Eternal Winter's Reign - Book 2 - Chapter 23 - Spiders (Patreon)

Alexander North

I smile as I swipe my claws through the air, sending arcs of cold energy straight at the spider frozen ones filling this nest. And just like with the other frozen ones I’ve attacked here thus far, the cold energy cuts straight through the legs they raise to defend themselves with before dissipating, only for me to send more at them, finishing them off.

This new ability really is a lot more useful than my original one. It has a lot more direct use in combat than simply freezing what I touch. Especially considering that it gives me a way to attack at range.

I walk up to the corpses around me before absorbing the energy left inside of their body and moving on through the tunnel.

Unlike the first nest, this one is full of nothing but spiders. Both big and small ones.

None of those suicide bomber spiders though, fortunately enough.

I hated those. And so did my armor.

It’s too bad these frozen ones aren’t giving me all that much energy, but I guess that’s mostly just because I’m already at the level of a Tier 3, so they are pretty weak in comparison. Which at least makes them easy to deal with.

I continue killing my way through the spiders until I find a large room at the back of the nest. One where I sense the strongest frozen one of the nest.

The room seems to have some sort of giant cocoon blocking the entrance, so I quickly cut into it with my claws before immediately jumping back and sending several arcs of cold energy at the swarm of small spiders that rush out. But to my surprise, most of them avoid me instead of attacking, leaving me staring past them into the cocoon that I can now tell expands the entire walls, floor, and ceiling of the cavern.

Where I find a giant spider spanning three meters in length standing protectively in front of a familiar crystal.

Right as I’m about to step into the room, I pause. Then I turn back around and continue my trek through the tunnels, killing spiders as I go.

Almost forgot. The doctor wanted me to kill all of the frozen ones in the nest before dealing with the crystal and the nest’s leader.

That shouldn’t take very long. From what I can sense of the area, the one in that room is the only one strong enough to fight me.

And even that one is weaker than the bear was, so with the addition of my new ability, it shouldn’t be a problem to kill either.

Unless the frozen one eats the crystal before I get back that is.

Terminal, what are the chances of that?

|The chances are extremely low. It is hypothesized that the frozen one will wait until the crystal is fully stabilized to devour it.|

Thought so.

|This unit recommends user does the same.|

I know. It’ll give me a better ability if I wait.

Plus the doctor wants me to bring the crystal back first anyways. So it’ll be able to stabilize along the way.

|Incorrect. The crystal will only stabilize while it is still in the ground.|

That has me grimacing.

So I’m going to be stuck sitting there like the frozen one is while waiting for it to finish stabilizing?

|User Alexander’s assumption is correct.|

Well that’s gonna be a pain.

I continue going around killing off the spiders for a while, unsurprisingly finding that most of them are actually rather afraid of me. To the point that it’s more annoying trying to find the buggers than it is to kill them. Even if I know a nest like this would be a serious problem for regular soldiers and even Tier 2 Symbiont Hosts.

After I finish dealing with all of the spiders, finding that once again there aren’t any intelligent ones amongst the bunch, I head back through the tunnels again towards the leader spider’s cavern. Where I find the cocoon having sealed up the entrance again.

I raise a brow before shrugging and cutting the thing back open, finding several small spiders rushing out again.

Okay, seriously. Did it just lay an egg or something while I was gone? Or did spiders hide in there?

Either way, I quickly kill off the fleeing spiders before focusing on the cavern.

The cavern itself is rather large despite having a massive cocoon wrapped all around it with random bits of webbing and other cocoons just handing from the walls and ceilings. And inside of some of those cocoons I’m pretty sure are most likely eggs. Which would explain the spiders that just tried to flee.

Looks like this spider is a lot different from the bear in that it’s actually giving birth to the other frozen ones in the nest and doesn’t care about other frozen ones entering the room. Probably because they’re all its children.

The mother spider – which is what I’m gonna call it now – seems to be more focused on breeding and making its own frozen one forces via its children then it is focused on pure power. Which would explain why it’s weaker than the bear.

The creature has pitch black eyes with no blue in them, pitch black hair with just a few specks of blue across its exoskeleton beneath the hair, and glowing blue claws on the ends of each of its eight legs. It spans three meters in length and about one and a half in height, with two incisors in front of its mouth.

It’s also just kind of staring at me while hovering above the crystal and dangling from a spider web.

Just like the bear, it really doesn’t care about me as long as I don’t step inside of its little nest here. A rather interesting fact.

Anyways, after having a bit of a staring match with it for several seconds, I finally go ahead and step inside of the cavern.

Time to see how strong this thing really is.

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