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.
Additionally, the arachne weapons were different from vampires and demonkin. Because they were large, heavy, and inherently powerful, the armaments weren’t as exquisite as the demonkin's, and the raw materials were also several grades inferior. That said, Porter’s giant axe was at least several hundred times heavier than a vampire viscount’s sword. How could he afford to use the same materials?
Because of this, there were only a handful of things in the entire storehouse worth taking away for Qianye. It was the same with ores and materials. Various types of ores were piled until they reached the ceiling, but they were mostly copper, refined iron, or raw, unprocessed ores containing some black crystals inside.
The material room was full of already-refined metal ingots, but the grade of these materials couldn’t catch Qianye’s attention.
After a round of inspection, Qianye did gain some benefits in the end. He found a batch of raw black titanium and mithril ores. The amount was enough to produce two or three bullets, albeit barely. Moreover, he had also found a batch of high-purity black crystals and blood crystals.
In the end, Qianye picked out two grade-five vampire handguns and a grade-four sword from Porter’s collection of armaments belonging to other races. That was all he had. Apparently, this arachne viscount wasn’t interested in weapons from other races—the collection was pitifully small, and the quality was also fairly mediocre.
“Well, it can’t be considered a fruitless trip.” Qianye consoled himself. The things he could take away were more or less equal to the treasures in two ordinary viscount castles combined. But there was no denying that he was disappointed—after all, Porter was a first-rank viscount.
It was at this time that Qianye’s heart skipped a beat as a peculiar feeling emerged therein. The sensation passed by in a flash and was soon untraceable.
Qianye confirmed that it wasn’t a hidden source of danger, but instead a certain existence that didn’t quite fit into the surroundings. He pondered for a moment before his eyes lit up with an azure blue as he scanned the storeroom with True Sight.
After two repeats, Qianye finally discovered an origin-power abnormality in a certain corner. There was actually a strand of void origin power lingering around the junk piled up therein!
This was an almost impossible scene. It was virtually impossible for it to appear without any external induction. Even the void origin power that leaked through the legendary spatial tears would be quickly assimilated by the surroundings and turn into darkness origin power.
Qianye arrived before the pile of junk and began rummaging through it. There were various things among them, including irregular pieces of timber, ores, crystals, and some peculiar things of unknown function. It seemed Porter would toss things here if he had no idea whether it was useful.
Qianye soon found the source of that wisp of void origin power—an unassuming metal box.
It was made of the most common of pig iron, two finger’s breadth in size and mottled with rust. The box hadn’t been opened for an unknown length of time—even the latch on the front surface had became fixed with rust.
Qianye held the box and studied it time and again. He scanned the state of the void origin power once more and pried it open with his fingers after confirming that there were no mechanisms within.
The box was only made up of a thin layer of metal. The inside was just as ordinary—its inherent metallic hue was visible due to the absence of origin arrays and linings. Within it was a black crystal the size of a finger. There was almost nothing special about it apart from its surface appearing smoother and its corners more rounded. Moreover, it was much smaller than the standard black crystal.
Qianye’s True Sight, however, could actually see strands of void origin power forming at its core. One of them would gradually seep out, but would only exist for an extremely short moment before being assimilated into the surroundings.
Qianye sensed it for some time and confirmed that the previous abnormality he had perceived was in fact due to the emergence of void origin power. Apparently, there was a secret within this piece of black crystal. He fished out an origin bullet case and carefully stored the black crystal within, along with its iron box, before putting them away in Andruil’s Mysterious Realm. Only after this did he feel that this trip hadn’t been in vain.
Qianye checked Porter’s residential area once more before returning to the circular elevator plaza outside. He had stayed in Black Nest for a fair length of time up until this point and was just hesitating whether he should withdraw when he felt the nearby vent releasing a stream of abnormally warm air.
The facilities in the arachne lair were several times larger than those found in human buildings, and the air vent was no exception. Qianye’s vision was filled with red mist as he peered down through the large grills. The heat was actually coming from real magma! This also meant that the space beneath his foot was the arachne incubation chamber.
Now, that was an effortless discovery. The human from before had never come into contact with the Dark Nest’s core area, and Qianye himself had no time to search every corner of the castle—he was already about to give up.
Qianye observed the geography then proceeded to carve an entrance on the plaza floor and advanced into the room below. However, he had unexpectedly encountered intense resistance as he reached the door into the incubation chamber. Unexpectedly, there were over a hundred guards stationed there—the security here was far tighter than Porter’s own residential area.
The hundred-odd soldiers were all slaughtered in an arduous blood-bath before Qianye successfully arrived in the incubation room. He was immediately shaken by the scene before him as he stepped into the room.