[Collecting Ring]
[Type: Jewelry]
[Quality: To Be Determined]
[Special Effects: Collects a special type of energy every time the wearer kills a being. Once fully filled, the ring transforms into an item containing 1 or more effects related to the beings killed to charge it. The item created from the ring cannot exceed the strength of the creature the ring was received from.]
[Description: A really good item...if it wasn't from one of the weakest forms of creatures that could drop it. Guess you can consider yourself lucky, as its such a pitifully weak item that you're getting close to filling it just from killing some tiny bugs.]
Upon first glance at the item description, 6 was happy to see that it said he was close to filling the ring.
It didn't say exactly how close he was, but considering his short period of time killing the spiders was enough to place him close to filling it, it couldn't be that much longer.
But on his second glance, when he actually examined the description in detail, he realized it was making fun of him once again.
'Tsk. You think I don't know this thing sucks?' 6 thought.
Ignoring the disparaging comments by whatever jerk writes the item descriptions, 6 decided to switch gears, abandoning his plan to make a quick retreat.
If he could fill up the ring before heading out, it would put him in a good spot for when he came back the next time.
According to his plans, his next trip would be the time he finally decided to enter the nest.
Having his item in advance would help him out a lot, as it would give him plenty of time to get used to using whatever it may be.
His item could end up being basically anything, from a quarterstaff, to a bow, to a lucky rabbit's foot, to a piece of armor. There was no way to tell what he would end up with, so it was a good idea to give himself some time to practice with whatever it was.
The worst case scenario would be the item transforming into something bulky and difficult to move while he was in the spiders nest, forcing him to leave his new item behind in order to not risk his life.
So 6 needed to kill as many spiders right now as he could, given that he had to leave long before more spiders arrived.
The area was certainly more advtageous to him, especially in regard to dealing with massive numbers of the spiders, but at a certain point, no matter how good the terrain was, the number of spiders would overwhelm him.
Right now it was fine, a few hundred was manageable, but if thousands showed up he would be in trouble.
The sides of the spiders nest remained spotless, free of the terrifying sea of spiders that would haunt 6's dreams, so he had nothing to worry about yet.
As long as he left as soon as they began rounding the corners, he would be fine.
This was considering if they even showed up at all, however.
It couldn't be ruled out that his last trip was a special exception. Something may have happened that caused the spiders to react the way they did, outside of 6's own actions.
An outside force could've had the spiders on edge, causing them to react more explosively to intrusions.
Perhaps this time would be different, 6 thought.
Maybe this time he could massacre the entire group, soak in the sweet taste of victory, surrounded by the corpses of his spidery enemies, before having a melodramatic moment of 'sigh, if only I could find a proper opponent'.
By now, the number of anti-range spiders was thinning out. 6 was only able to find one on rarer occasions, and the twelve legged spiders were now something he could only hope, but ultimately fail, to encounter in this group now.
They were already rare to begin with, and after his culling, they were practically non-existent.
With no other choice, 6 was forced to include all of the black and gray spiders in his kill list.
There had been no further changes in the ring since finishing off the rest of the anti-range and twelve legged spiders, and aside from the black and gray spiders, the rest of the spiders were poisonous.
He would rather risk getting a slightly weaker item that had an effect he liked, than risk getting a stronger item that had something he hated.
If, in his endless unluckiness, he did end up with a poison effect on his item, it wasn't the end of the world. He had ways to turn things around.
A '6-The Road From Assassin To Hero' museum would be great. He could use the poison of his first item as a whole 'even the universe tried to make me an assassin, but I broke through my destiny to blossom into what I am now' bit.
That would certainly be enough to brag about.
Museums and other stuff would have to wait until after he finished off these spiders.
Keeping an eye of the side of the nest in the distance, he continued wiping out the spiders.
While doing so, he was slowly but steadily drawing the entire group away from the nest.
The further away they got, the better.
From his last experience, it seemed they got weaker with distance, not to mention that when need be, it would make his escape easier, as he would be further away from the location the horde of spiders would emerge from.
All he had to do was keep pulling them away, while killing all the non poisonous ones he could.
Everything had been going quite well, until he discovered something.
There was a spider he didn't recognize here.
Aside from the color of it, being the same plain gray of the most basic and common spiders, the look of the spider was entirely different.
It had longer, skinnier legs that stretched put further, and its body was thinner, almost to the point of being sleek, as opposed to the fat roundness of the other gray spiders.
Weirdly, it had absolutely no eyes.
This didn't seem to affect it all that much, as it moved around as if it could see just the same as the rest.
Though it was hard to tell without being closer, as 6 was hanging from one of the webbed trees a distance away from the spider, it also didn't seem to have a mouth.
Thats right, it basically lacked a face entirely.
In a way, it was almost creepier than a normal spider.
Currently, it was remaining completely still, its body flattened against the ground with its legs out to the side.
If most of the spiders didn't take on an odd deflated look once he killed them, even when their bodies were mostly intact, he might've assumed it was an already dead spider.
Jumping from the tree, he took his knife from its sheath and threw it at the spider.
The moment he jumped, the spider seemed to react to his presence, as if it knew immediately, despite the fact that he hadnt made any noise.
Unless the spider happened to have eyes hidden on its back, there was no way it should've known he was there, as the rest of the spiders in the area couldn't find him even when he stalked directly behind them, so long as he didn't directly get spotted.
The only times he would get noticed is when he attacked, when he would make enough noise and movement to alert most of the spiders in his general vicinity.
That was why he had to disappear from their sight every time he killed a few, otherwise he would end up being besieged by all of them at once.
It was impossible to tell if the spider actually had reacted to his jump, however, as the knife pierced its head before it could even move anywhere.
6 could only assume it sensed something, and be more cautious about being discovered by that variety of spider in the future.
He took the risk of killing it despite not knowing if it was poisonous because of 2 reasons.
Firstly, as an unknown spider that even Trivrium didn't have information on, its value was higher than the rest.
It was possible that it was special in some way, like the large spider he dealt with.
When it first reacted to his jump, 6 had been excited as it seemed like that would be the case, but he was greatly disappointed by its instant death.
Even more so, he was disappointed that killing it didn't reward him anything.
Clearly it was too weak for that.
Secondly, there was a chance that it was a mutation, similar to the twelve legged variation of the other spiders.
Perhaps the no eyes, no mouth spider was just a special form of the gray spiders, in which case, it should have no poison.
Given these possibilities, he decided it was worth killing it, just in case.
There was a slight bit of risk to it, but if this one spider was the only poisonous spider he killed, and he still ended up with a poison item, he could basically say with certainty that the universe just hated him.
Throwing in a single poisonous spider in his cooking pot of now more than 100 spider shouldn't, pun intended, poison the entire item.
The odds of getting a non-poison item should still be relatively high.
At this point, while still killing the black and gray spiders spiders that remained, it was beginning to be odd that no horde of spiders had approached the area yet.
With only the spiders he avoided killing left in abundance, he had been here for quite a while.
Long enough that even the black and gray spiders were becoming scarce, yet no changes occured on the nest, and he even launched himself as high in the air as he could, over the tallest tree in the area, to look at the ground nearby.
There was no change there either.
Despite the overly long period of time, no horde arrived this time.
This was good for 6, but it definitely left him with some questions.
What was different about this time?
Was it this particular area, or what it something to do with the time?
Perhaps something special really had happened last time that ignited the horde, or perhaps this time there was something more important taking their attention away from him.
Still, as long as it didn't affect him currently, he could ignore it, placing the issue in the back of his mind until he could figure out the cause.
Just as he was about to give up on the spiders in his area, as he was beginning to struggle with finding any non-poisonous spiders at all, something finally happened with his ring.
6 felt a faint warmth on his hand, as if the ring were heating up.
He looked down at it, ignoring the spiders approaching him, too intrigued by the sudden change to care.
Red cracks seemed to be expanding on the ring, like magma breaking through the crust of the ground, as it continued warming up.
Immediately, he broke away from the spiders, abandoning stealth to retreat as fast as possible.
Observing the changes in his ring, and making sure he wouldn't be bothered why doing was, was more important than getting a few more worthless kills.
Especially since he now wouldn't gain anything from killing them.
Thanks to his diligence in drawing the spiders away from the nest, he was already near the edge of the webbed area.
After passing it, the spiders no longer pursued him, acting as if he hadn't been there at all, despite the corpses scattered all around.
Shortly after exiting the webbed land, something big happened to his ring.
The entire thing cracked, pieces of it falling to the ground at his feet, and the blood drained from 6's face as he feared that the item failed to transform at all, turning into useless scrap.