Name: Pusher
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can use the Pusher skill, which creates a powerful gust of dark energy originating from you and spreading in all directions, which might knock your enemies off their feet.
Effective range: +3 meters (Current: 0 meters)
Pushing power: +20% (Current: 0%)
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Status: 0/5
So far, I had learned four skills for my Active Ability, having put ten skill points into them in total. The distance of my blinking ability was now thirty meters. Moreover, the Active Ability now allowed me to blink three times in a row—with only one-second recharge delay between each blink—before going on cooldown that was thirty seconds instead of sixty as it had been before.
So my Active Ability was now much more powerful than it had been before. Which was I decided that after leveling up, I would probably turn my attention to my Passive and Ultimate Abilities. So far, I had learned no skills for them at all.
I closed my Class Menu.
Immediately after the battle finished, Jennifer had gone to check on the condition of the colony. Not long after we used our skill points to learn new skills and upgrade the old ones, the leader of the colony returned to us. The woman told us that a few colonists had been killed in the recent spider attack.
“However, it would have been much worse had it not been for you,” she said. “Earlier today I said that you were a bunch of inexperienced kids. As it turned out, I was wrong about you, guys. Looks like you know how to do your job, after all. So I want to take my words back and thank you for helping us defend our colony.”
Vlad grinned at her and said, “It’s all right. You don’t need to thank me. Just doing my job.”
The Russian obviously thought that it was only thanks to him that we had won the battle. But he was wrong. Sure, he and his battle drone had killed more spiders than any of us, but we had been able to fight off the arachnids by the joint effort of all the members of our team. Without Nate using his shields to protect Vlad, Alyson constantly healing him when he got injured, and me flanking and distracting the arachnids, dealing additional damage to them, Vlad would not have been able to hold off the spiders for long, not to mention to make them flee.
Judging by the look on her face, Jennifer was well aware of that, yet she decided not to argue with Vlad.
“So I want to apologize to you, guys,” she said.
“For what exactly?” I asked.
Jennifer gave him a smile and replied, “Well, for calling you a bunch of useless kids. As I said, I was wrong about you. We wouldn’t be able to fight off the spiders were it not for you. We all would be dead now. So thank you for helping us and dealing with those spiders. I’m really glad that you’ve arrived at our colony.”
“We’re not done yet,” Nate said. “The spiders will keep coming. To put an end to it, we need to kill the spider queen.”
“Yeah, about that,” I said. “How exactly are we gonna do this? I’m telling you, that the Raid Boss thing is very dangerous. We need to come up with some plan before trying to take on the spider queen.”
So Nate, Vlad, Alyson, Jennifer, and I talked it over for some time. Soon we developed a plan of dealing with the spider queen. It was not one-hundred percent foolproof, so we were going to need to be very careful when dealing with the Raid Boss.
However, we decided to wait until morning before getting on it. It was a very dark night, and it had to be much darker in the forest. We did not have night-vision googles or any skills enhancing our night vision, hence our decision to wait until morning.
Moreover, while it seemed highly unlikely, the spiders might launch another attack on the colony again, so we wanted to keep guard over the settlement for the night.
What surprised me that while Jennifer and the other colonists were exhausted after the hard fight with the spiders, the four of us were not tired at all. When I asked Echo why we did not feel tired, he replied that each of the four of us had been given a shot of special stimulators while we had been in cryogenic hyper-sleep on our way to this planet. He also said that when the effects of the stimulators in our bodies wore off, we would feel very tired and would need to rest for a while.
The spiders never showed up again that night.
When the sun began to rise above the eastern horizon, we got ready to move forward. We went over the details of our plan, then checked our Mission Menu one more time.
> 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 (COMPLETED);
> 2. Kill all the aggressive creatures or find a way to stop them from attacking the colony (COMPLETED);
> 3. Find and kill the spider queen (IN PROGRESS).
> Additional Objectives: (*)
> 1. Get a sample of the spider queen’s DNA so it can be delivered to the space station to be analyzed (IN PROGRESS).
> (*) Note: Your Additional Objectives are optional. You are allowed not to complete them if you choose not to. If you complete your additional objectives, however, you will get extra experience points and a monetary reward.
“So if we manage to get a sample of DNA of that spider queen,” Vlad said, “then we’ll get more exp and money, guys.”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “Then some boffins in our organization will probably be studying it to find out how a regular spider mutated into a spider queen. Maybe we’ll even find out why it became so aggressive toward humans that it was keen on massacring the whole colony.”
The Russian looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Boffins? What the hell does this word mean?”
“Boffins means scientists,” Nate explained. “It’s a British slang word.”
“Great,” Vlad muttered. “I’ve been having a hard time learning American slang since I moved to the US, and now I have to learn British slang as well. Just great.”
“At least, you’ll be able to differentiate British and American languages,” Nate said. “They are not exactly the same.”
“I don’t care,” Vlad said harshly, cutting off the conversation he was not interested in.
It quickly grew lighter as the sun climbed higher and higher.
We climbed into our large off-road vehicle and drove toward the forest.
When we reached the line of trees, I slowed the car but did not stop it completely.
“What if we got stuck?” Vlad asked as we slowly drove into the forest.
“I’ll take it easy,” I said. “Believe me guys, the spider queen is very fast. There’s no way we can outrun it on foot.”
I guided the vehicle through the trees. Sometimes I needed to slow down in order to avoid getting stuck, and the other times the trees opened up a bit, allowing me to accelerate. It took me some time to find my way to the spider queen’s den. I then performed a U-turn so that the front of the Humvee was pointed away from the entrance to the cave. We then climbed out of the vehicle and turned to look at the large opening.
“Do you think it’s in there now?” Nate asked, peering into the darkness of the cave and reaching for his handgun.
“Only one way to find out,” I replied.
I activated my Ultimate Ability and entered the cave. When I was fifty meters into the cave, which was about halfway down the tunnel, the second portal was automatically placed and I texted my teammates, telling them that they could use it. A second later, then stepped out of the portal, and we began advancing down the tunnel, our weapons drawn and at the ready.
However, as we found out a tad later on, the spider queen was not in the cave at the moment.
The tunnel opened out into the main cavern. We immediately noticed several cocoons that were glued with a yellowish sticky substance to the rear wall. In each of them, there was a colonist. It must have been the pe
ople I had met yesterday after running out of the cave.
“Oh my God,” Alyson whispered.
“Are they alive?” Nate asked, his voice breaking.
“Yes, they are,” I replied, “but wishing they were dead.”
“What the heck is happening to them in there?” Vlad asked as he walked closer to one of the cocoons for a better look.
“They are being dissolved into a liquid form so the spider queen can kind of drink them,” I said.
“It’s grossing me out,” Vlad said with a look of disgust on his face.
Alyson wheeled around. She felt bad for the victims and at the same was appalled by what was happening here. Nate looked down at the girl and asked softly, “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “Can we help them somehow?”
I glanced at the cocoons one more. The colonists inside of them could barely move, which meant that they were still paralyzed. I did not know how the spider queen’s venom worked. The colonists’ loss to move could be temporal or the effect could be permanent. There was no way to know which was the case.
From the look of things, however, the colonists were not going to regain their ability to move anytime soon, that was for damn sure.
Moreover, they had been being dissolved in the acid all night long, so they looked awful now. Their flesh was soft and half-melted, their bodies terribly deformed.
So even if we got them out of the cocoons, what were the chances that the victims could get enough medical attention to keep them alive or at least to overcome the paralysis and heal the acid burns? I thought that the chances were slim, to say the least. While I was in the world of the future and did not know the limits of medicine in this world, I knew for sure that the colonists were very limited in resources. Jennifer had told us this herself. So there was no way the victims could get decent help at the colony.
Then a thought struck me, and I looked at Alyson.
“Maybe you can help them,” I said. “You’re a healer.”
The girl nodded. “I’ll try.”
She turned around and stepped closer to one of the cocoons.
With a look on her face as if she were doing her best not to throw up, she extended her left arm toward the cocoon. Bluish energy flowed from her palm toward the cocoon and went right through it, completely enveloping the colonist inside of it. However, it did not do the trick.
She tried again but with the same result. Her ability did not heal the colonist at all. We could have gotten the man out of the cocoon before trying to heal him again, but we did not do that. It was doubtful that the cocoon was somehow capable of negating Alyson’s healing ability. The cocoon had not prevented the healing energy from going right through it and enveloping the colonist, so there had to be another reason why Alyson could not heal the man.
“It doesn’t work,” the girl said sadly, finally lowering her arm. “I don’t know why. My abilities don’t work on him for some reason. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Nate said. “I think you can heal only the four of us. The nanotrites in our bodies must’ve had something to do with it.”
The girl nodded.
Since we could not help the colonists, all we could do for them was put them out of their misery. We killed them all with a single shot to the head.
“The gunfire may attract the spider queen,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before it returns and traps us here.”
We ran out of the main cavern and down the tunnel. Upon reaching the portal I had set up earlier on, we entered it and emerged from the first one near the entrance to the cave. As soon as we reached the Humvee, we heard the noise of something large and heavy crashing through the foliage. We jerked our head in the direction of the noise and saw the spider queen, rushing toward us.
We jumped into the vehicle, and I slammed it into gear.
“That thing is huge,” Nate said as he twisted in the shotgun seat to peer through the back window.
“That’s what I told you, guys,” I said as I guided the Humvee through the forest, driving as fast as the deep foliage allowed.
“That’s good,” Vlad said. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
He began to fire his machine pistol through the back window at the spider queen chasing us.
The Raid Boss was large and fast, which was why I did not care about driving slowly and carefully anymore. If I slowed the vehicle down, the enormous arachnid would instantly catch up with us and we would be fucked.
One of Vlad bullets drilled into one of the two bulbous eyes protruding from the spider’s ugly face and exploded inside of it, spraying revolting gore over the ground. Even half-blinded, the Raid Boss continued to chase us.
Surprisingly enough, we did not get stuck in the deep foliage. When we burst out of the trees, I accelerated, slowly widening the gap between our off-road vehicle and the Raid Boss.
I cut through an open area, guiding the car past the colony and headed for the waterfront. Several log cabins lined the lake shore. The leftmost was not finished yet, so nobody lived there. Jennifer had let us use it when we were discussing our plan of defeating the spider queen last night.
I slammed on the brake pedal, bringing the vehicle to a stop in front of the log cabin. We burst out of the car and ran for the house. As soon as we got inside and reached what looked like the living area, we saw several armed colonists standing in the middle of the room.
“Who the hell are you?” Vlad barked at them.
“We are from the colony,” one of them stated the obvious.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Jennifer sent us here,” someone replied. “To help you deal with the spider queen.”
“You don’t have to risk your lives here,” Nate said. “Get back to the colony while you still can.”
The colonists did not move.
“We want to help you, guys,” one of them said.
We did not have time to reason with them.
“What the heck is this?” One of the colonists said, looking out the window.
The rest of them turned their heads to look in the same direction. The spider queen appeared in sight. It got within ten or so meters of the log cabin and stopped for a moment as if examining the area in front of it. It could not help but notice us through the living room window.
“It’s one big ugly motherfucker,” another of the colonists said.
Overall, they were not all that surprised. It figured. They had actively been dealing with overgrown spiders for the past two months, so they were not easily surprised by that point. Moreover, as Jennifer had once told us, oversized insects was a pretty common thing on virgin planets like this one.
However, it was obvious that it was the first time that they had ever seen a spider that was almost the size of a two-story house.
The enormous arachnid watched the window of the living room with its only eye.
“Is it seeing us?” Someone asked.
“Don’t doubt that,” I replied.
The giant spider suddenly burst into a run. All the colonists backed up, bringing their weapons up. The members of our team walked a safe distance from the window as well. While the creature was too large to get through the window, its long legs could easily reach deep into the living room.
Somebody asked, “How do we kill that thing?”
“Just shoot the ugly bastard until it dies,” Vlad growled. “It’s not all that hard. The fucking thing can’t—”
We never found out what, according to the Russian, the fucking thing could not do, because he did not finish his thought. The giant spider slammed its huge body against the front of the house, and the whole building shook with the impact. One of its front legs crashed through the window, lancing through the living room to stab one of the colonists into the chest. The leg retracted through the shattered window and brought the screaming man impaled on its tip to its mouth.
“Kill it,�
�� he shrieked. “Kill it, guys. It’s gonna eat me. Oh my God, it’s gonna—”
The spider sunk its fangs into its victim. As soon as the venom entered the man’s system, his body went limp and his shrieks reduced to moans. Then the arachnid shifted its attention to the rest of us.
The colonists stood still, dumbfounded by what had just happened.
“Open fire, guys,” Nate yelled. “Kill that thing!”
When our team brought up our handguns and aimed them at the Raid Boss, the colonists followed suit.
The crack of gunfire reverberated through the room, spent shell casings raining down to the floor, the stench of cordite filling our nostrils.
The slugs penetrated the huge spider’s body with wet sounds, black blood gushing out of the wounds blossoming on its body. The health bar was slowly but steadily shrinking. Unlike the four of us, the colonists could not see it, though.
Now that the spider had only one eye left, it was more careful. Instead of attacking us through the window, it ran along the front of the building and then dashed around the corner, disappearing from sight.
“Where did it go?” Someone asked, nervously looking out the other windows. The spider was nowhere in sight. But it was somewhere close. Had to be.
“It may have left,” another colonist said with hope in his voice.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Nate said. “It’s lurking somewhere outside the house, waiting for the right moment to attack. So stay away from the windows and keep your eyes peeled.”
The colonists were nervously looking in various directions as they huddled together in the middle of the living room.
I noticed the staircase that led to the second floor and began walking toward it.
“Where are you going?” Vlad asked.
“Upstairs,” I replied, not looking back. “You guys stay here. I’m just gonna take a quick look around.”
“Okay,” Nate said. “Be careful, mate.”
“I’m going with you,” Vlad said.
“No,” I said. “Stay here.”
The Russian refused to obey. I heard his footsteps behind me but did not waste time and energy on reasoning with him. We ascended the stairs and reached the second floor. In front of us was a corridor that ended in a window. On either side of the corridor were closed doors.
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 19
