Cavern of the Matriarch

Eidiri wildly trashed through the group of spiderlings, the spiderlings clinging to his body.

Their fangs continuously attacked him, heavily damaging his armor.

Ken stayed behind despite Eidiri's suicidal actions, opting to protect the still recovering Edgar.

The spiderlings were swarming all over Eidiri, his armor already disfigured and his pained cries reverberating through the cavern.

However, he continued to relentlessly stab and slice at the spiderlings, ignoring the warning flashes of his health bar depleting rapidly.

His blood dripped out as the spiderlings had now punctured certain sections of his armor, allowing them access to the flesh within.

Nevertheless, despite him being shaky he still swung his sword around vigorously. one after another spiderling after spiderling fell to his blade.

His arm protested against Eidiri, 2 spiderlings latched onto his arm, already injecting the paralysis toxin into his bloodstream.

His mana was already over half depleted with the large number of Fury Fists that Eidiri had been using, his glowing-red fists shattering their carapaces.

His figure was almost like a lone ship, weathering the storm in stormy waters. He kept on getting battered but as long as he had some HP still, he wouldn't fall.

The option of retreat had already been discarded, mainly because there was nowhere to retreat to.

1, 2, 5, the spiderlings dropped but so did Eidiri's health.

After the spiderlings had cracked through the flimsy armor that Eidiri wore, Eidiri's chest was covered with wounds already, the fangs of the spiderlings raking across.

Not to mention, the spiderlings had also injected copious amounts of toxins into him, speeding up the paralysis.

As Eidiri continued fighting, his limbs became heavier and heavier as if his arms and legs were remade into lead blocks.

The combination of fatigue and venom quickly sapping his strength, when Eidiri was on the brink of falling he turned around and yelled to Ken and Edgar.

"What are you guys doing?" he yelled, "I could use a lot of help here!"

Seeing that Edgar had recovered to just over half of his health again, the 2 of them ran forwards to back up Eidiri, woken up by the call for help from the startling scene that they had just viewed.

The 2 of them quickly joined the fray, prying the spiderlings off of Eidiri before finishing them off with quick thrusts downwards, spurts of putrid green blood bursting out.

Soon enough, most of the spiderlings had been finished off, Eidiri recuperating his stamina as well as regenerating his health back with the use of Ken's food.

Edgar and Ken were still fighting around him, taking care of the stragglers that they had yet to finish off.

As they were still fighting, Eidiri who was currently relaxing quickly commented, "Hey while this pain system is a complete bastard and all that, it really does make this game so much realistic. Makes you value your in-game life so much more."

"It doesn't actually hurt too much though right?" asked Edgar.

"I haven't really been seriously injured yet so I don't really know but like I don't want to have the feeling of thousands of spider fangs in my chest," he said.

"Nah man you're good. It's not a completely realistic pain experience, that would be insane. See I'm fine. It only feels like a shot when you go the doctors and all that," Eidiri explained.

Ken swiped his dagger, lashing out at yet another spiderling, having become accustomed to spiderling's movements, he simply swatted the spiderling out of the air before rushing over and plunging his dagger into it, giving it a clean death.

In the meanwhile, Edgar was confronting 2 spiderlings by himself, having already applied the max number of poison stacks onto them, merely leading them around by the nose, waiting for them to kneel over and die.

At this point Edgar was only playing with his food, these being the last of the spiderlings in the chamber, Eidiri having dispatched the majority of them.

Not interfering with Edgar's steady kiting Ken and Eidiri merely watched him, Eidiri munching on a sandwich trying to recover more of his health.

After about a minute the spiderlings had collapsed, the poison rushing through their bodies incapacitating them.

Seeing that the spiderlings had gone motionless Edgar sighed before walking up and finishing this little battle, quickly ending their lives.

"Okay, now that that's done, let's take a short break, recuperate our energy and health and all that. Then we'll explore that tunnel or whatever," Eidiri said.

They then moved to take seats on the floor but when they looked down, they decided that it was ultimately a bad idea, especially considering how the floor was swamped in spiderling blood.

"Do spiders even have blood?" Eidiri wondered to himself, "Nevermind," he shook his head.

He just stood there, leaning on the cool cobblestones laid into the wall, recovering the energy he had expended.

An unfortunate thing, in particular, was that Eidiri's armor had been completely trashed during the fight.

The armor, or what was left of it, didn't even resemble armor, rather it was a flimsy piece of filthy with such a large amount of holes in it someone could have mistaken it for a moth-eaten shirt.

Nevertheless, they still had to press on, Eidiri would simply make do without the armor, "Perhaps I could use the scrap metal for something back at the forge," Eidiri thought to himself.

After 5 minutes had passed, the trio started making their way through the tunnel, the dark narrow passageway canvased with webs.

A minute of walking passed without any major events, then 2, and then 4.

"Okay is this just like some sort of bug or something?" Ken asked, "Why's this tunnel so damn long?" he offhandedly commented.

"Like are the resources for this section of the map so large that we have such a huge loading screen segment or something?" Ken complained.

"Nah, you already know that everything's loaded upon startup. It's just that this tunnel is probably like this," Eidiri said as he cut through what was probably the hundredth web.

They continued onwards, completing the grueling task of removing the webs from the cavern, then suddenly as they cut away a layer of webbing, rather than the usual sight of more webbing greeting them, there was a large open chamber.

Peeking in from their tunnel, Eidiri was able to see the outside. However, the outside was all the way up, presumably, the tunnel they had taken had led them to another open section of the caverns.

Just great.

However, this segment of the caverns being open-air wasn't the real thing that disturbed them so.

A Giant Spider occupied most of the space in this cavern, a giant web constructed that spanned across the entire canyon, it merely sat there, still.

All across the walls of the cavern, there was the familiar sight of the spider eggs that they had previously smashed.

Spiderlings hurriedly made their way around the cavern, devouring one another hunting small rats and mice that dared to exist with this, this 'domain' of spiders.