Ball of Nothing

Zero had to say, the one thing unbearable about this strategy was the feeling of hairy legs crawling all over him. Zero didn't absorb all the spiders in one go. He did it slowly so that the spiders wouldn't notice that their siblings were disappearing as he 'struggled' in their captivity. The webs that they produced to wrap him in were also slowly absorbed into his void inventory.

All in all, Zero was enjoying the experience with the exception of crawling legs all over him. If one spot got too ticklish, Zero would simply make the spider disappear into his inventory. While the spider did their task and Wii did her job, Zero tasked Mii to expand the search of the dungeon and level up the appraisal skill.

Currently, the appraisal skill was at an intermediate level that allows Zero to see their names, ranks, skills, title, stats, levels and species but he wondered if he could view more information with a higher level appraisal skill. What better chance was there than now? With plenty of spiders coming at him, Zero should have no problem levelling the skill up. He wanted to know more about the mother spider because he had a plan to make more money out of it since spiders didn't taste good.

"Is this enough silk?" Mii asked and Wii continued working. Lily also checked the inventory levels and adjusted the partition. The shared inventory with Truen was getting a little too small with the spider corpses piling.

"Should we transfer the spider corpses to the main inventory instead? The shared inventory with Truen and the inventory that Zoe manages are overflowing..." Lily reported.

Zero nodded. "Let's put everything in the main inventory for now and save some for the mindscape pharmacy. I want to experiment with some of these spiders, they are rather interesting. How many spiders have we collected so far?"

Mii did a quick count. Currently, they had about five hundred spider minions but even with this number, the sider minions attacking Zero don't seem to end. Zero had been sitting in this web for at least five minutes and she wondered how Truen was coping.

"Zero, should we at least let Truen know that we're alright? It's been a little too long and I'm afraid he's panicking. The Great Gods and your teachers might know by now."

The doctor felt a little bad so he gave in and unblocked the connection. In less than a second after unblocking the party call, Zero heard Bob's voice.

"Master! Are you alright? We lost connection all of a sudden. Why did you put a barrier here?"

Zero cringed at the yelling. truen was definitely aware of it but his friend was keeping very silent and that made him nervous. Was Truen angry at him for taking matters into his own hands?

"Don't worry, these things cannot harm me because I don't naturally produce mana. You should set up camp a little further from the dungeon. You might not realise it yet but the dungeon is using mana to repair walls, grow monsters and trap adventurers. I will handle this and find the desert poppy although I don't think it will be here, I haven't gone deep enough to find mana crystals or bedrock apart from where we first found the dungeon."

Needless to say, Truen wasn't pleased to hear that. Yet, he refused to speak to Zero and told Bob to relay the message.

"If you're not back for dinner, we're going to starve. Truen just wanted me to tell you that. Also, your shifu and teacher aren't happy about what you did. Merlin said he was going to place a tracking spell on your communicator. You need to report to Heaven once you're back, Steve has readied a new communicator for that very purpose and if you don't appear, Merlin says that he is going to make a personal appearance on Earth to turn it inside-out until he finds you."

Zero cringed. Was it that bad? He knew that people would be mad at his prank but did they have to take it this far?

"Got it," he sulked. There would be consequences but Zero didn't want to think about that now. Instead, he looked up on summoning techniques. If he saw the mother spider, he was going to form a contract with her to become his summon. He could do with another weaver now that Mitchnew and Sekkin were no longer in Half Moon Village. Besides, the silk that she could make these babies produce would bring in a steady supply of income. Feeding these spiders shouldn't be a problem, Sleepy Cave had plenty of monsters for them to hunt. It was going to kill two birds with one stone. At the same time, the spider minions would be very useful as additional labour. They were naturally talented with construction and the renovations will progress a lot smoother if they became permanent additions to Half Moon Village.

It took the spider minions about fifteen minutes to realise that something was wrong. Usually, it didn't take them very long to subdue a trapped human and wrap it up to bring them to the food storage. However, this one puny elf was proving to be more problematic. The webs that they wrapped around him often slipped off and disappeared. While they tried to figure out why their usual method wasn't working, Zero continued to bring in spider minions into his main inventory.

He had about a thousand spiders in there now but the numbers didn't seem to be decreasing. With the dinner deadline coming up, Zero discarded his patience and started bringing in more spiders at once. The number of spider minions on his body decreased significantly and that was when the spiders started to understand what was truly happening.

Some retreated and called for back-up while others reported back to their mother about the threat they couldn't deal with. Zero was enjoying the bountiful harvest when he felt the dungeon shake. He didn't know what was going on at first but the spider minions were retreating very quickly, leaving Zero alone on the web trap.

"Is it finally happening?" he asked Mii who noticed a huge red dot on the minimap.

"Yes, she's coming for you," the strawcherry announced and Zero grinned devilishly, freeing himself from the web trap by absorbing the silk into his inventory.

Wii prepared the summoning spell and Zero readied his tonfas. According to Bob, a creature can be captured in two ways to be forced into a summoning contract. The first way was for them to willingly submit to the summoner and the second way was to be beaten within half an inch of their lives without a will to fight against the summoner's might. Zero didn't think that mama spider would be willing to negotiate so they would talk with hairy legs and tonfas instead.

The rumbling got closer and Zero readied himself for the fight. He was going to recruit this useful spider no matter what.