Chapter 22: The ambushed arachnids
Translated by: CHua
Edited by: TN and ELkassar
Mogensha reflected over Sheyan’s words and found reasonable logic within; nodding his head and continued advancing. Actually one couldn’t blame him, Sheyan was an exceptionally thick skinned badass who dared to charge recklessly into a deadly sea of arachnids. Mogensha didn’t dare to be that reckless, prudence and cautiousness were his priority.
Merely 50 metres later, Mogensha strode towards the lateral side of sand. There was a distinct permeation of brown there, as he pushed away the sand to take a closer look at the brown patch, he shrugged his shoulders.
“Another died here. His corpse was probably eaten – god bless his soul.”
Sheyan nodded his head as he continued forward. Throughout the journey, Mogensha repeatedly managed to locate the fleeing route of the small squad. It was obvious many members willingly stayed behind to fend against the arachnids, yet they ultimately got ravaged and consumed by the ravenous arachnids. After roughly 1 km later, ahead of them remained the boundless Gobi desert; yet shockingly, a profound rocky mountain valley so deep its tail could not be seen appeared! This ravine was as broad as a hundred metre; dark, eerie, horrific and between it contained craggy weird devilish liked stones. However, places that the sun rays couldn’t reach was bound to have vegetation like moss growing.
Mogensha gazed at the rift valley, deep with worry in his heart.
“Arachnids have an exceptionally keen sense of smell; if those fleeing guys wanted to rely on the complicated terrain to throw them off, they would be committing a grave mistake.”
Sheyan suddenly furrowed his brows.
“What’s that smell? Isn’t that the rotting stench of decomposing flesh?”
Mogensha also pinched his nose.
“Its coming from the ravine. Strange, arachnids normally wouldn’t waste their food!”
Sheyan took big steps towards the ravine. Currently, daylight was already prevalent. He hurriedly headed towards the edge of the ravine, couldn’t help covering his nose on they way as his pupils contracted. There was actually an appalling calamitous massacre smacked at the bottom of the ravine, roughly 3-4 km away.
The massacre wasn’t comprised of humans, it was actually hundreds of arachnids! Their corpses seemed to have been left lying around for over 24 hours, naturally starting to decompose due to the high temperature of the Gobi Desert. When the sun came out, the rotting became more rapid.
Mogensha’s eyes leaked out an astonished expression. He suddenly pointed towards a hydralisk who had its head literally ripped apart, as he loudly exclaimed.
“Holy shit! That culprit for this ambush was actually another race of arachnids! Human weapons could never cause such a gruesome injury!”
Sheyan ignored the awful rotting stench, his eyes seemed to be outlining sketches of the event 2 days ago. The group of blood-soaked courageous soldiers, in their tragic despair they discovered this massive ravine; going all in as they rushed down. From behind, the greedy and savage arachnids frantically chasing. At this very moment, the other hostile group of arachnids was eyeing them, sweeping an ambush from their back. After slaying completely the backlines of slower hydralisks, they continued on annihilating the foot soldier-like zerglings……
In that instance, Sheyan couldn’t help recalling the place where they encountered the junior class legendary creature ‘Scorching Mouth’; similarly it was an arachnid’s internal bloodbath! Looks like the arachnid race were really like the humans, their factions surmounting to great figures. Moreover, the human’s internal conflicts could still be negotiated; yet for arachnids who were conflicting, the only solution was acid, claws and fangs.
“Ak, are we still able to find the route of those fortunate survivors?” Sheyan abruptly blurted out.
Mogensha hesitated before offering. “Shouldn’t be a problem.” He put on his helmet to cut off the stench as he stood at the edge and surveyed below. Obviously, the ravine was as deep as 30 metres high; one didn’t need to wait for the arachnids to finish him off if he fell without support. Sweeping his gaze around, Mogensha discovered a gentle slope that the survivors prolly used. Moreover, they even exploded off several assisting rocks on the way, probably causing a huge amount of pursuing arachnids to fall to their death. The traces they left behind was chaotic, especially the arachnid’s pursuing trail was utterly broken off here.
The two traversed through the overwhelming hellish stench of battlefield. The corpses here belonged to a species of black arachnids, but their wounds were smaller; perhaps belonging to the party of ambushers. Next, they immediately noticed a trail of footsteps stopping, probably the survivors halting to engage in combat. This was a narrow district within the massive ravine, providing advantageous defence and difficult offense. The arachnids couldn’t easily separate themselves here, while the humans could utilize their long range weapons to carry out concentrated fire within the narrow gaps behind cover.
Mogensha glanced at the charred marks along a rock beside an arachnid’s corpse.
“There were probably Firebats around in their squad. Look the position I’m standing on isn’t bad, if a firebat hid behind here, a hydralisk’s acidic spray wouldn’t reach him. They need to go round this corner, but when going round the corner, the hydralisk would instantly suffer concentrated firepower from the front.”
The two continued forward, advancing within this temporary fort. Scattered needles (‘Stimulant’ dosage) littered the ground, ammunition shells and blood-soaked bandages; there was even a small ration can. It was huge mess. But this was a dead end! The tumbling rocks from above had utterly cut off the advancing route!
Delight surged across the eyes of Sheyan and Mogensha! Because in this temporary fort, there were few blood stains, but more critically; zero presence of fragmented or shattered armour! What did this mean? It meant the survivors lived on! The previous scene could now be easily predicted even with their toes: Due to the fact that the hydralisk were totally annihilated by the ambushing arachnids behind, the frontline zerglings were taken care of by relying on the superior advantage of that Firebat. Hence, they successfully survived!
Following that, the surviving remnant naturally had to face off with those ambushers! Presently, Mogensha had discovered several buried arachnid corpses; a sharp black barbed-tip sprouted from their bodies, and contained black scales. It seemed like that exact arachnid species from those black ones beforehand as well, except their rivals were different now.
For some unknown reasons, the black arachnids didn’t slaughter the humans — or merely didn’t kill them onsite. If not, even if there were no human bodies around, there should still be an abundance of blood stains scattered about.
“What’s this?” Sheyan suddenly pointed towards a diluted green botch on a nearby rock. The sun had yet to rise fully, and the ravine was still casted with shadows. The botch was faintly emitted a fluorescence glow within the darkness, easily identifying it.
Mogensha focusedly examined it for a moment, before getting a strand of hair from Sheyan to dip into it (Because Mogensha was bald). After confirming it wasn’t poisonous, he touched with his hand. After interacting, he withdraw his finger, as a long mild green sticky thread attached to it.
“Looks rather viscous eh?”
Sheyan raised his brows before realizing numerous other mild green spots surrounding the rock, filled with glow. Both their knowledge of information didn’t shed light on its existence. Without much efforts, Mogensha located the dispersing direction of those black arachnids. But he also worriedly mentioned, that the arachnid’s core creature ‘Overmind’ could absorb a human’s brain and retrieve their memories. If the black arachnids had such an intention and practice, then undoubtedly the survivors would rather be nibbled to death.
To their relief, as Sheyan and Mogensha repeatedly discovered along this trail, the remnant not only weren’t killed, they even reached an outstanding degree of freedom; for example several scattered litter as well as bits of cigarette buds. The arachnids definitely weren’t creatures who were polite enough to hide their intentions and beastly nature. Hence, even the pessimistic Mogensha had to admit that the chances of the remnant surviving were currently pretty high.
After travelling for 2 hours across the ravine, the two followed a narrow ramp returning to surface level. If not for Mogensha’s trailing capabilities being absolutely outstanding, they would have gotten lost long ago. As they walked back up the desert, Sheyan suddenly felt a wave of strange sensation sweeping in. He instantly dived forward, twisting his body around as he executed a blocking action!
Behind him in the air, an extremely weird creature was suspended roughly 50 metres above. From far, it appeared like a strange pear. It had brown skin, 4 long legs and two spider pedipalp* like feelers. Between its 4 long limbs was a wide purplish membrane connecting them into a webbing, contracting while the legs moved; yet the joint membrane could rapidly expand into a ventilator releasing repelling force, allowing the creature to easily float in midair.
(TN:* that’s the two feeler like things of a spider, you can google it)
As Sheyan caught sight of the creature, he instantly witnessed its 4 long legs suddenly circulating with a light greenish fluorescent. It swiftly congregated at the twin feelers, before shooting out a lump of fluorescent green mucus at Sheyan and co.
Undoubtedly, this mucus wasn’t a welcoming greeting. Both Sheyan and Mogensha reactive instinctively as they dodged, darting away to different sides. The flight of the mucus wasn’t considered fast, allowing them to safely avoid it.
But at this moment, both their eyes were widely opened. The lump of mucus was actually dividing in mid air, from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8….. Its splitting interval was even joint by a thread of green mucus. When it reached above Sheyan and Mogensha, it had astoundly metamorphosed into a light greenish and glowing gigantic spiderweb! Covering the entire heavens as it enshrouded down!