O.C. Saar
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Omega Release | Chapter 26: I REALLY Hate Spiders
🕑 Added 2025-06-23 18:00:02 +0000 UTCIt took me a moment to gather my wits, but I stood up, joining her in looking outside the window.
The Lava Walker approached one of the chamber's walls and rose on the tip of its legs until it faced a pair of slowly opening hangar doors. I stood there, wondering how it would manage to crawl inside, but once the doors locked open with a loud clunk, Reina waved at me to follow her. We entered an adjoining chamber, and once the door closed behind us, the wall we faced hissed and fell away, turning into a ramp.
I faced the long, dark corridor and steeled myself. "Let’s do this," I said seriously, and Reina, standing next to me and facing forward, nodded once and stepped off the Lava Walker.
I followed her, and as soon as we disembarked, the ramp raised back up, and the Lava Walker departed, the large hangar doors closing behind us with a hiss.
The corridor we walked down looked no different than a normal service tunnel, but scaled up to the point where you could drive two cars side by side and not be afraid of colliding. The floor, walls, and ceiling were made of plain concrete, with the occasional metal support structure.
The lights that hung from the ceiling bathed the entire place in a dim, white light, giving the place a cold feeling. I shivered, and Reina glanced at me with curiosity.
“The temperature difference between the Scorched Plains and here is substantial, but I did not think you acclimatized to the high temperatures so quickly as to have you shivering here.” She said teasingly.
“It’s not that!” I protested.
She giggled and looked forward, not bothering to hide her grin. “Whatever you say.”
I couldn’t be bothered to argue the point, so I went on the counter-offensive. “What about you, huh? What’s with the outfit?”
She turned to me, her mirth instantly snuffed out. A primal instinct inside me screamed that I had just stepped on the tail of a dangerous predator and that I should scream and run in whatever order I felt like.
“What of it? ” she said.
“Nothing,” I said reflexively.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Spit it out.”
“Nothing! Really!” I said in a rush, “It’s stunning! It’s just that… I don’t see this style often. You look…”
“Positively ancient?” She interrupted, her cheer coming back in a rush as she laughed. “I know. This set is fairly new but was inspired by one of the few surviving pictures of my family’s past on Terra.”
The mention of humanity’s lost home piqued my interest immediately. “Oh?”
She nodded and smiled wistfully. “Father took me a few weeks ago to my family’s mausoleum to visit the burial pods of my ancestors and some of the relics they left us. One of them was a picture of the first ancestor of mine, from his time on Terra as a child, before he lived on the Rings.”
I stumbled at her words. “But that would make the picture…”
“Ten thousand years old? Yes.” Reina nodded. “It survived the Long Sleep, and we have managed to preserve the data for one thousand years now with minimal corruption. We have a whole collection of ancient relics, most of them weapons. My father calls it the Red Hoard”.
I whistled, impressed. Preservation experts and equipment were rare in the Outer Ring. Everyone was too busy trying to survive the now to worry about the past. For the Molten Fist to preserve all that was seriously impressive.
“Does he let you use any of them?” I asked, eager to see what powerful items Reina’s clan considered worthy of preservation.
She shook her head with a snort. “No. The Red Hoard is not to be unleashed save for the gravest of emergencies.”
“Huh,” I said. “So why did he take you there?”
Reina shrugged. “He said it was time for me to understand our journey, the weight of our legacy, for when I lead the clan.”
“A history lesson, then.” I nodded. “What was your first ancestor doing in that picture?”
She gave me a mysterious smile. “You’ll see.”
My curiosity had been piqued, and I was about to press her for more information when I heard a faint mechanical clanging from behind a bend far down in the corridor. Before I could ask Reina about that sound, the cause showed itself. Two waist-height mechanical spiders came into sight, ambling in the same direction we were.
“Reina, what the fuck are those?” I asked, my eyes glued on the terrifying robots and their many spiked legs.
“Oh, don’t mind those. They are sentry bots that prevent intruders from our environmental controllers. They are completely harmless to us.” She replied casually.
“Can’t be that good at their job, considering the Ash Stag got through them,” I grumbled. “And anyway, what’s with the newfound spider theme?”
Reina took a slow, deep breath through clenched teeth. “Yes, to be honest, I don’t love all these spiders either. We got the Lava Pangolins in an attempt to break the theme a little, but there’s not much we can do about it right now. They were a gift from our sponsor, so if we get rid of them out of nowhere, it will be seen as an insult.”
“Who the fuck gives spider-themed gifts? ” I asked, flabbergasted.
“Cobweb Insurance.” She said, sighing.
“The ‘Our Policies Have More Legs than a Spider’ people? Wasn’t the Ecclisiarchy going to dissolve the company?”
Reina nodded slowly, wincing a little. “Yes, the incident with the itchy spiders was most unfortunate. The news broke while the Proxy War was in full swing, so they were forced to reveal to us that this was why they spent so much money sponsoring us. It was a Hail Mary of sorts. They hoped that a victory would boost their value and reduce the value of their competitors to the point where they could acquire enough of them to keep their value steady, avoid the Ecclisiarchy’s ire, and ride out the PR storm, but it appears it was fruitless.”
“Yeah,” I said, putting on an expression of feigned surprise. “People will rather go through the hassle of switching companies rather than stick with the itchy spider one. Color me shocked.”
Reina chuckled, “Then the time we can get rid of these spiders without losing face is coming soon.” She sighed contentedly, and we settled into a companionable silence.
“Sir,” Hob said, waving to catch my attention. “What is the itchy spider incident?”
“Ah, that,” I thought back at him in amusement, “Yeah, a few months ago, the head of Cobweb Insurance had the genius idea of releasing a swarm of small spider bots with the company’s logo to weave advertisements made out of cobwebs. Programmed everything himself.”
“Is that it?” Hob asked, perplexed. “Whilst very disturbing to people who don’t like spiders, I don’t see it warranting the dissolution of an entire corporation.”
“Yeah…” I thought, dragging the word out. “Except he made a couple of small mistakes. After an investigation, he confessed that, in a drug-induced haze, he put a dot in the wrong spot, and it caused the spider bot’s limited self-replication sub-routine to go wild. Over a single night, the spiders grew numerous enough to cover every surface in the whole 2nd quadrant of the Middle Ring in cobwebs.”
Hob nodded. “Ah, I think I understand no-”
“The liquid the bots used to create the spiderwebs was slightly toxic and gave everyone who touched it an itchy rash.” I interrupted.
Hob’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh dear.”
“Oh dear, indeed,” I said, recalling the pictures of people demonstrating in the streets, their skin covered in literal spiderwebs of rashes. “Thankfully, the rash went away, the spiderwebs dissolved after a day, and the bots were all disposed of without incident, but it's hard to bounce back from that.” I hid my shiver better this time, and Reina didn’t notice.
Hob tilted his head a little.“Why do you hate spiders so much, sir?”
“Sixth birthday party, my pare-” I stopped myself, squashing the ember of hatred that had popped up for a second. “My birthday party had a man dressed as a supposedly cute spider who tried to entertain us. He was drunk and ended up stumbling over his own legs and collapsing on top of me. Peeing myself because I thought the man-sized spider would eat me ruined my playground reputation for several years.”
We had significantly closed the gap between us and the spider bots. I wanted to suggest we don’t overtake them, but they were walking at half our speed, and we had places to be.
Then, they hopped in place in a blur of motion and turned to face us. Scratch that, they turned to face me. Their mechanical eyes locked on me, glowing a menacing red.
“Reina, are they supposed to do that?” I asked her in a rush.
She looked back and forth between the spiders and me, confusion in her gaze. Then, as the spiders reared up and let out a loud mechanical hiss, her eyes widened, something clicking in her mind. “Oh, shit. I forgot to add you to the whitelist.”
“You fucking WHAT?!” I said and watched as the spiders charged towards me. “WELL, ADD ME TO IT!” I screamed at her as I dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the sharp claws of one of the spider bots.
“Okay, okay! Hold them off for a minute!” Reina said, running away from me, waving her hands at windows only she could see.
“It’s not like I have much of a fucking choice, now do I?!” I yelled at her, pulling out my [Rail-Revolver] and aiming it at the face of one of the bots. Right before I pulled the trigger, the blasted thing shifted its body so that my shot grazed its abdomen rather than hitting it straight in the head. A milky fluid exploded out of the robot, and it stumbled for a moment, but a second later, it was again charging at me. Its friend hadn’t sat idle either. Both robots ignored Reina’s existence and were focused on turning me into minced meat. To that end, the other robot was repeatedly trying to stab me. I managed to dodge the strikes, but my window to dodge kept getting narrower and narrower.
“You don’t have to yell!” She screamed at me.
“You forgot to add my name to the ‘Do not kill’ list for your horrible spider murderbots. I think I’ve earned the right to yell a little!” I screamed back, diving to the left to dodge a charging spider that smashed against the wall with enough force to crack it. I landed with a roll and came up, gun raised. I turned around and unloaded five shots into the dazed robot’s body before its partner was upon me. I started dodging again, waiting for an opening. “How can you forget something like that?”
“I had a long day, okay?” she replied defensively. “I trained for twelve hours with almost no breaks, and then suddenly, I had to deal with you being here and barging into my mission! It slipped my mind!”
I barely dodged a swipe at my head and got a shot right into one of the robot’s eyes, causing it to stumble back into its still-recovering partner. They collapsed in a tangle of many, many limbs. “Well, either get to it now or help me kill these things,” I yelled.
“I’m doing it! Hold your damn horses!” She said, frustration in her voice. “The system is a little slow. We were planning on upgrading it next week.”
I turned to her, incredulous. “Good for you? You know what, fuck this.” I looked at the two spider bots, still trying to untangle themselves, and leveled my gun at them. If regular bullets caused them damage, then what would my first-ever active skill do?
It was time to find out.
With an instinctual thought, I activated [Magma Bullet], and an HP bar and an MP bar appeared in my vision, right above Hob’s window. The MP bar instantly depleted by half with the skill's activation, and I pulled the trigger.
I didn’t expect the kickback, and it left me stumbling and my wrist sore, but the results were worth it. The bullet traced a bright line that burnt itself into my vision, went into the first spider bot’s head, and then through the abdomen of the second one before impacting the wall, leaving huge cracks in the concrete.
The bullet wounds left behind were double the size of normal ones, smoldering with heat. The first spider collapsed to the ground, something vital to its operation having been destroyed, but it was tossed aside by the second spider, who started running towards me, two legs raised to skewer me.
“Any time now!” I urged Reina, preparing to cast my second [Magma Bullet].
“Almost there!” She said, sweat on her brow. I raised my gun at the charging robot. “There!” she yelled triumphantly a moment before I pulled the trigger.
The spider immediately stopped moving, its eyes turning green, and it lowered its legs. It turned as if to resume its patrol as if nothing had happened, wobbled for a moment, and then collapsed, its limbs spasming a couple of times before growing still.
I gasped for breath, staring at the two dead robots. “I REALLY hate spiders,” I growled. Then, a window opened up, and I instantly felt a little better.
[KILLS]
[Warden Spider Bot - Level 8] x2
By defeating a creature five levels above your own, you gain bonus XP.
XP Earned: 200
[Level up!] x1
Congratulations. You are level 4.
[ATTRIBUTE POINTS EARNED]
Strength: +2 | Dexterity: +3
Perception: +1 | Endurance: +1
Intelligence: +1 | Wisdom: +1
Unallocated Attribute Points: 2
[Skill Level up!]
[Lucky Shot] Level 1 to Level 2
[Magma Shot] Level 1 to Level 3
I threw the two bonus points to Wisdom and shook my head. The feeling of getting a single level up instead of two was not as intense, but it still felt good. It almost made up for having to fight two spider bots. Almost. I glared at Reina, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed.
“I apologize for that.” She said stiffly. “I have given you a proper security clearance. We shouldn’t have any more issues with our automated defenses.”
“I would hope so,” I grunted back. “Otherwise, I’ll have to charge your father extra.”
She winced at my words and looked down. “I would also appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it to him. I would be willing to compensate you for it.”
An idea popped into my head. This was an opportunity I couldn’t ignore. “Fine. But I don’t want your money.”
She looked up, looking slightly alarmed. “What do you want, then?”
I quickly sent the instructions to Hob, and in a moment, I had a window in front of me. I read through it, nodded, and sent it over to Reina.
“This is an NDA,” Reina said as she read through it. She looked at me in confusion and… slight disappointment? Nah, that couldn’t be right.
I nodded at her. “That’s right. I want you to sign that you won't spill the beans if you see something I want you to keep a secret. This is a matter of life and death, Reina.”
She squinted at me as if she stared hard enough, she could see why I asked this. Ultimately, she gave up, sighed, and signed the NDA. “Fine. But this NDA is null and void if you do something to endanger me or my clan.”
“That’s alright by me,” I said. “Now then.” I turned to the two robots and claimed the two kills. Reina let out a loud yelp as the robots started dissolving in a gray cloud and looked at me like I had grown a second head.
“What was that? How did you do that?” She asked, in a rush.
I waved her question away, minimizing the window with my loot. There would be time for that later. “Doesn’t matter. Please don’t tell anyone you saw me do this.” I turned to the corridor and the massive door I saw in the distance. “Now, can we please kill this fucking stag and get out of here?”
