FB: Chapter 89 – Spider Forest

“Command build outline stone block.” A holographic display popped up. “Command horizontally level.” I said and the block rotated so the bottom was flat to the ground. “Command lower towards ground.” The holographic outline lowered until it was touching the ground under the water. “Command place.”

I quickly began repeating the command lines as quickly as possible building up the altar. I had used some strong repellants, but at this high a level it was more of a suggestion than a guarantee. A solid foundation was constructed two blocks thick and then I began building up the 5 by 5 pillars. The total base was 20 by 20. There would be a gap of 10 blocks between each pillar.

With the number of materials I needed, I had to hire a group of NPC porters with zero combat ability. Each NPC had a construction pack that could carry up to 400 blocks. I had to also purchase them a city teleportation crystal each. It was a massive expense and headache, but it was easier dealing with professional NPCs than actual players.

I had used a liberal number of consumables to keep monsters away on the trip here, while killing the few monsters we ran into. I emptied the pack I had brought and then took one from an NPC and handed them a city teleportation crystal. They quickly disappeared in a burst of light, as I continued the construction was rapidly as possible. The base of the altar took up 2 packs. Each pillar took up two packs as well, rising to the height of 32 blocks each.

I had temporary climbing ropes set up so I could get back on top of the pillars. That brought the total up to 10 packs. Then came the support beams, which took another pack for each half of the beam that I then had to use a rapid smelting material to quickly put them together on top of a pillar. The metal beams were laid down between the pillars. The beams and other miscellaneous materials took up another 10 packs.

The floors, walls, and roof were built which took another 8 packs of supplies for a total of 30 packs worth of materials and NPCs that I had to escort all the way out here. That was on top of five additional NPCs that had brought out extra supplies for my personal use, since I wouldn’t be going back to civilization for quite a while. Once I was done, I had a big box on four thick stone pillars with a slanted metal spiked roof. There were finger sized pipes going through the box to the outside and the space between the blocks was sealed with a quick application mortar.

I climbed up the thick rope through the hole in the middle of the floor of the box. I then made sure to attach the main rope to four other ropes, that each went to one of the corners of the box to better spread out the weight when the Mega Spiders arrived. I hauled up the packs with the extra supplies I had brought. With the time and expense to get out to this location, this entire expedition was a massive investment. The huge altar was finally complete, and I wasn’t about to leave and let it decay.

Once I confirmed everything was in place and I knew the location of all my extra supplies, I got out a packet of dried spider nip. It was like cat nip, but for spiders. It was fairly cheap but drew spiders of all kinds. I then poured a high grade pest repellant potion over the rope and the edges around the hole up into my box.

I heard a lot of movement over the next minute felt vibrations through the altar structure. Thankfully it was an incredibly solid construction with high end materials that could take a tremendous amount of damage and corrosive attacks. The first Mega Spider appeared at the base of my altar.

Vomitatis. I unleashed a barrage of puke upon the spider. It unleashed a torrent of smaller hand sized spiders from its egg sack, but they couldn’t find a way into my box past the pest repellant I had laid out. More Mega Spiders began to arrive, and I kept puking out the bottom hole of my box.

Some of the Mega Spiders tried climbing up, but after a face of poison, they fell back down. In addition, I had a lot of pointy spears with me to poke at the Mega Spiders climbing up. They then began laying webbing, and I tossed a fire grenade out the bottom of the altar, which lit the webbing on fire. I then tossed out more spider nip through the hole in the bottom of my altar.

More Mega Spiders began to show up and I was puking constantly. Once the corpses started to build up, I tossed out a barrel of corpse acid which quickly melted them. Better than fire grenades and cheaper as well. I could feel the constant tremor of movement outside the box and the Mega Spiders constantly appeared underneath.

Once they were hit with poison they were dead. Despite their level, the constant damage from poison critical attacks would quickly add up. I kept eating consumables to keep me going as I unleashed a torrent of vomit, one attack after another. I had been tempted to not use Gestureless Casting and Silent Casting, but with the amount of time I was going to spend doing this, getting a slightly higher critical chance wasn’t worth being impacted by my skill or taste. I could do it, but I didn’t want to.

I kept a close eye on my experience during the first hour of constantly killing Mega Spiders. I was hitting a rate of 20 monsters per minute. That was why I had made the space below my altar quite large, so multiple Mega Spiders could be there at the same time. If I had to kill one at a time, this kind of monster grinding wasn’t worthwhile.

That put me at 1,200 per hour, which translated into having to do this for around 140 hours to get the experience I needed and originally planned for. The rate was a bit slower than I liked, but the Mega Spiders were just too big. It would take a real-world week of constant grinding 20 hours a day.

The medical nanites and new capsules allowed people to spend 20 hours per day in the capsule. Technically one could spend 24 hours a day if they hooked up a catheter and feeding tube. One could sleep while inside the capsule and in VR, which was why a person could go on for so long. In addition the medical nanites would help maintain a person’s body to a certain degree.

While it was tempting to try and spend 24 hours a day, there were slight health risks with doing so. I preferred 20 hours a day and getting out to eat, shower, stretch, and use the bathroom. While one could go without sleep, there were long term medical risks as well, sleep dysphoria was a common mental aliment in the future where people found it impossible to go to sleep outside of a capsule.

I would have normally kept to a 14 hour schedule leaving the capsule to do my business and sleep outside, but I needed to maximize my time grinding out here in the wilderness. I had enough supplies to go 4 weeks. It would be a struggle to make it that long, but I didn’t want to have to spend the hundreds of platinum to build another altar after I left this one.

Once I hit 18 hours, I didn’t throw out any more spider nip. At the 19 hour mark I tossed out a powerful but short term repellant. The number of Mega Spiders quickly went down after that until they finally stopped showing up. I then moved over two large metal plates over one half of the floor opening. A single metal plate would have been too hard to move. Once that was done, I got out a cabin and entered. It cost 10 platinum, but I wasn’t going to risk dying out here. With the cabin on top of the metal plate the spiders would not be able to get in. A cabin couldn’t be moved or destroyed by monsters or players once it was set up until the timer ran out.

If it didn’t cost 10 platinum it would be an amazing defensive structure. I had 30 cabins ready to go. More than enough to see me through my month long planned grinding session out here in the Spider Forest. The Fanged Fox Guild was in a stable position as well and didn’t need my input. Everyone knew what to do and Henry could contact me outside of Exponential if there was a major emergency.

I entered the cabin, which was set up like all other log out rooms. I got on the bed and logged out. It took a minute longer to get out, since the medical nanites had to be pulled back into the capsule reservoirs. I then got out and spent the time tending to my personal business.

After cleaning my capsule, eating, and using the bathroom, I sat in a comfortable massage chair and set an alarm for two hours later. The lights were dimmed, and I laid back in the chair. Once the two hours were up, I got up and began to stretch before spending some time on a tread mill and lifting weights.

I then went back into the capsule. I showed up in the cabin and went back into my altar. Since no one else was using it, I could have it self-destruct while there was still a period of invulnerability. I then moved the two metal plates off the floor opening. Then I reapplied the pest repellant and got out the spider nip to start the process all over again.

Most of the time was spent walking around the edge of the large opening in the floor, vomiting on the Mega Spiders below while using consumables. It was incredibly boring and mind numbing. But I persisted, slowly racking up the experience to level up.

Hitting level 120 and unlocking all the skill slots was a huge milestone. I didn’t pause to celebrate and immediately began sending all the experience into the skill shards I wanted to invest in. Every day I was out here, I expected some kind of super spider, but nothing happened. I did note that the air holes and outside was slowly covered up with more and more webbing.

A couple of times the fire spread to engulf the entire outside of the altar when I cleared it out with a powerful fire grenade. Still the structure held and didn’t cook me like a furnace. I could look through the tubes I had set up and see how much of the structure was left. By the time I had gotten through an entire month, half of the outside walls and two thirds of the roof spikes had been destroyed.