A few minutes ago, Lake was happily going through the spider's food storage, collecting RP to his heart's content.
From his calculation, he still had an hour before the next batch of spiders came to feast. Originally, he wanted to stay for a bit longer to gather a few more RP points before leaving.
Unfortunately, a lone spider had passed by the area and spotted the massacre he had left outside and immediately left to call for backup.
Before Lake even realized what was going on, the area outside the storage room was filled with hundreds of spiders crawling all over the ground, walls and ceiling.
When Lake finally realized what was going on, he had been completely blocked into the storage area. At first, he didn't understand what had gone wrong with his plan, no spiders were supposed to be in this area for another hour.
Lake managed to observe the fate of a random spider and found out that a lone spider had been the one to discover the massacre scene outside which led to the report.
After glancing through the crowd of spiders, Lake had managed to pinpoint the spider that had reported this incident and read through its fate quickly.
After going through it however, Lake was slightly stunned for a moment before releasing a long sigh. This failure was entirely his fault.
The lone spider that had spotted the massacre was apparently the younger sibling of one of the soldier spiders that had been guarding the food storage area. It seems that she had wanted to check up and talk to her brother due to the lockdown but when she turned the corner to see the nightmarish scene of her brother's corpse ripped apart… Lake could only lament his lack of understanding thinking about it.
"I didn't expect these spiders to possess humanity too…" Lake softly muttered as he gazed at the eight eyes of the little spider that had been staring at him.
Lake could sense the deep resentment emanating from them without even having to use his sixth sense.
In the face of that resentment however, Lake remained expressionless, as if it hadn't affected him in the slightest.
Removing his gaze from the little spider, Lake looked at the rest of the spiders who filled up the wide tunnel. Their beady red eyes were all staring at him as he stood on the other side of the entrance to the storage area.
The entrance was small, only allowing for at most two spiders to come through at once. However, Lake could already see that some of the spiders were digging into the earth, creating tunnels that would lead to a new entrance to the storage area.
If that were to happen, even using the entrances as choke points to limit the amount of spiders he would face at once, he would eventually be surrounded and vastly outnumbered. Even with his strong defense, Lake highly doubted that he could survive being cut over and over again by countless spiders. Not to mention if he were to be injected with their paralytic venom or restrained by the barrage of webs that would be flung his way.
While Lake was busily thinking about a way out of this mess, the spiders had begun to approach the storage room entrance.
Leading the charge was more than ten General Class Spiders with around thirty Soldier Class Spiders behind them.
Seeing the spiders approaching him, Lake couldn't afford to hesitate any longer, he needed to get out of there.
Throwing his last remaining smoke bomb at the approaching group of spiders, Lake rushed in as soon as the smoke filled the tunnel.
With swift and silent movements, Lake managed to dash past the General and Soldier Class Spiders. Behind them however was going to be the tricky part.
Looking at the numerous spiders covering both the ground and the ceiling, Lake's eyes narrowed into slits as he used the power of the wind to lighten his body.
With a mighty leap, Lake cleared over twenty meters, landed lightly on top of a spider's head.
*BOOM!*
With a low resounding sound of air exploding, Lake leapt forward again, completely exploding the spider's head who he had been standing on. As he leapt, he made sure to grab the strand of fate as soon as it disconnected from the spider's exploded head.
With the sound of the spider's head exploding, every spider was quickly alerted to the position of Lake, including the group of Soldier and General Class spiders who were still inside the smoke.
As Lake landed on another spider's head and was prepared to leap forward again, his sixth sense alerted him of danger quickly approaching from behind. Turning his head slightly, he saw a giant wall of web quickly approaching him.
As Lake saw the web, he quickly leapt forward once more, killing the spider he was standing on before grabbing the thread of fate. As he soared through the narrow gap between the spiders, he spun his body around as he stabbed his spear into one of the spiders on the wall.
As the web was about to hit him, Lake took a deep breath as his muscles tensed up, swelling greatly as green veins appeared like vines wrapping around his arms. With a short grunt, Lake swung his spear, sending forth a large gust of wind, blasting the spider that was attached to his spear forward into the approaching web.
Using the rotational force from the swing and the wind generated to propel himself backwards, Lake turned his body to face forward as he lightly landed on top of another spider's head. With another resounding boom, Lake dashed forward before landing on the ground, having completely bypassed the spider's backlines.
Panting lightly, Lake turned his head to look at the spiders that had started to turn around and madly rush towards him.
Seeing the spiders approaching, Lake immediately picked himself up as he made a mad dash through the tunnels. The move he used just now to create the gust of wind was one of the stances from the Steel Body Martial Art.
Lake had discovered this interesting use of the stances after he had upgraded Steel Body to level two. Apparently all of the stances of Steel Body could be used as a combat technique if applied in the correct situation to unleash astonishing power. Lake didn't know about this when the technique was still in the first level as his body wasn't strong enough to handle practical use of the stances back then, however, after reaching the second level, his strength had reached the point where he could use a few of the stances in combat before he was completely exhausted. After Lake had thought about it a bit more he found that it actually made sense. After all, the technique is called Steel Body Martial Arts, not Steel Body Training Method.
While running through the tunnels, Lake ran into a few spiders who he quickly dispatched before continuing forward. This however only served to further enrage the spiders and caused them to chase him even more frantically.
Lake didn't mind this as he continued to run through the tunnels.
As he ran he took the chance to glance at the current amount of RP he had earned from this trip so far.
[RP Points = 603.031]
Seeing that he had gained almost 400 points from this trip, Lake was more than satisfied with the result. However, Lake felt that he could still do more. If he could earn 400 more points he would have enough points to upgrade Steel Body to the final level, gaining strength and defense similar to that of a Peak Rank One beast.
Lake had originally planned to continue hunting in the nest, but glancing at the spiders that were frantically chasing him from behind, Lake knew he had to get out of here first.
Looking ahead, Lake could already see the exit from the tunnels to the ravine. As he approached he could hear the swarm of spiders lined up outside waiting for him. If the spiders that had been chasing him so far belonged to the fourth Queen's colony, Lake guessed that the spiders waiting outside were the combined force of all the Queens' colonies.
Sensing the spiders waiting outside for him, Lake didn't slow his approach one bit. Inside the tunnels one may have thought that Lake held the advantage due to its narrow structure that allowed him to fight spiders in small batches. However, to Lake, this was nothing more than a limitation.
After he had upgraded the Master Parkour skill to the second level and could call on the wind to assist his movements, Lake's combat skills ascended to the next level as various new forms, techniques and strategies were opened up to him after being combined with his Weapon Master skill.
However, due to the narrow space of the tunnels and the little wind, Lake couldn't use his skills' maximum potential.
Looking at the exit, Lake didn't hesitate as he jumped straight into the middle of the ravine after exiting the tunnel.
When he landed in the center of the ravine, he raised his head as he pushed his sixth sense to the maximum. Now that he was in the open again, Lake could feel the cold wind blowing against his skin which wrapped his body, almost like a protective bubble.
Looking around, Lake could see hundreds of spiders crawling on the walls and cobweb bridges that dotted the ravine. Lake was ready to fight through this horde of spiders at any moment but after waiting a bit, he was slightly puzzled.
Why weren't they attacking?
As Lake stood in the center of the ravine, he continued to observe the surrounding area that had gotten creepy all of a sudden. Each spider had eight eyes and there were hundreds of spiders here. Each of those eyes were staring him down. Not a sound was emitted as they all stood by and watched.
Even the spiders that were previously chasing him had slowly stopped as they just stood by and watched. Lake could even spot the little spider whose brother he had killed. She was surprisingly silent and Lake could even see that the resentment in her eyes had calmed down greatly.
Feeling that this situation was too weird, Lake chose to observe a spider's fate to find out what was going on. When Lake started to observe the spider's fate, he saw a glance of something in its memories that immediately sent a chill down his spine.
Without hesitation, Lake quickly jumped out of the way of his current position. In that split second from when he jumped, Lake could feel his sixth sense going crazy as a deep sense of dread drowned him.
*CRASH!* *BOOM!*
Something crashed into the place Lake was previously standing as a giant shockwave was emitted from the crash site, sending Lake flying from the impact. Thankfully, he had the assistance of the wind which he used to immediately push himself even further away as he began to quickly run up the ravine wall trying to desperately escape this area.
Standing in the dust of the crash site, a pair of human eyes were staring at the figure of Lake running away with slight shock. When the dust finally cleared, the figure's full body was revealed.
The Empress Spider, walking out of the dust, locked her gaze onto Lake who was frantically scaling the cliff face of the ravine as a puzzled expression appeared on her face.