The first thing they have to do once Uraraka wakes up is to give her a quick moment to acclimate to her new skills. [Lesser Thrust], obviously, is an attack-boost similar to [Sharpen Claws], just tailored more towards thrusting attacks.
No, seriously, it's an oddly specialized thing. It doesn’t seem to do anything when Uraraka swings her spear, but when she does a thrust, yeah, it does seem to strengthen her body, with a focus on the muscles used in the act of thrusting a spear.
It makes it stronger and faster, simply enough.
[Barricade Shield] seems to work similarly and reinforces her shield-bearing arm - it doesn’t do a lot to make the shield more durable, but it definitely helps resist impacts without being sent flying or staggered.
“Nice.” Uraraka grins while raising her shield and her weapon. “I’m stronger now! And I love it. Let’s go show those spiders what we think about them and their nefarious, too many legged ways!”
I love it when she acts like that.
(-_- )
Because she’s like that Bakubrat but she’s also actually friendly and won’t just punch you at random?
Kacchan does have a … temper, I admit it.
Just stop
I’ve met him for just a short while and I already know that he’s annoying and he’d feel much better if he became a villain
But he’s too much of a glory hound to pick that option
And that’s why you failed to recruit him. Because he, too, looks up to All Might.
He doesn’t look up to All Might, he looks forward to becoming better than All Might, and he can’t do that while being a villain
His ego is so overblown that he reminds me of All for One
That’s definitely going too far.
Riiiight
Keep telling yourself that
***
Nothing really interesting happens on the way to the elven mine. The only vaguely interesting moment is Toga’s once more having problems with the concept of ‘crossing a river’.
Eventually, though, they arrive at the mine, tie the rope to a large rocky outcropping nearby, and then descend down on it, before walking down the first corridor, turning left at the elevator hall and - after a short while of walking - approaching the ruined barricade.
They are, naturally, pretty cautious about it. So, Toga sneaks ahead of the group and uses her hearing to try to confirm how many enemies are actually there. The number didn’t seem to change.
Three enemies, each of them about the size of a german shepherd (Tomura complains again, obviously). That… that should be doable, right.
“How do we do that, Ochako-chan?” Toga asks with a loud whisper.
“We draw them here.” Ochako replies. Fighting in the corridor, with the barricades - however rotten - offering them at least some protection felt like the best way to obtain at least some tactical advantages. “And the first thing I gotta do is to prove to Izuku that when he asked me if I’m going to howl at the moon, and I said no, I answered that way mostly due to the ‘at the moon’ part.”
“Huh?” Toga blinks at Uraraka.
Really, Ochako? Really?
“Really.” Uraraka replies with a nod.
And then she does a very convincing emulation of a wolf’s howl. Thus maybe making the spiders think that a wolf fell down the entrance hole. And that meant said wolf likely being injured, and thus, an easy meal!
“They’re coming!” Toga lets out while jumping slightly behind Uraraka, who takes her position in the entrance to the corridor.
And yes, Uraraka can hear them now. The skittering sound of many, many legs approaching them.
That was going to be fun!
The moment the first of the spiders jumps at the top of a nearby barricade, Uraraka does a [Lesser Thrust] on an instinct. She gets a brief moment to look at the horrid creature, its black body and the eight legs, its multiple eyes, a giant abdomen and the twitching mandibles, before her spear thrusts right into its face,
It cuts through it, blueish blood splattering all over it. Is it down? She has no time to confirm it before another spider jumps at her, Uraraka using [Barricade Shield] to resist the impact. The spider lands on her shield, Uraraka raising it slightly up, the spider still trying to get to her past it, its legs reaching behind it one after another just as the main body is still trying to slam into it.
It’s damn heavy, she’s literally holding an equivalent of a really big dog up with one hand, and she has a feeling that without [Barricade Shield] she would already lose that fight.
Third spider is there, its carapace having a strange reddish hue to it, Toga leaping in and trying to nail it to the ground with her knife boosted with [Sharpen Claws]. She fails to pierce through it, the spider clearly pissed off by it and jumping back a little, before spitting some congealed mass at Toga.
She is surprised by it, enough to get hit. The mass splatters around her right arm (she shielded herself on instinct), almost immediately solidifying. It was a web, a form of web made to restrain movement.
“Hey!” Toga vocally protests while jumping a bit back to get some space. “At least buy me dinner first!”
“Stop… flirting with them!” Uraraka lets out, the spider still trying to climb past her shield. “I need you, now.”
The spitting spider takes that very moment to fire at her, her right leg being immediately wrapped in adhesive silk and anchored to the floor. She can immediately feel her skin tingle and then just… she just stops feeling her skin down there.
Shit, it has to be mildly venomous too. How lovely.
“Give me a second!” Toga shouts back before leaping again at the spitting spider. This time she knows that it's a ranged combatant, so she just jumps on top of it, and stabs it. Over and over again, blueish blood erupting all over it and the spider letting out really awful sounds while trying to shake her off.
It fails, and stops struggling rather quickly.
Uraraka at this point can feel her shield arm going numb, even with the [Barricade Shield]. She would have otherwise tried to withstand it, waiting for Toga to leap at its back, but at this point it becomes obvious that she failed to completely finish the spider she used [Lesser Thrust] on.
Because while nearly dead, it still manages to do a very meek leap, right at Toga’s back. The catgirl shouts loudly, before turning around to stab it.
At this point Uraraka decided that it was enough waiting and she should do something risky. And so, she follows up on [Barricade Shield] with a [Shield Bash]. With her arm going numb, the power is massively limited but it still throws the spider off her shield. It lands on the ground and immediately leaps at her again, just to impale itself on her follow-up [Lesser Thrust].
That ends its life. At the very same time, Toga finished the one that Uraraka speared earlier.
“Phew.” Uraraka exhales loudly. That was… quite awesome, even if the spiders look absolutely disgusting. “Toga, give me one of your knives, I have to get that damn web off.”
“Sure thing, Och…” Toga replies, only for her words to be cut short as she suddenly stumbles. “E-eh? That… that feels weird. Why does everything feel…”
And that’s when she suddenly grabs her throat, before dry heaving as her eyes grow wider. Shit. The spider that Uraraka failed to kill with her first thrust must have bit her… and was clearly venomous.
“You’re poisoned, give me your knife quickly.” Uraraka says quickly while starting to do her best to cut the silk with her spear. It’s not working as well as she hoped it would. “I have to be able to move to carry you back and this damn cocoon is…”
Toga does three whole steps in her direction, before suddenly falling onto her knees, clearly dizzy. Shit, just how potent was that venom?! It should have taken hours to start giving symptoms this intense!
And that’s when Uraraka hears a sound that she didn’t want to hear. Skittering. Something was coming. Something larger than the spiders that they just killed.
She immediately pulls out a javelin (this time she could wear it without problems). Her position is sort of unsteady, courtesy of one of her feet being locked into the ground, but it’s more of a random throw either way. And the target was pretty close.
She throws it with her whole strength down the corridor, hoping to hit whatever was coming. Toga took that moment to collapse on the floor, gasping for breath (it seems to be an anaphylactic shock, shit ).
Uraraka doesn’t know if she hit anything until the thing emerges, her javelin still submerged in the far side of its chest.
Yes, its chest.
What came out of the tunnel was a hybrid between a lower body of a spider, one slightly larger than the ones whose lives they just cut short, and an upper body… of a human being.
A woman, to be exact. Maybe. It was thin and slender, to the point where it could be described as androgynous. Naked, but it started above the genitals, so there was barely anything to see, even if you were into it.
Also, the only human parts of its head were the ears and the short, messy black hair. Because the eyes were distinctly spider-like, with eight of them arranged into two rows of four, every single one of them looked completely pitch black.
And the mouth looked more like a gaping hole surrounded by twitching mandibles. It was absolutely freaking terrifying.
And so were its long fingers, so thin that they resembled needles more than they resembled fingers. It must have been using them to weave its silk, didn’t it?.
“Well.” Uraraka sighs loudly. “Guess that didn’t work out as we wanted it to.”
She tries to do a [Lesser Thrust] as it charges at her, but she fails to hit before it full-body tackles her, breaking her leg (still anchored to the floor) and then immediately biting her face off while impaling her body with her fingers.
Big oof.
Looks like total party kill due to an unexpected miniboss
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Regretful
Do you think they’ll be alright?!
If you exclude the fact that the spiders will likely wrap them up in cocoons before injecting them with a corroding solution that will liquify their internal organs while they are still alive, allowing the spiders to suck their tasty insides out like Eraserhead does with his jelly pouches, yes
Wha
Unless the spiders are spiders of culture and played that mod to Rimworld
In which case, big oof
that arachne/drider should have at least bought them a dinner first
Wait, what?
Sigh.
I’ve already pulled their souls out of them. The distance means a certain delay in getting them back, but we’ll be able to bring them back to life soon-ish.
Chill
You’ll have your girlfriends up and running in no time
Oh, phew.
I mean, they’re not my girlfriends!
Sigh
Normies
***
“God…damnit!” Uraraka throws her arms up in pure anger a few hours ago, once she’s finally back. “That sucked! Where did that damn spider-human thing come from?! Toga, I thought you said that there were only three things there?!”
“Because I thought so, Ochako-chan!” Toga replies quickly. They were both in their [Floor Guardian Room]. “It must have been much deeper into that place and came out hearing your howl! Or they heard the spiders die to us.”
“Ugh.” Uraraka groans loudly. “I shouldn’t have howled that loud! Damn it!”
“It’s alright, Ochako-chan!” Toga smiles widely. “We’ll get them during our next visit! We’re going there right now, yes?”
That gives Uraraka a pause. She stares at Toga suspiciously.
“Why are you looking so happy?” She asks. “You’ve just died to some horrid giant spider poison and yet you look as if it was Christmas and you just got your dream present.”
“You told me to stop flirting with other women.” Toga says as she covers her blushing cheeks. “And that you need me. And now! I knew you loved me back, Ochako-chan!”
“Errr…” Uraraka blinks back at her. “I… didn’t quite…” Toga for some reason blushes even more. “... you know what, let’s just move past it. Izuku, we’re going back for a rematch, immediately, right? Right?”
Sure.
This just means that we’re going to get more stuff unlocked!
Go and take your revenge, Ochako!
“Alright!” Uraraka grins her most ferocious smile. “Toga, we’re moving out!”
“Yes ma’am!” Toga salutes to her. Whatever laziness she terminally suffered from has currently evaporated due to ‘her Ochako-chan’ needing her. “Let’s go and do this!”
***
Their revenge battle should be an epic clash, forcing them to reach their absolute limit in pursuit of that sweet, sweet dopamine release caused by seeing your hated enemy be broken, driven in front of you and hearing the lamentations of their women (or men, Uraraka is alright with both options).
Unfortunately, it just wasn’t the case.
The spider-human hybrid was still there, and was currently busy wrapping Toga’s corpse in a cocoon. Uraraka’s corpse was for some reason gone, and they were going to look for a reason for that soon, but for now, they had something else to deal with.
It was either unable to differentiate people or lacked the mental faculties to be surprised by such a thing as being beset by the exact copy of the enemies you slew a day earlier. Instead, it just leapt at them, clearly looking for more food.
This time Uraraka managed to withstand the charge with [Barricade Shield], even if the impact was quite enough to push her back a bit. The problem there lied in its hands, which she could use to attack Uraraka even from behind her shield, and that’s without mentioning something likely venomous that was dripping off her mandible-armed mouth that Uraraka could see staring at her angrily from right over the top of her shield.
Ugh.
At least Toga was still there, and not poisoned this time. Before the creature had the time to go past scratching Uraraka a few times in her left arm, the catgirl had landed herself on the spider body right behind its human part.
And then slits its throat.
Blue blood pours out of the injury, the creature lets out an angry and pained sound, too deformed by the damage to its vocal cords (if there even was something). It rapidly jerks back, trying to push Toga out of it, and it fails, mostly because Toga immediately jumped off it.
The creature realized too late that it placed itself in a perfect distance for a [Lesser Thrust]. With its human part being clearly softer than the spider carapace, she manages to push her spear all the way through the body, the tip of it emerging from the spider-human’s back, soaked in its blue blood.
The creature screams in pain and tries to pull back, its hands grasping on the spear and trying to push it back. But Uraraka presses forward, pushing the creature all the way into the half-crushed barricade.
It wasn’t coming down. Why?
The javelin she threw during their first fight was no longer there, but the injury has clearly healed. How did it even manage to so casually ignore such an injury?
Ochako, the upper body is…
“I know!” She shouts back, she has no time for it but it’s great to know that Izuku came to the same realization. “Toga, the upper body is a bait, hit the spider part!”
Toga immediately jumps onto the creature’s back again, and pierces its carapace with a downward swing of her knife, strengthened by the [Sharpen Claws]. The spider’s eyes didn’t change, but the sudden flinch of the face around them told Uraraka everything she needed.
It was fear.
It grabbed the spear with its left hand before trying to slash at Toga with its right hand. Toga manages to dodge it and finally pierces the carapace, blue blood bursting from the injury in much larger amounts than from its slit throat.
The spider tries to shake them off, but its mobility is limited by the spear in its chest and the barricade right behind it. Toga is dodgy enough to avoid its nigh-blind swings with her free hand.
In short, it can’t do a lot while they both kill it. And eventually, it can only twitch meekly… and then, not even that.
“Revenge!” Uraraka raises her spear, still covered in blood, one of her legs triumphantly standing on her defeat foe. “Victory! Woohoo!”
“Woohoo!” Toga raises both her hands, a bloodsoaked knife in each of them. “But a quieter one, because we don’t want to bring more of them here, right?”
“Oh, right.” Uraraka realizes where they are and quickly turns down the volume. “Let’s go check what is in the room ahead, and then let’s work on figuring out how to bring all that stuff back.”
It just occurred to me
There’s probably someone looking like that thing back on Earth
Some poor random schmuck with a spider quirk
And yet, here we are
Uraraka cheering after brutally killing such a creature
I think you should grow slightly concerned by now
Not really.
It tried to kill them first, and it doesn’t seem to be sapient.
I think it was a valid self-defense kill.
(o_o )
Now you’re the one that’s concerning to me
What would All Might say if he saw you right now?
That’s between me and All Might.
What would All for One say if he saw you cooperate with the heroes?
I literally don’t give a fuck ever since I’ve learned that he might have been behind the death of Mon-chan.
And my family.
***
The thing they find in the hall ahead is the stuff of nightmares. It was the spider’s breeding room.
There were eggs there, lined up by the walls and clearly opened a long time ago. And cocoons. So many cocoons with long-dessicated corpses in each and every one of them, all of them being devoured by the newly-born spiders long, long time ago.
Some of them were those of animals. They could barely recognize a few deers and other forest creatures. But… Most of them belonged to humanoids. On all of them they could see some long-ruined clothes.
They’ve discovered what happened to the miners. And to Uraraka’s corpse, as they find it neatly wrapped in a fresh-looking cocoon. Which would be disturbing for the now alive Uraraka, if not for the fact that it was missing its face and that made it… err… slightly less disturbing.
As for the mine itself, they must have breached into the habitat of those spiders. There was a large crevice in the wall from which they could feel an air draft. The hole that they entered through wasn’t the only entrance to the mine.
They truly mined too shallow. Which implied that the spiders were living on the surface or in a near-surface cavern.
Why were there some leftover corpses by the barricade, though? Maybe they arrived some time later, when most of the spiders already got born and left? That’s the only idea that came to their mind.
On a side note, the smell of the human-spider seemed to be coming from that crevice. It must have been somewhere deeper, and have heard Ochako’s howl before coming to investigate.
The chamber was mostly empty. Spiders have already reproduced and clearly ran out of food after emptying the mine of all forms of life, making them move elsewhere, likely returning to hunting on the surface.
“Alright.” Uraraka decides. This place was disgusting and it felt great to have been the one to clear it out. Though she’d still prefer to burn it to the ground. “We’re going back. But I don’t think that we can carry it all back on a single trip.”
“If we want to bring both the spider-human thingy and one of the normal spiders and maybe a cocoon and an egg to get a new Lair, definitely.” Toga agrees. “So, what do we bring with us first?”
***
They end up having to go there and back twice, filling their backpacks with severed spider body parts, eggs and some of the smaller cocoons, while carrying the dead spiders bound to wooden branches and carried by them both between themselves.
Bringing the first spider unlocks a completely new category in the [Entities] titled the [Rampant Bloom]. Inside it are two new creatures: [Giant Spitter Spider] and [Giant Biter Spider]. Both of [ETL 9].
This is a bit low, but it makes some amount of sense. Get a normal human being a pickaxe and have them get close enough and do an upward swing, and you have a shot at killing those creatures instantly. Though the human would definitely die if they didn’t get to surprise it.
Similarly, get the strongest man alive (in both physical strength and combat experience) and have them fight those spiders without any equipment or armor, and he might succeed, but it would be a really dangerous fight.
However, give a human being plate armor and proper weapons, and the spider will struggle to do anything to you, while you will rather easily squash them. Which makes sense, seeing as such an equipment would likely make your ETL be around 20 or 30.
The spider creature they slew, when brought back to the Dungeon, unlocked a [Spider Maiden] creature of the same category, with a [ETL 12] designation.
So, it was a woman? Seems so. None of them really want to dig into that. But they should definitely ask Aeonia what was the deal with those creatures when they meet her next time. In fact, they should also ask her what the Wild Courts are.
Bringing some of the eggs and a small cocoon or two has also opened up a completely new [Lair] called the [Spider Breeding Chamber]. With it, they should be able to populate an entire level of their Dungeon with some truly horrid giant man-eating spiders.
Lovely.
That’s like a complete staple of every fantasy world out there
And now we can do it too
Venom, mandibles, webs and more.
Poggers
I
I genuinely don’t think that I like the very concept.
But we’re supposed to keep people out and that’s what matters, right?
Self-defense.
With giant spiders.
Ugh.
Hey, you think that there are even, errr, giant-er spiders out there?
Please don’t even think about this.
*thinks about it even more intensely*
Ugh, why am I not surprised?
Oh, check it out
We’ve unlocked [Insect Carapace] and [Spider Silk] in the [Materials]
And there seems to also be a completely new category in it titled [Alchemical Compounds], with a [Giant Biter Spider’ Poison] inside.
Huh.
Think we can make a whole pool of that somewhere? Or maybe a trap that fills an entire room with it unless you manage to find a way out of it in time?
…
I sincerely hope that we can’t.
Loser.