He could only see the underside of the spider, but the underside alone was terrifying to look at
Any creature blown to this proportion would be deadly by size alone, much less a spider inside a nest the size of a city in a world where things 6 previously thought were impossible were, in fact, possible. He'd bet money that this spider didn't just rely on its size to fight.
Just one of the legs of the spider had to be at least 40-50 feet long, the entire thing was practically a building on its own, and it was laying on a canopy of webs that looks so frail and paper thin compared to the walls that made up the nest that 6 was afraid it would fall through and crush him the moment he stepped foot in the room.
More than just thin compared to the rest of the webs that made up the nest, the web it was laying on looked thin compared to regular spider webs.
A piece of paper dropped onto a strand of it would probably be sliced apart.
Slowly, with great caution, he creeped past the hallway, careful to make absolutely no noise whatsoever to avoid alerting the spider. There was no doubt in his mind that the giant spider in the room could kill him in a heartbeat, and that wasn't something he wanted to test out when he had some many other things to explore in front of him.
No matter how good the reward for killing that spider would be, and he could already imagine theyd be amazing, there was a 0% chance that he could kill it. His little tooth pick of a dagger would only draw a little bit of goo, if it could even penetrate the damned thing.
Not far past the room, he came upon the opening in the nest that led underneath the ground.
Rather than a tunnel downward as he had expected, he found that it dropped into another large, open room.
Thankfully, there was no giant spider inside this time.
Whatever upgrade his eyes got in the nest made it incredibly easy to see things. Whereas light could be utilized to help hide yourself, finding shadows and blending in to various things, this form of vision made it incredibly easy to see people trying to do that, not that there were any shadows to begin with in the pitch black room.
6 reminded himself not to be overconfident in his stealth. Creatures and people that had vision like this would surely be able to see through many of the techniques he used to remain out of sight.
The room wasn't too much of a drop, nothing compared to the practically cathedral sized ceiling in the previous room he looked into, so without hesitation, 6 climbed directly in, utilizing the webbing of the nest to climb to the floor.
Thus far, this place seemed less like a spider nest and more like an ant nest.
He headed toward the only path he could take from here, an entrance into another area of the nest.
Poking his head out of the doorway once more, 6's pupils expanded as his heart began to beat harder.
Outside of the room was the image he had been hoping to find when he first enter the nest.
A massive cavern opened in front of him, webs threaded across it every way possible, interweaving and intertwining among themselves. An uncountable amount of spiders were walking across these webs, covering the walls, the ceiling, the webs, the floors, and every other surface they could find.
He could see hundreds of different types of spiders, some as large as cars with twelve legs, some with 14 legs, some had hundreds of spiders upon their backs, there were small, average looking household spiders, and spiked, armored spiders that looked as if they were prepared for war.
The first thing that hit his mind was that this infestation of spiders couldn't possibly be the result of a naturally occuring nest, that is to say, he basically could rule out the odds of this being caused by a parent spider which gave brith to the rest.
Although the books he read said that spiders could have different appearances with the same parents, they just had to have one connecting trait, there was absolutely no possible way that these spiders could share a parent.
That parent would have to have more recorded variations in it's offspring than any spider recorded in the books he had read, eclipsing them by huge amounts.
That would have to be one legendary spider, the kind that would have thousands of myths and stories about it.
If that was here, 6 wouldn't have had a chance to enter the nest.
Legendary beings like that would be so oppressively strong that most beings weaker than it would drop dead by being near them.
They wouldn't appear on a low level planet like this, a weak planet that wouldn't even have enough food to satiate them for a day.
Planets would be food for them and their broods, but that wasn't the case here.
As far as spider infestations go, this one was rather...tame.
Other than Erver, who they did annihilate, they hadn't really caused any other issues for the planet, or even for the region surrounding the nest.
Plus, he hadn't read about any legendary spiders to watch out for that made nests like this particular one.
'Trivrium, can you record the appearance of these spiders? I can try to remember them, but if i have to compile my own intelligence report for you then i doubt im gonna rememebr every single one of these.' 6 thought
[Trivrium will automatically handle any information you come across during missions, with the exception of locations which block her presence.]
'How handy.'
[Trivrium recommends that you assess their combat abilities.]
'I know, I know. I'm not just gonna look at these guys and then dip. But i can't exactly charge into this massive group and expect to come back out alive.' 6 thought, looking for another passage out of this area that he could take.
In order to find some spiders here that he could fight without being besieged by million of other spiders, he needed an isolated area where they would take some time to reach him even if they noticed he was here, as well a low enough amount of spiders, preferably just a single one, in that area that would be conceivably possible for him to fight and win, or at the very least, not die.
Bonus points if he can find somewhere with enough exits and passageways nearby that when he had to run, which he would almost certainly have to do after starting a fight here, it would be relatively easy to lose his pursuers.
It didn't take long to pick out a nearby passage that looked promising.
Further away from the edges of the nest on the surface, which should mean it would lead him deeper into the nest, 6 could see a length of the way into the passage and could tell it was a long length of hallway, long enough to take him away from this death cavern he was in.
Crossing the cavern, with his hope pinned on the fact that most spiders had terrible eyesight, and thus shouldn't be able to see him despite the lack of cover he could use here, he made his way to the entrance of his chosen passageway.
He did use the webs they climbed on to block the sight of any spider that happened to turn towards him as he walked, but with this many eyes, that could only do so much.
By a stroke of luck, or perhaps because the spiders truly has terrible eye sight, he made it there without incident.
Actually, now that it occurred to him, 6 had no idea if the circumstances he came upon, being that his eyesight got an upgrade in this nest somehow, also applied to these spiders. It may be entirely black in the nest to them, meaning all he had to focus on was remaining entirely silent as he moved.
Testing that would have to wait for a time when he came upon a spider, or a group of spiders, that wouldn't kill him instantly if he was discovered. So far his luck on that was as low as his luck ever was.
6 continued along the passage he entered, turning and taking other passages as he came upon them, getting a feel for the overall area and putting some distance between himself and the spiders he had discovered earlier.
He did run into more spiders along the way, including another large one sitting alone in a room, though it was nearly half the size of the first one he found.
There was also one passageway that lead to a room full of spiders, thousands of tiny, fingernail sized spiders.
6's skin itched just thinking about trying to deal with that many spiders, even if they couldn't pierce his skin thanks to the Protective Blessing of Trivrium.
Finally, after a large amount of self restraint to keep himself from charging at the every spider he saw to get whatever rewards they would drop, 6 came upon something he should be able to deal with, in an area he could easily escape from.
He also hadn't found any spiders nearby when he searched, leaving him satisfied with the amount of privacy he should have while fighting his new prey.
It was a pair of spiders, alone in a decent sized room. One was about knee height, and the other was a bit smaller than the large spider he received his first reward from.
If he was lucky, that large spider would be worthy enough, by whatever metric it was judged by, to get another reward when he killed it.
Both of them were different varieties of spiders that 6 hadn't seen before, nor did Trivrium have any information on them.
The knee height spider looked more armored than the similarly sized spiders from outside of the nest.
Its legs had long spikes jutting off of every joint pointing downward, and it had two spikes jutting out from its head. Across its back, a line of small spikes striped down it, like a mohawk.
On their own, the spikes looked rather dull and unimposing, but if it weren't for the small size of the spider, it would be an imposing, threatening appearance.
Instead, it looked somewhat cute, like a puppy trying to pretend its tough.
The large spider on the other hand, was more standard. It was covered in hair, and the only real distinguishing feature it had was the strange shape of its head.
Where the rest of the spiders tended to have regular, round heads, this one had a rather square shaped head.
Realistically, it just made him look like the stupid jock of these spiders, which 6 found rather amusing.
With confidence, he stepped closer to them silently, putting himself within their line of sight to test their vision.
Just as he stepped forward, into sight of the smaller spider, it snapped its head toward him with frightening speed, long before his foot could even make contact with the floor.
In the blink of an eye, it rushed toward 6, darting toward him before he could even react to its first movement.