Ascension of the Master Assassin

Chapter 55: Steel-tipped Tarantulas

[Ding]

[You have entered the lair of the Steel-tipped Tarantulas.]

Inside a dry cavern that was pitch-black and devoid of any light, a singular flame was illuminating the surrounding dirt walls with its flickering flame.

Though the distance that the light from the flame torch could illuminate was short, it was more than enough for Venn to navigate his way in the cave.

Holding the torch in his hand, Venn's lone figure slowly moved forward to explore the lair of the Steel-tipped Tarantulas. As he walked into the cave, his heart started beating rapidly as he could hear the hissing sounds and the faint sounds of metals clanking, coming from the unknown areas where the light of his torch could not reach.

Although the sounds seemed to come from all around him, he knew that it was just echoes from deep within the cave.

Braving his heart to continue, he finally stopped in his tracks after walking inside the cave for another minute until he reached an intersection. Since he was still near the entrance of the cave, he did not encounter any Steel-tipped Tarantulas thankfully.

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Moving forward with his plan, he took out bundles upon bundles of grass consisting of a type of grass that was red in color from his inventory, and stacked them together into a massive hill obstructing one of the two exit paths of the cavern. 

Since the game only imposed an encumbered status to players carrying more than their strength allowed, Venn was able to bring a massive amount of Smoking Grass along with him into the cave.

Although there were several status penalties in place to players who are encumbered, like having their movement speed be slowed to a crawl, and having all their belongings dropped if they were to die, it did not bother Venn as he knew that he was safe as long as everything went according to his plan.

His plan hinged upon whether he could block one of the two available exits of the cave, thus he was extra careful about the layout of the grass, ensuring that the spiders would only choose the exit path that he entered from.

After he was done with setting up everything, he activated his shadow partner skill and conjured up a shadow from the ground.

His shadow was not affected by his encumbered status effect and immediately sprinted out of the exit. With his consciousness split, he controlled his shadow clone and signalled to Vesra that was waiting outside the cave exit that everything was ready to go.

With several meat buns stuffed in his mouth to recover his health, he began to light up the large hill consisting of the Smoky Grass or the "Ikermuri Grass" according to Ten and Eleven.

With the fires quickly consuming the dry red grass, producing an ungodly amount of red smoke, Venn turned towards the inside of the cave.

From within the cave, he could hear heavy rumbling noises of the panicked Steel-tipped Tarantulas, and soon, his whole body began to violently shake from the tremors of the ground.

"Steel-tipped Tarantula, Level 39, 7700 HP, common modes of attack are its powerful bite and strikes from its steel-tipped legs that could shred armors. Occasionally, they will attack with their webs as well. They have fast speed and long jumping distance because of its powerful legs, and they like to live deep in their lair where the sun is absent. Steel-tipped Tarantulas are nocturnal hunters with strong territorial behaviour, once they discover an enemy, they will stay aggro until the target dies. And I am the detestable target that distrubed their beauty sleep."

"Hah! Why am I feeling so excited even though I should be terrified right now?" Venn laughed in the face of the impending danger. He was feeling regretful that he chose to be a library rat in the past when Heaven Descent was full of such adrenaline pumping moments. Nevertheless, he focused on the task at hand before his mind wandered off further.

A day had passed since the war meeting held by the Oni Clan had ended. After discovering the existence of the Smoky Grass in the Oni Clan when Venn saw the oni twins crafted a circlet with it, the idea of dealing with the Steel-tipped Tarantulas popped up in his mind.

In a normal scenario, Venn would never dare to provoke the Steel-tipped Tarantulas with his troops, much less try to clear them out at one go. Due to the sheer number of them, even the Oni Clan had trouble with them as well. It was a suicide mission from the start if he approaches their lair normally.

However, the terrains surrounding its lair were somewhat peculiar and had a distinct difference from normal. 

Hence, instead of going into the cave which was their natural habitat, it would be more advantageous for Venn to drag them out in the open under the bright sun. Venn believed that the location would be the decisive factor of the entire battle.

During last night, with further understanding from Vesra that the Smoky Grass was abundant in the fields everywhere near the vicinity of the Oni Clan, Venn was extremely delighted. In the Rosewell kingdom, a mere gram of the grass would cost 5 entire gold coins, but in the Oni Clan, they were just some useless weed growing in their farms, vying for nutrients with the crops.

Little did they know that Smoky Grass is commonly used as a key ingredient to craft smoke bombs, flare signals, bombs, and all things explosive. If burned on its own, it will produce a vast amount of smoke rapidly. Thus, Venn's plan was to smoke the Tarantulas who disliked smokes out from their hiding spot.

With the support from the Shuten family's warehouse, Venn obtained a total of 22 tons of dried bundles of red Smoky Grass. It was then carried by the militias and Venn up the mountain where the Steel-tipped Tarantulas resided.

The lair of the Tarantulas had a total of 4 exits according to the detailed map provided by Vesra. Thus, Venn ordered some of the troops to split up and proceed to the other 2 exits. With his instruction, they were to light up and drop the mountains of grass they possessed into the cave and seal it off with boulders.

And with that, the first part of his plan was completed.