Chapter 12

I was barely able to contain my excitement. All of this good food was laid out like a buffet before me, and the best part was I would finally get to use my full strength to hunt it! Until now I’d had to hold myself back so I didn’t smash my prey into an inedible mess, but against Cleaners that wouldn’t be a problem.

“Ah, I’m drooling, best get started before I frighten the humans.”

I crouched on the mountain of rubble and garbage that made up the defensive wall, aiming my body at a large adult Cleaner standing at the opposite end of the den, then kicked off as hard as I could. My body rapidly soared across the length of the hole, a full kilometer away from where I started, in three seconds.

I landed right on the Cleaners head, smashing my legs into his skull and killing him instantly. There were five other cleaners in the immediate vicinity. They stared at the intruder for a moment, processing what was happening before two of them, who were also adults, came rushing at me. The other three were only adolescents and they ran off to get help. I didn’t try to stop them, it was what I wanted after all.

The first Cleaner attempted the usual running charge attack, but I stopped it with a shot of formic acid out of the hypodermics in my forearms.

“Tcha! Damned ant, how dare you-!” it tried to shout, but its words were cut off by the urticating hairs I shot through its head.

“Impressive” I thought, examining my arms, where the hairs were already regrowing “But what If I do this?”

I imagined one of the hairs growing longer than the others, exactly like the Evolved Cleaners special attack earlier. As expected, the hair grew long and shone a nice shade of ebony. Though it looked a bit ridiculous attached to me, as it was nearly double the length of my arm, so I broke it off.

“Y-You…! Why are you able to make hairs like that?!” the other adult said, now quivering in fear.

“You already know, don’t you?” I said, bending my legs and jumping at the Cleaner. This time I jabbed my makeshift spear into its head and found, to my delight, that it penetrated their exoskeletons nearly as well as my secondary arms did.

I made a second one, and just it time too, as I could feel the adult and adolescent spiders about to swarm me. Once again I crouched my legs and jumped up, not as high as I could, but high enough that I could see the hoard of tarantula beneath me. They were climbing all over each other, making a small tower of bodies to try and reach me.

“Kihihi! This is the best!” I shouted, gleefully.

“Don’t go overboard Master! Remember what happened before!”

“Don’t worry, I was still green back then, this time it will be different!”

I pointed my hypodermics at the crowd of eager Cleaners below me and expanded their openings up to the size of golf balls, then drenched the crowd in formic acid. The hoard below scattered, leaving a nice, mostly empty spot for me to land in. There were a dozen younger cleaners who were pushed down and trampled on by the adults who couldn’t get out of the way in time. They weren’t dead yet though, so I quickly poked my spears into their brains to put them out of their misery.

“Hey Ember, what’s my kill count?” I asked nonchalantly

“Fourteen, Master.”

“Damn, I’m going too slow. My buddies and I used to be able to run a dungeon like this in fifteen minutes. Guess I have to-” I raised my arms, spikes primed to fire “-start taking this a little more seriously.”

The hoard closed in, each one chomping at the bit to get themselves a chunk of Lord flesh. But there was no way I would let that happen again. I shot my hairs out at a rate of four per second, and they grew back almost instantly. Dozens of the Cleaners were mowed down before the first ones actually got close enough to attack me and all they got was a spear through the head for their efforts.

It took me five minutes to clear the hoard out, with all of the adolescents and adults dead and all of the remaining children and infants scurrying down into the burrows. I was tempted to chase them, but decided against it, as freeing the humans was a higher priority.

I jumped over to the center where the dead humans were to check for any survivors. Up close the cause of death was much more obvious, as each one of them had a hole in their stomach the size of a basketball.

“Judging from the shape of the wounds it looks like something forced its way out of them from the inside…” I thought

“Given the Cleaners method of reproduction-” Ember started

“You don’t have to say it, I already know how they died. Figured it out as soon as I saw the smaller ones running around. God that’s horrible, even to a guy like me.”

I surveyed the dead but there were no survivors to be found so I moved over to the living humans still struggling against their bonds. Their arms, legs and mouths were tied up with silk and they were all lying face down so, one by one, I turned them all over and sat them up.

I found the oldest in the group, a man in his 50’s, and ripped the silk off of his mouth. His face was fiercer than the rest of them, covered in scars from what must have been a difficult life, so I decided he was the one most worth talking to.

“Do you know…where you are?” I asked. As expected, many of the humans were surprised by my ability to talk, but the old man wasn’t phased.

“We’re in Charleston, or whatever's left of it. Where’d the big f***ers go?” he asked. I turned his body so he could see the corpses in the distance and he asked “Did you get all of them?”

“Just the big ones…the smaller ones ran.”

He nodded. “I take it you’re not here to eat us then?”

“I would think that obvious…i’ll be taking you out…of this fog.”

“In exchange?” he said, not missing a beat.

“He’s quick, kukuku. I like that.”

“You get to be my bait…until you’re out of here….should take about a month.”

“Fair enough.” he said, head turning to see what was behind me “Those your friends over there?” he asked, gesturing behind me where Tim and Cory were sprinting towards us after presumably sliding into the den.

“Something like that…free the others” I said, severing the bonds on his hands and feet with my hair-spear, then handing the spear to him.

He took it, but before he went to do my bidding he asked “Did you…did you by any chance see an old lady over there in that pile of bodies? Would have had red dyed hair and green jade bracelets?”

His tone was grave, I didn’t need to guess why he was asking.

“…the one with the cardigan?…and the horned rimmed glasses?” I asked, remembering one such person.

He didn’t answer me, he simply sighed and left to cut the others free.

Once everyone was out of their restraints I set about the business of addressing everyone, telling them who I was and what I was about. In all there were thirty one survivors, a veritable feast for a Cleaner or an impossible to pass up chance for a Caretaker.

“Though if I were this late in the game I would just give it up.” Ember lazily remarked from her perch on my back.

Ignoring her, I said “Now then, since there are so many of you…i’ll have you each split up into three groups…one under Cory,one under Tim ,and one under Holden” I said, gesturing to the old man from earlier “All three of them will relay orders to you…from me directly. If I say eat, you eat…if I say sleep, you sleep. If I say run and hide, well you get the idea…”

I looked around, gauging their reactions when one of them, a man in his early twenties, stood up and said “Now wait a minute, I don’t remember electing you our leader.”

“Gotcha” I thought. In every group there was always one.

“Frankly I don’t feel comfortable following some monster ant around-especially after what those spiders did to us. Hell, he’s even got his own spider on his back! How do we know he won’t just eat us?” The man blustered, positively gnawing on the hand feeding him.

“Hey, now wait a minute-” Cory started, but I raised my arm and cut him off.

“You are free to go wherever you like…it makes no difference to me whether you follow or don’t…but just know that this will be the final time…I escort any humans out of here…there will be no second chances…so go your own way and die or stay with me and live…I will not tolerate buffoons.”

The man looked like he wanted to argue, but a dark look from Holden shut him up.

“I realize that up to now your experience in this place…has not been pleasant…but I promise you it will get worse soon…wasps and tarantulas were only the beginning…the real monsters will make their appearance soon…and they will make everything up to now look like a pleasant dream…so go get some rest, and to those following me…we’ll leave in the morning.”

I walked away, toward the pile of Cleaners I had waiting for me, when my three lieutenants stopped me.

“Uh, shouldn’t we get away from here? Y’know, to somewhere a bit less…spidery?” Cory asked.

“No, there is a reason…we are staying for the night.” I said, eyeing the group.

Cory shrugged and nodded, like that was all he needed to hear.

“So obedient, I might even miss him when he’s gone”

“What are we going to do if more spiders come?” asked Holden

I thought about it for a moment, then created three dozen of my hair-spears.

“Hand these out to everyone…you might not be able to kill them but I trust…you can poke their eyes out?…at least until I can finish them off…ah, but don’t poke yourselves…the tips are lined with blood thinner.”

With that, I left the three men alone while I went and gorged myself on Cleaner meat. There wasn’t much in the way of abilities to be learned from eating them, but God did they taste good. I’d had filet mignon and buttered crab legs before, but nothing could compare to the sweet and tender innards of the bugs.

Peculiarly though, no matter how much I ate my body didn’t expand any, nor did I ever have to use the bathroom. My body just absorbed the nutrients, so the more I ate the stronger I got.

There were so many Cleaners that I would have had to sit there and chow down for several days to finish them all, so I contented myself to eat the night away until the thing I was waiting for happened and sure enough…

“GAAAAAAHHHH!!!” came a woman's scream from where the humans were sleeping.

The ones who were on watch hurriedly started looking around, trying to find the source of the woman's terror, but there were no bugs to be found. I sprinted over to where they were and found her raising hell, holding her stomach and twisting around on the ground.

“He-Help meeeeEEEEE!!” she said, voice rising and falling in pain.

“I can’t…you know what’s coming…all I can do is…bring the end faster for you…” I said, raising my secondary arm.

“Now hold on, what are you trying to do?” said Tim, looking frantically between me and the woman.

I ignored him and asked “Do you want me to end it?”

There were tears in the woman's eyes, both from the pain in her stomach and the fear from what would happen next. I pitied her, but it was her choice to make. Despite the pain she went silent for a moment…

…and nodded at me.

“Wai-!” Tim shouted, but too late I brought my arm down and severed her head from her shoulders and her body was still.

“What the hell!” Shouted Tim “Why did you do that!? We could have saved her!”

I was about to retort, but Holden beat me to it “No, we couldn’t have. Those bastards put one of their eggs in her and short of cutting her open I don’t see any way we’d be able to get it out.”

“Wha? Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me that-” he stammered

“Have you never watched a B sci-fi film?…I thought it was obvious…” I said, surprised by Tim’s lack of culture.

“Yeah, I figured you knew too.” Cory remarked.

“Of course I knew, silly human!” Ember had me say for her.

“…Look, I uh-” but he was suddenly cut off by an infant Cleaner bursting from the woman's stomach.

The cat sized spider tried to pounce on Tim, but I impaled it with a spike, killing it instantly..

“Go back to sleep…we have a long day of traveling tomorrow.” I said, lazily picking up the infant cleaners carcass and snapping one of its legs off.

I tossed it into my mouth, savoring the flavor when Tim spoke up again “Uh, hey Forminus…”

“What? Do you want…to try it?” I said, waving another leg in front of Tim

“N-No thanks. Just, uh, sorry about yelling at you.”

“Think nothing of it…i’m more concerned about your lack of taste…both in food and in movies.” I replied, and with that I left the humans to continue my meal.