1.12

Their group was not cut out for tunnel warfare.

Harold had known this, but had led their motley band straight towards the site of heaviest fighting anyway. At this point, he had half a mind to just dismiss the possibility of mind control, and just curse at his own damn stupidity.

Well, it was too late to find a lesser site of battle. They would make their stand here.

The battle took place in a cavern this time. Massed spiderlings, both Fangs and Black Widows, attacked and counterattacked across the wide cave, until the entire large expanse was filled with the sounds of a swirling melee.

Their allies in the Fang brood were also undoubtedly fighting on other fronts, and he had no guarantee that they would hold out. They would have to break this front, and fast. If the Brood Mother wasn’t lying, they’d be outnumbered, and a game of attrition would only mean defeat in the coming days.

Recognizing that he couldn’t command the spiders, Harold racked his brain for ways to organize the forces in the cavern. They didn’t speak the spider’s language, and save for the Brood Mother, they couldn’t understand him.

Voicing his concerns, it was Amber who came up with the solution. “What if we just have Rocky say it? Isn’t he able to communicate with anything?”

Harold nodded, “that could work, maybe.” He had no idea whether the spiders had a language in the first place. And if they didn’t would Rocky just terrify them? “Hey Rocky, can you tell them really loud to ‘Fang spiders, fall back and hold the line?”

The little rock nodded. Then, in a terrifyingly loud voice, it bellowed. “FANG FALL BACK AND HOLD LINE.” Rocky looked up at Harold as if to ask whether he had done a good job.

“Good enough.” Harold rewarded him with a little headpat, and the little rock nuzzled into his palm.

All over the cavern, Fang spiders were reforming their ranks. Rocky’s command had interrupted the brutal hand to hand, or fang to fang fighting. The Fang spiders reformed a line, and Harold moved to the front of the line.

The Black Widow spiders, however, had been confused by the loud voice. After all, only their Brood Mother could speak to them, and that was through a mind magic, a mental link. So what was this voice that they were hearing in their own language?

They didn’t stay stunned for long. Shaking off their confusion, they quickly began scuttling towards the Fang spider line, looking to break it.

“Oh no you don’t, [Wall of Ember].” Three Black Widow spiderlings were incinerated immediately, and no other spiders came rushing through the wall of flame.

“Hey Rocky.” Harold began, patting the little rock. “Can you command these spiders to rush the other side of the cavern as soon as the [Wall of Ember] dies down?”

Rocky nodded. “RUSH OTHER SIDE WHEN WALL FALLS.”

The spiderlings obliged, massing together and charging as the wall of fire began to die down.

They overwhelmed the Black Widow spiderlings with that charge. Harold found himself in the thick of it, while Amber kept to the back, throwing a [Flame Lance] at short intervals, each shot either pierced a foe, breaking through its carapace, or resulted in an injury that their allied Fang spiderlings could capitalize on.

The foe was disorganized, no leadership structure was evident in the cavern, and so when the flame wall had gone up, they had seemingly scattered, each individually looking for a way past the flames.

When the organized assault came, the Black Widows broke into smaller groups, which could be surrounded and crushed by their allies.

Harold swung his war hammer, bringing his heater shield up to defend his body whenever a Black Widow spiderling lunged.

He advanced with the line, careful not to outpace friendly forces, for fear of being flanked like he had been in the last fight. Harold had spent three days paralyzed and in pain, and there was no way he was going to fall victim to their venom a second time.

Rocky’s golem waded into battle with them, uncaring of the venom that the Black Widow spiderlings could impart, their fangs making small dents in the rock whenever their blows connected.

It had been about the same height as the Black Widow spiderlings when it had first spawned, but it seemed to have grown recently. It’s body still held many jagged stones, but a dim green ran through it all, a dimmer green than Rocky’s gem, but enough for any onlooker to make the connection.

With its larger size, near immunity to the Black Widow venom, and the war hammer it had in place of a right arm, it broke through the discoordinated enemy line easily, bringing enough blunt force to turn the enemy spiderlings to mush, even while still within their black carapace.

Harold fell into a comfortable rhythm. Overhead blow, raise shield to guard against counter, shield bash forwards to disorient, move shield to the left and perform a lethal blow.

Slowly, they pushed back the Black Widow line until they went scurrying into one of the two tunnels on their side of the cavern.

Panting, Harold turned to his companions. “Rocky, tell the spiderlings to leave a quarter of their numbers here to hold the choke points, the rest should follow us and attack the flank of a different Black Widow force.”

Rocky nodded, taking time to process the complex sentence. “Quarter of spiders stay here, block tunnel. Rest follow, attack enemy side.” The rock’s voice no longer boomed as it had in the thick of the fighting, but the spiderlings obliged. A quarter of their number held the left side tunnel against any possible attack, while the rest looked on at them, their beady red eyes expectantly waiting for him to lead their assault.

Harold felt the fatigue now. That had been several minutes of non-stop fighting, and he had exerted a lot of energy to do it. He held up his index finger, panting, and sat down on the cold stone floor.

Minutes later, their party was at the head of a Fang spiderling counterattack, aiming to take one of the Black Widow caverns, and cut off reinforcements to other battlegrounds.

#####

The tunnel was dank. Where once was a cold, empty tunnel, stood now a passage filled with the blood and guts of eviscerated spiders.

They forged on anyway. Harold led the way, illuminating the way forwards with his war hammer, the dim glow had only grown stronger as he had levelled, and now it illuminated the passageway.

It was quiet, and Harold asked the spiders to hold this position. He was fairly certain they were reaching the end of the tunnel, and he did not want to fight the Black Widow brood while at half strength.

It only took a quick request to Rocky, and the Fang spider behind him moved to hold his forward position in the tunnel. He sat, as did Amber, and they checked their notifications.

[Congratulations! Level Up! Level 7 Gem Soldier]

[Congratulations! Level Up! Level 8 Gem Soldier]

[Congratulations! Level Up! Level 9 Gem Soldier]

“No new skills,” Harold began. “Hopefully we’ll get one for level ten.”

...

Amber shared her status. “Same here.”

#####

[Amber Liddle]

Age: 24

Race: Human

Class: [Elemental Mage, Level 8]

Constitution: Human

Achievements: [The First Spellcrafter]

Titles: [Pyromancer]

#####

Rocky meanwhile, not one to be left out, jumped up and shared his own status, speaking in his once more disconcerting voice. “Status!”

#####

[Rock Hard]

Age: ???

Race: Rock

Class: [Noble of Stone, Level 7]

Constitution: Rock

Achievements: [First Light]

Titles: [Progenitor]

#####

Harold looked at the status page in confusion. “Wait wait wait, has Rocky been fighting while we’ve had our backs turned? How is he level 7 from just one fight?”

Amber looked thoughtful. “Maybe it’s an experience sharing function in the system. He developed skills before, right? Like the language thing, so let’s just assume that he can gain experience both from what his golem kills, and when he watches us fight.”

“Okay, that’s good.” Harold gave the little rock one of the headpats it seemed to love so much. “Nobilis are strong, right? So hopefully his level 10 skill is something overpowered enough to kill a brood mother.”

She nodded, then gestured further down the tunnel. “We should get moving again.”

#####

Harold regretted his role as the head of their little ad hoc attack column. He was happy enough to set the pace, of course. No sense in letting the Fang spiderlings tire themselves out before even reaching the enemy.

However, the limb falls of the Fang spiders sounded remarkably similar to the movement of the Black Widows. Standing at the head of the column, Harold had to try to listen for their foes in vain.

‘Wait,’ a thought froze Harold in his tracks. ‘Spiders aren’t limited to the ground, are they?’ He brought a fist up, signaling a stop, the column coming to a halt. He looked upwards and pointed.

Harold’s heart dropped. There were indeed spiderlings on the ceiling, and upon raising his hammer to illuminate their movements, the vast majority of their ceiling-borne attackers dropped onto the column, intent on wreaking as much havoc as possible.

This was no time for fancy maneuvers or a consolidation of forces, Harold simply swung his way back through the column, catching a low level Black Widow spiderling in the head, sending it flying into the tunnel wall.

When another spider came at him, fangs bared, hoping to assault his midsection, Harold promptly brought his shield down, severing its head with the sharp, angular bottom of his heater shield.

‘I have to get to Amber.’ Harold muttered to himself. All along the tunnel, Fang spiders were caught, paralyzed, and killed by the larger Black Widow spiders.

Amber had taken up the back of the line. As the mage, it had made sense for her to be as far from the front as one could get. Now, though, Harold could only think about how far she was from him.

Far from the near formulaic fighting of the large cavern, the tunnel war had turned from a brawl to a deathmatch. The Black Widows had had the advantage to begin, dropping from the ceiling to immediately kill one of their foes.

However, their larger bodies meant that they had to drop down in single file, to do battle with the Fang spiders that marched two abreast. Many of the Black Widow spiderlings found themselves surrounded by three or four foes, and were gradually worn down, until finally killed as a fang pierced their carapace.

Rocky’s golem was doing quite well for itself as well. No longer having to break a line, it was now fighting enemies one at a time, sometimes even with a numbers advantage. It crushed everything in sight, freeing up more and more of the Fang brood to aid in other fights.

Still, the fight wore on, and casualties began to mount on both sides. Harold had reached the middle of the column, close enough now to see Amber casting flame lances. There were no spiderling corpses near her, drawing a sigh of relief from Harold.

The last few enemy spiders were being cleared up now. Their corpses being pushed to the sides of the caverns by allied Fang spiders, to allow the convoy to move once more. The attack column had taken casualties, many had fallen in the initial ceiling-borne attack.

Bringing Amber and Rocky to the front, he asked the little stone to convey a question. “Do we keep going?”

The rock relayed the query. “Keep Going?”

The lead spiderling gave a light hiss, gesturing down the unexplored tunnel with one spindly appendage.

We keep moving.