"This has to be a joke!!!"
"Let's get out of here!!! Quick, before he notices!!!"
Ashton began to retreat, walking backwards whilst firing short bursts of two or three rounds from his AR-15 with one hand; with the other, he did his best to drag Cody along by the strap of his bulletproof vest.
"Realise what?!!"
Henry didn't want to retreat; they already had this thing right where they wanted it.
"That our bullets aren't doing anything to it!!"
"It's too late."
The calm voice of a young man reached the ears of the whole squad, and he was right; the giant spider clinging to the wall let out a stridulation, a very loud clicking sound made with its large vocal pincers.
Its long legs, a metre and a half in length, stretched to their full extent; the bullets merely bounced off its hard shell. The spider, red as blood, raised two of its long legs.
With two of its legs it shielded its soft, gleaming eyes; four legs held its body firmly to the ceiling; and the last two legs were aimed at Ashton and Boby, looking like two razor-sharp spears that extended several metres through the air until they struck their target.
*Crack!!!*
They easily pierced Ashton's Level IIIA ballistic ceramic plates, which could easily stop shots from 9mm pistols.
Cody felt his boss's blood splatter on his face; his teeth wouldn't stop chattering in his mouth; he felt as small and defenceless as when his father used to hit him with his belt whenever he got bad marks.
Boby suffered the same fate; the long leg, made of eight segments of chitin reinforced with a special hardened protein, pierced his neck. The Level IV tactical reinforcement plate for bulletproof vests, capable of withstanding rifle ammunition, could not stop the long black claw covered in sharp hairs at the end of the leg, and it tore a larger hole as it exited.
"Ashton!!!!"
Along with Henry's shout came the sound of his gun, indicating he had run out of ammunition.
*A powerful hiss!!*
The giant spider forced air through the vents on its abdomen, creating a hissing sound as it dropped to the ground.
Its legs stretched out as far as they would go, and it extended a couple more into the air, doing its best to look menacing to whoever was lurking in the darkness.
Suddenly, a silvery, metallic flash shot out of the darkness straight at the giant spider.
It looked like a beam of light that struck the spider's legs; the red exoskeleton was no obstacle, and it cleanly and smoothly severed the leg at the root.
*E'aaarhhhh!!!*
One after another, the flashes came, until they had made dozens of bleeding holes in the enormous spider; sticky green blood oozed from each one, and the fifteen red eyes were also sliced in half.
Henry paid no further attention to the spider, but turned his focus to the tunnel from which they had come; footsteps could already be heard.
And after the longest seconds of his life, Henry could see the handsome young man dressed in a black leather jacket enter the room.
A long, gleaming silver spear was held in his right hand, the blade pointing towards the floor and the long shaft resting against his upper back.
"They should have done more research; that's not a Crypta spider, it's a J'ba Fofi from the Congo."
Realising it was a human, Henry lowered his weapon and took off his night-vision goggles.
J'ba Fofi, or Giant Spider as it is translated from the native language of the Baka tribe of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is known for devouring many missionaries during the Sacred Heart Missionaries' humanitarian and educational work in the country.
"I didn't know you could extend your legs; that would have taken me by surprise..."
William pressed his boot against the now-blind head of the J'ba Fofi; even without all its legs and riddled with holes, it writhed, hissed and clacked its fangs together.
The reason William took his time and watched the fight from a distance was simple: he didn't know what the hell was inside that hole in the ground, only that it was something capable of hiding for days, capturing and devouring nine humans in roughly two weeks.
"Who are you?!!"
Henry couldn't take it any longer and asked the question that was gnawing at him from within; his finger was still on the trigger even as he aimed at the ground, and William was aware of it.
"It's one of those types; they call them Fangs..."
The one who replied softly was Cody; he looked very pale from blood loss and closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. Soon he would fall asleep and never wake up again.
(That army unit, the one deployed when the situation is truly extreme.)
Henry immediately recalled how little he knew about that unit—nothing but rumours.
"I'm just a hunter passing through."
"Why didn't you help us before if you knew what was going on?!"
"Why would I? What would I gain from that?"
"You son of a bitch!!!"
Henry grimaced and advanced, swaying with every step towards William in an attempt to grab the collar of his jacket.
"Stop!!!"
Cody shouted with the last of his strength.
Henry stopped, as did the tip of Titan, which had extended until it was a centimetre from his neck.
The last thing J'ba Fofi saw before being blinded was Titan's blade being extended and retracted several times in a single second.
"We don't want any more trouble, we just want to get out of here."
Cody could barely keep his eyes open from exhaustion; most of his blood had spilled onto the floor.
"Hang on a little longer, I'll finish this."
William withdrew Titan's blade and held it just above J'ba Fofi's head; his left hand drew Sting from its sheath.
*Deafening screech!!!*
Sting's gleaming blade pierced the enormous spider's head at the same moment as Titan's; the sword and the spear sank deep enough to scratch the stone beneath.
The J'ba Fofi shuddered all over and tried to pull in its eight legs, of which only the bases remained after William had severed them
(Now I can truly call you Maegnas, the spider's bane.)
Just like the sword carried by Bilbo Baggins, the sword Sting in William's hands was bathed in the blood of a giant spider, an apex predator in its own ecosystem, far removed from the swords forged in Beskar and enchanted with runes that could easily pierce its hard armour.
*Sigh of satisfaction!!*
After all, William enjoyed these things, and experiencing them was even more thrilling for him.
William quickly shrank Sting and Tintan to the size of a dagger and returned them to his Calisto belt; it was high time to tend to the wounded man. He wasn't responsible for him, but it would only take a second to do something about his wound.
"Do you still want to go on? That one over there is a male and the bigger one is the female. I'd say they've been stockpiling food for the brood of chicks that are about to hatch; their eggs will be worth something."
"Would you let us do that?"
Cady replied; a drop of sap from a tree with golden branches stimulated his body to produce more blood, and his complexion improved—he looked less pale.
"I'm not a policeman to stop you, and the money will be useful if either of the two who fell had a family."
William nodded towards the bodies of Ashton and Boby.
"Here you go, what will you do with it?"
Henry approached the two of them; Cody was lying with his back against the wall, and William crouched down beside him, holding in his hands a glass vial with a silver dragon-shaped cap, a reinforcement to protect the glass from impact.
The mechanism inside allowed the dragon's mouth to open so that sap could drip from it.
The whole area was lit by green glow sticks; Henry threw a few around the area. The battery in his night-vision goggles would run out if he used them the whole time, and it was uncomfortable to hold a conversation like this.
William took the arm, dripped three drops of golden liquid onto Cody's arm, and then pressed it against his body. The wound healed at a speed visible to the naked eye, and in the blink of an eye it was as good as new.
"We're just going to get out of here… we've lost three good friends; that's enough."
"Two…"
William walked over to Mikel's silk cocoon and gently cut the silk that held him captive with Titan.
"But did you see what that silk did to Cody's arm?"
Henry caught his friend to stop him from falling to the ground.
"That is silk for restraining, and this is silk for cutting; one is for capturing, and the other for bringing down their prey."
William obtained all this information from the Stone family's Hunting Diaries; the family library held many of them in perfect condition. The diaries were written on parchment, leather and clay tablets, whilst the more modern ones—such as his father's—included photographs and videos.
The oldest ones were illustrated with drawings, sketches or parts of the beasts, such as tufts of fur or fangs.
Hunting techniques, strategy, tracking and even the breeding of dogs or beasts as hunting hounds.
William also had his own: journals with leather covers, handwritten and illustrated using the tempera painting technique.