The spider princess was huge, its body the size of a van. Fred was looking up and down its features, it had 8 red eyes and a stony metallic body with silver lines running down its body, a trait shared with all of the spiders, Fred was curious to figure out its makeup, this was the first time he had come across a living thing made out of metal.
“What are you thinking of naming it?” Jackson came up behind him to also stare at the spider.
“I don’t know, I’m bad with names,” Fred responded. “I don’t even know what to do with it.”
“What do you mean?” Jackson asked.
“Where would I house it, would I be able to take it with me when I return to earth, I don’t even know what it eats or how it reproduces, or what it needs to survive,” Fred commented.
“They wouldn’t last in our world for long, their mana starts depleting fast there, which causes them to die,” Ronald said he had just joined the pair. “But you can use it to help you find resources and fight off other monsters down here. Albeit they are usually bottom of the pack when it comes to predators in this world, relying on numbers.”
“I see,” Fred said.
“Come on, they are going to share the loot, we got quite a bit of monster crystals from this. And some of their monster parts are quite good.” Jackson said as he turned away and walked down the hall. The two followed to see what good parts they could get.
___
“Fuck,” Harold groaned, “How the fuck did he subdue a princess spider.”
“It’s just a silver spider, Harold, there are far better monsters out there that we can subdue.” A member of his group commented.
“Tristen, he can use this spider to help him subdue a better creature, and the point is that he keeps being one step ahead of me,” Harold argued.
“Come on,” another one of their teammates Justin came rushing over. “They are sharing the loot; we need to make sure we are not left with scraps.” The other three got up from their resting position and headed over.
Each of them managed to nab two monster crystals each and some body parts, which the people started trading with each other, as Fred was looking over what should be the web sac, he saw it was filled with sprawls of metal elemental iron wire. Although the wires were quite thin, about as thick as hair strands, Fred traded some of his spider fangs and limbs for another sac, as he wanted to experiment with it later.
The sacs were quite large, just two of them would fill his backpack.
The group then heard people coming down the tunnel from the entrance. The one who went back to report came with the guards, ready to set up a base camp. Once they were there. the scouts started heading back up to the depot to rest for the night and to store their loot.
___
The next day the scout groups came back down to the sounds of construction. They were building a fort down to the bottom layer of the cavern, “Right, listen up,” the garrison commander called them over for a meeting. “It was great work, yesterday, defeating the nest outpost. However, we are still not safe, we need you to start mapping out the areas down here marking dangerous areas, and bringing back mineral samples of what you find. You will be split into two teams now, one team going right the other team going left,”
The commander left it at that, Fred’s group teamed up with another group and headed right, while Harold’s group went left with the remaining group.
“What do you think we will find down there?” Fred asked.
“More spiders, probably,” Jackson answered.
“Some rare metals hopefully,” Ronald interjected.
“Metal mana spring, but that would probably be occupied with another colony outpost,” Peter said.
They had trekked for half a mile now, where they found the walls to be made up of a dark grey crystal-like structure.
“What are these” Fred was amazed he recognized the structures from somewhere.
“Iron crystals, they are useless, though, they turn brittle and unusable once melted,” Ronald said.
Fred placed his hand on the wall, and holding a metal crystal in the other, he used mana sense, “It’s not Iron, these are rutile,” Fred picked up his pick hammer, and using metal mana to harden it, started mining a part of the wall.
He pulled off a good size chunk of the stuff and placed it into his backpack.
“What’s Rutile?” Ronald asked.
“It’s a type of ore, for the metal titanium. If this is considered useless, would they mind if I took it?” Fred asked.
“Probably not, you could pay some of them to mine it for you, but if it starts becoming a sought-after material the prices may rise,” Peter commented.
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“Based on what I have seen, hopefully, I should be the only one with the knowledge to smelt it at the moment,” Fred responded.
“For now, at least, there are spies everywhere,” Peter warned him.
“Well, I have a sample, for now, when I get back, I’ll do some tests to reassure my guess,” Fred commented.
The group carried on moving, half an hour later, the group in front stopped. The groups had taken it in turns to lead every hour. The group in front started getting into a defensive stance, so Fred’s group rushed over to join them.
“What’s the matter?” Peter asked.
“We have movement up ahead,” the leader of the other group answered.
They quietened down and could now hear multiple tapping noises that matched the spiders they had fought before. “Do you want me to send a spider down to scout out?” Fred asked.
The spider group was just behind them. Fred had no other place to put them, so they followed along.
Just as he said this, spiders came running out of the dark tunnel in front of them.
“Brace yourselves!” Peter warned.
They all took defensive formations and had the friendly spiders, cover their flanks and rear.
The tunnel was wide so they couldn’t effectively use a rank formation as they did before. Fred had his two pick hammers ready, he started applying his metal mana to them to strengthen them. 10 spiders rushed out, then 20, 30, and now the count was up to at least 50 spiders.
“Earth Shake,” a member of the other team shouted out, and the ground in front of them shook, directly where the spiders were running into. The shaking didn’t affect the eight-legged beasts that much, but the cracks that had appeared caused some of their limbs to get trapped, tumbling the spiders over.
This had only stalled ten or so spiders, with the rest relentlessly rushing over, they clashed into the shielded guys at the front, who tanked the worst of the impact, now the rest of the group got stuck in, Fred was able to smash a few of the spiders in quick succession. The group was doing much better than before.
Most of them had switched out their weapons to hammers and maces since the previous fight.
Fred’s spiders had joined the fray too, trading blow for blow,
“Arrge,” Fred heard a scream, he tried to look over, but the spiders didn’t give him a chance to.
“Damn it.” Fred cursed under his breath. He sent electrical charges through his pick hammers, which caused all sorts of problems for the spiders when struck. Suddenly he was knocked back with a bit of force. “What the fuck.”
When he stopped and looked at his new assailant, it was a guard spider. Fred ran back into the fight with it, trading blows, however, the hammers weren’t doing as much damage, so he switched them to the pick side.
Hack after hack, his pick was doing minimal but noticeable damage, so he sent his heat mana to the tips of the picks. With a well-timed swing, he managed to attack the shoulder joint of one of its front legs. The spider started hissing in pain, and Fred could hear the sizzling of the cooking internal flesh.
With the pick still lodged in, Fred pulled himself forwards towards its face and lodged the other pick into one of its eyes, Fred was now lodged on to the spider as it thralled around in agony, so with a circuit complete, he sent a lightning discharge through it. It took a few moments to finally kill the guard.
Once Fred managed to dislodge his picks from the spider guard, he noticed that the enemy was in full retreat.
“What happened, why are there so many?” Fred asked.
“We killed two of the guards, with that they saw it as a loss and fled,” Peter explained.
Fred looked around, the people weren’t injured, just exhausted, with some minor cuts and bruises, however, he had lost 5 spiders in the encounter.
They continued to walk down the ravine, each of the people was taking samples of different coloured crystals and rocks they found. “How far are we going to travel?” Fred asked.
“Either to the end of the ravine or half a day’s journey, whichever is shorter,” Peter commented.
About an hour later Fred noticed a hole on the cliffside, about 30 meters up, “Hey look up there.” Fred pointed.
“A cave tunnel, we will check that out tomorrow when we come down here,” Peter commented.
“Is it wise to walk past it, if the spiders are using it then they can cut us off from home?” Fred argued.
Some of the adventures started to worry, it had dawned on them that this could be a trap.
“What are you so worried about, these spiders are weak, we’ve engaged them so many times and have lost no one.” An annoyed voice from the other party could be heard.
“Every battle we fought, we prevented them from swarming and surrounding us, with a clear way of retreat,” Jackson argued.
“Look, let’s just check it out, it may be a shallow cave that doesn’t lead anywhere,” Peter cut in, trying to defuse the tension.
“Hump.” The guy from the other party turned around and started discussing with his team about climbing the rock.
“Let’s just go up for a look,” Peter said. His team started climbing to the entrance.
They reached the level of the cave, Peter, and Fred to the left of the entrance with Jackson and Ronald to the right. “Ready?” Peter asked.
Gaining a nod from the three, “Go.” They sprung around the corner, in a combat stance, ready for what may come. They caught the remanence of the group they had fought before but managed to catch them off guard and charged at them, with Fred’s spiders following the pursuit.
Down below the other team who were just starting to climb up heard the clashes, “It looks like Fred was right,” one of them said.
“Looks like it.” The one who spoke earlier agreed in annoyance. They sped up the climb to catch up to the fight.
There were only 10 or so spiders left from the group, and Fred’s team was easily making short work of them. Fred and Peter beelined the guard, the spiders were less coordinated without a leader, and so, taking it out would give them a tactical advantage.
Sensing its predicament, the guard spider started making loud chittering noises, “We need to hurry, that’s a noise they make to draw nearby spiders.” Peter shouted over the chaos of battle.
Peter slammed his mace at the front of the spider, who managed to use four of its legs to resist the crushing blow, however with Peter bearing down on it, the spider guard couldn’t deal with Fred coming in at the side, Fred swung his two Picks straight into the shoulder joints of the front two arms, ripping them completely off.
Peter was able to pull back and go in for another swing towards the head, with it in agony and having only two arms to block, it could no longer resist the weight of Peter’s blow, crushing its head entirely.
Fred, at this point, had switched to another two targets, the spiders were now in a panic, and their numbers dwindling. Roland and Jackson had managed to take out 5 of the spiders, while Fred and Peter were dealing with the guard.
However, just as they whittled down the spiders to the last three, they heard a rumbling. They looked down the tunnel of the dark and gloomy cave, presumably where the rumbling came from.
It was at this point that the other group finally joined them. “Shit what’s coming,” the leader of the other party voiced out, the rumbling soon changed to a cacophony of thousands of metal needles scratching along the iron-enriched stone floors.