《Wars, Massacres and Undeads》Chapter 11: Critters
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"So, what kind of affinities do you have?" asked Elia, after a few minutes of silence.
Without hesitation, Elena briefly told him what kind of affinities she had and also took some time to explain how her Affinity tab had fused with her Status Screen.
It wasn't that she was a naive person, ready to tell everyone her secrets, but she really couldn't see the innocent looking boy betraying her somehow, and if he didi, she wouldn't really blame him. Even if Necromancers weren't persecuted, people weren't all too keen on living in the same city as them, because of their bad reputation of desecrating tombs and the likes. No one wants to know that your deceased father was fighting some monsters or even other humans in an undead army of some kind.
While Elena told him what affinities she had, his expression grew more and more stupefied. When she finished, Elia was on the verge of exploding with excitement.
"You have four affinities with values higher than the average person and two of those are on a genius level, that's incredible!"
Affinities were divided in Elemental affinities, so air, water, fire and earth, Balance affinities, like Death and Life, or Dark and Light and Combined Affinities, like Nature or Space.
The last was usually a mix up of up to three other affinities, that either combined trough training or naturally. It was really rare to obtain a Combined affinity, as you would have to possess good values in all of the affinities used to create the combined one.
Usually, normal people of all mortal races, like Dwarfs, Elves, Humans, Gnolls, Lizard-kin, Gnomes and so on, all had a value of two in all the Elemental affinities, other than the Element their race was attuned with, like Water for Humans or Fire for Lizard-kin.
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Then came people blessed by the gods, geniuses or people who lived life-changing experiences. Elia was of the first kind, he somehow got blessed by Melia and was awarded higher than the average affinity with Water, Earth, and Life, and he had gained the Nature affinity much like Elena.
"Let's move," said Elena, cutting off Elia's explanation. She wasn't all too interested in hearing it right now, in the middle of a Dungeon, so she simply gave the Affinity Stone to Elia and got back to the King's Cave.
After a short break to eat lunch, or dinner, or whatever, Elena concentrated on the current situation. One of the remaining group of spiders, the Critter Spiders, was starting to taste the ground and trying to start expanding to where the Shadow Spiders lived in before.
If they got settled in, they would probably proliferate and their already huge numbers would increase even more, which would prove rather annoying. So Elena decided to go for them, as the Titan Spiders still had to try anything funny.
As always, she got her undead in formation, creating a circle around her and Elia, and gave them the order to move towards their new targets.
As soon as they reached the Critter Spiders, they crashed in hundreds of them. Even the most trained soldiers and ruthless monsters would at least feel uncomfortable with a number of spiders crawling around and on them, but the undead didn't so much flinch and continued to move forward, all the while protecting her master who was busy killing off the few who got past them and collecting as many bodies as possible.
After what seemed an eternity of the spiders and undead mass crashing against each other, the place was finally cleared of the small critters. She had lost some of her undead, but overall she felt satisfied with the results and spurred her minion forward toward the mouth of the Critter Spiders nest entrance.
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They managed to clear it in a matter of a few hours. The small spiders were not big enough to oppose resistance against the superior undead, even if they flooded the tunnels with their bodies.
Only a single room remained in the nest, which had been quite a surprise in its size, being much bigger than the other she had cleared earlier.
In the last room stood a single spider, busy on dumping out Critter Spiders at a sickening pace and surrounded by her kind. As soon as Elena ordered her undead to attack, all of the spiders in the room turned towards them and charged, like a massive tsunami.
It was quite an easy battle, the Critters were not strong enough and were squished by the tens, and the 'Mother' couldn't give birth to the spiders the pace at which her children were being slaughtered.
Soon enough, all of the little spiders and their 'Mother' had been slaughtered, squished to a green mush which covered the floor and the walls.
As with all the other nests, there was the usual pillar in the end, on which was a completely white robe, so white it almost looked transparent. Elena got one of her undead go take the robe for her, and when she assured it was safe she put it in her inventory, where it was identified as a 'Spider Silk Robe (+1 Wisdom, +1 Dexterity)'.
Elena took it out of the storage and wore it, feeling the small change in her stats. Satisfied, she turned around, going straight for the last group of spiders, the Titan Spiders.
Elena took out the last two corpses of Stone Centipedes from her Inventory and turned them into zombies, then she used the remaining mana to create four skeletons out of the Poison Spiders, which were the biggest and strongest monsters remaining in her inventory.
With her ranks replenished, they assaulted the boundary of the Titans Spiders domain, taking on a few of the gigantic spiders at a time.
As expected, they were much stronger than any of her individual undead, but this time Elena and Elia had numbers on their side, so even if they took many casualties, they were able to bring down the dozen of spiders patrolling the area around their nest entrance by using a simple hit and run tactic.
After that, Elena had her undead create a perimeter on the nest entrance, gathered the corpses and took out a meal for herself and Elia.
After they finished eating, the weariness of the battles they had fought started to take the toll on them, so they decided to sleep some to recover energies. If anything happened, Elena's minions would warn them.
Recap of Elena's Forces and Inventory:
LEGION:
Zombies:
1 Big Acidic Roach - 'Ro' (Acid Spring)
10 Centipedes
1 Ant Queen - 'Queen'
4 Poison Spider
Skeletons:
1 Big Bipedal Boar - 'Rao' (Bipedal Affinity)
4 Poison Spider
INVENTORY:
Corpses:
152 Giant Ants
21 Acid Roaches
4 Giant Earthworms
25 Poison Spiders
59 Shadow Spiders
139 Critter Spiders
1 Critter Spiders Broodmother
Provisioning:
47 liters of water
3 cooked rabbits
3 cooked birds
Herbs (i)
Berries (i)
Tools:
5 Cooking Knifes (i)
4 Pickaxes (i)
1 Mithril Bracelet (Enchant: Spider's Bite)
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