Raid (3)
The mountain spiders, our gracious benefactors who would shower us with magic stones, were now thoroughly roused.
The Spider Queen looked at us and suddenly began retching, heaving up something from deep within her.
"What the hell is that?"
"I believe... those are spiders, sir?"
Leaving a horrified Pitasha behind, I hurried to take command.
"Superior units, charge your breath! Snipers, shoot down whatever comes at you! Combat engineers, get those makeshift barricades up. Execute!"
The engineers scrambled to build emergency barricades, working the blackened trees and the red-stained soil and sand around us into hastily assembled walls.
Thanks to the snipers' efforts, we'd bought ourselves a sliver of time — and that sliver was enough to raise the first barricade.
"Heavy weapons units, fall in behind the barricade. Fire the breath!"
KWAAAAAAAAM!
The moment their charges were ready, the cannons let fly.
This time, rather than a single point, we fired across the widest spread we could. It left a few mountain spiders alive, but it wiped out a fair number of the common ones.
With nothing charging from the front anymore, we rushed to reinforce the first barricade and threw up a second one behind it.
We built the second barricade taller and posted the snipers on top of it.
"Raptors! Get out there and fight!"
<Tseeeeiik...!>
The Raptors burst forward and bared their fangs at the spiders swarming toward them.
At the same time, their muzzles opened up, spitting fire into the endless tide of eight-legged bodies.
"Breath... fire!"
While I was directing the battle, Pitasha fired off a fully charged salvo.
She apparently wanted to clear the flanks first — she sent only twenty units into the center, then split the remaining eighty evenly, forty to the left and forty to the right.
The spiders that had been closing in with their legs spread wide like unfolding wings were annihilated in an instant.
As for the mountain spiders clustered together, we took out roughly thirty of them in one go.
The most effective strategy, it turned out, was nothing more complicated than killing them while they were still inside the mother — before the little bastards ever emerged.
"Reload the breath! Transport units, get those warheads and ammunition moving, now!"
Amid the machine legion moving in flawless unison, so many spiders kept raining down from the sky that the heavens themselves began to darken.
"Transport unit. Give me a spear."
This was one of the spears we'd only just started mass-producing.
To be precise, it wasn't an artifact — it was a spear that detonated on impact, unleashing an instantaneous explosion that swept everything around it.
Given the advanced engineering involved, I'd only had them make the ones for my personal use so far.
Roughly ten thousand of them, give or take?
"I'm only twenty-six, you know! Body's still springy—!"
Shweeong...
KWAAAAAANG!
SHAAAAAAA!
The spear I hurled into the air detonated, the clustered spiders bursting apart, and it began to rain spider gore from the sky.
"Ugh... son of a bitch, since when is spider blood BLUE?!"
Shweeong...
KWAAAAAANG!
Red specks were multiplying across the blackened sky.
At the same time, the shockwaves from each blast knocked the surrounding spiders off balance, sending them plummeting straight down.
The Raptors on the ground took some damage from the falling spiders, but there were far more spiders than Raptors, so we came out fine.
For every ten spiders killed, we lost about one Raptor.
I kept hurling spears, aiming for the sectors with the fewest Raptors on the ground.
"HRYAAAAT!"
KWAAAAAAANG!
The ground was holding — the heavy weapons units and Raptors had it covered.
"Fire!"
KUOOOOOOOO—
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
The breath shot straight out and hurtled toward the Spider Queen.
And then—
Ji-ung...
"A reflection?"
KWAAAAAAAAANG!
A iridescent aura surged up from her body, wrapping the Spider Queen whole — and the energy we'd fired came bursting back outward from her as the epicenter.
"Huh?"
Thanks to that, the mountain spiders standing beside her died just as instantly.
"Hold the breath! From now on we go full-auto. Load the breath — pick them off one at a time!"
Could she keep a barrier like that up indefinitely? Obviously not.
So the moment we fired a single shot, the barrier snapped on again — apparently even one shot registered as a threat to her.
The instant that thing reflected our energy back, we fired the breath again.
"Fire five."
KWAAAAAANG!
Five breaths streaked out in the blink of an eye and struck the Spider Queen's legs and body dead-on.
Perhaps deploying her barrier immediately really was beyond her, because she'd nearly lost her left leg entirely, and her upper right side had ruptured like she'd taken a shell straight on.
Just as I was starting to relax at the sight, she lifted her forelegs.
"Oh, come on. Since when do spiders breathe?"
She gathered the energy coiling in her forelegs and stuffed it into her mouth.
Chomp, chomp.
When she finally opened her mouth, there it was — a sphere brimming with violet light, floating inside.
"Everyone, recall! Now! Full recall — go, GO!"
I recalled everything, Pitasha included, and boarded the one remaining Superior Combat Unit.
Then I pushed it into overload and ran at maximum speed.
PSSSHUUUUU—
KWAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!
The energy gathered in the Spider Queen's mouth discharged in a single torrent, surging straight for the combat unit.
The unit twisted and juked every which way, but its frame was simply too massive — it got shot down in the end.
"Summon!"
I summoned a new unit and scrambled aboard.
"Transcended human" was pushing it, sure — but at the very least I could perform at enhanced-human levels.
CLANG!
"Agh..."
I smacked my head trying to board the hovering unit, but that was hardly the priority right now.
Gripping the scaled hunk of metal tight, I barked my order.
"Damn it — get us into the SKY!"
<Tseeik!>
Wriggling and squirming, the unit clawed its way upward like a dragon ascending to heaven, and we barely slipped clear.
We climbed until we could nearly touch the clouds.
"Summon. And load the breath."
The instant the Spider Queen saw the breath charging, she threw up her barrier again.
"I'm not firing right away, though?"
Tsk... tk-tk-tk...
Apparently she couldn't hold the barrier forever. A mere three minutes later, the colossal barrier began to crack.
"Now. Fire everything."
And the moment her barrier started to fail, dozens of breaths slammed into her all at once.
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
SHAAAAAAA!
The Spider Queen's ruptured body went flying through the air.
Gigantic chunks of meat tumbled across the sky, blood pouring off them like rain.
Only after several minutes did the rain finally let up enough for me to descend and touch down.
"Whew... summon again."
"MAAAAASSTEEEERRR!"
WHOOMP!
"Oof..."
The moment she was summoned, Pitasha took one look at me and came sprinting, throwing herself straight into my arms.
She wrapped herself around me and peeked up at my face with just her eyes showing.
"You're not hurt anywhere, are you?"
"Doesn't look like it."
"Hehe..."
I stroked her head as she fretted over me, then ordered the machine legion to start collecting the magic stones.
Even a single mountain spider held tens of thousands of magic stones inside it.
And naturally, a mountain spider's magic stones were enormous.
"Wonder what the Spider Queen's will be like..."
Just as I was thinking that and waiting, a lower-grade golem finally came trundling back.
The Spider Queen's magic stone!
[Inner Core of the Spider Queen]
"...An inner core? If that's an inner core, it's a legendary elixir ingredient!"
"I'm sorry, WHAT? An inner core! Oh my GOD... Master, you're going to get so much stronger!"
According to Pitasha, an inner core was something entirely different from a magic stone.
It formed only in beings that had attained a certain rank of existence.
That rank, naturally, required all three vessels — body, mind, and energy — to rise in equal measure.
Which meant that spider was, in a sense, a spiritual creature.
"Hardly a sacred beast, though. Hmm... a spider like that?"
Considering it had been devouring humans alive, abomination seemed like the more fitting word.
Be that as it may, chunks of the Spider Queen's flesh lay scattered everywhere, and Pitasha insisted every last bit was essential, so we gathered it all up.
We collected her outer carapace, the muscle and sinew beneath it, and then neatly bagged those iridescent eyes and her legs for good measure.
"Excellent. With all this, I can... hehehehe... NEW materials! NEW materials!"
Her old world had never had spiders like this, so Pitasha was bouncing with excitement at the thought of researching them as fresh materials.
Since I had no idea where else they'd be useful anyway, I handed the entire haul over to her.
She worked herself to the bone every single day — the least I could do was let her drown in the research she actually loved.
"That's what good welfare looks like. Mm-hm."
The instant I said those words, the System finally pronounced the end.
[Contribution Ranking 1st: Kim Hyunwoo (100%)]
[Reward granted.]
[Reward: Commander Summon Ticket (1)]
"FINALLY! A new commander, WOOHOOO!"
At long last, I could summon a brand-new Commander.
Heart pounding, I first had the transport units load up all the magic stones our units had gathered.
I looked over the steadily piling mountain of stones and nodded.
This many magic stones was definitely nothing to sneeze at.
"Could we use these stones to extend a lifespan?"
"Stones from a mountain spider should do the trick, sir. I'd estimate roughly three doses' worth per spider."
"Phew... excellent!"
They'd be perfect gifts for my parents.
Once I got home, I planned to brew not just potions but full elixirs from these stones.
Which meant I'd need to build an elixir-manufacturing facility too.
"I just wish the territory were bigger. How many more raids will it take before it grows?"
With that thought, I finally turned to the Spider Queen's and mountain spiders' corpses sprawled all around us.
And the magic stones, too — we gathered up every last one of them.
"Recall me."
FWAAAAAH—
Light bloomed from my body, and before long, I opened my eyes to find—
"Wha... what the—?!"
My territory had grown vast beyond all recognition.