Capturing the Spider Mother Alive

The first several hundred Zerglings had mostly cleared away the webs along the descent. The Zerglings that followed began adjusting their posture midair, then smashed into the Spider Mother's body at maximum speed like cannonballs.

Zerglings did have the ability to fall from great heights unharmed, but that required them to land on both feet, using the four joints in their legs and their developed muscles to cushion the impact. A rigid, headfirst collision like this would kill them even if their bodies were twice as strong.

The Zerglings' suicidal strikes pierced even the Spider Mother's thick carapace.

Though each Zergling could only leave two small round holes and a depression barely a meter across on the Spider Mother's back, an insignificant amount compared to its enormous body. But the number of Zerglings made up for everything.

The disadvantage of the Spider Mother's massive size was now on full display. Faced with the ceaseless impacts, it had nowhere to evade.

Every collision made the Spider Mother's entire body tremble, as though it were screaming soundlessly.

At the same time, another group of Zerglings began leaping onto the Spider Mother's body to attack.

They used the same old method, anchoring themselves to the Spider Mother's body with their appendages and spiked tails before unleashing a frenzied assault.

The Spider Mother's carapace was so thick that even at the weaker joints, Zerglings could not pierce through it in a single strike.

But Zerglings were already used to dealing with heavily armored targets. They immediately embraced the spirit of grinding an iron rod into a needle, madly clawing at the same spot on the carapace.

The incessant creaking from all over its body tortured the Spider Mother's sensory hairs.

The repeated injuries drove the Spider Mother into a slight frenzy. It shook its body, killing batch after batch of Zerglings within reach of its limbs, yet an endless stream of Zerglings still rushed at it from all directions.

Just as the Spider Mother was locked in a bitter battle, Dragon Dog was also frolicking wildly across the battlefield.

It charged head-on at a Lesser Spider Mother.

The Lesser Spider Mother tried to pin Dragon Dog down, but its spider legs passed straight through Dragon Dog's body.

Dragon Dog slammed precisely into one of the Lesser Spider Mother's chelicerae, knocking off its venom fang.

Then, the appendages on its back stabbed into the Lesser Spider Mother's eyes.

After using phase shift to avoid the Lesser Spider Mother's three headbutts.

Dragon Dog drilled directly through the gap in the carapace around the Lesser Spider Mother's eyes and destroyed its brain.

"Skree~" Dragon Dog howled toward the sky, seemingly celebrating its near single-handed killing of a Lesser Spider Mother.

At that moment, an urgent command entered Dragon Dog's mind.

Standing atop the Lesser Spider Mother's still-twitching corpse, Dragon Dog saw the mountain-sized Spider Mother in the distance rapidly moving toward one side of the rock wall—it was trying to escape!

However, due to its enormous size, the Spider Mother could only retreat through a few passageways. None of them connected to the bottom of the shaft, and even the nearest one hung more than a hundred meters above it.

Once it left the shaft, it would become far more difficult for the Zerglings to pry open its carapace.

"Skree—" Dragon Dog let out a shrill cry toward the sky.

At once, every Zergling in the shaft sped up noticeably.

The red glow in Dragon Dog's eyes dimmed considerably, but its psionic energy soon filled back up again.

On a battlefield watched by the Overmind, the energy bars of the Zerg's psionic units could basically be considered infinite.

In fact, without the Overmind constantly replenishing it, Dragon Dog could never have accomplished the feat of slaughtering a spider alone—using only its own psionic energy, it could maintain phase shift for merely three to five seconds.

After its howl, Dragon Dog and a group of Zerglings ran into the distance under the Overlord's command.

The Overlord calculated the Spider Mother's path and had Dragon Dog and the other Zerglings climb the wall ahead of time, moving in front of the Spider Mother to intercept it.

Zergling feet could not adhere to walls, but both the sickle-shaped claws on their forelimbs and the bony nails on their hind feet could serve as climbing picks.

The Spider Mother had no need to worry about that. In theory, even with the aid of earth elementals, the adhesion provided by the hairs on its feet would not be enough to support its body weight.

But just as Dragon Lion could pull its several-ton body into the sky with its relatively small wings, its powerful soul bore the burden brought by its oversized body.

However, before the Spider Mother had climbed very far up the wall, it saw more than a hundred Zerglings blocking its way.

With two swishes.

The Spider Mother's forelimbs swept through the swarm like windshield wipers.

A few Zerglings took the chance to nail themselves to the Spider Mother's front feet, but most were still swept down to the ground.

Only Dragon Dog turned black all over as the Spider Mother's front foot swept toward it, passing straight through it.

As the Spider Mother's front foot swept past, Dragon Dog simply released the claws embedded in the wall and dropped toward the Spider Mother.

Clearly, the Spider Mother had not anticipated this. It instinctively raised its legs to brace its body, only for Dragon Dog to land right on its face.

A flash of cold light.

Dragon Dog cleanly stabbed out one of the Spider Mother's eyes.

The Spider Mother struggled as it swung its front foot over.

Dragon Dog's body surface darkened once more.

But this time, its phase shift did not take effect.

The pain of losing an eye made the Spider Mother's soul boil, and that extreme emotion truly infused the front foot it swung.

The blow landed solidly, sending Dragon Dog flying.

As mentioned before, even without a focus device, an eighth-level psionic could unleash attacks similar to psionic concentrated blades.

Likewise, an eighth-rank soul was already capable of unleashing attacks that defied physical laws under extreme stress.

With one heavy blow, the Dragon Dog's carapace shattered, half its abdomen caved in, and blood mixed with large chunks of organs sprayed from its mouth. It nearly flew across half the spider nest before fortunately crashing into the spider egg zone. It smashed dozens of eggs but avoided any further injury.

The fungal mat spores on its body activated upon contact with the fluid from the spider eggs, growing into fungal mat to fill its wounds. The Dragon Dog had finally preserved its life.

Meanwhile, the Spider Mother also fell from the cliff wall due to the excruciating pain.

That height was not enough to injure the Spider Mother, but it exposed its relatively soft abdomen.

Four leapers immediately descended from above and punched four bloody holes into its body.

An ordinary spider, trapped in such a legs-up position, might not even be able to turn itself over and could even starve to death.

Naturally, the Spider Mother did not suffer from such a weakness. It flipped itself over in one motion and prepared to climb the cliff wall again.

At that moment, rustling sounds came from above.

Eight enormous spider-like units, each as massive as a tank, appeared on the cliff wall.

They were the Long-Legged Giant Spiders infected by the Overmind after the previous battle.

Their abdomens were all swollen like balls, five times larger than before. They had even been forced to drive their eight legs into the mountain wall to anchor themselves.

The moment they spotted the Spider Mother, they immediately turned around and aimed their massive rear ends downward.

At the same time, a group of bizarre mutated combat forms clinging to the Long-Legged Giant Spiders began jumping down with flapping sounds. Unlike the leapers, they could not survive a fall from such a height and could only hitch a ride down.

The first mutated combat form to touch the Spider Mother exploded violently.

The symbiotic mold within them could produce explosives more powerful than TNT. Combined with a compression chamber, it created an explosion comparable to RDX—the primary component of C4—of the same volume.

By modern warfare standards, its power was not especially great. A single mutated combat form's self-destruction could not even kill a leaper.

But a group of mutated combat forms had no trouble blasting the Spider Mother off the wall.

The Spider Mother, which had only just placed its forelegs against the cliff wall, was sent sprawling onto its back once more.

Then, the spinnerets on the Long-Legged Giant Spiders' abdomens opened wide.

What they sprayed out was not spider silk, but concentrated spore slurry filled from the Venom Devourer.

Like foaming agent, the concentrated spore slurry rapidly expanded and reproduced the instant it touched an object.

In almost an instant, it thoroughly covered both the Spider Mother and the wall.

This was the same spore slurry that had dealt with the Dragon Lion.

Unlike the Dragon Lion, the Spider Mother's enormous size meant that the fungal mat could not wrap around it too thickly. It was capable of breaking free from the fungal mat's restraints.

But unlike the Dragon Lion, the Spider Mother also lacked an efficient means of killing fungal mat, such as breathing fire.

It had no way to clear the fungal mat from its back.

Moreover, because the structure of spider carapaces had long since been thoroughly studied, the fungal mat could calmly secrete the appropriate acid to weaken the Spider Mother's carapace; it could also reach into the Spider Mother's wounds and produce toxins; it could even clog its tracheae and book lungs.

After all, a Level 8 epic creature was different from a Level 10 unit like Elar.

It did not possess limitless stamina, nor could it ignore the effects of its injuries.

The Spider Mother struggled for a while longer, but in the end, it still crashed to the ground...