Chapter 397: Incubation Chamber (1/2)
Chapter 397: Incubation Chamber [Volume 5 – A Distance Within Reach]
As expected, Qianye heard faint sounds coming from behind the door, the rustle of limbs brushing across the floor. He withdrew his aura and waited silently for a moment. He estimated that it was a wide space inside with over ten arachne moving about.
Qianye quietly produced several grenades from within Andruil’s Mysterious Realm, pulled the door open, and tossed them inside.
A gust of fishy air assailed his nostrils the moment the door opened. Qianye quickly confirmed that his judgement was correct—the cave-like hall within appeared to be the arachne’s daily gathering and resting area. It was just that the roof was higher, and the walls were wider.
The ten-odd arachne within, some prone and others standing, were moving with gradual crawling movements. Several of them reacted rather quickly once the door was opened. With their limbs rustling about, they pounced toward the door. However, Qianye shut the door immediately afterward.
A series of powerful impacts were transmitted through the metallic doors.
Qianye’s countenance turned pale—the combined force from so many arachne was almost equal to a small siege machine. Fortunately, the explosion of origin power grenades rumbled behind them. Near and far, they rang out continuously amidst the sharp hisses, roars, and hurried footsteps. Eventually, the sounds of the arachne banging against the door also died down.
Qianye opened the doors once more and found the hall in a state of disarray. Over half of the spiders had collapsed to the floor and were on their last gasp. Those still alive, on the other hand, had been badly wounded. The angle at which the bunch of grenades was hurled enveloped the entire room within the blast radius, and the hall’s strong walls deprived the arachne of any space to escape as all of them were swept up in the explosive tempest.
Qianye charged in with East Peak in tow. He then swiftly went around the hall to kill off all the arachne before breathing a sigh of relief.
At this time, he had just realized that the arachne in the hall were all females. Add to that the fact that this place was at the very center of Porter’s residential area, they were likely his wives, concubines, and daughters. It was just that Porter’s preferences were evidently quite unique. These arachne all possessed arachnid bodies, and some didn’t even have human-form upper bodies, a stark contrast from the dark race upper-society who favor humanoid forms.
There weren’t any garrisoned soldiers in the residential area. A number of servspiders were drawn out by the loud rumble of the grenades, but Qianye killed them off one by one with relative ease. And behind this hall was Porter’s bedroom.
It was a large space of about a hundred square meters and over ten meters tall. The ground and walls were covered in dense spider webs, but certain important equipment like blades, armaments, paintings, and carved treasured sculptures were left untouched by the spider webs.
There was a tall platform at the end of the hall with a thick layer of countless beast skins entangled with the interlacing spiderwebs below. That was likely Porter’s bed. There was something sparkling within the beast skin and spider webs. Qianye discovered, after arriving closer, that they were randomly scattered jewels and black crystals with a number of rare ores mixed within.
The treasures, ores, and black crystals didn’t count toward military contributions, but they were of great value in and of themselves. The price for obtaining these benefits wouldn’t come cheap, however. Qianye’s senses were extremely sharp. As he approached the bed, the intense odor beneath the mattress almost caused his vision to go dark.
Qianye endured the discomfort and leapt onto Porter’s large bed. East Peak swung like the wind, cutting the beast skin and spider webs into several pieces. The jewels, ores, and black crystals were sent flying into the air with a light flick of his blade, eventually falling into the bag in his hand.
The speed of Qianye’s movements was even faster than when he was fighting against Gurema. From this, it was evident just how destructive this mattress was. He managed to breathe a sigh of relief only after wiping Porter’s bedroom clean and beating a hasty retreat. But his mood was immediately elevated after weighing the bounty in his hand which was likely worth several tens of thousands in gold coins.
Porter’s storeroom was also easy to find. Perhaps because no one had ever entered the viscount’s bedroom before, the door was constructed to the east of the room and was only covered by a simple tapestry which occupied the entire wall. There was simply no way to disguise a ten-meter door.
Qianye used East Peak to tear away the wall decoration of interwoven cloth and spiderwebs, revealing a set of two giant doors cast from refined iron. This kind of metal was sturdier than the steel alloys used by humans. Its main merit was still the massive weight, with each door weighing several tons.
Here, weight was the best defense. Porter didn’t bother setting up any steam mechanism to open this door, thus it required several powerful arachne to forcefully open this storeroom.
Qianye’s present strength was insufficient to open the massive doors, but he had other methods. He raised East Peak and attempted an all-out slash which promptly produced a deep scar upon the large refined iron door. Afterward, Qianye landed numerous slashes on the same area and, amidst a shower of sparks, finally managed to punch a hole through the big door. He widened the opening enough to allow himself passage before making his way inside.
The storeroom was extremely large. There were as much as four ten-square-meter rooms within separated into weapons, defensive armaments, ores, and raw materials. But Qianye was greatly disappointed after going through them.
There were a lot of items in the storeroom, but all of them were items for arachne use. The armors were all unusually large, and most of the weapons were so big that they wouldn’t fit inside Andruil’s Mysterious Realm.