Chapter 62: Debts
"This doesn’t feel right." Galahad said.
"What?" Leo frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"Spiders don’t just leave eggs lying around like this." Galahad explained. "Someone, or something, which is probably an adult Bullet Spider, laid them."
Leo scoffed. "So what? The adults are already dead. Or maybe they never made it through. These things are from the abyss, remember? Entire structures get dragged into the monoliths sometimes."
Galahad didn’t look convinced. "Even if that’s true, the number of eggs here suggests a Patriarch or Matriarch. Bullet Spiders don’t breed without one. We might be standing in the heart of a hive."
Leo spun around, exasperated. "Come on, Galahad. Use your head. This is an E-rank monolith. You know as well as I do that adult Bullet Spiders don’t show up in these."
"If this nest came straight from the abyss, the spiders could’ve hatched here. That doesn’t mean their parents made it through."
There was a tense moment of silence. Everyone’s gaze flicked from the eggs to the glittering stones. Temptation danced in their eyes.
"We harvest." Leo declared. "Quietly. Don’t touch the eggs. We grab what we can, and we leave. No boss fight, no more tunnels, just profit."
Cal nodded. "I’m with him. This is more than enough. Our shields won’t last much longer anyway."
Bronn agreed. "One of those big toads again, and I’ll be using my shield as a stretcher."
Galahad hesitated. Then slowly, he gave a reluctant nod.