NOVEL NEXT Chapter 54 – Swarm of Spiders
Under the premise that we were being chased by a strong Awakened with the intent to kill us, I thought of two different courses of action.
The first was to hide until the dungeon is cleared. This plan has the advantage that if we managed to hide until we return to the outside world, we will be out of danger. After all, our families are relatively influential. If we make use of them, we can easily take care of a common thug.
The downside of this plan is that if we are found by our enemy before the dungeon is cleared, we will be in grave danger, and one of us could die. Plus, we don’t know if that Awakened has a way to find us.
In the end, we would be relying on luck.
We could also use this method to lay in an ambush, but to be honest, I’m not sure how effective an ambush will be against an Awakened of a higher Tier.
The second plan is to continue with our previous course of action and search for more Awakened to form a team. The advantage of this plan is that there is strength in numbers. With enough numbers, the robber won’t dare to attack us, and if he dares, we could even kill him.
This plan also has a downside, though. If he discovers us before our group is big enough, we will be in grave danger.
At the end of the day, both plans relied a bit on luck. None of them guaranteed that we would be safe.
However, some words of the demon made me lean towards the second plan.
[When your life is in danger, taking a passive stance and relying solely upon luck is never the best option.]
I agreed with these words.
Thus, we decided to resume our search for survivors while being wary of being attacked by the robber.
But to our dismay, finding survivors was much harder than we thought.
Even after almost one hour, we did not meet any other survivor inside the dungeon.
“… Could it be that nobody else survived?” Jessica could not help but mutter that after one hour of searching.
I frowned and did not reply. It doesn’t make sense.
This dungeon occurred in the middle of the city. Even if Awakened are a minority of the population, at least ten or twenty should have been trapped in this dungeon.
Where are they then?
No matter how I thought about it, something seemed strange.
Fortunately, our search for the past hour was not completely useless. In the way, we fought several monsters, either spiders or berserk humans, and thanks to that, we managed to increase our battle experience greatly.
I also experimented using the technique based on [Confidence] that I tried against the leader of the robbers. After trying it on several monsters, I learned how to use it at will.
By projecting my killing intent outwards, I could scare my enemies or use it to stiffen their movements for a brief instant, giving me a great advantage during a fight.
I named this skill [Killing Aura].
Even the demon praised this technique as a slightly useful way to use killing intent. Big praise considering that the demon considered almost everything about me as trash.
Despite our failure to find survivors, we decided to continue searching for a bit longer. And finally, when we were about to give up, a young man suddenly appeared before us.
“You are Awakened as well, right? Are you here to clear the dungeon?” The young man asked.
We looked at each other before shaking our heads.
“We were trapped in the dungeon when it occurred,” Andrew replied.
“Is it so?” The young man showed a disappointed expression before looking at us and sighing. “You are lucky to survive until now. Follow me, I will take you to a safe place.”
But we did not move.
After our experience with the Awakened we met at the bank, we were much warier of other Awakened. There is no way we will trust a stranger so easily.
The young man frowned. He was about to talk again, when all of sudden, a spider monster appeared.
We were surprised, but fortunately, the spider was not that strong, around Tier 2 or Tier 3. Before it could approach us, Karime used her Ice Creation skill to freeze its legs as Andrew charged towards it.
But at that moment, the young man shouted.
“Wait! Don’t kill it!”
We were surprised, but it was too late.
Andrew had already swung the metallic pipe in his hand, crushing the spider’s head.
The young man turned pale.
“Fucking idiots!”
“What is wrong?” I immediately asked.
The young man cursed loudly and ran away.
“Come with me, idiots! These spiders are like ants. They live in a hive with a queen, soldiers, and workers. The one that you just killed is a worker.”
I frowned. That explains why usually solitary creatures as spiders were in a group.
But, why do we need to escape?
The young man looked at us and explained.
“Creatures that live in hives communicate secreting hormones. It’s the same for these spiders. And every time that one of them is killed, they secrete a special hormone to tell the rest of the hive about it. Do you understand now?”
My expression turned pale.
“Wait a moment. We have killed a lot of spiders until now, but they did not attack us.” Karime hurriedly said at that moment.
The young man stared at us blankly before his expression turned completely ugly.
“Fuck! You are a fucking time bomb! Get away from me!”
I wanted to refute his words, but just then, we heard a sound like tens of insects crawling towards us.
When we turned around, we saw a swarm of at least twenty spiders in the distance, rushing in our direction.
The young man’s face turned ashen white.
“Fuck, we are doomed.”
[Yeah, you guys are doomed.]
Fuck you, demon.
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