Soul of Blades - Chapter 33 & 34: Proliferation / The Entrance (Patreon)

“What do we do?! John yelled, his voice reaching Alex over the maelstrom of rumbling rock and distant screeches.

For a second and for a breath, Alex hesitated. Indecision seized his joints and the temptation of endless rewards tugged him in all directions. He did not think he had performed enough acts to secure the most valuable quest rewards for escaping. After all, John and the Kid had dealt all but one of the final blows. He found himself tempted to head back into the darkness to find some more Arachnae monsters, to slaughter more of them before leaving.

I mean, it couldn't hurt to check, right? He bargained with himself as the ground trembled.

He really wanted that insight.

Alex took a step in the wrong direction before coming to his senses. His desire to further his journey into the Dao influenced his subconscious steps. John frowned in concern and the girl quirked her head in disbelief as Alex seemed to abandon their escape completely- right when their path to freedom lay clear in sight.

Alex sagged- catching himself, and mentally shook away the greed clouding his thoughts. He attempted pragmatism in the way one would wear an undersized coat- that is to say, he forced it.

He forced himself to think logically of all the things that could go wrong if he turned back, even for minutes. If we head back… there's a big chance of getting lost, Alex reasoned, the prospect of being trapped shattering his greed further. And who's to say we’ll be able to find our way back here? And how many battles would it take to complete the second quest? There have to be hundreds of these things in here… And only god knows how long they've been hiding underground. Alex also considered the fact that the system’s message heavily implied the colony had been dormant for at least a century. Hiding, growing, only making sure not to disturb the humans until they were ready to break the surface. A hundred years of untampered proliferation.

Their numbers could be in the thousands.

“We escape for now!” he yelled back, decision made. It wouldn't end here. He reasoned that the Baron and whichever monarchy existed above his station would have every reason to deal with the waking lion in their midst. Not to mention the local adventurers and ambitious warriors desperate for a chance to level. They would escape to come back later and end this, one way or another. “We'll come back with an army, and wipe them out,” he said.

“Damned right.” John nodded and held his sword at the ready. Beneath her coverings, the girl frowned with unreadable emotions at her companions' words.

All three headed toward the battling soldiers in the distance. Alex took a step, summoning a blade into his right hand. Then with his next step, he summoned another into his left. “Follow my lead. When I attack, all of you follow suit.

“If either of you have any long-distance skills, that would be the time to use them.” Alex set off in a sprint, the rumbling earth and crashing rocks masking his ascent.

Alex pulled up his stat sheet and dumped his four free stats into dexterity; he would need any speed advantage he could get while facing 12 blades at close range.

[Name: Alex Ironwood

Level: 37

Race: Human - Rank F

Primary Class: ̷̷͎̠̠̖̳̮̿́̏̄͝͠Sys̵̞̈́͆̓̓te̸̪̟͇͕͂mic SwO̷̟̮̙͚̔rd So̶̼̲͋͐͋͂ͅve̶̷̵̴̲̳̱reign

Sub-class: Locked

Strength: 170 (117)

Dexterity: 219 (151)

Endurance: 61 (42)

Intelligence: 255 (176)

Wisdom: 41 (28)

Feats: First Encounter, Pioneer, Pinnacle IV, Survivor, Warrior, Champion

Phoenix Leap, Mana Blade, Boundless Dodge, Duȅ̷̳̮̄͝͠l of C̷͎̠̠̖̿́orruption, Sovereign Executioner,

Passive skills: Inner Focus, Outer Focus, A̷̶̵̴̲̳̱l̸̢͉̗̣̑͐͛à̸̶̵̴̶̷̶̺̥̮̯͇̲̳̱̼̲͒̈́̈͛͋͐͋͂ͅͅ ̷̷̶̴̵̶̷̸̴̶̷̵̢̳̮̲̳̱͉̗̣̲̳̱̏̄̑͐͛͝͠Ω̴̵̶̷̲̳̱ ̶̶̯͇̼̲̈́̈͛͋͐͋͂ͅ ̷̷̶̴̵̶̷̴̶̷̵̳̮̲̳̱̲̳̱̏̄͝͠g̵̶̷̴̲̳̱e̸̪̟͇͕͂e̶̷̵̴̲̳̱E̵̴̶̷̶̵̴̶̷̷̸̸̢̲̳̱̼̲̲̳̱̟̮̙͚͉̗̣̺̥̮͋͐͋͂̔̑͐͛̀͒ͅͅ ̶̷̶̴̵̶̷̯͇̲̳̱̈́̈͛ ̷̸̴̶̷̵̳̮̪̟͇͕̲̳̱̏̄͂͝͠M̷̶̵̴̲̳̱m̸̵̴̶̷̸̷̸̴̶̷̵̢͉̗̣̲̳̱̪̟͇͕̟̮̙͚̺̥̮̲̳̱̑͐͛͂̔̀͒ͅ ̶̯͇̈́̈͛ ̷̸̶̢̳̮͉̗̣̼̲̏̄̑͐͛͋͐͋͂͝͠ͅO̷̟̮̙͚̔o̶̼̲͋͐͋͂ͅᾯ̴̵̶̷̵̴̶̷̷̸̸̸̢̲̳̱̲̳̱̟̮̙͚̪̟͇͕͉̗̣̺̥̮̑͐͛̀͒ ̶̯͇̈́̈͛ ̷̶͎̠̠̖̼̲̿́͋͐͋͂ͅ ̷̳̮̏̄͝͠ ̷̶̴̵̶̷̵̴̶̷̴̶̷̵̲̳̱̲̳̱̲̳̱ , Inventory,

Dao: True Immortality - 0.03% Progress

Unassigned stat points: 0]

Fight the three guards, bust the door open and escape, or find the workers and escape. He thought while preparing to lunge forward. His two companions raced beside him as silent spectres, all three planning to aim death at the distracted foes ahead. Alex mentally zeroed in on his targets, all other distractions fading away. If I beat the soldiers before we leave I'll definitely have the highest contribution. He thought between steps. The quest isn't lost just yet.

Alex shot forward like a rocket, leaving the two behind. His system-enhanced physiology cracked the ground as he leapt, and a trail of earth and rock followed in his wake.

John was left gawking and intensified his sprint in an attempt to catch up.

The girl crouched low and launched off the ground in another attempt to mimic Alex’s movements. She soared forth, but slower.

Ahead of them, Alex was a blur. Phoenix Leap. Mana Blade. Mana Blade, he thought, mentally activating his skills as he soared through the air.

The swords in each of his arms blazed blue and encased with mana, and Alex spun in mid-air, stretching his arm taut.

The large-scale battle at the town's borders taught him another use for the mana-intensive skill. Through the battle he had discovered that ‘Mana Blade’ could be used to turn his blade into a potent projectile. Mana Blade was an attack unblockable by anything he’d seen so far. If his opponents were close enough, and if he threw mana-infused blade hard enough, it could reach his enemies with deadly unstoppable efficiency. If he released his weapon from his grip without deactivating the skill, the skills mana remained infused in the blade for just over a second. In some cases, a second was all it took.

He flung the first sword as hard as he could. Aiming at the insectile soldier to the left of the other, and hurled the sword in his right hand immediately after.

Using Mana Blade so early was a risk, of all of his skills, it was one of the few with a heavy cost. He had developed a habit of saving it for openings and killing blows. But he wanted to end these soldiers as swiftly and definitively as possible, to escape without any hindrances and claim his Dao reward.

A trail of light blurred forward as Alex's swords shot through the air, the light and sound of their passing masked by the chaos all around them.

The soldier, without looking, raised two of its arms with unerring accuracy to block Alex’s ascending blade. It moved to block the projectile even as it struck and defended the blows of its arachnid opponent with the others.

A mistake.

The remnant mana of Alex’s Mana Blade sheared through two of the soldier's arms and swords in a blur of blue and silver, the cut limbs and broken weapons fell to the ground brutalised. The flung blade sank into the wall with a swift thud, its mana long disconnected from its owner, spent.

At the sight, the other soldier twisted beneath the glowing sword with its arms splayed, causing the second blade to miss, whizzing by its target and sinking into the embroidered wall behind it.

Alex raced forward to meet them with a clash, and ten blades descended on him from all angles.

Boundless Dodge. Boundless Dodge.

Alex was a blur of movement as blades grazed his hair and sliced his clothes. The blades missed by millimetres.

He inhaled sharply, a single breath focusing his mind. His right foot pivoted, shifting his stance to employ the Ren Dan- a complex multiple-strike technique, its movements forged into his muscles as a blacksmith would forge his own hammer. body swerving just as the first blade whistled past, missing him by mere inches. His left arm shot up, parrying a downward strike from a second blade. Four more descended. No time to think. He struck and twisted and struck again, then once more. each aimed at a different vital of his multi-limbed adversaries. He unleashed a flurry of strikes a baseline non-system human would not even be able to see.

But the strikes were ineffectual, each arm of the soldiers appeared to move with dexterous independence, blocking and striking simultaneously. Each block sent them sliding back, or tumbling. Then they began to parry, and Alex’s heavy blows merely caused them to buckle or tilt. They move with uncanny, almost prophetic accuracy, at some strikes not even looking as they defended with extra limbs. It was as if they could see for each other, or share their vision, somehow. As if they could communicate without speaking.

Another coordinated strike, 10 lances of death. Blows targeted in ways Alex could not hope to evade. But he had been prepared for this, after the first clash.

Boundless Dodge, he thought.

Hair was sheared, and clothes cut further, but his skin remained untouched. His skills mana seized him, aided by his intent, causing him to spin to a  crouch beneath a storm of ten crashing blades above.

He looked up to see the injured soldier with all of its four remaining limbs overextended above. Its body was wide open.

Phoenix Leap. The skill sent him crashing into the injured soldier at close range.

The soldier went flying into the far wall with another crash.

“Tch.” Alex clicked his tongue in irritation. The soldier was further injured and now lay stuck, embedded in the wall- but it wasn’t dead. He had been intending on cleaving it in two, but it had twisted all of its blades at the last second to intercept the blow, somehow.

He wasn't sure how non-humans allocated their stats, but the creatures before him were identically fast to each other. Fast and strong enough to face him as a threat. He imagined their stat sheets would have disproportionately high dexterity and strength numbers and not much else besides that. Probably on the orders of the Queen, he guessed. They were like glass cannons, impossibly dangerous, but all it would take to end them was one good strike.

Alex landed in a crouch with frustration bubbling within him. This fight was taking too long. Despite the difference in strength, their coordination and sheer number of limbs made them a difficult enemy to deal with. He shuddered to think of how it would be to face an Arachnae soldier with stats equal to or greater than his. He wasn't sure that it would be a battle he would win.

Be one hell of a fight, though, he thought grimly.

He turned to face the remaining soldier, sword raised, ready to end this.

In the heat of battle, Alex couldn’t count the number of myriad eyes arrayed in the depths of its chitin visors, but he did see two large ones in the front, and several more arachnid eyes to the sides. They probably had perfect 180, or 240-degree vision.

He struck out anyway, aiming to overwhelm them with his inflated stats.

Two blades parry Alex’s attack, the soldier grunting in chipped alien tones at the difference in strength, and in the same instance, seven more struck towards him with swiftness, all aimed at his vitals.

Alex felt a shadow behind him and twisted just in case, and his heart sank at what he saw.

The second soldier had raced forward to capitalize on his distraction. It was practically dead on its feet, its carapace a mosaic of fractures. But it moved with a crazed zealousness that bordered on insanity.

His companions were too far to reach him, his plan to race ahead had created as much risk as it had opportunity.

Alex’s thoughts screamed as he instantly unleashed the trump card he’d planned the moment he’d begun to battle them.

Boundless Dodge. Sovereign Executioner. Mana Blade.

He swung wide, aiming at their heads, while he summoned his mana construct on the floor beneath both soldier's feet. They seemed to see everything and could communicate somehow, warning each other of their blind spots. But all of their eyes were focused on the front and sides, Alex gambled on their inability to perceive something in the heart of their shadows. Their blind spot was at the base of their heels.

The Arachnae soldiers arched back to dodge his glowing unblockable blade with inhuman flexibility in the same instant as the ground beneath them rippled and warped, a long ceremonial blade swept in an arc under Alex’s control. It cleaved through both of their legs, sending them toppling. The six-armed soldier recovered swiftly despite losing its legs, landing on four of its arms and thrusting two at Alex’s throat.

Fuck! Boundless Do-

Before Alex could summon his evasion. The girl came crashing into the Soldier with both feet. A crunching impact akin to a gunshot sounded as both of her webbing bound feet sent the amputee arachnid tumbling.

John soon followed, and together he and the girl made short work of the dazed and badly injured soldier.

[You have defeated, Level 35 Arachnae Soldier]

There goes my contribution, Alex rose to his feet with a sigh and slew the remaining soldier. The soldier lay on its stomach struggling to crawl towards its scattered swords. hadn't recovered as well as its kin.

Alex killed it.

[You have defeated, Level 35 Arachnae Soldier]

Only level 35? Both of them?  The notification gave credence to his ‘glass cannon’ theory. Alex had a total of just over 740 stats. The stats of someone with a level near seventy, assuming they had a common class and gained ten stats per level. Or the stats of someone with a level in the 50s-  if they had a unique or greater class or something that rivalled his own.

But despite the stat inflation he only had 168 strength and 211 dexterity.

If an opponent went all in on strength and dexterity and had a common class that allocated stats to just those two and nothing else, then at level 35 they could have 113 strength and 113 dexterity. They would be almost as strong and fast as he was, but any injury would leave them at death's door. There was a high chance that each soldier at that level had two-thirds of his strength and half of his speed. And it wouldn't take many levels for them to outstrip him in either stats.

At level 45 they would rival him as he was now, in speed and strength alone. And anything beyond that level would outpace him in those fields.

Alex gulped in trepidation at the prospect.

It caused past notifications to rise to the forefront of his mind.

[2: Arbiter of Evolution: Defeat the evolved swarmlings before an unprecedented evolution occurs.]

It had said, and then a calculation:

[…Should the Rite complete, high-level members of designation ‘The Hidden Queen’s’ colony will proceed to subjugate the land above, as the predicted level difference of colony members as a result of the rite will leave a 47% chance of subsequent non-Arachne victory.]

With the advent of the system and its physiology-enhancing stats, these things stood a real chance of proliferating the planet. The natives would have to scramble to attain levels just to keep up with the threat.

They had to escape to warn the others in town as soon as possible.

He paused as a dark glint by the dead soldier caught his eye. Crouching, Alex’s palm grasped a dark crystal that swirled with strangely coloured mana in his Outer Vision.

“Let's go,” Alex called to the others with a step forward. And his companions joined him in heading towards the door beneath the archway. As they drew near, Alex retrieved his swords embedded in the walls, storing them in his Inventory with a swift gesture.

As the sounds and screeches of battle drew distant, Alex cradled an item in his hand as he hesitated before the door.

A skill crystal of arachnid origins.

He pushed, and the door opened before his fingers could even graze its surface. Cautiously, the three entered. The girl's expression beneath her wrappings grew increasingly concerned with each step.

Then the door slammed shut behind them, and an overload of bright colours, sounds, tastes, and smells assaulted their senses.

For a heartbeat, silence reigned.

Alex leaned into the stillness, shock consuming him. Momentarily blinded by the shift in light, he tried to parse the overload of information that lay before him.

A woman, at the far corner of the large space they found themselves in.

At the end of the room she drifted.

At first, he thought she was floating in the air, suspended high above at the end of the chamber.

Until the luminous Moss variants entered, a congregation.

They surrounded her, glowing like fallen stars. Each one a beacon of unnatural life. They were like living trees, exoskeletons spongy, pulsing with bioluminescent life. The moss, a key to their path of evolution.

They circled the chamber like ghostly forest spirits. Some vanished into distant chambers, silent as the dark itself. Lighting the paths ahead.

The ones that remained, circled the floating woman. Illuminated in sudden light, a grotesque form loomed. The extent of the floating ‘woman’ became clear.

Eight legs, thick like tree trunks, stretched to reach the corners of the chamber. Deeply rooted, they held aloft the true breadth of her towering torso.

A womb far larger than should be possible, enough to fill a corner of the chamber. Enough to fill a house to bursting. But filled with eggs, teeming with life beneath a mother's suspended bosom.

A giant arachnid, a blend of human and spider, made manifest. Almost human, but not quite.

She smiled with delight at the sight of her visitors.

Carapace glistened, doll-like in the bright light. Her many eyes held mirth, glinting as sinister jewels would.

In shadows deep, other figures appeared where some vanished, silent and unseen. Humans. Victims. Workers. Cores. Each second stretching like an eternity. Then, a swift, brutal act.

She ate them. It ate them all.

A subordinate Arachnae dared to speak.

It ate that, too

Its protests cut short. A swift motion. The subordinate's body, crushed. It's core, consumed.

A splatter, muted. Ichor and blood hit the ground in melded rains, an end to dissent. An end to protest.

It advanced, a nightmare given form. Legs like twisted pillars supported its half-human, half-arachnid body.

With deceptive beauty, It smiled at its visitors once more.

The sound of its movement, a chilling scrape. Eyes, numerous and unblinking, fixated on the group ahead.

Clicks resounded, chitin scraping stone.

Click. Click. The sound, relentless. A rhythm of impending doom.

A medley of death.

The matriarch, clothed and fearsome, moved with deadly purpose. Eight arms, each holding a meal. Several holding Arachnae, several more holding humans.

Its mouth, a black abyss, issued commanding rhythms. Voice cold as death.

The Queen, a grim monarch. Authority absolute.

In her midst, more figures. Humanoid, two-legged, yet unmistakably Arachnae. Closer to the ground than the towering worker companions, armoured in natural chitinous plates. Slightly larger than human men, they stood at attention, armoured in natural chitin. Their stoic forms commanded the spaces in which they stood. Their faces shifting mosaics of exoskeleton, each resembling a knight's helm, hard and angular. Venomous fangs peeked from large mandibles. Six eyes, Six swords, and arms six — warrior casts, soldiers of the swarm.

Alex, John, and the girl were frozen in stunned inaction at the sight. The three of them stood before the soldiers and the Hidden Queen’s Chamber.

The ‘Entrance’.

John gulped, and sliced through their statuesque and shocked senses with shaky words,

“Uh… guys. I don't think this is the way out.”