> David: I’m coming. I will be back soon.
> Nate: Our objectives have been updated. Now our mission is to kill a spider queen. And it is a Raid Boss. I guess you have something to do with that. You’ve found something out there in the forest, haven’t you?
> David: Yes. I’ll tell you everything when I come back to the colony.
> Nate: Okay. Be careful on your way back.
Fortune seemed to be smiling upon me because I did not encounter any more overgrown spiders on my way through the forest.
By the time I returned to the settlement, it had grown very dark. The night had fallen. When I met up with my teammates, Jennifer led us into her container house.
Once inside, I told them about what had happened to me and what I had found out. I told them about the cave, what I had seen inside, how powerful and dangerous the spider queen was, and how easily it had dealt with the armed people I had met near the entrance to the cave.
“You shouldn’t have gone in that cave all by yourself, mate,” Nate said when I was done. “It was very dangerous.”
“You could’ve died there,” Alyson said, then gave me a self-consciousness smile. “But I’m glad you’re alive and safe.”
“Next time don’t risk your life and wait for us to join you, okay?” Nate said. “We are a team, after all. We’re supposed to cover one another’s back.”
“Okay,” I said.
“A freaking Raid Boss?” Vlad exclaimed. “And we need to kill it? That’s awesome, guys. It’s much better than trying to track down and kill every single one of the ordinary spiders. Not to mention that Raid Bosses drop awesome loot in video games. Can’t wait to deal with that thing and see what it will drop for us.”
“We should use our skill points to learn new skills before getting into a fight with spiders again,” Nate said.
“You’re right, bud,” Vlad said.
All of us killed lots of spiders in the forest. Each of us leveled up several times. My current level was five. Nate’s level was five too. Due to his battle drone and the machine pistol he was armed with, the Russian had killed more spiders than any of us had, so he had gotten much more experience points than any of us. His level was seven. Alyson killed the least amount of arachnids, so her level was four.
We called up our Class Menus.
“What skills do you guys are gonna learn?” I asked.
“Since the spiders attack us from all directions, my Active Ability doesn’t seem to be much of a help here,” Nate said. “So I think I’ll improve the recharge delay and the duration of my Ultimate Ability for now.”
He glanced at the holographic screen in front of Alyson and said, “Alyson’s putting her skill points into similar skills to improve her healing abilities.”
Vlad did not reply. In fact, the Russian turned to face us before bringing up his Class Menu. This way, we could not see what was shown on the holographic screen in front of him. He might have done this on purpose so we could not see what skills he was going to learn.
I shifted my attention to my own Class Menu and studied the available skills.
Green Rune (Active Ability) — Blink
The First Branch of the Active Ability:
Name: Ready for Action
Description: You gain improved recharge delay for the Active Ability.
Recharge delay: -10 seconds (Current: 40 seconds)
Status: 2/3
Name: Unstoppable 1
Description: You gain an additional Blink charge. While the Active Ability can be used several times before going on Cooldown, after you use the Active Ability, you will have to wait some time before you can Blink again.
Recharge delay: 3 seconds
Status: 0/2
Name: Reacher
Description: Increases the distance of the Active Ability.
Blink Distance: +5 meters (Current: 15 meters)
Status: 0/3
Blue Rune (Passive Ability) — Sixth Sense
The First Branch of the Passive Ability:
Name: Guardian Angel
Description: You gain improved recharge delay for the Passive Ability.
Recharge delay: -1 second (Current: 6 seconds)
Status: 0/5
Name: Speed Maniac
Description: Increases your overall movement speed.
Speed increase: +10%
Status: 0/5
Red Rune (Ultimate Ability) — Teleport
The First Branch of the Ultimate Ability:
Name: Teleporter
Description: You gain improved recharge delay for the Ultimate Ability.
Recharge delay: -60 seconds (Current: 10 minutes)
Status: 0/5
Name: Reach Farther
Description: Increases the length of your teleportation tunnel.
Length: +50 metres (Current: 50 meters)
Status: 0/5
I gave the matter some thought. I had three skills to use. I really wanted to fully learn the Guardian Angle skill. It was a very useful skill and moreover, putting five skill points into it would unlock the Second Branch of my Passive Ability. This ability was great. It had saved my life more than once today. I was more than sure that there were lots of good skills on other branches of the Sixth Sense skill tree that could make my Passive Ability even more useful.
However, I decided to put all the three skill points into skills of my Active Ability first. My ability to blink was extremely useful. It had also saved my life several times back in the forest earlier today. So I put one more skill point into the Ready for Action skill, fully upgrading it.
The other two skill points went into Unstoppable 1. It was an extremely useful skill. It allowed me to use my Active Ability three times going on cooldown, with only a three-second recharge delay between each blink. Since the skill was called Unstoppable 1, there most likely was an Unstoppable 2 skill on one of the other Branches of my Active Ability skill tree, which probably improved the recharge delay between the three blinks.
Now that I had put five skill points into the skills on the First Branch of my Active Ability skill tree, the Second Branch was unlocked. Though I did not have any more skill points at the moment, out of curiosity, I took a look at the skills on the Second Branch of my Active Ability skill tree.
The Second Branch of the Active Ability:
Name: Faster, Faster, Faster
Description: For a short amount of time after using the Active Ability, your movement speed increases.
Speed increase: +10% (Current: 0%)
Duration: +1 second (Current: 0 seconds)
Status: 0/5
Name: Unstoppable 2
Description: You gain improved recharge delay for the Unstoppable 1 skill.
Recharge delay: -1 second (Current: 3 seconds)
Status: 0/2
Required skill: Unstoppable 1
Name: Trigger Happy
Description: For a short amount of time after using the Active Ability, your reload speed increases.
Duration: +3 seconds (Current: 0 seconds)
Speed increase: +10% (Current: 0%)
Status: 0/5
All of the skills on the Second Branch of my Active Ability seemed to be very useful, especially, the Unstoppable 2 skill. I was not sure which skills I would learn first. I decided that I would think about it after I leveled up and got skill points to use.
I then switched to my current stats and checked out my build.
Your Current Stats:
Class: Flanker
Your Current Level: 5
Experience Points: 1370
Experience Points to Level 6: 1500
Abilities:
Green Rune (Active Ability) — Blink
Maximum distance: 15 meters (Learned Skills: No Skills Learned Yet)
Amount of charges: 3/3 (Learned Skills: Unstoppable 1 2/2)
Delay between charges: 3 seconds (Learned Skills: Unstoppable 1 2/2)
Cooldown: 30 seconds (Learned Skills: Ready for Action 3/3)
Blue Rune (Passive Ability) — Sixth Sense
Effective range: 25 meters around (Learned Skills: No Skills Learned Yet)
Cooldown: 6 seconds (Learned Skills: No Skills Learned Yet)
Red Rune (Ultimate Ability) — Teleport
Maximum length: 50 meters (Learned Skills: No Skills Learned Yet)
Duration: 30 seconds (Learned Skills: No Skills Learned Yet)
Cooldown: 10 minutes (Learned Skills: No Skills Learned Yet)
Learned Skills:
Green Rune (Active Ability) — Blink
The First Branch of the Active Ability:
Name: Ready for Action
Description: You gain improved recharge delay for the Active Ability.
Recharge delay: 30 seconds
Status: 3/3 (Completely Learned)
Name: Unstoppable 1
Description: You gain an additional Blink charge. While the Active Ability can be used several times before going on Cooldown, after you use the Active Ability, you will have to wait some time before you can Blink again.
Recharge delay: 3 seconds
Status: 2/2 (Completely Learned)
After studying the information, I closed my Class Menu.
“Okay,” Vlad said. “Now I feel like I can take out both the Raid Boss and whatever amount of minions it will bring along.”
“What skills have you learned?” Nate asked.
“Very useful ones,” the Russian replied with a sinister grin on his face. “For instance, now my drone’s bullets will be turned into mini grenades too.” He turned his head to look at me and added, “So Dave, that little spider queen that almost fed on you is going to be stomped on very soon.”
“Before getting to the cave and trying to kill the spider queen, we need to come with a plan of action,” I said. “Whatever you may think about the spider queen, it’s extremely dangerous. It killed those people without breaking a sweat. It almost killed me too.”
“Don’t fret, Dave,” Vlad said. “The spider queen scared the shit out of you and made you run scared, but that’s okay. You’re not supposed to be all that tough and dangerous. It’s me who’s a damage dealer here. And you’re only a flanker. Your job is distracting our enemies, not to deal with them.”
I did not agree with him on that. While a Flanker did not have any skills improving the damage he or she dealt, his or her abilities allowed them to quickly get out of the line of fire or flank their enemies from various directions. It made a Flanker a very dangerous opponent.
So I did not agree with Vlad. And neither did I like a nasty smile on his face.
However, seeing that we were going to start arguing, Nate decided to take over the conversation.
“What were your people doing out in the forest, by the way?” Nate asked as he turned his head to look at Jennifer.
“I sent them into the forest to find and help you for the same reason I gave you my machine pistol,” the leader of the colony said. “After you left my house, I felt really bad. My conscience began to gnaw at me. The four of you were so young and inexperienced that I felt like I’d just sent a bunch of lambs into the lion’s den. So I quickly rounded up a team and had them go after you.”
Vlad clearly did not like being compared to a lamb.
“So they were real grown-ups and must have been very experienced,” he said angrily. “Only it didn’t help them much, did it? In the end, we—a bunch of kids—are alive while they—a team of experienced grown-ups—are dead. Funny, isn’t it?”
The leader of the colony did not find it funny. Not at all. Those people had been her friends. She did not like him making jokes about their death.
She took a step toward the Russian and said, “Listen, you—”
She was interrupted by a sound of the alarm that echoed through the colony.
“What the heck is that?” I asked.
Jennifer instantly forgot about Vlad. Her anger toward him was replaced by something like fear.
“Someone sounded the alarm,” she said. “Which means that spiders were detected. We are under attack!”
Without waiting for any of us to reply, she rushed for the door and a second later, she was out of the container home. We glanced at one another and hurried after the woman.
When we burst out of the house, we saw her climbing a ladder set into the wall of her container home. We followed suit. Once on the roof, we turned to look in the direction of the forest.
What we saw was terrifying. Lots and lots of overgrown spiders rushed toward the settlement from the forest.
“I’ve never seen so many of them at once,” Jennifer said. “You must’ve really pissed them off by getting into the lair of their queen.”
Judging by the speed the swarm of spiders was approaching the colony, they would reach it in under five minutes. We did not have much time to prepare for the upcoming battle, so we did not waste time talking. After we climbed down to the ground, Jennifer provided us with loaded magazines for our pistols.
After that, it was not long before the spiders invaded the settlement.
We fought the overgrown creatures vigorously. Remembering all too clearly our first unfortunate encounter with the overgrown spiders, we were willing to do our best not to get into the same situation again. And we seemed to have learned from our past bitter experience and were able not to make the same mistake.
The spiders were mostly attacking the four of us, having realized that it was we who posed the most threat to them. However, unfortunately to the aggressive creatures, we were now way more careful than we had been during our first encounter with them. We were also getting the most out of our abilities now.
Nate was constantly employing his shields—both his Active and Ultimate abilities. Unlike the rest of us, he also had a kinetic shield which was his Passive Ability. The spiders needed to destroy his kinetic shield before they could do any damage to Nate himself. So since he had a kinetic shield protecting him all the time, he was doing his best to attract the spiders’ attention to himself in order to provide protection for the rest of us.
Alyson always stayed by his side, using his shields for protection and timely employing her healing abilities when one of us got injured.
I was using my Active Ability, trying to flank the spiders to distract them or take them by surprise.
Vlad and his battle drone slew great amounts of overgrown spiders, their bodies bursting apart when his and his drone’s bullets ripped into the insects and exploded inside of them. He also used his Ultimate Ability a few times, which made him stronger and faster and made his wounds capable of healing by themselves, and very fast at that. At some point, I caught a glance of him charging at one of the nearby arachnids. But instead of reloading his machine pistol, he tore the overgrown spider to ribbons with his bare hands. At that moment, he looked like a barbaric warrior, his clothes covered in blood, a crazy look on his face.
While the four of us took the brunt of the spider attack, the colonists climbed on the roofs of their container homes and fired their handguns down on the arachnids. Not that they were unreachable up there. The arachnids had no trouble climbing vertical surfaces. However, most of the overgrown spiders simply ignored the colonists. Nate, Vlad, Alyson, and I posed the most threat to them, so they were trying to deal with the four of us first. Without much success, though.
That we had recently leveled up a few times and learned new useful skills was another reason why it was easier for us to battle the overgrown arachnids than it had been the first time back in the forest.
So the arachnids failed to accomplish their goal miserably and at some point, all of them suddenly stopped attacking us and simultaneously fled as if every single one of them had received a telepathic command to do so. Which most likely was the case.
During the battle, Vlad leveled up six more times while Nate, Alyson, and I leveled up f
ive more times. Our levels were now as follows: Vlad’s was 13, Nate’s was 10, mine was 10 too, and Alyson’s was 9.
I put three skill points into the Reacher skill on the First Branch of my Active Ability and the other two into the Unstoppable 2 skill on the Second Branch of my Active Ability.
Name: Reacher
Description: Increases the distance of the Active Ability.
Blink Distance: 30 meters
Status: 3/3 (Completely Learned)
Name: Unstoppable 2
Description: You gain improved recharge delay for the Unstoppable 1 skill.
Recharge delay: 1 second
Status: 2/2 (Completely Learned)
Required skill: Unstoppable 1
Now that I had ten skill points allocated into the skills of my Active Ability, the Third Branch was unlocked. Though at the moment, I did not have any more skill points to use, I took a look at the new skills.
The Third Branch of the Active Ability:
Note: While the Third Branch of the Active Ability contains two skills, you can learn only one of the two. So choose carefully.
Name: Going supernova
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can use the Going Supernova skill to temporarily blind nearby enemies.
Effective range: +1.5 meters around (Current: 0 meters)
Duration: +0.5 seconds (Current: 0 seconds)
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Status: 0/5
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 18
