Chapter 224: Longleg spiders
Yutaka soon came back, and he was even paler than before as he stared at them with wide eyes. He told them what he found out.
Everything was because of a large hunting team, the Mistwalker. They were the ones that wanted to hunt the Longleg Spiders in a very large capacity, and they needed bait to know the recent strength of the nest.
And as it turned out, Vacuse and Lady Slave had walked in like goats stretching out their necks for slaughter. The gang had promptly set them up.
Vacuse was annoyed. It seemed as if people were always trying to kill him everywhere he went, and it was getting tiring, but this time he really could not blame them, because they genuinely thought he was weak.
"One thing I still don’t understand is what the deal with the Longleg Spiders is. Are they that valuable?" Vacuse asked.
"Yes. Their venom is precious. It is used in the making of hundreds of poison and healing potions. Also, the venom that can be extracted from each spider is no more than three drops. That is why I was surprised the nest was assigned to you. After all, only large teams are allowed, because it is one of the main sources for the gang to make money!" Yutaka said.
Vacuse frowned. "The monsters are in the second circle, and even then they are at the very bottom of it, right? Alright, we’ll take it."
Yutaka froze, and his eyes widened as he looked at him with traces of fear on his face. "Wait, you are going to take it even when you know it’s a suicide attempt?"
Vacuse looked at Lady Slave, and after a brief hesitation, she sighed heavily. "We are already in the boiling pot. We owe the Gloomspire for the fee of the contract we already agreed on, same as the Guide Association.
"We need money to leave this territory, which means work, and it seems this is the only work we will be getting."
Yutaka groaned and put his hands on his head in a sign of doom. "I’m going to die."
"Why though? Are guides allowed to enter the nest?" Lady Slave asked.
"Guiding means I actually have to take you to the place, you know. And if I dare do anything like stop halfway, the guide will just kill me at the end. And don’t even talk about running away! The spiders will kill me before I get far!"
Vacuse could not help it, he chuckled. "Maybe you should have been much stronger than you are. The weak have no choice but to do what they are told. Choices are for the strong, and the number of choices depends on the amount of strength as well."
Yutaka looked at Vacuse with a blank expression, and then he looked from the blind guy to the person leading him. He did not know if he should cry or laugh that a blind person was the one lecturing him about strength. Finally, he took a deep breath and shared a look with Lady Slave as if to highlight how simple the blind guy was. "Right."
Soon though, they had no choice but to start moving.
Yutaka began to explain things to them and clung to the hope that maybe Lady Slave could find a way to kill two spiders while avoiding the rest of the nest, but even from his tone, he did not believe himself.
"Longleg Spiders are social monsters. Their nest is a hive. All the grunt workers are also warriors, but according to their level of power and rank, we have the warriors, then the generals, and then we have the queens, and finally, the queen mother.
"When I talked about the circle two power of the spiders, I meant the warriors and the generals. After all, they are the ones that move close to the outskirts of the nest. They are the ones we would have to deal with.
"They have six legs with two claws at the front. They have protruding fangs that are so dangerous they can bite through steel, even enchanted ones, not to mention their venom. Their shell is hard and mostly resistant to magic.
"But surprisingly, if you can hit them face first, then they are easy to kill, but that is even harder because they are very agile with their long legs."
Yutaka explained as he led them through the tunnel. The tunnel had grown cold and dark, very much deserted now. "If you can kill two a day for a week, then you’ll pay all your debts and still have much left over!"
They had not gone that far when Vacuse noticed that someone was following them. The person was keeping their distance, but they made the mistake of looking at Vacuse constantly with killing intent in their eyes.
The killing intent was faint, so Vacuse knew the person must be a professional, but even then, the dragon heir was sensitive to things like that, so of course he knew.
Suddenly, Yutaka paused and pointed at two large pillars by the side of a tunnel. The pillars were inscribed with magic symbols, making them glow and shimmer. "This is some sort of magical barrier. But of course, it does not really keep the whole nest out if they want to flood over, but that has never happened.
"It seems they are quite content in their lair, killing the occasional unfortunate hunters and other monsters... wait... where’s the blind guy?"
While Yutaka was yapping on, Vacuse had moved. He used draconic energy to cover the distance between him and the person spying on him in what seemed like a blink.
But he had underestimated the spy a little, because they also began moving the instant they sensed something was off. Unfortunately for him though, Vacuse used his void energy to empower himself, and his speed increased tenfold.
He caught the spy by the neck and broke it before they had the chance to throw any attack at him.
"Hey, Yutaka. Do you know him?" Vacuse asked as he slowly returned, dragging the dead man along with him.