Chapter 25 – Silver Chest
Within this wide space where the tunnels intersected, the spiders were regularly crawling about in every direction, their positions ever changing.
Nie Yan patiently awaited the arrival of an opportunity. About half a minute later, the spiders began congregating towards the center. However, in an area that was fairly close to Nie Yan’s position, one lone Rock Spider lagged behind and remained loitering on the side.
Nie Yan’s eyes lit up; this was his chance! There was no time to lose. He raised his crossbow, aimed at the lone spider, and fired.
「Pa! Pa! Pa!」The lone spider who had suffered the sudden attack rushed towards its aggressor’s position and lunged.
Fortunately, none of the other spiders followed, thus, Nie Yan met with its assault head-on.
Following the conclusion of their skirmish, the Rock Spider dropped a piece of equipment: White-grade Level 5 Dark Leather Thief Tunic.
The drop rate for any piece of equipment was extremely low regardless of the profession it belonged to, to the extent where prices for equipment always remained high. For instance, if this leather tunic were to be placed on the marketplace, it would sell for at least six or seven coppers.
Nie Yan threw the leather tunic into his knapsack. Shortly after, he continued waiting for more openings.
Roughly six minutes later, he had drawn out and killed three more spiders. Afterwards, Nie Yan tallied up the remaining monsters and found that there were still twelve remaining.
Unfortunately, they were clumped a bit closely to each other.
Nie Yan searched around for quite a while, but wasn’t able to find a suitable position to lure these spiders out one by one.
This position is still a bit lacking. It could get dangerous. Regardless, let’s give it a shot.
He raised his crossbow once more and fired. Subsequently, three bolts were launched from the crossbow and pierced through the air.
−5, −5, −5
The three bolts penetrated the body of a nearby Rock Spider.「Scritch! Scritch!」The spider furiously cried out as it charged towards the one who harmed it, with another spider following closely from behind.
I aggroed two of them… Nie Yan’s heart tightened as he made a hasty retreat. He retreated into a narrow tunnel within the cave. The narrowness of this passage meant that it wouldn’t allow for the two Rock Spiders to pass through side by side.
After a brief moment, Nie Yan drew his dagger and directly engaged the Rock Spider he had aggroed first, unleashing a continuous chain of attacks.
The spider repeatedly lunged at Nie Yan. One after another, a line of damage values floated upward above Nie Yan’s head during their exchange.
Ninety-two percent, eighty-seven percent, seventy-two percent… Gradually but surely, Nie Yan’s health continued to fall.
While in combat, Nie Yan made sure to maintain awareness of his surroundings as well as the positioning of his footsteps. Meanwhile, the only spider that was capable of attacking him through this narrow tunnel was the one he aggroed first. As for its partner, who had closely followed from behind, it could do nothing more than cry out helplessly.
The spider met its end as Nie Yan finally finished it off with Vital Strike. He glanced at his health bar—around a quarter of his health remained—before quickly retreating back from his current position
As soon the first spider was killed, the one that was helplessly crying from behind immediately lunged forward.
Seeing this, Nie Yan hastened his retreat and began applying a Combat Bandage.
+20, +20, +20… His health rose by a quite a bit with each passing second.
The Rock Spider lunged at him repeatedly as he dodged and leapt back in retreat. However very quickly, he ended up reaching an impasse. There was a single Rock Spider approximately five meters at his rear. If he continued retreating, he would aggro it. Thus, retreating was no longer an option. By this time, his health had already been restored to eighty percent, so he raised his dagger and ran forward to face the spider head-on.
The two parties finally met and clashed. Unfortunately, all of Nie Yan’s skills had yet to come off cooldown. Met with such a situation, his only choice of action was retaliating with regular stabs and slashes.
After evading the spider’s lunge, Nie Yan would step forward and counter with successive stabs.
Nie Yan’s health dropped quite quickly while under assault from the Rock Spider’s violent attacks. At the moment, the spider had over sixty percent of its health remaining while Nie Yan was at a third. The damage he could deal with regular attacks was quite limited. In the end, Thieves were still classes that relied on their skills for the majority of their damage output.
Twenty seconds later…
Assassinate, Lacerate, and Vital Strike had finally come off cooldown.
For Nie Yan, this was undoubtedly a great boon.
In the next instant, the Rock Spider came leaping forward while baring its fangs.
This is my chance!
Nie Yan’s dagger passed the spider’s legs and aimed directly for the spider’s head while it was mid air. As it implanted itself deeply within the spider’s eye, taking advantage of the momentum of its descent, he ruthlessly cleaved outward, as a thick and viscous substance oozed and bubbled forth from its mutilated head.
The Rock Spider’s legs had still managed to land and pierced him in the shoulder, dealing thirty-three damage as the value floated above his head.
With a quick glance of his health bar, he had a little over a tenth of his health remaining.
That was dangerous!
+30
He had hastily pulled out a Basic Health Potion and drained its contents down his throat. That final Vital Strike from his dagger had taken out thirty-nine of the spider’s health, but its body still came ramming forward.
The impact from the spider colliding on his chest dealt thirty-five more damage to his health.
Nie Yan quickly retreated several steps back.
The Rock Spider turned its body to face where its opponent had retreated.
Nie Yan swept his eyes over the spider’s health bar and noticed it had fifteen health remaining. Meanwhile, after drinking the Basic Health Potion and enduring the collision to his chest, he barely had a tenth of his health left. Right now if one of the spider’s attacks were to even slightly graze him, then he would likely meet his end.
He quickly retreated several more steps, as the spider lunged in pursuit.
If he were to engage this spider and were their exchange to be anything like the one prior, then both parties would most certainly face mutual death.
−5
−5
As it pounced forward, two damage values gradually floated above the spider’s head one after another.
In its final moments, the spiders raised forelimbs stabbed towards Nie Yan as its lumbering body descended forward.
Nie Yan instantly reacted and dodge-rolled the spider’s final attack.「Crash!」The spider’s body landed heavily on the ground beside him and created a large pit in the earth on impact.
Only a millisecond later, and he would’ve been struck by that attack. Nie Yan broke out into a cold sweat as he thought of how he had just narrowly escaped death.
−5
Finally, the spider’s health had been bled dry. The legs that were just struggling to get up prior had suddenly lost all ability to support itself as the spider’s body collapsed on the earth..
「System: You’ve gained 280 experience points.」
The second Rock Spider had finally met its end… As such, Nie Yan breathed a sigh of relief, Supporting himself with both arms, he pushed his body off the ground and sat himself beside the cave wall. Soon, his health gradually began recovering.
It was a pity that this spider hadn’t even dropped anything upon death. What’s more was that he had been forced to expend a Combat Bandage against a common mob such as this Rock Spider. The cost of crafting a single bandage made it so that the the payout of this battle wasn’t worth his efforts.
After a moment of rest, his health was at last fully restored. That was too dangerous just now… If I’m going to lure out anymore Rock Spiders, I definitely can’t aggro more than one of them at the same time.
He walked over to the intersection where there were now only ten spiders remaining. As a result, there was a lot more open space than before.
However, these ten spiders were moving together in either groups of two or three, which caused Nie Yan to have difficulty in finding any openings that he could act upon.
There’s more room to move around now… I should be able to Stealth my way through here. With the current level of my Stealth, I should be able to pass through within a meter of these spiders without being detected.
Gradually, his body became increasingly transparent until it was fully merged within the darkness of the cave. Shortly after, he slowly began making his way forward.
Roughly three meters from his left and to his rear, one lone spider moved in his direction. While five meters from his right and to his rear, two other spiders were crawling towards his position.
Nie Yan carefully observed the positions of each spider and determined the path of their movements.
Suddenly two spiders had crawled over and were two meters from his current position. Nie Yan quickly halted his footsteps. A while later, the two spiders didn’t seem to detect his presence and slowly moved on.
Nie Yan continued moving forward when suddenly he happened to spot something over in the corner of the room. Nestled between several large rocks was a single chest that faintly glowed with a silver light.
The several rocks had obstructed his line of view, thus he was only able to the edge of the silver chest.
Son of a bitch… they really did hide it well.
Unexpectedly, it’s a silver treasure chest! Nie Yan’s heart rate inevitably sped up.
In the same moment, three spiders abruptly halted their movements and looked around.
These actions were akin to a bucket of cold water being dumped over his head, causing him to immediately calm down. Right now, it was still too soon to get excited. The duration of Stealth was finite, and couldn’t afford the luxury of opening the chest right now. Thus, he was forced to give it up and leave it for next time.
He held his breath and waited.
A few moments later, without discovering anything, the three spiders crawled further and further away.
He slowly and carefully made his way through the remaining spiders before finally making it out of danger. He breathed a sigh of relief. This kind of work definitely wasn’t made for the average person.
After proceeding forward for a while longer, he glanced at his coordinates. I’m here!
“Tang Ya, where are you?”
The next moment, a figure slowly emerged from the nearby shadows. Who knew what hole this guy borrowed himself. By the time he finally crawled out, his body was completely covered in dirt.
“Haha, not bad… you hid yourself pretty well,” said Nie Yan with a smile.
Tang Yao patted the dirt from his body and gloomily replied, “Don’t say anymore… Anyway, there were so many Rock Spiders over there. How did you manage to get here?”
“Stealth,” Nie Yan answered back.
‘You can even do that?” Tang Yao blanked for a moment. That intersection was littered with Rock Spiders. How the heck could a Thief Stealth their way through that? This was an incredibly difficult thing to pull off!