He was sitting on the most comfortable pillow ever crafted and casually munching a fruit in his left hand.

“Life is good.” He reflected and took another bite. ”All is well” It was amazing to have no troubles.

A spider scuttered towards the throne in hurried steps. He looked at the messenger raising a curious eyebrow.

“Intruders!” It reported in an alarmed chipper.

The fruit slipped out of his hand and rolled on the ground. “Where?” He stood up.

“Come. Come.”

The spider ran and he ran behind it. At the edge of the farm, he could see his spiders fighting something. He had trouble describing what it was from the distance, but it looked like a tide of brown mass. When he was close enough he realised that this mass wasn’t uniform, it was made out of many small individuals. They were tiny and plump creatures, no bigger than a foot. They had white bodies with stumpy hands and legs, and on their heads was a brown cap. The brown mass was a horde of walking mushrooms! The little creatures gnawed and chewed on his plants. The spiders were trying to remove the pests, but there were simply just too many.

He got close to one specimen.

“Mush! Mush-Mush.” It shouted at him and then bit on his boot.

“Hey, you!” He kicked at the pest sending it flying into the air.

“Mu-oooooo-sh!” It shrieked while coursing through the air.

For whatever reason, the mushrooms didn’t like him even more now. Not one but five mushrooms were gnawing at his boots. He has had enough of this rude behaviour so with a quick thrust of the spear he pierced the mushrooms one by one, making himself a nice mushroom skewer. The five were replaced by ten, and ten by twenty, when soon he had to face what looked like a good fifty; the horde was endless.

He retrieved a flask out of his pocket and flung the contents at the mushrooms. The blue dust burst into the cloud making the mushroom people cough and heave, it didn’t look like they were immune to the debuff. One by one they fell asleep. Alas, he had only a single flask with him, so the moment of respite was temporary, he had to keep fighting the pests one group at a time.

He didn’t need to do that alone either, the spiders were here to help, and the lamias too. His numbers were within thousands but the mushrooms must have been within tens of thousands. The battle was fierce and long, but in the end, the brown horde, what remained of it, retreated into the jungle. Everywhere he looked he saw limp mushrooms littering the floor and a faint mist of red hovered above their corpses.

“Goomba stomp!” He crushed the last one which seemed to be still alive.

Whatever mercy he had it was long gone, and for a reason. The pests had half destroyed his fields, the precious vines had bite marks all over and the fruits were missing, the StemLeaf and newly established FireAgave suffered similar fates. The only exceptions were the blue flowers and the patch where Alraune was living. For whatever reason the pests had avoided her.

If he didn’t have fruits in storage his spiders would starve, the devastation was that bad.

“What were those?” He asked a lamia suspecting the mushrooms had come from the mountain.

“Monsters-sss. Myconids.”

“Tell me more.”

According to a friendly lamia the mushroom monsters were common in the Oberon Underountain. They would often hide their communities in caves unreachable or disguise themselves as simple mushrooms and wait out the intruder. However, she remembered them as non-violent and she had never seen a horde so big. By the way, lamia often would hunt myconids and eat them as food, apparently, they were quite delicious.

He looked at the half-crushed myconid under his boot, it didn’t look tasty at all. “So why did they attack?”

“I can only guess-sss. It’s-sss the mana they’re after.”

“Mana?”

“Mana rich food. SSS. Your fruits.” She elaborated.

That was right, his plants were kinda magical.

“I get it, but why an entire horde?”

“Yes, too many.” Lamia agreed. “That I don’t understand as-sss well. Sss-shall I investigate?”

“Only if you think it’s safe. Here take some spiders with you.”

“I shall make preparations-sss and move out at dusk.”

Finding the cause was essential, but that wouldn’t stop another attack. He had to find ways to protect his farm from further devastation.

Out of curiosity, he used Harvest Material on one of the corpses. It turned to motes of light leaving exactly nothing behind. “Worthless for crafting then. A fertiliser, perhaps.”

He told the spiders to turn the mushroom people into mulch, the plans will need the nutrients to recover the damage. And to ward the further infestations off he had sent the spiders to patrol the jungle and give him a warning, but also he began planting flowers around his farm; their dust was super effective against the myconids.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

…

He was woken up in the early morning. [Perk Chaos Blessed activated], Lamia Queen had invited herself into his chambers. That, and he just ignored the system message, that perk would often activate at random; its effects were unpredictable.

“What is it?” He rubbed his tired eyes ignoring the system message.

“The mushrooms-sss…”

“Are they back?” He panicked.

“No, but… come-sss.”

He didn’t need to go far, as soon as he stepped outside he could see tiny stalks of fungi pointing up and out of the ground. Thousands and thousands of mushrooms which hadn’t bloomed yet.

“Oh, no!” He reacted in horror.

“Oh, yes-sss!” Lamia Queen licked her lips. “Tasty.”

As he was thinking about what to do with mushroom plague the first sun rays hit the clearing and once that light had hit the mushroom stalks and they began to shrivel. Fungi withered in droves and crumbled to nothing but dust.

“No-sss!” Lamia Queen shouted in disappointment.

“Yes! Cave mushrooms can’t grow outside.” He had made an important discovery. “Crisis averted.”

“But I wanted to grow them in your farm. They make a good soup.”

“Not if they try to eat you first.”

The small event aside, he was still unsettled by what had transpired. He didn’t like to be invaded like that, not one bit. What if next time it will be a more formidable monster? His spider warriors needed protective equipment not just axes and machetes, so he locked himself inside the workshop for the rest of the day.

He wanted to make shields and armour for the spiders. However, his materials were still few, he had to use what he had. He decided to use the leaves from PurpleM vine and the thorns he had gathered for this project.

He reinforced both to +1 using his perk, then layered multiple blue leaves on top of each other and bound them together making a triangular shield. He attached thorns on its face and sides so it could be used for attacks too.

[You have crafted thorn shield of superior quality. Crafting +100exp.], plus he reinforced the finished product again.

[Thorn Shield: Reinforced +2, Reflect Physical Damage 5%.]

He used one of the axes he had made before to test this shield. He swung at full power into the shield. The axe damaged the thorns but didn’t manage to split the shield, it left only a small scar on the shielding. The shield was damaged already, so why stop there? It was to stress test it properly. He landed five more swings, knocking all the thorns off but it was the axe which broke firsts.

“Huh?” He was surprised but then he remembered that the axe only had Reinforced +1.

He took another axe and in two more swings, the shield had finally broken.

“7 hits, not bad.”

This was the axe, mind you, a natural counter to shields, so what this meant was that the shield was better than it had any right to be. Also, interestingly, he didn’t take any reflected damage; he couldn’t help but wonder why it was so.

Needless to say, the crafter spiders were peeping on him from the windows. He needed enough of the shields for all of his warriors, and he didn’t intend to craft them alone.

“Come, come. I will show you how to make it.” He unlocked the door letting them in.

The spiders rolled and prodded the shield with their pseudo arms and mandibles, passing it between one another.

“Marvellous.”, “Magnificent.”, “Superb.” They praised his craftmanship, obviously keen to flatter their king.

“What do you think? Can you manage to replicate it?”

The group chirped in affirmation. “We. Can!”

Of course, he still needed to use [Reinforce] on some of the materials, but that was only a trivial matter. The spiders made a line and used the conveyor strategy to make shields. Ingenious really! One spider was cutting the leaves into the right shape, the other stacking them together, the third one pressing them, the fifth and sixth binding the leaves into a uniform and thick sheet, and the eighth and ninth attached the thorns. The tenth had grabbed the axe and was keen to stress test the final product, this was the point where he had to intervene and explain that this was unnecessary. The little guy was looking forward to smashing all of the shields and was visibly disappointed, moreover, it was left without a task. So instead he offered the spider to join him in making the armour.

The armour followed a similar pattern and design, it was three plates, two for the sides and one for the back. Each plate had thorns on it. The spiders had many legs, that’s why the armour was kept so simple, there was plenty of space between the plates but it protected what was most important. This way no one will have a chance to kick at the spider from the side or even jump on their back, that is unless they wanted to be pierced by thorns.

[You have crafted thorn armour of superior quality. Crafting +100exp.]

[Thorn Armour: Reinforced +2, Reflect Physical Damage 5%.]

The Reflect Physical Damage bonus added up to a nice 10%. Now the enemy will have to think twice before striking his spiders. All that was left was to test it. So he had sent the spider crafter number ten to fetch him the best of the warriors.

Soon it was back, but the spider wasn’t back with exactly what he had expected. Well, yes it was a spider and a warrior but…

“Have you evolved or something?” He looked again and was unable to believe it.

The spider no longer was just a spider, it was more. This warrior’s body was made out of two distinct segments. The lower segment had the spider body with iconic six legs (yes, his spiders only had six). The upper segment was the torso similar to that of human with two arms and a head, but that was where the similarity ended. The warrior still had its black obsidian-like chitin, unique bug arms and spider head with four yellow eyes and a set of formidable mandibles. Its waist was unnaturally thin and the chest was broad and looked bony. Most frighteningly of all it stood as tall as the King of Spiders.

“I’ve Molted. Grown. Bigger.” It raised its chin higher and puffed out its chest.

“Amazing!”

He still couldn’t believe that his spider looked like an actual person, well, spider-person. Regardless, the image in his head of a budding city filled with spider people got even stronger.

“Thank You. King.” It bowed respectfully.

So humble, so well-mannered already! His spiders were just the best.

“There is one problem, however.” He picked three plates which were bound together by ropes. “The armour won’t fit you anymore.” The design was meant for his average spider.

“No. Problem. We Change. It.” The crafter spider gave him the equivalent of spider thumbs up.

However, a familiar messenger ran into the workshop shouting. “Problem. Problem!”

“It never ends does it?” He sighed but was not disheartened. “What is it?” He was keen to solve this new problem.

“Come. Come. Lamia. Kobold.” The spider chirped in a rush as if it was most urgent.

He couldn’t quite get it but followed anyway.

Indeed, the situation didn’t look good. No one else but his most trusted friendly Lamia was holding a wooden cage right above the pot of boiling water. In that cage was a familiar kobold, the leader of Kobolds. The cage bottom was open and she was trying to shake the kobold out.

“King of Spiders, help! She will eat me!” He screeched at the top of his lungs while clinging to the cage bars with all fours.