The spiders that we saw coming from the houses were not as big as the one that we fought against. Or, at least, most of them weren't. There were about six of varying sizes, all trying to grab or eat people. Then again, it was hard to tell their actual intention in a situation like this.
Hearing everybody scream and everybody run made me have some flashbacks of the attack in my village. That moment during the rainy night when everyone that I ever knew was killed. Almost everyone. I froze for a moment, but quickly forced myself to move.
There were big differences between what happened back then and what was happening now. For one, these were not Eaters. They were not the unkillable killing machines that reduced humanity to its current state. If we wanted to fight, we could still do so. And even regular people might be able to hurt those spiders. Two, there was no one here I needed to protect. Not really. I wasn't trying to save Pops. I wasn't trying to save someone who was really important to me. The only people who I might be worried about could also handle themselves and I trusted in them to be able to do so. And three, I was no longer the same person. I was not that powerless woman who could only run and hope to survive. I was someone with a System. Someone who had fought and killed Eaters. Someone who had traveled hundreds of kilometers just because I wanted to see the ocean. And I was not going to die here. Much less let those spiders kill indiscriminately.
I glanced back at my companions, who also seemed to be taking a moment to understand the situation. I considered telling them to split up, but since we didn't know the type of monsters that were around, that seemed like a bad idea. Maybe there was one very difficult spider to deal with and we couldn't handle it on our own. Seeing as none of them was moving, I took charge and pointed to one of the larger ones that was chasing after another family. But oddly enough, that family didn't have any adults. There were only the elderly or the very young. Even teenagers didn't seem to be around.
"There." I pointed. "Kill spiders you see in the path, but we're focusing on that one."
"Hide?" Astrid asked.
"Forget that. We can't afford to hide our abilities now," I replied.
The Frosted Lumberjack nodded and went for an upward swing, creating a wave of ice that cut the path between the giant spider and the family that I pointed to. Some people ran for cover while others stared at this in disbelief and we jumped into the fight.
"Holy shit," Peter gasped," Are you witches too?" he questioned, but we were already gone before he got closer.
The man was just now getting to the point where the body of the spider we killed was laying. We continued rushing towards the largest spider, confirming that it was just like the first one that we killed. At tier one, and it was already saturated. Right away, we started attacking it. Our sudden appearance seemed to rally the people from the village who started grabbing some farming tools some axes and other weapons and started fighting back. We could even see now some older teenagers and young adults finally coming out of their houses and starting to help. None of them looked to be particularly fit. Not in a way that you expect a hunter at least, but they were better backup than the elderly and children that were running around.
Without having to hold back, Astrid managed to slam the giant spider in front of her with her axe once more. A wave of ice appeared from the ground thanks to {Emerging Glacier} and she quickly followed up with {Frost Chop}. In addition, with {Splintering Ice} she sent countless shards of sharp ice towards the monster. That one attack was more than enough to cause a lot of problems for the creature as it rolled in pain, losing pretty much half of its legs while trying to evade the blow.
And that was still not the end.
Michael fired {Power Shot} twice, with the help of {Scavenger's Volley} aimed at the monster this time focusing on the open wounds letting the shattering still explode inside the beast while I just went for a {Formless Lunge} and even triggered {Compression} on a few pieces of wood on the ground to stop the movements of the creature. I could tell that my offensive abilities were not as powerful as the ones my companions had, but that didn't mean I was not enjoying my skills. I just needed to prepare a few things to catch up on the damage aspect of things.
With the sudden help of the people from the village, we were able to kill off the rest of the spiders relatively quickly and undefeated. There were too many people for them to focus, and every time we saw an opening, we would deliver the finishing blow. Even without a proper damaging skill, {Formless Swipe} was enough to kill off most of the smaller spiders. Especially once we realized that a better place to hit was either the top head or the one closest to the ground.
It took about 10 minutes to finish killing the spiders. It should have lasted longer, but some of them decided to escape once they realized the tide of battle had changed. Once there were no more spiders remaining in the village, I quickly opened my quest to check how much progression had I gained towards tier 2. Unfortunately, it was a very small amount? From 75, it only grew to 83. Even though we had killed a bunch of different spiders with powerful eyes and powerful limbs.
But before I could start arguing with the System about it, the people from the village approached us with thankful expressions. While some were asking for help, as they were injured by the monsters.
"I don't know who you are, but thank you." An elderly man grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously.
"Don't worry. We were just passing by and that's not the type of thing that anyone would just ignore, you know," I replied a bit awkwardly.
"But what is going on here?" Michael said then, which I really appreciated after all that was a question that was in my mind as well.
"We don't really know. But it's probably the witch's fault," the elderly man replied, only to receive a slap on the back of his head from an elderly woman who was right by his side.
"All we know is that those giant spiders appeared and started attacking us, but they didn't kill anyone. They just grab people and take them into the forest. We don't know if the witch has anything to do with that," the woman explained.
"And do you know where they are taking the people?" I asked.
The woman shook her head. "No. Our hunters went after them to see if they could rescue those who were kidnapped. But we haven't heard from them in a few days. Honestly, we're starting to get worried that they are not coming back," another man replied, which caused a few of the younger children to start to sniffle.
There were some angry stares at the man. That was clearly a sensitive topic. And something the village might be trying to avoid talking about near the children.
"Okay, but you," I pointed to the man who mentioned the witch. "Why do you think this witch is responsible for all of this?"
"What else could it be? Yes. We never had any problems with spiders here and all of a sudden a bunch of them appeared? That sounds very witchy to me. Besides, no one knows what she does in the middle of the forest."
"She helps us," another woman protested fiercely. "Anytime you're sick, all you have to do is go there and ask for help."
"Yeah, but what does she ask in return?" the man protested.
"Nothing!" the woman replied.
The man just shook his head, "That's the problem. No one helps for free."
"She's not helping for free she just asking for some meat and some food."
"Then how does she survive when we are not giving her that?" another man, a younger one but still on the older side, asked.
The discussion continued while I pulled Astrid and Michael back, just to talk about our next step.
"Do you want to be involved in this? We could just go, you know. We have no part in this," I asked my companions.
"Well, I would like to help the people. Not to mention that there are some big spiders that could help us definitely level up." Michael replied.
"But dangerous," Astrid added.
"That's true, but I'm not going to make this decision on my own. If you two think that this is too much, we can just say this is not our problem and leave," I looked at them, but before anyone could answer, a voice spoke up.
"Please don't do that," Peter suddenly appeared by our side. Between all the yelling behind us and the nonthreatening feeling he gave off, neither predatory sense nor I noticed the man approaching us. "Look, I know you're right. You don't have any reason to be helping us. But please don't leave. Our people are gone. They were kidnapped by those spiders. And you don't know what's happening to them. We need help. Even if it's just to find them. We don't have enough people to go search in the woods and you are clearly capable of stuff that I didn't even know was possible. So please. Help us. I'm not going to ask you to stay longer than that. I'm not going to ask anything else just help us save our people."
I glanced at Michael and Astrid, who nodded and I did the same. "We'll try. I can't promise that we're going to save anyone, but we'll do our very best to find them all. But we already wasted way too much time. It has been a couple of days since people were taken, so we are going to need to start now." I turned around and told everybody that we were going to help but that we needed to move fast and asked in which direction the hunters had gone to.
But before we got an answer, someone spoke up. "Hang on. Can you please go check the witch first?" The same old woman who slapped the older man earlier stared at the man speaking with an angry expression. "I'm not saying to attack her. A lot of people who were hurt by the spiders the last time they attacked got poisoned. And we don't know how to deal with that," the man explained.
I frowned and asked, "Where are those people?"
"They are in the chief's house," he pointed to a larger structure in the middle of the village. "We put them all in the basement so they were more protected if anything was going to show up."
I paused. "Wait in the basement?"
"Yes, why?"
"That's a bad place to leave someone who is sick. Besides, some spiders can dig." I replied, making everyone pause before rushing towards the village chief's house.
There were a good 15 people in the basement. But luckily, there was no signal of spiders trying to get there. Still, they agreed to remove the sick people from the area and took them upstairs back to the main hall of the chief's house.
A part of me wanted to just go after the spiders, but then I noticed how many of the wounds did not look like they came from fangs. But looked like small cuts caused by the creatures' legs. I glanced at Astrid, who seemed to have noticed the same thing and was now staring at her wounded arm, or at least the area of her arm that had been cut.
I carefully approached and asked through the System.
Cassandra: Can your system tell if there's anything affecting you?
Astrid: Yes. Poison.
Without missing a beat, I told everyone we would go look for the witch and asked for directions. There wasn't any doubt in my mind that this was the right move to make. It was one thing to help these people, but another to let one of my companions suffer just because we were prioritizing a bunch of strangers. And I would do anything to make Astrid and Michael were safe.