Chapter 72: The Spider Nursery
No matter what the reason had been, none of it mattered anymore.
The victor became king and the loser turned to dust.
The Spider Chimera was dead.
Joo Joowon awkwardly manipulated the webbing, causing the strands to separate to both sides.
The spider webs came in many forms.
Some were flat.
Some were three dimensional.
Others were funnel shaped or wheel shaped.
Every kind of web possessed its own hunting method.
The Spider Chimera seemed to be the culmination of every spider’s hunting instincts.
Its web resembled a living formation array, capable of changing shape according to its will.
Joo Joowon could easily imagine that if the Spider Chimera had survived, it might eventually have become one of those terrifying Boss monsters that players spoke of with fear.
It might even have transformed the entire city into its personal nest.
Unlike many other zombies, the Spider Chimera did not possess strong destructive tendencies.
As a result, the interior of this floor had remained largely intact.
There was not even any visible bloodstains.
That was also related to the hunting habits of spiders themselves.
The web weaving spiders injected digestive enzymes into their prey, dissolving them into liquid before absorbing the nutrients directly.
The final attack the Spider Chimera had used against Joo Joowon was based on exactly this ability.
Normally, however, spiders could not spit venom the way snakes could.
Their venom glands were located inside their chelicerae, meaning they needed to bite their prey to inject it.
Yet somehow, the Spider Chimera had managed to spray it as a ranged attack.
That realization served as an important reminder for Joo Joowon.
In the future, when facing zombies with obvious animal characteristics, it was acceptable to use the original creature as a reference for predicting their abilities.
However, he absolutely could not assume that they were limited only to the abilities of their original forms.
Pushing aside the webbing, Joo Joowon finally entered the innermost room.
Inside, more than a dozen spider eggs lay hidden within layers upon layers of webbing, protected so thoroughly that not even the slightest gap remained.
The entire room had become a nursery built specifically for the spider offspring.
Beside the eggs lay several prey creatures that the Spider Chimera had captured and brought back.
Several crimson strands extended from the bodies of those prey and connected directly to the eggs, continuously transporting nutrients into them without pause for even a moment.
Without a second thought, Joo Joowon immediately cut through the several crimson spider threads.
This type of thread did not exist among the functions of the Spider Web Launcher, so Joo Joowon could not manipulate it through the equipment and had no choice but to deal with it personally.
He did not dare look closely at whether the prey wrapped inside the threads had already been dissolved into liquid or whether any remains were left behind.
Instead, he directly controlled nearby spider silk to drag the remains into a corner, out of sight and out of mind.
No wonder the Spider Chimera possessed such incredible vitality yet had not displayed many abilities during the fight.
Perhaps it was precisely because it had devoted most of its prey and energy toward nurturing the baby spiders.
The moment the supply of nutrients was cut off, the dozen or so spider eggs immediately became restless.
Watching the eggs tremble violently, Joo Joowon quickly pulled all of the capture threads into place, making absolutely certain that the baby spiders would become trapped the instant they emerged.
Without their supply of nutrients, the unborn spiders seemed to decide that the time had come to enter the world.
A series of rustling sounds echoed through the room.
Suddenly, eight sharp black spider legs tore through the silk surrounding the eggs.
However, before the creatures could even fully crawl out of their eggs, their movements caused the tips of their legs to brush against the capture threads.
The moment that happened, they were instantly stuck in place.
Panicked screeches rang out one after another.
Unfortunately for them, the more they struggled, the tighter the threads wrapped around their bodies.
Before long, they exhausted themselves completely and ended up firmly bound to the capture web.
In only a short amount of time, more than ten spider hatchlings had fallen into the trap.
Only three eggs remained completely motionless, as though they had failed to hatch.
Joo Joowon vaguely remembered that although the silk surrounding spider eggs protected them to a certain degree, it also inevitably caused some eggs to fail during the incubation process.
Fortunately for mother spiders, a single clutch often contained twenty or thirty eggs.
Losing a few during development hardly mattered to them.
Joo Joowon raised the Compound Repeating Crossbow and began firing at the eggs one after another.
Although the equipment description did not specify exactly how much attack power the crossbow possessed, the offensive capability of a rare grade weapon was clearly far beyond that of the ordinary compound crossbow he had used previously.
The bolts effortlessly pierced through the tough spider silk and skewered the eggs completely through.
Almost immediately, the system notification sounded in his ears.
[ Ding! ]
[ Level 2 Baby Spider has been Killed ]
[ EXP +2 ]
Joo Joowon did not know whether it was because they were premature hatchlings or simply because Level 2 monsters only awarded two points of experience by default, but he actually found himself greedily thinking that the amount of experience gained was far too little.
However, after another thought, he realized that this was essentially free experience he had picked up without any real effort, so he quickly adjusted his mentality and calmly proceeded to shoot down the remaining dozen or so spider eggs one by one.
Amid the long string of system notifications announcing the deaths of Level 2 Baby Spider, a completely new message suddenly appeared.
[ Ding! ]
[ Level 3 Elite · Spider Leader has been killed ]
[ EXP +8 ]
"Huh?"
The notification immediately caught Joo Joowon’s attention.
After carefully searching through the remaining eggs, he finally discovered that one of the spider eggs was slightly larger than the others.
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