Chapter 743: Spire Ascension (XIII)
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The Nest Carrier and the Gnawers were just the 40th Floor enemies.
Anybody who’s been following the trend of how the spire works would understand by now that this was only the beginning of a long and arduous climb.
But even at the start, it’s already this difficult.
Arriving at the 41st floor shortly after clearing the previous floor, Cedric scanned his surroundings with his sword already out.
To his and the audience’s surprise, though, he arrived at a rather strange place.
"Am I inside a nest?" He asked himself.
He looked behind him and saw that there was a broken egg wrapped in spools of thread around the same size as him, almost giving the illusion that he came out of it.
His surroundings were all gross and smelly. All sorts of gross organic mutations could be seen everywhere. There were pulsating vines running across everywhere. There were also a bunch of eggs and bulbous growths attached to the walls and the ceiling.
There were also threads everywhere. It’s like he’s in a spider’s nest, given the structure of this place.
He tried expanding his sensory range but was interrupted when, all of a sudden, the threads all around him began thrumming.
Then, one by one, everything that had been slumbering or incubating within the eggs and spools of thread broke out and hissed angrily at him.
Now, Cedric found himself surrounded with all sorts of mutated bugs with rows of teeth, appendages, legs, etc. Each one looked like nightmare fuel, and they came towards him from all sides, leaving him no room for escape.
And so, Cedric responded as anybody would expect from him.
He attacked, of course. He wasn’t just going to stand there and let himself be devoured.
But while he’s dealing with the army of bugs coming his way, Cedric is thinking.
’This can’t be it, right? ’
’The big bad should be hidden somewhere around here. And there should be two, given the trend of this spire.’
’Where are they, though? ’
Cedric’s senses were limited here. The thick threads running all over the place sort of dampen the efficiency of his sensory range. It’s like each thread was absorbing his spiritual sense or something.
But even though this was the case, Cedric wasn’t all too perturbed. This wasn’t the first time that his senses had been limited in some way, after all. He had long since expected that his powerful sensory capabilities would be countered in some way ever since arriving at the Primitive Universe.
Cedric continued slicing through the seemingly never-ending tide of bugs all while trying to locate who exactly was his target here.
It wasn’t until after he culled at least ten thousand bugs that he finally had a clue where to look.
Eyes gleaming with a resplendent light, he held his sword with both hands and sliced and diced the very area he was in.
Because of this, the structure collapsed around him, also eliminating the holes where the bugs kept coming out from.
After the structure collapsed, the reality of his situation was revealed.
The bleak and lifeless sky was revealed, all dark and gloomy. A depressing aura hit Cedric’s senses all of a sudden.
Then, overwhelming his vision, was a gigantic monster that looked a lot like a larva, only it was about atimes bigger, more gross, and was spewing obscene amounts of silk threads, which seemed to have a mind of its own.
It also wasn’t alone. Not too far from where the larva was, an orb weaver spider could be seen. It was a lot smaller than the larva, but that’s not important.
The orb weaver was weaving the silk threads the larva spewed out into webs and traps while also laying down eggs nonstop. It weaved its eggs with the silk, spreading her children everywhere.
Both of these monsters sensed Cedric’s presence and stilled for a bit. It’s like they didn’t expect to see an unknown creature like him appearing on their turf out of nowhere.
Screech!!
The gigantic larva emitted a sharp screech that reverberated throughout the bleak and lifeless world, alarming every creature that heard it. The orb weaver also stood up, but it didn’t stop laying eggs; in fact, it even doubled down on it.
The worst part is that the orb weaver thrummed the silk webs, sending a particular rhythm that caused the growth of her spawn to accelerate greatly. She didn’t just give birth to spiders; she gave birth to all sorts of disgusting bugs, and she’s nowhere near stopping from making them.
’That larva...it should be what they call a Silk Mother. And that orb weaver should be called the Silk Spinner."
The Silk Mother and the Silk Spinner are two creatures of ’The Horde’ that have a symbiotic relationship.
From what Cedric recalled, Silk Spinners will always search for a Silk Mother. Because although the former can exist on their own, their true capabilities could only be unleashed with the help of the latter.
Silk Mothers, too, can be just fine on their own, but they won’t refuse the service of Silk Spinners because with them, their security is further increased. Silk Spinners can and will spawn a multitude of their children with the task of protecting the Silk Mother while they do their thing.
This relationship ends when either creature evolves to the next level.
You see, silk mothers have to release silk; they will die if they don’t. With how much they could release at once, it’s not at all strange for them to encase planets or even entire solar systems within a ball of silk; they just needed time and freedom to do so.
The evolution of the Silk Mother happens when its silk-producing organ has been completely emptied. When this happens, all the remaining silk it has produced will form a cocoon around it, protecting it while it evolves to its new form.
The Silk Spinners work the same way. They needed to lay eggs until they physically, mentally, and spiritually couldn’t anymore. The interesting part about silk spinners is that they share a gene bank with their spawns.
When the children of the Silk Spinners eat something, the Silk Spinner herself will know just what kind of life they devoured. Her children don’t have to be anywhere near her for this to happen. They could be separated by worlds or galaxies, and this will still happen.
So long as the Silk Spinners can sense their children alive, they will know what they’re eating. All of this information will be stored in a gene bank where Silk Spinners could easily and almost effortlessly weave a new form of their children.
Silk Spinners doesn’t care if their creations were considered failures. With how many eggs they could lay down in each minute, the failures were nothing more than experiments or passing thoughts to their mothers.
When the point came where Silk Spinners could no longer lay down eggs, they too entered the next stage of their evolution.
On their own, these creatures were already pretty strong. But they became even stronger with their powers combined.
The Silk Mother didn’t let the Silk Spinner fight alone. It spewed a new type of silk, one that’s more dangerous than the regular one it usually produces.
This new silk was not only sticky and seemingly had a mind of its own, but it was also poisonous and sharp. Anything caught by them will experience agony like no other.
Meanwhile, the new spawns of the Silk Mother broke out of their shells mere seconds after they were laid down. They came in various shapes and sizes; some barely resembled their mother.
These creatures were the real strong combinations the Silk Spinners created before from the gene bank, ones that had been tried and tested. And with their blueprint unlocked, the Silk Spinners could just produce armies of them in a blink of an eye.
And so, not even a minute since he broke out of the nest he arrived in, Cedric already found himself surrounded from all sides once more.
Slowly but surely, the silk threads of the Silk Mother were encasing him in. Limiting his field of movement little by little, almost pushing him to the edge of certain death.
Meanwhile, the spawns of the Silk Spinner soldiered on, coming towards him with no regard for their personal safety or survival. Their minds were only filled with the single purpose of killing and devouring him so that his genes could be donated to the gene bank of their mother.
"This is going to be a little tricky, but it should still be manageable," Cedric mused to himself.
He knew he had to deal with the silk pair; otherwise, this will never end. As much as he’d like to let loose and just let them produce as much silk and spawn as they wanted, that would be helping them evolve, which might result in his certain demise.
Therefore, he needed to make sure that those two big bugs died soon so that he could move on safely to the next floor.
Of course, with everything that this spire has thrown his way since the beginning, saying this was easy; doing it was more complicated.