The Eternal Winter - Chapter 14 - Spider Bombers (Patreon)

                                                       Alexander North

After borrowing a sword from some random person’s quarters and hanging it on my waist by its sheath, I pat it a few times with affection while walking back to the captains, who are standing guard at the entrance to the housing area with a couple of monster corpses next to them.

Hmm. Guess there really aren’t as many monsters on the lower floors as the higher ones.

But I guess it makes sense, considering that the shards would have to bury themselves deep underground to get here. Not to mention that the monsters would have to break down the doors of the hallway and make it into the staircase to get here.

There also seems to be a bit less frost everywhere down here.

“So are we heading to BF6 next?” I ask the captain of Phillip’s group – or I guess it’s now temporarily mine as well – once I reach the entrance to the housing area.

My question seems to surprise both him and the other two captains, but he just glances at my crest and seems to remember who I am as he answers, “That’s correct. We need to find the base commander, and that’s the most likely place that he’ll be at right now. It’s one of the places we’re all supposed to meet in an emergency.”

I nod my head at that before looking down the hall as a wraith appears around the corner.

“There’s a wraith,” I mutter while pointing over at it, making the others look confused for a moment, only for that confusion to go away once they turn to see it.

The other two captains quickly rush over to deal with it, leaving my new captain with me as he asks, “What’s a wraith?”

Oh. Right. Forgot that I was giving them a name.

“That’s just the name I gave the fast, stalkery ones with blades as arms because they remind me of wraiths in the old mythology,” I answer him with a shrug.

Captain Ruthers actually laughs at my explanation before muttering, “I think I like this kid.”

I just stare at him for a second, only to shrug again.

Wonder what he’d say if he knew what I was.

Although I don’t even know what I am.

“Captain Ruthers,” I hear someone ask from behind us, making me turn around to find one of the soldiers – a second lieutenant just like myself – standing behind us wearing a helmet with the rest of the soldiers standing behind him, “we have each found a helmet and are ready to move on.”

The captain looks at the various soldiers before nodding and turning towards the other two captains while saying, “We’ll move out once those two are finished dealing with the monster.”

“Yes, sir!” the soldier exclaims in response.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It doesn’t take long for them to finish before we quickly find ourselves moving through the floor again towards command central – which is basically just a large meeting hall where the higher ups meet to make important decisions.

But oddly enough, once we actually get there, we find dozens of strange… creatures… inside of it. The creatures honestly just look like oversized spiders. Except ones with icicles growing out of their skin in seemingly random locations, and with light blue eyes.

“What the hell?” one of the other second lieutenants of the group mutters at the sight of them through the open doorway, attracting the creature’s attention straight towards us.

“Eww,” a few of the soldiers with us start freaking out at the sight of them, with the majority of the soldiers being the girls of the group. But I do see a couple of guys doing it too.

Although what catches my attention over them is the one big guy who simply walks up towards them and reaches out to stomp on one of the spiders right when it gets close to him.

Which turns out to be a really bad idea after the spider practically explodes, sending some sort of liquid flying out of its body, freezing everything it touches. But it doesn’t just freeze it, as shown by the quick onset of frostbite on the big guy’s leg as he screams he head off.

“Shit, don’t step on them!” one of the captains shouts, followed by another one who shouts, “Try to use your swords to kill them as cleanly as possible!”

Easier said than done, considering how they’re only one foot in length, but I obviously don’t mention that out loud. Instead, I grab my knives, because they’re better against smaller targets, and honestly, because I don’t want to ruin my new sword already, and quickly start stabbing the little critters before they get close enough to me to do whatever they’re planning on doing.

Each of the soldiers around me proceed to tear into the spiders with awkward movements due to not being used to attacking such small creatures so carefully. Eventually it reaches the point that a couple of them mess up and end up being suicide bombed by the spiders, which only serves to freak out the other soldiers and make them make even more mistakes.

I continue killing more and more spiders until one of the soldiers near me messes up and lets one of the spiders suicide bomb on him, making some of the icy liquid spray my arm. However, what surprises me is that the liquid simply freezes the armor covering it but doesn’t do anything to my arm underneath after soaking through, so I simply rip that part off and continue attacking the spiders.

It ends up taking us several minutes before we finally get rid of all of the spiders, following which the captains order the medics amongst us to begin looking over everyone’s injuries. And once the medic for my new temporary squad reaches me and tries to examine my arm beneath the now-torn-off sleeve, I simply wave them off and tell them, “Don’t worry. It was just leftover splash from one of the monsters that self-destructed on someone else.”

The medic looks at me with obvious suspicion for a moment before checking my arm anyways, finding nothing wrong, and moving on to the next person.

Guess she couldn’t just believe my word on it?

I turn around to look for Phillip, only for my eyes to quickly find captain Ruthers staring directly at me with suspicion in his own eyes.

Oh. Wait. Did he see what happened?

Because that’d be bad if he did.

After staring at me for a few seconds, he quietly whispers something to the medic that had just inspected my arm. The medic then says something back to him and moves on, leaving him to get up and approach me.

Shit. He knows something’s up.

I anxiously wait as he gets closer and closer until he kneels down next to me and whispers to me, “You got a symbiont from your father, didn’t you?”

My mouth drops open at that question, leading to him nodding with a disappointed look on his face before he stands back up again, says, “That’s answer enough,” and walks away.

Wait… what?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Discord Invite:

https://discord.gg/R7M6QNRm7y

Table of Contents