Chapter 70: I Didn"t Attract These Mobs
Yue Qiang beckoned Ai Qian from the back.
The trader was looking a lot better than before. At the very least, his complexion was looking closer to normal now.
"So." Yue Qiang said, "The current situation is clearer than it was before now. There are a lot of unexpected dangers in this place, but they are all within understandable boundaries. Therefore, let"s tell each other our respective combat abilities so that we"ll be prepared to divide our tasks when we face the enemy later."
"I"ll talk about my abilities first." Yue Qiang said, "The abilities I"ve learned in this world are basically all close combat abilities. My 1v1 abilities are okay, and I can fight for a reasonably long amount of time."
"I can only attack once, and after my attack I will fall into a state of extreme weakness." Yin said, "However, my attack will never miss, and it deals tremendous damage."
The duo briefly explained their abilities before facing towards Ai Qian at the back and waited for him to speak."
"As for me…" A Qian appeared a little hesitant, "Actually, I was fully prepared before I came here, but all of my preparations were spent on my ten soldiers. I"d selected them from the Zhao Army Camp after great consideration, promised them a hefty reward, and even equipped them with the latest iron armor and helmet and well forged weapons. But I didn"t think that they would all die before they even saw the enemy"s shadow."
"Do you have any abilities that could save your own life then?" Yue Qiang asked.
He did not choose to right click and check his stats immediately, and instead chose to ask Ai Qian directly. This was because the system seemed to be slowly blocking out the ability to check another"s stats, and among the attributes and abilities he had seen on Ai Qian before, many of them were displayed with question marks. Therefore, it was actually better if he asked him directly.
"I do, but…" Ai Qian continued to look very hesitant. It wasn"t the kind of hesitation that stemmed from his need to keep his secrets. He actually looked like he was just embarra.s.sed, "After I arrived at this world, I mastered a skill that can allows me to attract females strongly towards me. And this also includes… mosquitos."
When Yue Qiang heard this, he immediately feel a great curiosity.
An attraction ability that crosses the line between species?
Yue Qiang recalled his memories. Ai Qian seemed to have an attribute called "Incomplete Charm" that had a pretty high value. Not only did the system purposely noted that the attribute was "Incomplete", it even described its effects as incredibly effective on females. In that case, was there a skill among the ones that were blocked out with "??" that was related to this stat?"
"Can your ability protect your life?"
"I"m not sure…" Ai Qian hesitated for a moment. He himself did not seem confident with his abilities, "I basically earned all my money on this world by relying on women. Mm… let me demonstrate it to you."
While speaking, Ai Qian closed his eyes for a moment before quickly reopening them once more.
He was still the same person as before, but something seemed to be different now.
Ai Qian"s looks were leaned towards the handsome side, and Yue Qiang garnered that even without any Charm his looks were definitely more than capable of attracting the opposite s.e.x.
To put it more bluntly, he had a handsome face that could make a man jealous.
Now, the trader looked even more handsome after merely closing and opening his eyes once. When Yue Qiang saw his face, he suddenly had an impulse to smash it into a pulp.
The reason for that was because he looked way too beautiful right now. If he put a long wig on his head, he would definitely look like an absolute babe.
His looks had obviously not changed in the slightest, and yet he somehow managed to double his Charm stats after blinking once.
Yue Qiang subconsciously threw a glance at Yin.
The girl still looked as calm as ever, and her attention did not waver from Ai Qian. However, she did shift her gaze slightly upwards.
"And this is basically how it is. After I entered this state, any woman who saw me would basically jump at me like they"ve gone mad. That"s not all though. The reason I carried Cinnamomum with me as a mosquito repellant is because I easily attract mosquitos to me. I heard that all blood sucking mosquitos are females, so…"
Seriously? Yue Qiang was speechless. This was literally an enhanced, male version, and species ignoring AOE Charm spell.
"In short, as long as the enemy is a girl." Yue Qiang thought after he typed that his choice of words wasn"t very proper, so he changed it, "As long as the enemy is a female, you can take care of them, right? That"s why you say this is your life saving ability?"
Ai Qian nodded, "More or less, yeah."
"It is a very bizarre skill." Yue Qiang thought for a moment, "If we are in a society, then this skill has literally infinite usage against a woman. Unfortunately, it doesn"t seem like it"ll be useful in such a place."
Their ultimate objective – the coffin – did have a woman inside it, but of course a dead woman wouldn"t come back to life and attack them just because Ai Qian had used his Charm skill. Quite the contrary, what Yue Qiang was worried from the beginning until now was the Mo Family"s legendary devices and traps.
After he had heard Yin"s long winded explanation on magnetism, he suddenly had a more logical thought:
Why did the Mo Family lay down an electromagnetic device in this place? Could this be a disguised form of a disarmament trap? The Mo Family was known to have built their fame and fortune on wooden traps. The idea of disarming an enemy through magnetism before beating them with wooden traps didn"t seem like a bad idea at all.
After all, Yin had said that her earlier theory that magnetic fields could kill people was a complete con. In that case, since the Mo Family had spent so much effort to lay down these magnetic devices, then there must be something else waiting for them at the back. This theory was logical in his opinion.
He whispered to Yin and communicated his thoughts. Yin agreed with him before whispering, "The traps are a problem. The Confusion type skill I mentioned earlier is also a problem. However, it would seem that there is a third problem as well."
While Yin spoke, her gaze was focused at the top of Ai Qian"s head.
The pa.s.sage right now was extremely silent. In this utterly soundless environment, Yue Qiang suddenly heard a very soft rustling sound that sounded like droves of something moving across a surface.
Using the weak lighting of the torch, Yue Qiang looked towards the three soldiers who had died first furthest away from them.
Some black shadows had shown up on top of the three corpses!
These moving shadows were about the size of a fist, and they were many in number. There were a dozen of them on every corpse, and as they moved continuously the exposed parts of the corpses began to turn red in color.
These red colors were blood seeping out of the corpses!
Yue Qiang subconsciously moved his character a few steps backwards. As he continued to listen to the soft, rustling sounds, he suddenly realised what these fist-sized moving black shadows were.
They"re spiders!
They"re huge spiders!
They"re spider feeding on the soldiers" corpses!
Since the corpses" armor were polished real bright, the reflected light illuminated these black shadows. However, the corpses were quite far away from Yue Qiang"s group. Who knows if these spiders crawling towards them from places they could not see?
Yue Qiang suddenly recalled Ai Qian"s male version Charm skill. If he remembered correctly, this skill crossed the line between species, right?
If he remembered correctly, all blood sucking spiders were female spiders, right?
"I didn"t attract these spiders…" Ai Qian"s quibble was weak and unconvincing. Yue Qiang had already equipped the iron rod and pulling the duo backwards into a flying run.
Yin continued to focus her gaze at the top of the pa.s.sage, and while they were backing away she suddenly warned Yue Qiang, "His head!"
Yue Qiang subconsciously looked at Ai Qian"s head, and through the light of the flames he saw a bright, thin thread dropping down from the ceiling. It was falling extremely quickly!
The end of this thin thread was a fist-sized black shadow, and the end point of its fall was none other than Ai Qian"s head!
Chapter 71: Attraction
This was a wet and dark underground environment. It was very logical that creatures such as spiders would exist in a hole within a hole like this one.
The problem was that this spider was too huge.
If Ai Qian"s Charm skill had attracted female mosquitos, then it was a minor nuisance. If it had attracted normal-sized female spiders, it wasn"t a big problem either. However, the attraction of such giant-sized spiders was absolutely lethal!
The spider that jumped straight at Ai Qian"s head looked a little larger than even a human human head after it had extended all eight of its limbs. Its speed was tremendous and its aim was flawless. It deserved its t.i.tle as an insect hunter.
Yue Qiang once watched about this giant-sized spiders from Animal World. Not only a creature this size could hunt the average insect, it could even hunt a small bird. Moreover, spiders in general had poison glands in them, so he did not doubt in the slightest that Ai Qian would die the second the spider descended on him.
His iron rod was already equipped beforehand. He activated the skill Run and Basic Jabbing present within the iron rod at the same time.
His move was both swift and timely.
An instant before the giant spider would land on top of Ai Qian, the iron rod pierced through its body and saved the trader"s life.
Yue Qiang did not dare to pause to check his handiwork. With his quickest speed, he tossed the skewered spider towards the far distance.
The spider"s corpse fell on the ground with a pop noise.
The ground was completely dark, and it was impossible to see their surroundings at all. However, when the spider"s corpse landed on the floor, a series of soft rustling sounds immediately rang from that area. It was exactly the same sound as the dark shadows made when they were feeding on the soldier"s corpses.
It was obvious that the dead spider was consumed by its kind the second it landed on the floor.
While pulling at the duo and retreating swiftly, what Yue Qiang was thinking inside his mind was surprisingly not the situation before him: My iron rod isn"t attracted to the ground. Does that mean it"s not made of iron at all, or is it made from other rare metals?
He swiftly retreated to the vertical ladder area and climbed back into the small room above in the order of Yin, Ai Qian, and Yue Qiang.
After killing yet another two fast crawling spiders, the trio used the table and blocked off the hole.
"I"m not sure what to say about that Charm of yours." Yue Qiang said, "There are at least one hundred of those giant spiders inside that hole. If they were spread out I might have been able to kill them one by one with my iron rod, but obviously that"s a moot point now. They"re all gathered beneath this wooden table. We don"t even know if they could eat through the wood and crawl out. If they could, we"re all going to die here."
Ai Qian looked a little embarra.s.sed; the appearance of these spiders was absolutely his fault. He stood up and said, "Let me check outside and see if the road truly is completely sealed off."
He quickly returned.
"The whole thing collapsed." he said, "They"re completely sealed by rocks. There"s absolutely no way we"re getting out there."
"So we don"t have a choice then." Yue Qiang said, "Either we are trapped here until we die, or we remove the table and kill a few spiders before getting eaten alive by them."
Ai Qian looked a little loss as to what to do in this desperate situation, but Yin spoke up, "Actually, I think this is a good thing."
Both men looked surprised by her statement.
"This is a good thing?"
"Mm. A good thing." Yin said, "At the least, we can defend this small room for a short amount of time. If Ai Qian hadn"t used his Charm ability just now, we would"ve travelled deep into the pa.s.sage just now. When the time is right, those spiders would have crawled out from every direction and cut off every path of retreat. Now that is certain death!"
Yue Qiang gave it a brief thought and noticed that it was as she said.
The reason they managed to escape back to this room was purely because the spiders were too far away. However, if they had travelled deep into the pa.s.sage and was forced to deal with attacks from every direction, then Yin and Ai Qian would absolutely perish. He might be real fast, but in a situation where the floor was completely littered with spiders, it only takes a bite before he was dead as well.
"You used your Charm at a good time." Yin said encouragingly before continuing to a.n.a.lyse, "So now we have two choices. One, we break through the sealed pa.s.sage and leave through the front hall. However, since it was completely sealed, we cannot use this method. The other choice we have is to kill every spider that"s blocking our way and reach our destination, that is the deepest area of this great tomb."
"The problem is how to kill them though."
"We use fire." Yin said.
Her tone had been calm without any emotional fluctuations at all. She sounded like she was saying, "let"s eat some fried julienned potato tonight". However, the method she provided was both simple and effective.
"There are a lot of wooden beams used to support the cave walls in the pa.s.sage behind us. Since the whole path had been sealed off, it"s no longer a problem even if we take them all apart. We"ll light them all up and burn these spiders to death."
"A spider this size is most definitely the strongest existence of the food chain in this underground cavern environment. There are a hundred or more of them down there, so I can say with almost absolute certainty that every spider within the pa.s.sage had surfaced to the open. This is perfect opportunity to eliminate them all in one fell swoop so that we don"t have to watch our backs at every moment while fighting against other enemies."
Yin"s talking speed was slow and without hesitation, giving off the impression that she was figuring out a way to save money, "We have a sufficient supply of both wood and oxygen in this place, so we do not need to worry about suffocating. We even have a torch to use as a fire source, so this isn"t a problem as well. To be honest, we are really lucky to be able to use Ai Qian"s ability and coincidentally lure out the biggest hidden threat inside the cave and eliminate it. Otherwise, there"s an extremely high likelihood that none of us will survive when we are attacked by spiders from every direction."
When Yue Qiang went through Yin"s thought process inside his mind, he suddenly discovered a problem, "It"s true that we can burn the spiders to death, but how exactly are we going to do it? Do we toss the ignited wood into a group of spiders? While we may be able to burn a portion of them to death like this, the ones that survived are still more than enough in number to kill us. After all, the second this table is removed, the spiders would charge at us from everywhere."
The more he thought about it, the more he thought that it was a huge problem, "If we surround the cave entrance with wood and light them up with fire, we could guarantee our safety for a while. But these spiders aren"t stupid either. They could totally wait until we"re out of wood before charging out into the open. Your method won"t work like this!"
"It will work." Yin said before making a show of hand towards the seated Ai Qian beside them.
"The solution of our problem is on you. Please use your Charm ability once more."
"Let us see if your Charm will attract these spiders so much that they would rather throw away their lives to consume you!"