H-rank dungeons were something most people considered to be relatively harmless, as long as the monsters within didn’t come out. A well-trained team of police officers, armed with rifles and enough ammunition, could clear the whole place with little trouble.

The main problem with such weak dungeons was their spawn rate, which was sufficiently high to almost saturate Awakeners’ ability to clear them up, as well as the risk of their going unnoticed long enough to rank up.

A G-rank dungeon, after all, was a different thing entirely, requiring military intervention to clear.

It was why, when a H-rank one was found at the brink of reaching the next level, they were given priority even surpassing some E-rank ones.

Conversely, those on the upper side of the tier but not yet close to reaching the next were almost ignored. They were stable enough that no intervention was required and were not nearly as lucrative as upper tier ones.

“That leaves several H-rank dungeons for you to tackle, now that you have reached a level where you won’t just get squashed like bugs.” Miss Walker had said.

And indeed, at least a dozen relatively stable dungeons had been earmarked for their use in the next few weeks. Most of those had been owned by the Golden Sun Guild, whose holdings were still in the process of being completely disbanded.

Their properties were mostly given to the AA, which included the dungeons they had held for their shady purposes, alongside those they operated legally.

The place they were going at currently was one of those. Sitting a few miles north of Carmel, New York, a sleepy town of about twenty-five thousand people, a mix of suburbia and rural, was one of those irrelevant dungeons.

The Golden Sun had initially earmarked it as a potential moneymaker, what with all the silk they could get from it. They had paid a whopping twenty thousand dollars for a month-long lease and, after a short inspection, had decided it was not worth the effort to develop it.

The spiders within produced thread, yes, but it was incredibly sticky, not conducive to making clothes like they had hoped for.

Of course, they could still have sent a couple of their Awakeners to slaughter their way in, take all the mana stones and call it even. Their initial investment would have been more than made up, and they wouldn’t need to justify a loss on their balance sheet.

Since they were very much not interested in wasting time on the crumbs they’d get from an entire afternoon of cutting through beasts, however, it was simply left fallow. They had much more lucrative business to get to, after all.

Still, there is something not quite right. I just cannot put my finger on what.

“And so here we are.” The local guide said. She was a middle-aged blonde, the kind that put on progressively suffered loneliness more and more as the years since her children had gotten out of the house went by. This Megan had found a calling to volunteer as a guide for the local park, Clarence Fahnestock State Park, and it served as enough excitement to keep her from depression.

She gestured to the darker patch of the forest, where the canopy of trees obscured much of the filtering sunlight. With his high SENSE, James could also see the first webs, strategically hidden so as to catch unsuspecting prey.

“It’s really a pity, but no one wants to risk getting eaten by giant spiders, you know?” Megan continued, laughing to herself at her morbid statement. “We thought that since a big shot guild like the Golden Sun had taken the deed, it’d get solved immediately, but then it turned out they were crooks. Can you imagine? I could have never. The guy who came to take a look at the spiders was very elegant and charming.”

Tuning out the woman, James observed deeper with his metaphysical sense. There was the expected unnatural quiet of a dungeon since most wildlife got either eaten or driven away, but even the smallest insects were missing here.

Despite the mana levels not showing a hint of pushing to G-rank, it wouldn’t surprise me if the spiders were about to start roaming the forest. They must have already eaten everything within the dungeon proper. Usually monsters self-regulate…

“Thank you for your help, ma’am.” Daniel said, always the most diplomatic of the group. In short order, he managed to convince the woman to finally leave them be, as it would become quite dangerous for an average human like her.

“I thought she would never leave.” Lauren muttered under her breath.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Alright, annoying WASP aside, we need to get our heads in the game.” James announced as he started walking towards the dungeon “Ambush predators, sticky webs and paralyzing venom. Let’s try not to become spider fodder, people.”

“That’s if the information from the Golden Sun is reliable. I wouldn’t put money on that.”

James turned to give Lauren the stink eye. They had already been over the issue several times with Miss Walker, but she was too stubborn to give up. He was as suspicious as she was, but bringing it up again would not accomplish anything. They would find out soon anyway.

“Yes, yes, I know. I’ll shut up.” The girl replied, holding her hands up.

James shook his head in exasperation, before something pinged his senses. Immediately, he refocused, and his teammates quit horsing around, following his lead.

“Two big ones. Two hundred feet, one on top of the big oak, the other inside a bush.” He relayed.

Against ambush predators like these spiders, Thakinetic Awareness was truly a godsend. It nullified their biggest advantage, turning the fight into a more predictable confrontation.

Carefully, they approached the monsters, not giving any hint of having realized they knew.

When James felt the first one coil up, he lifted one finger, alerting the others, and then all hell broke loose.

Maria’s fireball flew true, hitting the sticky web the bush spider had shot, igniting it and pushing it back against its maker.

The second monster jumped from above the tree, fangs poised to sink into James’ flesh and paralyze him. Instead, they met Daniel’s glowing shield, which easily held against the pressure.

James was upon it before it could reorient itself, fist charged with Thakinetic Empowerment. The hard chitin of its skull held against the first blow, but it still rattled the spider enough that it could only stay there, flat against the loamy soil.

Another hit in the same spot cracked it, making the beast screech. That sound was cut off abruptly when Daniel drove his shield into the fracture, pulping its brain.

Turning around, James saw that the other monster was down for the count, too. The sticky web it had released turned out to be quite flammable, and having it splashed against its body had made it go into a frenzy, allowing Lauren to quickly drive her knives into it.

Now that the fight was over, James observed the beasts. They were almost pitch black, save for a grayish discoloration on their abdomen. Their fangs dripped with paralyzing venom, and their eight eyes were glassy with death.

The System proclaimed them as [Mutated Hunter Spider - Sentinel], which felt very appropriate. These creatures, for all the ease with which team 0 had dealt with them, were true predators. Their central bodies were as large as the squirrels James battled with so long ago, but their legs made them almost as large as the Boss rat.

Shortly after they were done with their initial assessment of the threat level, which coincided with the one within the Golden Sun’s papers, they proceeded deeper into the dungeon.

Several more of the same ambushes repeated themselves, so much so that it became clear it was almost the only tactic available to the spiders.

Sometimes, they were lone, larger variants, named [Mutated Hunter Spider - Forager], indicating creatures meant to go further out into the forest, confirming James’ suspicions that the dungeon would have started spilling in short order. Other times, there were three or four of the Sentinels, but the result was always the same.

With the element of surprise taken away and without enough strength to in any way damage Daniel’s defenses, the spiders simply didn’t have any way of harming them.

Maria’s fireballs burned any web they came across, and her control was high enough to harmlessly ignite the sticky mess, even if it caught onto their suits. Any possible discomfort was further eased by their D-rank quality.

They all got a level as they pushed through the dungeon, always being careful of a possible larger ambush. Still, it seemed the spiders were simply not interested in or capable of working together, even though it would have completely changed the balance.

I can sort of understand why the Golden Sun Guild didn’t clear this place. The spiders are all so far apart, and they are disgusting enough that it’s almost not worth it for us. For them, it would have basically been charity work. Twenty thousand dollars on a bad investment probably wasn’t even worth bothering with.

Once the number of webs in the canopy was enough to cause almost complete darkness, they all activated their in-built torches.

Standard teams of rookies would avoid doing so simply because the light could attract larger numbers of monsters, but given the spiders’ modus operandi and James’ sensory skills, they had little chance of getting swarmed.

After one last ambush, this time by two of the larger variant, they finally entered a clearing. Webs spanned the entire thing, so thick that the trees beneath them were almost invisible. A strange humidity permeated the whole chamber, as if they had stepped in a library.

It was quite evident why the spiders had spent so many resources on this specific place, as hundreds of eggs shined in the reflected light of the torches. They were milky white and stuck together in weird clumps, some in geometric shapes while others haphazardly.

Actually, there might be thousands. Jesus Christ, there are so many.

As the light of their torches illuminated the whole chamber, a shiver went down James’ spine. The sheer number of the eggs was mind-boggling, and the consequences of their hatching would be catastrophic.

“Shit. There might be enough here to overrun the town.” Lauren cursed, taking in the sight.

“If they all hatched, they would take over the entire reserve. It might be enough to push this dungeon up a rank altogether.” James agreed, staring fixedly ahead as he considered the implications.

“We need to kill them all.” Daniel concluded, grim but resolute.

“I actually don’t think I should just set fire to all of them, for once.” Maria added, pale-faced “I can generally control the flames, but this much webbing would ignite immediately. It could turn into a gigantic wildfire.”

“The old-fashioned way it is, then.” Ezekiel sighed, taking out his own knife. He cast a buff to everyone’s AGI since there was little need to augment their STR to break the eggs. More important was to do so before the Boss found them, and they became embroiled in a desperate fight while trapped in the webbed chamber.

With a sigh, James started punching and kicking, crushing the eggs and the barely developed embryos within with numbness.

It was somewhat revolting, but he had gotten used to being elbow-deep in monster offals enough that he could turn off his brain with little trouble.

Only after the twentieth egg, when a notification blinked at the edge of his sight, he snapped out of it.

He smiled, seeing that he had received a level for killing a [Mutated Hunter Spider - Embryo], which gave him [+50 EXP]. It wasn’t that much, but considering the sheer number of unprotected eggs, his mind quickly made the connection.

I think we might have found a way to powerlevel. There are enough eggs here to get us all at least three more, if they all give this much.