fall onto her side from the constricting bands that bound her legs tightly. I used the same detachment the insects displayed and hacked the head apart with the flashing of crits in my vision. Shinara’s neurological debuff was heavily weakened by the boss tag, but it slowed her down enough to allow me to keep slashing away. The health bar greyed out, ending her life.

Spidey creeped over, and I gave him a gentle pat on his head in thanks. To my surprise, my skin wasn’t crawling as much as it once had and I counted that as a win. He vanished back into my pack, leaving me alone with the corpses of a hundred children and one terrible mother.

“Uh oh.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me, but without the protection of the boss battle seal, the rest of the hive swarmed in. I tossed out Shinara’s grenade, and the dark ground came alive with the shimmering patch of white silken webbing. It managed to stop a dozen of the warriors, but the rest simply skirted around it. I readied myself to fight to the death, my shield pulled tight and sword at the ready.

Except there was no fight to be had.

The other arachnids approached, their antennae quivering. I’m not sure what they sensed within the thick gore I was coated in, but it stopped their hostility and their icons changed to a neutral yellow. Now that the threat was over, my auto-loot function stripped everything from the room as I walked around. The soldiers who had been assigned to Liza’s team were a ghastly sight and I had to ignore the suffering they must’ve gone through to look the way they did. Undamaged amongst the goods I took was a partly charged sat-phone. I slipped it into my pack and back out again, clearing the mucus and blood from the face of the equipment. There was some decent gear from the queen herself, but I wanted to get topside and out of the strangling confines of the nest. I checked the way ahead before I left the room and found the full force of arachnids was now gathered around the dead matriarch.

As I made to climb my way out, I noticed something half buried against one of the walls. Moving cautiously in case the effect of my extra layer of gloop wore off, I approached the shiny black surface. Upon closer inspection, it was a reinforced container of some kind, and I gently broke away several layers of the dried excretion, fully exposing the casing. The hinged lid was deeply buried in the wall, but in the bottom of the large plastic crate were a series of smaller sections separated by heavy dividers. I didn’t have enough time to examine it right there, so I slipped it into my pack. The entombed lid came with it, leaving a narrow void in the dried, shiny residue.

Making for the tunnel exit, I left in full stealth mode, hoping the scorpions would stay put. With one eye on my minimap the whole way, I finally stepped out into daylight, squinting at the brilliant glare of the afternoon sun. Before I could talk myself out of it, I moved to each of the entrances and tossed in a handful of my many torches. The fire caught just as quickly as before, and in less than a minute all of the tunnels were spewing black smoke and leaping flames. My enemy might’ve turned neutral toward me, but they were still a deadly threat to anyone who might chance upon them. I saw another dot slowly approaching and found Liza standing behind me, her face wrinkled at the state I was in.

“What happened in there?” she asked, turning to marvel at the growing inferno.

I gently pulled her back as the intensity of the heat grew to uncomfortable levels. “They had a queen.”

“A what? That’s impossible.”

“Impossible, but I still had to fight and kill her.”

“The abnormality might be a by-product of the increased oxygen. A genetic offshoot that allows them to breed faster and in so doing, makes them more likely to survive and thrive.”

“I also found this,” I said, popping the large crate down at our feet.

Liza knelt and studied it. “This is like an incubator.” She pointed out a side section that I’d not been able to see. “That’s a temperature regulator. I’m sure that’s a timer linked to the latch too.”

I shrugged. Everything about the container was out of power now. The small fans were still and the clock she had pointed out was without a time.

“This means that the creatures were inserted here in the jungle,” she continued. “On purpose.”

“An experiment?” I mused. “Or the first strike before the dinosaurs are unleashed?”

“The world in prehistoric times wasn’t just populated with giant carnivores. They had a similar ecosystem to us. Varying places on the food chains. Insects, mammals, reptiles, and everything in between. It’s like Sheldon wants to create your… Jurassic Park was it?”

I nodded.

“It’s like he’s trying to recreate that, but why?”

“There will be a lot less people yelling at him when they’ve got a tyrannosaur chasing them down the street,” I offered.

“You think he’ll try to kill the whole world?”

“I doubt I’d be here otherwise,” I said.

“What an asshole!” Liza snapped.

I chuckled at her outburst. “I think that’s an understatement.”

“You’re going to stop him, right?” she demanded, desperately.

“I’m going to try,” I replied, honestly. “Oh, and here’s your sat-phone.”

The device appeared on the palm of my outstretched hand, and Liza gingerly reached out to take it. “Thanks.”

“It won’t bite you. It’s just been… somewhere else.”

“The team?” she asked, keying in a long number.

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

She sighed, placing the phone to her ear. Even over the steady roar of the fire I heard the call refuse to connect. “That’s not possible.”

She dialled again, and the call wouldn’t go through.

“I thought sat-phones were designed to work in places without service,” I said.

“They are. No matter where we are, the signal should bounce off any number of the satellites in orbit.”

The truth hit me. “Unless a certain tech trillionaire who’s the master of telecommunications doesn’t want it to go through?”

“But Sheldon didn’t own all of them. The old government ones should suffice. I’m sure they were still online, even after he upgraded everything.”

“Can they be hacked? Like a computer?”

She tried again, with no greater success. “At their age, I suppose so. And if anyone’s capable, it’ll be Lake. Damnit!”

“It could be worse,” I said, “we could be walking out of the jungle while being pursued by giant scorpions.”

“Instead we’re just going to be food for the skeeters until we hit the reserve and open air.”

“Do they have foot long stingers?”

“No, much smaller, but still an ungodly nuisance.”

I heard rustling from the trees behind us and in one motion dragged Liza behind me and readied my weapon.

Liza gasped at my back as the man stepped into view. “Cody?” She forced her way past me and ran at the guy.

He caught her mid-jump and twirled her round, laughing. “Hey, Sis. What did you get yourself into this time?”