CHAPTER 140: IT’S OK (5)

The situation Jake depicted was a worrying one, to say the least, and that was for a simple reason: the monster’s level was 140.

Jake explained that the creature that killed his parents was a Gloom-Web Arachnid Broodmother. It was a large creature, so big that it had to take an entire theater as its nest because nothing else would fit.

The Broodmother was the one responsible for the disappearance of this city, although he explained it was far weaker back when it first appeared.

What troubled Reidar more was that the broodmother used people to feed and create her offspring, the Gloom-Web Arachnid, and their elite variant, the Dread-Spinner Gloom-Web Arachnid.

The basic variants were those roaming around and actually hunting, while the Dread-Spinners were solely dedicated to defending the broodmother and her territory.

Reidar listened as Jake described the Gloom-Web Arachnid Broodmother. It was strange to think of a spider living in a colony, especially one as large and organized as this. Spiders were solitary creatures, and the females often ate the males, or so he had always known.

But this broodmother had turned an entire city into her nest, using humans and monsters alike as a food source to create her offspring. It made his skin crawl.

Reidar knew he had to help Jake—not only for the boy, but because a monster that strong, sitting so near human settlements, put everyone at risk. It was too close to where Creamont ought to be. The broodmother’s reach kept spreading, and if they didn’t stop it now, it would swallow more than just Loden.

Jake had spoken of the spider’s nest with a mix of fear and hatred. He didn’t know how the inside of the theater was, as he didn’t dare to enter, but it must have been like any spider nest: full of webs.

Only this time, they would be so large and sticky as to even trap humans.

Lena, who had been listening intently, felt a pang of sympathy for Jake. The boy had already endured so much loss, and the thought of him confronting the Broodmother alone was unbearable. The Broodmother was known to be level 140, and while the Dread-Spinners were reportedly level 120, their lesser counterparts were around level 110, making the idea of hunting them even more daunting.

Reidar and Lena, sitting at a small table in the room, knew they had to eliminate the Gloom-Web Arachnid Broodmother and her nest. Jake’s safety, and the looming threat she posed to the nearby human settlements, left them no choice.

"We need to destroy them all. Every one of those spiders."

"Why are you so worked up?" He asked her. It was weird. Lena wasn’t usually like this... so... invested.

"I’m sorry for the kid..."

"So I am, but it’s not like I have a burning need for revenge."

Lena’s determination to kill the spider beast was fueled by a deep, personal wound. In Havenwood, what remained of her family had been torn apart by the Church of Unbinding. Torren, and Martin died, leaving her with a void that she was just now learning to take care of.

Lena saw in Jake’s eyes the same pain she had been feeling, the same loss that had hardened her resolve. She knew that the only way to honor the memory of those lost was to fight back, to show that even in a world gone mad, there was still room for justice and vengeance.

Reidar sighed, and his mind went to the logistics of their plan. "Regardless, that’s going to take a lot of time. We’re talking about a level 130 monster and her army of level 120 and 110 spawns."

"A week?"

"I would say four, depending on how far apart each individual spider is outside of the theater."

"What if we attack the theater? Do you think they will all head back to protect the broodmother?"

"It can be possible," Reidar said.

He paused. "We need to thin out the numbers before we get to the Dread-Spinners and the broodmother herself because if her spawn heads back to the theater, we might end up facing thousands of these monsters, and the fight will already be hard since the weakest of these fuckers is level 110."

Lena leaned in. "How do you plan on doing that? We can’t just walk in there and start slashing."

Reidar’s lips curled into a smile. "We don’t need to. I’ve got an army of my own. We’ll use them to draw out the Gloom-Web Arachnids and pick them off one by one."

Lena’s eyebrows shot up. "You think your summons can handle spiders of that level? They’re not exactly pushovers."

"With the right strategy, they can," Reidar said. "We’ll use a combination of my rift-sprites and some of the most durable creatures I can call upon. The weakest ones, the Vorathid Foragers, will lure them. I can make quite a few of them. The only problem would be that I don’t know if my mana can take it, and you must also consider we might end up luring other monsters."

Lena nodded. "They might start fighting each other, though."

"That’s what I was hoping for," Reidar said. "That would be a good thing to thin their numbers, but we would also need to be there to reap the benefits."

"And what about the Dread-Spinners? They’re the elite guards, right? How do we handle them?"

Reidar’s gaze drifted, his eyes tracing an invisible line across the wall behind Lena. His face shifted from thoughtful to uneasy.

"The Dread-Spinners will be our biggest challenge," he said, eyes narrowing. "They’ll be guarding the broodmother herself, so we’ll have to be careful. I think the best plan is to wipe out as many as we can before we reach the theater, then bring the whole place down."

He paused.

Reidar studied the ruined city of Loden, where the broodmother and her spawn had already laid waste to the settlement. "I don’t know if this will be enough to kill the broodmother, but it might at least injure her and her spawn. The next level-ups will make the following fight easier."

Lena frowned. "I get that these monsters basically destroyed a whole town, but don’t you think these level-ups they got are a bit to many?"