The flying ship was making its way through the sky; beneath it were the wast lands of plains. Before the land was known as the Fertile Kingdom but now it was just the Fallen Kingdom. The reason for the name change was obvious: the once bountiful fields were left to fallow and most of the settlements were abandoned. But of course, there were good reasons for that, namely the raiding bandits but mostly monsters.
Indeed, if one looked below the deck of the Galleon Whale, they would notice a roaming band of ferocious monsters. Those were the common Forest Drakes, they were lizard-like monsters or miniature dragons if you will. The biggest one was the size of a large warg and unlike the real dragon, it couldn’t use a breath attack. The band of drakes were heading towards the seemingly abandoned settlement, probably in search of food.
While it was a common monster in these parts it was the first time the Spider King had encountered the drakes. He used a nearby magical implement, Spider Scope, to increase the range for his perk, “[Inspect]” he read the details of the biggest drake in the pack.
Monster: Forest Drake Alpha
Status Effects: Famished
HP:250
MP:50/50
STA:200
Active Perks
[Ferocious Bite], [Tail Swipe], [Rallying Roar]
Passive Perks
[Venom Fangs], [Regeneration], [Leader]
Resistances
[Physical Resistance: Lesser], [Magical Resistance: Lesser]
Indeed, the stats told him that this was a boss monster, however, it wasn’t that strong. A good party of four or six humans should be able to take it down easily. However, it was not the individual strength of the alpha which made the drake band a threat, it was their sheer number. A quick count told him that there were at least over a hundred.
“Look’s like a good morning exercise.” He concluded and headed to the lower deck.
His noble mount, Warrior Leader Jr, was already waiting for him in anticipation.
“Go time?” He chirped with expectation.
“Go time!” He mounted the spider.
The hatch on the side opened and the spider jumped out stretching his wings. The wings weren’t an actual part of the spider, it was yet another magical item, SilkWeb Seraph. It was a masterwork quality glider made out of DriderSilk and reinforced with Living Wood. The exotic materials allowed the item to carry a set of powerful enchantments: Reinforced +3, Gliding, Cloaking Veil, Stealth, Speed Boost, Projectile Deflection, Terror +2. The last enchantment was more of a side effect and not an enchantment, but it was there and couldn’t be removed. Actually, it was more like a feature and not a bug, yes, let’s look at it like that.
The spider and its rider cut the sky gliding right towards the pack of monsters. The drakes were perceptive monsters and soon caught the sight of a massive flying spider. Needless to say, they weren’t too pleased about it. Luckily, they were landbound dragonoids (no wings) and were just forced to watch and groan at the incoming threat.
The alpha roared rallying its minions around itself. It was commendable that neither of them broke and attempted to flee. But that didn’t mean that the lesser drakes didn’t try to hide behind their bigger brethren who managed to shrug off the Terror debuff.
The gliding spider would soon reach the band of drakes where a fierce bloodbath would ensue, however, it didn’t mean that the two wouldn’t use the air superiority to their advantage.
“[Bombardment].” The simple chirp escaped the spider's mouth.
You know when you shake an apple tree, the one which is full of ripe apples and they just start hailing down on you one after the other in a heavy and painful rain? – this was much like it.
PetallBalls fell on the unsuspecting drakes and burst on impact clouding the entire area in dust, hence afflicting the drakes with Torpor or Sleep if they were weakwilled. And only then did the spider SLAM! right into the centre of the pack. Yes, there were better ways to deal with the monsters, safer ways too, but the two just wanted to have some FUN.
“Warrior Leader Jr!” The Spider King exclaimed not too pleased. “You squished the alpha to a pulp!” He complained.
Yeah, the massive spider had slammed into the alpha drake much like a hammer would at the ripe TomGrape; there wasn’t much of the drake left.
“Our legendary battle is over before it even started…” He said with disappointment.
Indeed, with the leader dead the drakes succumbed to Terror and were fleeing to all sides.
“Sorry, not sorry.” The spider chirped simply shaking the loose scales and bits of flesh off its spidery legs. “[Deactivate]” He chirped again folding the wings of SilkWeb Seraph needly to its sides. “Let’s see who. Can catch and kill. The most.” He proposed.
It was easy to forget that the flying mount was more than that, he was also a warrior and had that warrior spirit.
“It’s on!” The Spider King flashed the spider a grin. “[Transformation: Spider],” he shifted into a more agile form.
The use of Transformation was not an attempt to get the upper hand against the large spider, it was actually done out of respect. He was a mage and would easily win this fight, hence an unspoken rule of the competition was that no magic was allowed; however, the use of perks was fine. Okay, let's admit it, it was a lie; he did it to gain the upper hand… There was just no way to otherwise compete with a massive spider!
Stolen novel; please report.
The two now stood equal, both were spiders. The hunt began!
The Spider King used all of his extra legs to quickly catch up to the fleeing drakes.
“[Spear Thrust],” he jabbed at the nearest one.
Surprisingly the drake dodged the attack rather expertly. The forest drakes lived up to their reputation of high agility. He tried again without much luck; running and swinging your weapon was harder than one might think. Or maybe he just lacked practice.
“Argh!” He yelled in frustration missing again. “[Spin Web: Net]”, he finally gave up trying to pierce the monster.
A jet of threads fired from his free hand and quickly formed a net in the air. The net landed on the drake wrapping around it and arresting its momentum, soon it tumbled to the ground – Trapped. The use of the perk drained his mana to produce a purple magical web, however, this was not against the spirit of the competition because technically this was still a perk.
With the drake now stationary it was a lot easier to strike at it successfully. He turned around to see how his companion was doing. His jaw slung open at the sight: the humungous spider was just using Trample on the lesser drakes mowing down them in his relentless Charge; the spider was a combine harvester and the drakes his wheat.
“I need to step up my game or else…” He started towards the nearest drake.
The Spider King still had one more trick under his spidery chitin.
“[Discharge Core],” he spent the mana stored inside to power boost his abilities. “My final form!”
Much like a boss monster at the end of his HP he glowed in magical red. The magical energy empowered his spider form making it grow larger, stronger and faster. The nearby drakes clearly felt the change and fled with ever-increasing vigour.
“You can run but you can’t escape!” He yelled at the running drake.
The legs under him moved so quickly that the image of them blurred and he was running faster than the wind. However, speed would not be enough to catch up with Warrior Leader Jr. He needed to up his damage dealt per minute.
“[Spin Web: Binding Thread],” he formed an elastic rope and attached it to his spear. “Get over here, [Spear Throw]”, he tried.
He expected to harpoon and pull the drake closer for a finishing blow but instead, due to his heightened agility and strength, the blow was powerful enough to practically explode the side of the drake. And best of all with a quick thug of his arm, he had the weapon back for another throw.
“[Spear Throw], [Spear Throw], [Spear Throw],” he was firing like a mobile auto launcher; six-legged-boosted empowered-boss-spider mobile-spear-auto-launcher!
The spear projectile was aimed at the drakes with merciless precision making quick work of the monsters. It was good that his weapon was Reinforced otherwise it would have broken from abuse a long time ago.
In the end, some of the drakes managed to escape but mostly they were dealt with.
The two spiders met to tell the tally of their kills.
“57,” Warrior Leader Jr chirped contently.
“32…” He said with resignation. “I guess you are named Warrior Leader for a reason. Congratulations, you won. Well done.” He commended the bloodied spider.
“And my price is. A Monster Core.” He chirped his demand.
“Indeed, you bested me fair and square. I think you deserve it.” He paused to look at the spider apologetically. “But I have just discharged my core. We’ll have to wait for me to recharge.” Which would take a few days.
“I understand.” He said clacking his mandibles excitedly.
Judging that the boys had finished their FUN, Drow Assistant descended from the Galleon Whale which hovered just above.
“You did well eradicating the monsters.” She praised the two. “But did this need to be this messy?” She pointed at the bloodied field littered with exploded and trampled drakes. “Good materials went to waste.”
She was right about that. The drake meat was known to be perfectly edible, no not just edible, allegedly it was rich in flavour and succulent then roasted, and even better, it granted a temporary buff of Regeneration. And let's not forget the scales, Drake Scales were perfect for armour and arrow tips. Also, the Drake Eyes and Venom Glands had their use in Alchemy. Honestly, the entire monster could be used for one thing or the other.
“Yeah, let's gather what’s left of them.” He offered apologetically.
…
The ever-helpful spiders gave a spidery hand in the cleanup and butchering of the monsters making the otherwise gruelling work so much easier. Actually, they worked so efficiently that his efforts to help were just slowing the cleanup down. So instead, he whimsically decided to visit the abandoned settlement.
From the first glance of it, it was rather obvious that the settlement fell to bandits rather than monsters. There were signs of fire and brutal melee. And by no means the settlement was small, this was more like a large farming village which housed at least 2500 villagers or so. But by the looks of it, after the bandit raid, the inhabitants either left or succumbed to the monster incursion.
“That’s sad.” He idly kicked a piece of pottery sending it to the wall to shatter.
Vandalism was never okay, but this place was already beyond repair; half-burned and dilapidated.
“Good land is going to waste.” He said the obvious.
*Rustle*, *Bang*, *Thud*, a series of noises came from behind the wall to which he had just shattered the pot.
His reckless noise-making probably roused a nesting monster from its sleep. A not so surprising find really, and then thinking about it, if the village had a nest of monsters they could also clear it and harvest the monsters for materials. He didn’t want to get scolded by the Drow Assistant for wasting ingredients and making a mess again so he prepared Spin Web readying a net for capture.
The monster would likely jump out of the nearby window or the broken doors. He stepped further away to give himself time to use the perk. And there it was a fuzzy monster with green scales!
“[Spin Web: Net]”, he shot it right at the approaching monster.
“Ah!” The monster screeched in alarm.
Another one jumped right out of the doorframe pointing a fanged spear at him.
“Wait…”
Those weren’t monsters, they were his Ashen Rabbits! The one in the net wore a scale west made out of Drake Skales, and the one at the doorway was armed with a DrakeFang Spear.
“Rabbits? What are you doing here?” He questioned surprised.
“Spider?” The rabbit in the net yelped confused.
The rabbit with the spear ignored his question giving him a good look. “You look different than other spiders… Why did you web Ever?”
“Sorry, I mistook you for monsters.”
“Spider, how could you! I’m not a monster!” Ever struggled in the net.
“My apologies, wait… did you say Ever? As in Ashen and Ever?” He moved to dispel his magical web.
“Yes I’m Ashen, and she’s Ever. We’re here on the scouting mission.” He finally replied to the previous question.
“No, Ashen, we are taming monsters.” Ever protested.
The male rabbit just shook his head as if to deny that statement.
“But spider, why are you so far from your nest?” Ashen asked curious.
Okay, the two didn’t recognise him in his spider form so he shifted back to a more human-like variant.
“Oh!”, “Ah!”, both of them exclaimed.
“Yeah,” he smiled at their shock finding the expressions on the rabbits' faces amusing. “I’m also scouting. But mostly killing monsters.”
Ever was finally out of her bindings, she patted her armour as if to clean the dust from it. “King, please don’t kill them all. Some monsters can be tamed!”
Ashen gave him a dubious look for some reason.
“Really?” He questioned, the only one he managed to tame properly was probably only the Enchanted Boar and IceShard Devourer. Of course, spiders didn’t count because they weren’t monsters, they were people!
“Monsters are notoriously resistant to all taming attempts.” He added recalling hearing it in the Aurelian Kingdom.
“Is that so, but I tamed one. You don’t believe me? Come take a look.” Ever said with an annoyed pout.
So the monster was inside the building; he was curious about what sort of creature it was. Ever urged him to follow and he did just so. From the first look at the inside, he understood that the two rabbits were scavenging the building for goodies. There was a bag stuffed full of unwanted or otherwise forgotten items.
Ashen must have caught him looking. “Treasures of the fallen civilisation.” He explained with pride befitting an archaeologist.
No, Ashen, this is just junk!
“But where is the monster?” He questioned.
“Probably got spooked by all the noise.” Ever crouched down and poured some nuts and berries in her hand. “Pss, pss, pss.” She called.
And surely enough, from under the broken pile of furniture a monster emerged.
“See, I didn’t lie. I tamed this one.”
Yes, Ever, you did… however, this wasn’t a monster.
“Ever, this is a human girl.” He pointed out the obvious.
She nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen its status, a human monster.”
He did a quick Inspect just in case. No, it was just your regular human. But yes, she had that Tamed in her status; strange…
He looked at the poor child. “Did these two kidnap you? Where are your parents?”, he spoke in human tongue.
The child, who obviously didn’t speak Spider Chirp and hence couldn't understand the rabbits understood the Spider King because of his Language Comprehension. Well, he was too far gone to look like a human so she didn’t make that mistake. However, her eyes went wide and then tears began forming at the corner of her eyes.
“My parents… They are…” Looking particularly teary-eyed she didn’t finish. “… the rabbits are my family now,” she wiped the tears and looked at him with recovered courage. ”Yes,” she nodded as if to confirm all that to herself.
“I see…” He understood the unsaid.
However, he needed to clear up some misunderstandings the rabbits had. You just don’t go around and Tame little girls, that's just criminal!