In another part of the city, a small group of armored vehicles were speedily driving through the rugged terrain of the ruined city. These armored vehicles were equipped with high quality defense systems that would make them capable of driving through hordes of low tier monsters with ease. These vehicles are often called Field Vehicles and are usually used by the rich and high ranking hunters. They provide some of the best defense that money could buy when traveling through fields since they're also equipped with various offensive capabilities that could be used to quickly dispatch low level monsters and can even defend against some of the higher ranking monsters.
Driving in the front of all these armored vehicles was an impressive looking jeep. This jeep had thick, black armor covering its exterior with a sleek design that made it look very futuristic and gorgeous. The armor was made out of an extremely hard alloy that combined various monster parts and cutting edge science to make it tough enough to withstand attacks from rank two monsters. If anyone that was knowledgeable about the latest advancements made in Field Vehicles was here, they would be able to immediately recognize the jeep to be one of the latest and most powerful models of Field Vehicles currently available in the market.
The jeep was fairly large, with its cabin having enough space and seats to fit around 6 people, two on each side. Inside the cabin, there were two groups of distinct people seated opposite each other.
On one side, there was a group made up of two men and one woman. One of the two men appeared to be fairly old, looking to be around his fifties or sixties while the other two looked to be quite young, only around their early twenties. The young man and woman had rather cold and aloof facial expressions, giving them an air of arrogance to them. The old man on the other hand had his eyes closed, looking as if he was sleeping peacefully. Each of them wore a strange purple robe with an intricate design on it like some sort of uniform. On the back of the robes was an insignia of a snake wrapped around a glowing sun.
On the other side, there was a group made up of two hunters who were blankly looking ahead of them. One of the hunters was male while the other was female. If Lake was there he would immediately recognize the identity of the male hunter as he had seen the man around a month ago. This hunter was Romero, the man who fought against Dom in the martial arts duel that Evelyn had taken him to.
The female hunter was a beautiful blonde woman who appeared to be in her early twenties. She wore a bored expression as she looked ahead. The woman sat next to Romero as the two groups stayed in a deadlock of deathly silence opposite to each other.
This silence was oppressive and uncomfortable, however neither side chose to break it.
Romero released a small sigh in his mind as he contemplated how he ended up in this situation. After he had lost the match against Dom a month ago, he had lost the right to raid a high ranked rift for his guild. This had left him depressed for a long time after, leading to the guild leader suggesting that he take a short break so he could recover his fighting spirit before he started hunting again.
Feeling that he really needed the chance to mentally recover from his defeat, he accepted the guild leader's suggestion and proceeded to spend the next couple of weeks relaxing at home. To his benefit, this little vacation actually had some effect and allowed him to clear his mind from the loss.
When his break was finally over, Romero returned to work. He felt a lot more energetic and motivated after his break and his mind had become much clearer allowing him to stay focused better.
However, before he could even begin raiding rifts again or hunting monsters, the guild leader had assigned him on an escort mission instead. This had left him slightly stunned, as their guild never really dealt with escort requests but he heard from the guild leader that the client this time was relatively rich and paying a large sum to have him and a couple other hunters escort them.
At first he was a little reluctant to do the mission, as his specialty was focused more towards combat and hunting than escorting but after thinking about his last failure during the duel, he eventually decided to do it to make up for his previous loss.
When he first met the clients, Romero had initially tried to get along with them, but the group had responded coldly to him, slightly irritating him. However, since this was a mission and he wasn't here to make friends, he decided to just follow along with them and just lead his team of hunters to escort them.
The client had informed them prior to the mission that Romero and his team will be escorting them to the ruins of Star City. This had slightly taken him by surprise as that was a relatively low danger field with the highest level creatures there being rank one, which made hiring Romero, who was a Martial Warrior at the High Rank, feel like overkill. However, he didn't question the decision of the group and just obediently followed them.
Since then, the group had come to Star City and had been making quick progress. Star City was enormous, taking up close to a thousand square miles of space. This made getting around take a while, not to mention the rubble and occasional group of monsters that often blocked the pathways of the city which made getting around even harder. Thankfully, the clients seem to have a specific destination in mind on where they want to go and were not just randomly wandering around which made Romero's job easier.
Looking at the map he had of the City before its destruction, Romero estimated that they would reach their destination within the next two hours. However, he isn't sure if he would be able to survive in this insufferable silence any longer.
In order to provide their safety, the contract his guild had signed with the client required him to be within five meters of them at all times. This was the reason that he was in the same vehicle as them when he could have just rode with the rest of his team instead of them and having to suffer in this awkward silence.
Turning his head to the side, he cast a side line glance at the female hunter beside him. Feeling his gaze, the female hunter also cast a sideways glance at him, making eye contact. After staring at each other for a bit, they both looked forward and slowly released a sigh as they stared at the group of boring clients opposite them.
However, unbeknown to Romero or the others, flying high in the sky above them was a strange bird that followed them. This bird was extremely small and had a pure white body, allowing it to blend into the clouds seamlessly. Following the small white bird, was a flock of birds of various sizes. The small white bird in front continued to follow the vehicles keeping its sharp eyes staring at the vehicles quickly moving through the City.
…
In another area of the city, the ground had split open, creating a massive ravine that stretched for a long distance.
Perched on the edge of a five story building, Lake silently gazed down into the ravine as he observed the spiders crawling out of it. A few minutes ago, he had arrived at the location of the spider's nest which was located inside the ravine.
Seeing the spiders crawling up and down the ravine walls, Lake realized that his original estimation of how many spiders the nest had may have been slightly off. From the amount he had seen so far after watching for a few minutes, his new estimation on the number of spiders is far over a thousand spiders, a chilling thought if you were to consider the size of each of them.
After realizing the number of spiders, Lake had quickly climbed up a tall building a few blocks away and had been silently observing the spiders' fates since then. From the observation, Lake had gathered various information about the nest which also explained why he had so grossly underestimated the spider's number.
It seems that the spider nest is split into multiple sections and mini nests that all exist within the one big nest that was the ravine. Each mini nest seems to have a "queen" sort of like a queen ant or queen bee that manages a mini colony. Above those queen spiders is another queen-like spider which Lake decided to call the Empress Spider. The Empress Spider controls the whole colony by managing and controlling the queen spiders, which in turn controls the regular spiders.
The first spider Lake had killed before coming to the nest, was a member of one of the minor nests, which only had around eighty or so spiders in it which Lake had originally used to estimate the number of spiders.
Lake also learned more about the structure of the nest and how it functioned from the fates of the various spiders he had seen, which made him question if he could really consider this a "nest". Lake felt that the term Spider Kingdom would be much more fitting.
The Spider Kingdom functions very similar to an actual kingdom. At the top of the society is the Empress Spider who rules over the entire kingdom. Next would be the nobles who serve the Empress. These nobles are the regular queen spiders that control their "territories" and "people". In this case, the "people'' being the regular spiders that go out hunting and gathering food. These regular spiders are your farmers of the "territory". The territories were the various hunting grounds that the spiders used to hunt prey. Each different hunting ground represented a different noble's territory that surrounded the ravine, which acted sort of like a capital to the spider kingdom. There were also a few separate groups of spider's within each noble territory that filled different roles. Some spiders were designated as a builder spider that uses their webs to create traps and fortify nests. There were also spiders who were tasked with expanding the territories of the noble spiders, looking for new hunting grounds and building transportation routes.
As for how such a big colony can get enough food inside this ruined city, that is due to the insane breeding rate of the creatures in the field. Due to the high density mana in the field affecting the creatures that live here, most of them have developed several mutations but one thing stayed common over all of these mutations, they were all an improvement of the base species. If the creature was fast, after the mutation it would become even faster. If the creature was strong, the mutation would make the creature even stronger and if it bred fast, it bred even faster! This led to an explosive increase in the number of rodents and creatures around the city which acted as a major source of food for the Spider Kingdom.
The level of organization and structure among the nest was simply terrifying. For a group of low tier monsters that evolved from regular spiders to group up together and create something like this is enough to send the entire world crazy! Scientists from around the world would come from far and wide to investigate and document this phenomenon if they knew about it.
It is a shame that those scientists wouldn't be getting a chance to even hear about this phenomenon however, as Lake had already set his eyes on it. To him, those spiders were simply prey, prey that are going to make him a man rich in RP points.