With the spider in his hand, 6 ran across the cluttered area, ducking around trees and jumping over the strange lumps on the ground.
He avoided actually touching the lumps, just in case they were some type of booby trap that would blow up on contact.
With his luck, that would happen to him at the worst possible time.
So far, the spiders in the area only knew that there was something happening, but they didn't know what it was. They could feel the quick movements of 6, and the entire group began scrambling to figure out what was going on.
Unlike the last group, where he was on a flat ground with unhindered visiblity, these spiders couldn't immediately see 6 when he struck.
Though this area was a more deadly for most people, with as many hiding spots and areas to watch for as it had, for 6, it became more of an advantage than a hinderance.
Just as the spiders could use the webbed structures to attack from different directions and get the drop on their prey, 6 could use them to hide from view, disappearing from the view of the spiders and leaving them lost, unable to find their enemy.
The spider in 6's hands was thrown at one of the nearby bumps in the ground with all of his force, seeing if it would trigger any kind of reaction without him having to touch it himself.
It slammed into the smaller than average bump with a smack, the body of the spider cracking and splattering its innards across the nearby webs, taking away their pure crystal white coloring.
No reaction came from the bump, no explosion or popping. No more spiders emerged from it either, which was a big relief for 6 who already had far too many spiders to deal with.
He continued running throughout the landscape, taking out the weak spiders he came across as he ran by, squishing, crushing, or slicing them open.
Now that he was more used to fighting the spiders, taking them out became even easier.
The oddly high amount of pressure in the spiders that caused their goo to spray everywhere really made it simply. A large slice across their bodies, anywhere, while unable to kill them instantly, would slow them down drastically.
Following that, if he didn't take them out personally shortly after, they would die from blood loss in less than 30 seconds.
In fact, the ease with which 6 could disappear in this area made the fight significantly easier than his last.
Though they had a much larger number advantage, 6's experience with fighting them and the better terrain meant the fight was significantly more relaxed for him.
He could wipe out one small area of spiders, which would quickly alert the rest, before disappearing silently to hide until an opportunity arose to take out even more.
His main goal was to focus only on wiping out the stronger looking spiders in the area.
Ignoring the brown and black spiders, the 'plain' variety, he aimed for the stronger varieties. Any jumping spiders were ideal, the kind that had 12 legs were ideal.
The effects he could possible get from those would definitely be much preferable to any type of plain old poison.
A pair of boots or something similar that could enhance his jumping ability would be fantastic, it would really match his fighting style of erratic movements and sudden changes.
Of course, those types of spider were few and far in between.
The spider he encountered more often in this area was the yellow spiders that had black legs, the ones with the thick hair which blocked long range attacks.
6 himself didn't have any long range attacks, but he did use some spiders he picked up from time to use as makeshift ammunition, just to test out how well it works.
Although the spiders normally smack into whatever they're thrown at, dying upon impact and splattering their goo everywhere, it was different when they made contact with the yellow spiders, which 6 dubbed anti-range spiders.
They still died immediately upon hitting the anti-range spiders, but rather the pop like a water ballon, their bodies were just slightly crushed and they would fall to the ground, not rebounding away.
As if they were hitting an airbag rather than another spider.
Additionally, the anti-range spiders were entirely fine.
They hardly even reacted to the impact, not needing to adjust or every step back to absorb the force of the throw.
Perhaps a more solid object would be a better choice, given that the spiders were soft and squishable, but there was nothing around for him to throw.
Had the ground not been totally webbed over, he could've tried to find some rocks to use for that purpose, but the way things stood currently, the chances of him peeling through the webbing to find some solid pebbles weren't great, as he would have to spend a good amount of time cutting through the thick strands to reach the actual ground, even with his absurdly sharp knife.
Things were different when he attacked them directly, rather than from a distance.
Even crushing one with his legs, which happened when he tried to utilize one of their bodies as a platform to jump off of, was relatively easy.
In fact, they may even be easier to kill than the plain black and gray spiders.
Aside from a few rare twelve legged spiders he happened upon, as well as quite a good number of plain black and gray spiders, the majority if his kills were these anti-range spiders.
With his knife, he practically just had to poke them before theyd bleed to death.
All he had to do was run around stabbing the anti range spiders, while dealing with any spiders that happened to get in his way doing so.
He strictly avoided the brown poisonous spiders, and though he didn't encounter any, he would avoid killing the tiny green poisonous spiders as well.
If he killed zero poisonous creatures while he had the ring, the ring should have a zero percent chance of gaining a poison effect when it transformed, right?
Assassination and sneakiness may be 6's specialty right now, but he didn't intend to shoehorn himself into the role by adding poison into his arsenal.
In a way, the absurdly high total number of spiders in this spiders nest made things a little more simple for 6.
Entirely wiping the nest out was a fantasy he could completely erase from his mind, even the spiders outside of it were enough to be a threat and it was likely they would be much stronger onc ehe got inside.
That meant he no longer needed to pay any mind to trying to kill the spiders.
He could ignore them entirely, sneaking around them and observing them from afar.
Afterall, his mission was only to gather intelligence, so that Trivrium can assign a properly leveled adventurer to come finish the job.
The spiders he killed here were just icing on the cake, and could only serve as sacrifices for his ring.
Massacring the entire group like he did previously was totally off the plate.
If he stayed here long enough to do that, a horde like the one before would definitely have enough time to make him into webby cocoon to be dragged back into the nest.
Becoming the spiders next meal wasn't on 6's list of things to do before he died, especially not when that would involve him dying.
Unless...unless that would give him some miraculous spider powers after being bit.
That could be worth a shot.
This is a new universe right? Anything could happen, anything at all.
Who's to say he cant stick to walls and make a neighborhood full of friends. Something like that anyway.
6 doubted Trivirum cared about copyright infringement, so what did he have to worry about?
After killing another anti range spider, one that had taken shelter behind 3 gray spiders and 1 brown spider, of which he killed the 3 gray and played a gentle game of bowling with the brown one, sending it far away from him without kill it, 6 noticed something different.
A spot of green on one of the webbed trees nearby.
Not the same green as the goo that came from some of the spiders when he killed them, but a vibrant, almost grass colored green.
He could tell almost immediately after spotting the small spec of green that it was one of the spiders he wanted to avoid, the most poisonous variety so far.
Rather than immediately dive toward it to see what killing one was like, or even test his poison tolerance against it, he did something he rarely did when spotting something interesting.
Abandon it entirely.
Making his way in the opposite direction, hiding from view and moving entirely silently to not give away his position to the spiders, he decided it was time to think about making his retreat.
He couldn't leave just yet, constantly moving to avoid being found by the frantically searching spiders.
By now he had killed at least 50 spiders, 20-30 of which were anti-range or twelve legged spider, which was enough to satisfy him for now.
He hadnt been here for long, not even as long as his last visit, but he didn't feel like testing his endurance again, especially not so soon after the first time.
Before he did so, he needed to check one thing, which is why he made a point of hiding in the midst of the spiders before retreating entirely.
Without any prior knowledge, he had no way of knowing when the ring would transform.
It could do so immediately after filling up, or it could wait until he was in a safe place like it did when he claimed the loot.
The ring didn't even tell him how he would know when it was full, or how much it was getting filled by at all.
When he asked Trivrium about this, she basically said something along the lines of 'fuck if I know, it works different every time, good luck'.
Of course, she said it a little bit kinder than that, but that was the general gist.
There could be a physical change in the ring that would indicate how full it was, or it could simply say it in the description.
Examining the ring itself brought no hints to its current status, still appearing as a simple silver band with nothing special about it, so the next bet was the item description.
If it didnt give him any information, he would have no other choice but to blindly kill things until something happened, which would be the worst case scenario for him.
Ideally, this little escapade would be enough, or nearly enough, to fill the ring.
It wasn't like the spider he killed previously was all that strong. It was just a little bigger than average.
Pulling up the item description, 6 was delighted by what he found, before quickly being ticked off by the very same thing just a moment later.