“Oh, well, we don’t have much time, let me fix the armour first,” Fred said, trying to avoid the topic. He started walking towards the back of the tunnel, away from everyone and pulled out some glasses with dark shades, “If you want to keep your eyesight, don’t look straight at the armour while I work on it.”

“Wait, where are you going?” the owner of the piece of armour asked.

“To a dark place, away from everybody,” Fred commented,

“Are you using a new smithing method, can I watch?” Jackson asked,

“Me too,” Ronald joined in.

“Wait, I don’t want you going off with my armour,” the owner commented.

“Fine, fine, you’re lucky I have 3 more pairs of glasses,” Fred sighed. He rummaged through his pocket and found 3 more pairs, “Put these on,”

The three placed the glasses on their eyes, “Wait, why are these so dark, I can barely see.”

“Don’t take them off until I say so, otherwise I won’t take responsibility if you lose your eyesight.” Fred found a quiet place with two boulders next to each other. He straddled one and placed the piece of armour on the other, the others down the tunnel could barely see, as well, Fred had positioned himself in the way.

“Go take a look,” one said to his friend.

“No way, I don’t have one of those glasses,” the friend commented.

“Are you a wuss, he’s just saying that to hide his craft,” the first one said.

“Alright, alright, I’ll go.” He rose steadily, however, before he could take a step, zapping sounds came from down the tunnel, with a strong stuttering light coming from in front of Fred. “What, is that lightning arcs, why is he using lightning,” like the others, he had to cover their sights with their hands as they looked over.

Although Fred was blocking them, with the metallic shine in the walls around them, the light was still bouncing around and staying strong. It took just a few minutes before it stopped. Fred then turned the armour around looking for more puncture marks and continue wielding when he found some.

Overall, it took about 5 minutes to patch up the armour, and soon he was able to fix everyone’s armour, for now, taking up roughly half an hour. “Right, is everyone rested? It would be best to keep the pressure on the nest,” Peter asked.

They each rose to their feet, with a few complaints whispered here and there. “Same strategy as before?” Harold asked, his other teammates were healed now, meaning they will have reinforcements. This will allow the front line to be more proactive in the battle.

“Yeah, it looks like this is going to be a grind, we should have reduced their nest down to under 30 by now,” Peter answered.

They began waking down the tunnel again, with the melee units at the front and crossbowmen in the rear, “So, Peter, you didn’t tell me about the spider princess, and forward nests,”

“Well, when it comes to Silver spiders, they build societies, having multiple colonies in a weblike pattern, with the, let’s say capital in the centre. In the Silver spider society, they usually have 3 times of spiders that can produce, the empress, who would reside in the capital, however, the Empress can only produce the guard spiders, like what we saw next to the princess, as well as the elite guard spiders, which can only be breed by her.” Peter narrated.

“I see,” Fred was shocked, not only were these creatures’ showing intelligence beyond what Fred thought would be possible for them, but they showed characteristics usually only found amongst sapient creatures.

“Next is the queens, usually they take up command of major colonies under the empress’s domain, as well there is usually 3 or more queens staying with the empress, and finally the princesses, these are usually tasked with expanding the domains by creating forward nests, which, if successful, the princess will become a queen as the colony grows.” Peter finished off the explanation.

“So, wouldn’t that mean we are close to the Silver spider ‘empire’?” Fred asked.

“It’s hard to say, according to our records, they are just thrown out into the wild and the Empress just waits and sees who makes it. Only the closest colony with a queen will put up a guard if we destroy it, but the empress and the rest of the ‘empire’ won’t mobilize until a queen is either killed or forced to flee.” Peter reassured.

“Heads up, we are here” Harold shouted out to the rest of them, they were finally back at the nest and began forming up.

“same routine as before guys, Fred start preparing the bolts, crossbowmen at the ready,” Peter called out, Fred quickly got to work charging the bolts, and started handing them out, they could hear the nest stir, and the smaller spiders started rushing them, “first rank, loose,” Peter called out, “Second rank switch,” the two ranks switched, as practised.

Fred was able to notice that there were 32 of them, but according to the maths he worked out earlier, there should have been 26 left, this meant that the nest had a way of procuring reinforcements, and that of an alarming rate, alternatively, some of them were out hunting for food and had returned now.

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Who knows how many more will show up, so time was of the essence for the group. However, with the more aggressive approach, the front rank could commit to, casualties on the spider side were soon piling up, after the second rank fired, Peter gave them new orders, “Second rank, on your next round, target the bodyguard on the left, we need to nab the princess as soon as possible.”

“Understood,” they called out, Fred remembered them tanking the bolts last time, so he applied more of a charge to the next bolts, increasing the temperature to 400 Celsius above the melting point for iron, this, however, put more of a strain on Fred’s mana pool, which didn’t get much of a rest earlier due to fixing armour.

The second rank was now prepared to fire again, and with the sound of twangs the bolts went flying, but, this time, there was zaps of lightning bolts arcing off to any spiders getting too close, although this was damaging a few spiders, it caused a drop in power to the bolts, but luckily three hit home, causing some of the leaking innards to set fire, and lightning streaks to run across its body.

Seeing the guard fall like this caused the princess to get agitated, “What was that, Fred? The other bolts didn’t do that.” Peter asked.

“Due to the guards tanking the arrows last time, I overcharged them, but it has taken a lot of mana out of me, so pick your targets wisely for another round like that,” Fred commented.

“Great, great, the princess is getting agitated, we might be able to nab her. The first rank, target another guard with the normal arrows, second rank, we are going to aim at the princess,” Peter ordered,

“But the normal ones Fred has given us won’t work, as Fred said.” One of the first ranks commented.

“That’s the point, we want her to relax again so we can catch her,” Peter argued.

At this, the first rank aimed again and fired at a guard, and as predicted, barely any damage, with one bolt shallowly lodged in the body. The princess, as predicted by Peter, calmed down a little seeing this. “Second rank, ready, loose,” Peter ordered.

Four supercharged bolts flew towards the princess at breakneck speed, causing the same lightning-arc phenomenon to occur with any unlucky spiders, the bolts slammed into the princess, causing it to scream in agony, this screech sending the entire colony into a frenzy of confusion. Harold and the front rank started marching forwards, capitalising off of the opportunity.

With the spiders in disarray like this, they couldn’t put up a decent front line, causing more and more to be crushed and trampled to death. “The queen is starting to retreat, hurry,” Peter called out.

Fred gave two of his bolts to crossbowmen, but the last two for that rank, he spent 10 or so seconds attaching his wires, “Quickly, quickly,” the crossbowmen who were still waiting tried to rush him.

“Wait hang on, there, aim these two at the queen, you cannot miss,” Fred warned.

Peter was one of the crossbowmen in the rank still waiting. “What are you planning?”

“Just fire, you don’t want the princess fleeing, do you,” Fred commented,

“Alright, I’ll trust you,” Peter said, and aimed with the other one, “Loose,” he called out.

Feeling the wire sprawls spinning around on his back, he quickly arc-wielded his feed to the iron-enriched tunnel floor and braced himself. As soon as the arrows connected with the princess, Fred forced the sprawls to stop with his Metal Esper, this caused him to jolt forwards a bit from the princess’s strength.

Fred could continue charging the bolts, but his arms couldn’t move from being stretched out directly in front of him. “Are you ok, you have the princess anchored?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine, quick grab these arrows, they are anther supercharged arrows,” they took it from his hands, and then Fred had his other two cables follow along the first two cables using electromagnetism, they moved rapidly down towards the princess and pierced her again.

At the same time, four more bolts went whizzing at her, albeit one of the guards sacrificed himself by blocking it.

With four sprawls of wire attached to the princess, Fred now had more torque to reel her in. he also forced the metal at the ends of the wire to dig deeper into the princess’s flesh and twisted its shape to cause it to be lodged in more, Fred found out that he could manipulate the length of this wire with his metal Esper, which he would have struggled to manipulate another piece of metal at the same distance.

He would have to study this later though as at the moment he had to deal with this battle. As he was reeling it in, he suddenly got a notification,

*notification* you can attempt to force the ‘Silver spider Princess’ to submit,

Do you want to,

Yes (75% chance)

No.

Yes- Silver Spider Princess becomes a tamed creature bound to you.

“Er, Peter?” Fred called out; he didn’t know much information to go on with this.

“What is it?” Peter called out,

“It says I can tame the Princess, and that I would have 75% success chance,” Fred told him. “What should I do?”

“What?” Peter paused for a brief moment, “it’s worth it, you may end up with the rest of the colony under you by proxy, plus they make a metallic thread that is highly sought after,”

Fred thought for a second, “Am I stuck with one?”

“No, you are limited, but all spiders that are under her would not take up another slot.” Peter answered, “Quickly make your choice, we are running out of time.”

‘Yes’ Fred commanded. “I’ve confirmed it,” Fred called out, at this the princess started to calm down, and the spiders started pulling away from the engagement.

“Pull back,” Peter called out, the group pulled away from the spiders.

“What’s happening,” Harold called out, it looks like he wasn’t able to hear Fred’s conversation.

“We have managed to tame the princess,” Peter pointed out, “See, the spiders are calming down.”

“Who did it?” Harold asked, he seemed annoyed. At this point, they all got messages regarding the end of the battle, with their rewards and bonuses from it.

“Fred did,” Peter commented.

“Him, his ascension should be too low, you need ascension 5 for it.” Harold snapped, he did not believe Fred could already be at ascension level 5, he was ascension 5, and this battle had just capped him out at level 10.

“I am, ascension 5, turned level 7 from this,” Fred commented. Everyone, except Peter, Jackson, Ronald and two others, who participated in the war in Albion was shocked, due to Fred’s war both he, as well as Jackson and Ronald and the two others had gained an advantage over the others.

“What,” Harold got visibly angry, Fred had managed to catch up so fast, he should have a five-year head start, but due to him distancing himself from Edward, he was stationed with garrison duty in Castile, reducing his chances to gain exp.

“So, what have you got from this Fred?” Peter asked.

“It looks like 25 spiders, this is the princess, two guards, and the 9 remaining spiders here, as well, 13 spiders are out on hunting missions,” Fred responded.

Peter whistled at this. “You lucked out there, and we all did to an extent, there were another 13 spiders it could call upon,” Peter then turned to look at the crowd, someone needs to report to the garrison captain, we have secured the entrance to the cavern,”

“I’ll go,” it was one of the melee personnel who was a reservist for the battle. He quickly ran down the hall.