“What are you trying to say exactly?” Vlad asked. “That we ain’t up to the task?”
“I just want to warn you guys what you’re gonna be up against,” Jennifer said. “You may be as tough as you think you are, but don’t underestimate those spiders. They are very dangerous creatures. The largest ones are the size of a tiger and as powerful and dangerous.”
“Where do we find them?” Nate asked. “And how many are there spiders that we need to deal with?”
“They’ve been coming from the forest,” Jennifer replied. “So it’s safe the assume that their lair is somewhere in the forest, but I don’t know where exactly. We tried to find their den a few times but never succeeded. The deeper into the forest we went, the more spiders we encountered. At some point, there would become so many of them around us that we would have to turn around and return to our settlement. So I don’t know for sure where their lair is.”
“We need to find it then,” Nate said.
Jennifer nodded and said, “I have something else I’d like to ask you to do.”
“What’s that?” Vlad almost barked.
Jennifer gave him an angry look. She was to be about to say something unpleasant to him but then seemed to take a grip on herself.
She shifted her eyes to Nate and said sadly, “As I said, the spiders have been attacking our colony for the past two months. They not only kill our people but also grab some of them and drag them into the forest. We’re currently missing about thirty people. Every now and then, I round up a team of volunteers and lead them into the forest to search for our missing friends. Yet so far, we haven’t found a trace of them.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nate said.
It was highly unlikely that the missing colonists were still alive. Though Nate did not voice his thoughts, it was obvious that he thought the same thing.
“But as I said before, I can’t lead my team too deep into the forest,” Jennifer added. “The deeper we’d go, the more arachnids we’d encounter. At some point, they’d almost surround us from every direction, so we’d have to give up our search in order to return to the colony in one piece. We’ve never found our missing friends, because the spiders haven’t let us go too deep into the forest. So if you find our friends, bring them home, please.”
“Of course,” Nate said.
“I don’t think they’re alive,” Vlad said bluntly.
Nate looked at him quickly and said, “Don’t.”
“But it’s most likely true,” Vlad said, shrugging his shoulders. “Those spiders must already have fed on them. On bred on them. Or whatever else those nasty arachnids do to their victims.”
“Yes, I’m well aware that the chances that our friends are still alive are slim,” Jennifer said, eyeing Vlad coldly. “But if any of them are still alive, it’ll be appreciated if you bring them home.”
“You can count on it,” Nate said.
“Okay, guys,” Vlad said. “If that’s it, then let’s go already. Time to deal with those arachnids. Let’s show the colonists how it’s done.”
“Wait, Vlad,” Nate said to the Russian before shifting his attention to the leader of the colony. “So their lair is somewhere in the forest. We’re going to have to find it. But how many are there spiders we need to deal with?”
Jennifer shrugged her shoulders. “There’s a lot of them, that’s for damn sure.”
“How many is a lot?” Vlad asked, suspiciously squinting at the woman.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “There might be thousands of them.”
“What?” Vlad blurted. “Are you freaking kidding me? How are we supposed to deal with thousands of oversized spiders?”
“You tell me!” The woman shot back. “It’s your job, after all, not mine. You’re supposed to be good at dealing with such problems, aren’t you?”
“If you haven’t noticed, all we armed with are lousy pistols,” Vlad barked.
“So?” Jennifer said.
“You have to give us more guns if you want us to deal with your problem,” Vlad demanded.
“I don’t have to give you anything,” she replied. “We’ve already paid for your services. That’s not our problem that your superiors haven’t bothered to arm you with more powerful weapons.”
“Give us something, dammit,” Vlad yelled and began walking toward the woman.
“Vlad, calm down,” Nate said as he stood up and stepped in front of the Russian.
“No,” the woman shook her head. “I won’t give you shit, because we ourselves don’t have many weapons around here either. After all, we aren’t soldiers or mercenaries. If we’d had military experience or plenty of powerful firearms and ammo, we probably wouldn’t have had to use the services of your organization.”
Vlad glared at Jennifer, and she stared back at him. Nate stood between them, holding his hand on the Russian’s shoulder.
“Whatever,” Vlad finally said and took a step backward.
After making sure Vlad calmed down a bit, Nate turned to look at the leader of the colony, still standing by the window.
“I want to apologize for this,” Nate said. “This guy loses his temper so easily.”
Jennifer just shrugged her shoulders.
“Can you tell us a little more about those spiders?” he asked.
“Sure,” the woman said. “What do you want to know?”
“We know that there are lots of spiders in the forest,” Nate said. “But how strong are they? How fast are they? Are they smart? What tactic do they use? Is it hard to kill them? Any additional information would be greatly helpful to us. As a proverb goes, ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’”
“We, Russians, like to say, ‘Informed means armed,’” Vlad put in.
“There are two kinds of spiders,” Jennifer replied. “At least, we know of two types of them. We call them workers and warriors. The workers are somewhat smaller and thinner. They are pretty easy to kill, which is probably why they usually don’t participate in attacks on our colony.”
“So they are not dangerous?” Nate asked. “We shouldn’t be worried about the workers, right?”
“Not exactly,” Jennifer said. “While it’s true that the workers are weak and easy to kill, they seem to like to shoot gobs of webbing from their spinnerets.”
“Is their web dangerous?” Nate asked.
“Very,” the woman replied. “Their web is very sticky, so you will want to avoid being hit by it. If it gets on you, get rid of it as soon as possible before it dries up and glues you to something. While it’s moist, it’s not very hard to get rid of it. But after it dries up, it becomes almost as solid as rock.”
“Okay,” Vlad said. “Watch for the webbing. We get it. What about the warriors?”
The Russian clearly wanted for Jennifer to say all she had to say so we could finally leave the colony and go looking for the spiders.
“The warriors are stronger and tougher than the workers,” Jennifer continued. “They take several bullets to die. Unlike the workers, they usually don’t eject gobs of webbing from their spinnerets. Instead, they try to get within biting distance to use their mandibles on you. And believe me, their mandibles are strong. The warriors can easily rip human flesh and snap your bones with them.”
“Sounds terrifying,” Vlad said deadpan. “So, is that all? Do you have anything else to say or we can finally go?”
“There’s something else that you probably need to know about those spiders,” Jennifer said, glancing at the Russian. “As I said before, there are lots of various insects living around our colony. Since they are large and dangerous and there are way too many of them around, we do our best to avoid them. And most of the time, it works just fine. We don’t mess with them, and they leave us alone. However, there’s something strange about the spiders.”
“What do you mean?” Nate asked.
“It’s late summer now. Just like all the other insects on this planet, the spide
rs were in a dormant state during the winter. When spring came, they emerged from the hibernation. They didn’t seem to mind us at first. However, two months ago, their behavior drastically changed. They became very aggressive toward us and began to attack our colony for no reason we could think of.”
“You probably did something that aggravated them,” Nate suggested.
Jennifer shook her head. “No. As I said before, we do our best not to get into the insects’ way. At some point, the spiders just began to gather in large groups and attack our settlement. We never did anything that might have enraged them.”
“Yeah yeah,” Vlad said a bit annoyingly. “You already told us that. Why are you saying it again?”
Jennifer shot him an annoyed look and said, “My point is that the spiders’ attitude toward us probably didn’t change of its own accord. Something must have caused the arachnids to change their behavior toward us. So I guess if you figure out the reason why the spiders have become so aggressive toward us and deal with it, you will probably not have to eradicate the entire population of local spiders.”
As soon as she said that, a text message popped up in my HUD.
> Your objectives have just been updated.
“But be careful,” Jennifer continued, unaware of what we were seeing in our HUDs. “Most of the insects around here are pretty stupid like all insects are. But it’s not the case with the local arachnids.” She looked at Nate and added, “You wanted to know how smart they were. I can tell you that those spiders seem to have become very smart for some reason. They know when to attack and when to retreat. If you ask me, it looks like they either have somehow and extremely quickly evolved into way more complex forms or are being guided by something way smarter than they. The former seems highly unlikely to me if you want my opinion on that,” The woman fell silent for a second as if thinking about what else she should say, then nodded and added, “Well, I guess that wraps it up. I don’t think I have anything else to tell you about those spiders.”
“Good,” Vlad said then shifted his attention to the three of us. “By the way, I’ve just gotten a new mission or something, guys.”
“Me too,” Nate said. “Let’s check it out.”
I was about to bring up the Mission Menu when from the corner of my eye, I noticed that Alyson was shaking slightly. I put a hand on her shoulder and felt it tremble.
“Hey, what’s wrong, Alyson?” I asked.
The girl looked me in the eyes for a second and said quietly, “I don’t like spiders.”
She looked like she was going to burst into tears. She was really scared. Our intention of searching for giants arachnids and fighting them did not appeal to her at all.
Nate looked at the girl and said, “Don’t be afraid, Alyson. Just stay close to me, okay? I won’t let them hurt you.”
The girl nodded.
Nate added with a smile, “I’m not a big fan of spiders too, by the way.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said to make the girl feel a little better herself.
“You are just a bunch of pussies, guys,” Vlad said with a grin on his face. “Y’all should be wearing skirts and high heels instead of military uniforms.”
“You should keep your mouth shut if you have nothing useful to say,” Nate said.
“Oh my gosh,” Vlad said, shaking his head. “Can’t you guys take a joke? I’ve always thought that Americans love jokes.”
“Your so-called jokes ain’t funny at all,” I said.
“Tough crowd,” Vlad said and winked at Jennifer who met his eyes with a cold stare.
The Russian shrugged, then brought up his Mission Menu.
“The hell with all of you,” he said.
“You really seem like a very nice person,” Jennifer said.
Vlad did not reply. He had probably not even heard the woman. He seemed to have completely engrossed in what was showed on the holographic screen in front of him.
“Let’s check out our mission,” Nate said as he called up his own Mission Menu.
Jennifer did not seem to be surprised by it at all.
I figured holographic display screens that popped up in front of you out of nowhere were not all that rare in this world.
It was obvious that since we were a team, a single unit, all of us had the same objectives. So instead of bringing up my own Mission Menu, I just looked at the holographic screen hovering in the air before Nate and studied the information showing on it.
> The Mission Menu:
> Current Mission: Find and eliminate aggressive animals.
> Current Objectives:
> 1. Identify the reason why the spiders became so aggressive toward the colonists (IN PROGRESS);
> 2. Kill all the aggressive creatures or find a way to stop them from attacking the colony (IN PROGRESS).
So, our mission had initially been to find and deal with the overgrown spiders giving the colonists a hard time.
What we had to do now instead was to find out what had caused the local spiders to become overly aggressive toward the colonists.
“Okay,” Nate said. “Let’s go, guys.”
“Finally,” Vlad said. He then turned around and strode for the entrance door so quickly as if he were afraid that someone or something might stop him.
He was out of the container home even before we stood up.
Jennifer glanced at the door, which the Russian had left wide open, then shifted her attention to Nate and took a step toward him. There was uncertainty in her eyes.
“Wait a minute,” she said.
“You want to tell us anything more about those spiders?” Nate asked.
Jennifer just eyed the British guy for a moment as if trying to make up her mind. She then seemed to reach a decision. She replied, “No. I just want to give you something.”
She then walked to something that looked like a metal box, which sat next to the wall to our right. She tapped a button and the top drawer got pulled out. She reached inside with both her hands and took something from the compartment. When she turned around, there were what looked like a machine pistol and several loaded long magazines in her hands.
“Take this,” Jennifer said, holding the weapon and the pistol mags for Nate to take. “It’s a machine pistol. It’s fully automatic, and it holds sixty rounds. My people are armed with either semi-automatic pistols like yours or machine pistols like this one. We don’t have any other kinds of firearms around here, unfortunately. So take it and make good use of it.”
“Are you sure about this?” Nate asked.
It was obvious that the leader of the colony was not all that keen on handing her machine pistol over to us. She had not changed her opinion about us. She was still angry with us and still deemed us a bunch of inexperienced kids.
However, at the same time, she was well aware that right now, we were the only help that she was going to get. So she must have decided that she might as well give her machine pistol to us to increase our chances of successfully completing our job. It was her colony that was at stake here, after all. Those spiders intended to slay all the colonists, so us successfully dealing with them was in Jennifer and the other colonists’ best interest.
“Yes,” Jennifer replied. “Take it.” She nodded at the pistol in the holster on her right hip “I have this gun. It’s semi-automatic and holds only twenty bullets, so it’s not as good against those spiders as a machine pistol. Still, it’s better than nothing, so I’ll hang on to it for now while you are out hunting those spiders. Just do you best not to die, okay?”
“It’s nice to know that you finally began to care about us,” Nate smiled as he took the machine pistol and the spare magazines.
“Well, if you get yourselves killed, my machine pistol will be lost,” Jennifer said with a small smile on her lips. “Since I don’t have another, I wouldn’t want to lose this one.”
Nate laughed. “You got it. We’ll try not to get ourselves killed to get your gun b
ack to you.”
When we began to turn around, Jennifer said, “Be careful out there.” This time, she was speaking with a serious expression on her face. “Those spiders may seem pretty weak to you when you meet them, but there are lots of them and they are in fact very dangerous.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Nate said.
After that, we left her container home.
We returned to the Humvee and got inside. Vlad looked at me from the shotgun seat and grumbled, “What took you so long, guys?”
I just shrugged.
“She was giving you a blow job or something?” Vlad insisted.
I simply ignored him.
So he twisted in his seat to look back at Nate. He did it in time to see the British guy put the machine pistol under his jacket.
“Hey, what are you hiding in there?” He asked.
“Nothing,” Nate replied.
“Don’t bullshit me,” the Russian grumbled. “I clearly saw you hide some kind of a gun under your jacket. Spill the beans, bud. What was that? The cunt gave you something back there, didn’t she? That’s why it took you so long to get out of her hut.”
“For crying out loud, don’t call her a cunt,” I said. “Have some respect for people around you.”
This time, Vlad ignored me. He continued to stare at Nate in the back. The British guy sighed and said, “She gave me a gun.”
“That’s what I saw you hide,” Vlad said annoyingly. “But what kind of a gun?”
“A machine pistol,” Nate replied.
A smile slowly spread across the Russian’s face. “A machine pistol? That’s awesome. Sure, she should’ve given you an assault rifle or a shotgun, but a machine pistol is still better than our lousy handguns.”
“They don’t have assault rifles or anything like that around here,” Nate said.
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 13
