Leaving Rayla at the guild, I accompany the merchant to his workshop alone. It seems to have been hastily abandoned and the exits barricaded.

  “This is the workshop. The cages are in the basement.”

  “I see, so first of all what is the layout of the building?”

  “It’s not very complicated, we have one big room where we spin silk on the ground floor, then behind it there is a small open kitchen and a bathroom. At the end of the spinning room on the right side is a staircase that goes down to the basement where we keep the spiders and milk them. They aren’t a xxx species, meaning that they don’t see each other as family and would attack each other if forced to xxx. That’s why we have eighteen cages, one for each of them.”

  “Does it matter which cage the spiders are put in?”

  Pulling on his goatee while thinking, he replies, “Hmm, not really. We do have a way of organizing them by age, sex and species but the cages itself don’t matter. We can organize them again once they’re secured.”

  “Okay, how many of them have escaped their cages? Also do you think that the cages are still functional now that they escaped?”

  “I don’t know how many are still alive or have escaped but I’m quite certain that the cages are fine. We check for damage every day as part of our duties that come with being allowed to run a xxx like this in the city. My assumption is that we were sabotaged. We hired a new worker recently and she was not able to be found after we evacuated. It is possible that she fiddled with the locks, as such I have a bag of eighteen padlocks here that you may use if you need to.”

  “How will they behave when I go in?”

  “I’m not too sure since they’re probably a bit stressed, but most likely they will all have found a place that is the furthest away from another spider and started making nets. They won’t be thick enough yet to hold a person but you still need to be careful. Small layers of silk on you tend to accumulate quickly. It’s best to regularly check for and remove any silk on you. Here take this, it is a specialized brush we use to get rid of it.”

  Taking the bristly brush with some strands of webbing in it, I continue, “Thank you. What will I need to be aware of when I approach them?”

  “Well, first you need to be aware that they can crawl on top of walls. So always keep an eye on the ceiling. They are xxx hunters. They won’t attempt to attack you by charging at you from the front but if they are above you or behind you, they will use that opportunity to attack. When you approach one, they will most likely show their teeth and put up their front legs to look large while mock charging at you and retreating backwards. Only once they feel cornered or they feel like they can land a hit will they truly attack.”

  “I see, do they have any weaknesses I need to be aware of?”

  “Yes. While they are quite large and have a decent amount of strength they aren’t very heavy, so by using your weight against their strength you should always come out on top. Also, while they are strong opponents when you face them normally, they also don’t have much they can do when you get on top or behind them. The trick is to get on their back and push down on the part that looks like their waist. They can’t attack you when you do that so you can pin them down that way and kill them by piercing their heads or pick them up and carry them to the cages. Just be careful, they can still shoot out their silk so when you carry them you need to make sure that your legs don’t get tangled up.”

  “Alright, do you have any weighted hunting nets or something similar that I can use to secure the spiders? That way I don’t have to kill as many to guarantee my own safety.”

  Thinking for a bit, he looks around the market and says, “I don’t…But that is a good idea. Wait here just a second. I know a merchant that sells them. I'll try to procure some from him.”

  “Perfect! Could you also get me a large stick or something similar so I can get the ones on the ceiling to fall down?”

  “Yes of course! We actually do have a tool for that.”

  He then shows me what looks like a shovel with a very long handle and hands it over to me as well.

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  “With this you can push them without hurting them. It also makes it so when they try to web it up, they’ll just make the tool more sticky, making it harder for them to get away from it.”

  He then leaves me alone for a few minutes and comes back with what looks like five weighted hunting nets.

  Breathing heavily as he puts them down in front of me he wipes his sweat of his brow as he says, “These were all I could get.”

  “That’s okay, that's already better than nothing. What we’re going to do now is unbarricade the front door. I will need you to open and close the door for me so that in case of a spider being directly in front of the door I’m able to act. Then, once the entrance is secure, I will put all the tools inside so you can close the door behind me again.”

  “U-Understood!

  We then clear the entrance and get ready. I take one last deep breath and,

  “Go!”

  The merchant opens the door and hairy legs greet me from the other side of it as a spider seems to have sat on top of the other side of the door and is now scurrying towards me. Holding up my shield I cut at the underside of its head, its fangs in full view. Greenish guts flow out as it twitches and falls to the ground, slowly curling up its legs. I then look up at the ceiling and the immediate area around the entrance. There are spiders further into the room but the entry way seems secured. Keeping my shield up I make sure the spider is dead by sliding my blade into the head one last time before carrying in the equipment.

  “You can close the door now. For safety reasons please stay near it. If you hear me scream, call for help.”

  “Got it.”

  The door then closes behind me.

  Taking a deep breath, I compose myself and take in my surroundings, “Okay Thoma Ahad…That’s one down, up to seventeen more to go. Alright, what would Rayla do? Secure the area, stay vigilant, don’t start unnecessary fights, keep the goal in mind and be quick and deadly when I engage. Okay, my goal is to get them into the cages if possible, so I need to carve out a path to the basement. The stairs to the basement are to the right. There are five spiders in this room and an unknown number in the kitchen, bathroom and basement. There are two spiders near the basement stairs, one on the ceiling and one on the wall, the other three are on the left side of the room, so I might be able to get away without killing them.”

  Seeing as the two spiders near the basement stairs are relatively close to each other I put some steak on the shovel thing I was given and try to lure one of them towards me.

  To my surprise, both of them seem to get lured by it and a sudden fight breaks out between them as the one from the ceiling drops down on top of the other one that was trying to eat the steak. They look like a violent ball of legs as they each try to kill each other. Then, one of them stops moving while the other starts eating it. The other spiders don’t seem to react to this so I slowly approach. In response it starts to put up its legs toward me and shows its fangs just like the merchant predicted, it seems wounded. Keeping my shield up, I charge at it as it pounces on me. Its legs are violently tapping against my chest but my shield manages to keep the fangs at bay. Using my full weight I charge it against a wall, pinning it between my shield, and slash and stab at its abdomen multiple times with my cleaver until it stops moving. The legs then slowly start to curl around my shield, it takes a lot of effort to pull it away before it gets pulled in by the spider's death curl.

  “Alright, three down, up to fifteen more to go…”

  Looking down the basement stairs I can see two dead spiders, it looks like they tried to eat each other and both died. Taking one last look around to make sure none of the spiders have snuck up on me I go down the stairs, taking only the padlocks and the meat with me. Looking to the cage room on the right, It seems like all the cages have been opened but not all the spiders have left. The milking room to the left of me seems to have at least four spiders in it that I can see, they don’t seem to react to me.

  “Alright…First secure the area. The spiders here aren’t team players so even if one from the milking room ambushes me it’s best to close the cage doors that have spiders in them already first.”

  Slowly and carefully, I close and lock the doors to four cages.

  “Alright… Four caught, five dead, nine to go. There are three upstairs and at least four in the milking room so there are only two left where I’m unsure of their location. Oh also, can’t forget to get rid of the silk.”

  Carefully I use the special comb the merchant gave me to go over my armor and surprisingly there is a lot of webbing on me that I didn’t notice at all, especially around my legs. Thankfully I made sure to question him thoroughly just like Rayla taught me, otherwise I’m sure I would have been in danger relatively soon.

  “Alright…Let's go back up and get the nets, I should also leave the padlocks here with the cages…Actually, it’s probably best if I put the padlock on already so I just need to close them later…Yeah that’s a good idea.”

  I put padlocks on the nine open cages closest to the hallway and go back up the stairs, shield raised. The spiders seem to have moved. One is currently eating the one I killed at the entrance and another is eating the two dead near the basement stairs. Thankfully, I barely look up in time at the ceiling right over my head, making me able to block the spider that was hiding over the basement entrance and trying to drop on top of my head. Once on top of my shield it scurries downwards and manages to bite right into my armor before I am able to kill it by decapitation. There are blood and guts all over me now and the spider’s bite was so strong that the head is still attached to my leather armor. It’s really disgusting but I end up managing to pry the head out of my armor, spreading more guts all over me. Inspecting my armor afterwards it seems I was lucky. It nearly pierced through completely. Seven left.