I kicked one spider, stepping down on another. I felt the body squish under me. Stepping back, shaking the guts off my boot, I looked around at the carnage. There were dead spiders everywhere. It was a mess.

  Poor Sunie, the spider fan, wasn’t taking it well.

  He held up the end of his cloak, keeping it out of the spider guts across the floor of the ravine. We’d been killing stalkers right and left, almost enough to finish off the quest, when we came across the cave full of spiders. I’d lost count of how many of the things I’d squished. They were the size of small dogs, only like a foot long and wide.

  Not that big a deal, but they were still spiders.

  We kept walking through the cavern, not ravine and entered another wider chamber filled with spiders, the walls covered in webs and egg sacks.

  “I wish I could take one as a pet,” Sunie said.

  “I wish I had a flamethrower to take to this entire room,” I muttered, making Sunie laugh.

  “You really don’t like spiders do you?”

  “I’m not afraid of them or anything, but the things are just so damn creepy.”

  Sunie laughed louder, the noise attracting attention. The spiders along the floor started skittering their way toward us, little claws or whatever they were called on the ends of the many legs clacking against the stone.

  I sighed.

  “Let’s just kill them quickly.”

  And we did.

  Messily but quickly.

  Stepping carefully around the spider bits, I examined one of the egg sacks. I was thinking about the crystal formations in the Cliffside Walk Dungeon. So far this one hadn’t anything like that. I figured not all of them would, but it did feel odd to just have egg sacks laying around. Stuck to the walls by webbing, but essentially just laying around.

  “In one of the forest biome dungeons, I came across a harvestable resource,” I started, leaning close to the egg sack. Thankfully it wasn’t moving. “How common is that?”

  “Fairly I think,” Sunie replied. “I wasn’t involved in any of the resource harvesting teams and my Path didn’t make me a good guard for them, so I don’t know for sure, but I think at least two or three dungeons in every biome have harvestable resources.”

  He walked over next to me, also leaning in to look at the egg sack. He reached a hand out but stopped short of poking at the thing.

  “You think these might be a resource? What kind? I think there might be some beings that would eat spider eggs but…”

  “That’s gross,” I muttered. “I don’t know but isn’t it kind of weird to just have these out like this? I’ve come across spiders in the Tower already but never eggs. Same with any other creature. No nests, eggs, anything like that.”

  “You might be right,” Sunie said, stepping back. “Go ahead and try to harvest them.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah you. This was your idea.”

  I sighed. He was right. It was my question, so I should be the one to test it.

  Stepping back, I pulled a tonfa out of my inventory. Holding it by the handle, I flipped it around and poked the tip at the egg sack. Nothing happened. The material felt spongy, but it was made of webbing. I poked it again.

  “Scared to touch it?” Sunie asked.

  I grumbled but returned the tonfa. Hesitantly, I reached out and touched the sack. The surface was sticky and spongy, just what I imagined it would be. I was afraid the thing would pop and dozens of little spider eggs would flood out, but luckily it didn’t. Nothing happened.

  I bent down, looking at where the sack was attached to the rock wall. Still grumbling, I took a knife out. I never used a blade as a weapon, didn’t help get much kinetic energy, but a knife had a thousand and one uses. Carefully, I started cutting at the webbing where it met the rock. It took a bit of work, the webbing was strong, but I cut away the last part and the egg sack fell into my hands.

  YOU HAVE GAINED +1 DEEP RAVINE SPIDER EGG SACK

  I tossed it to Sunie, who fumbled to catch it with his staff still in hand. His eyes widened as he read the description.

  “I’m actually surprised it is a Resource.”

  He held it out to me.

  “Keep it, there’s more.”

  And I proceeded to get the rest. About twenty of them total. Neither of us had an idea of what they were used for, but figured we could check in with Sunie’s superiors at the Sunrise Formation when we left the Dungeon. Someone there had to know.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  I stood up, stepping away from the wall, holding my knife out. There were bits of spider web stuck to it. I sighed, and put the thing away, knowing I’d have to remember to clean it later. I wouldn’t remember. How mad would Tammy be at me if I sent her a message to remind me?

  Probably pretty mad.

  Not like I could message while in the Tower anyways.

  “I wonder if this is used to create pets,” Sunie mused, pulling a bit of spider web off his gloves.

  “I hope not.”

  We kept walking, Sunie’s staff providing the light. That thing was pretty useful. The Staff Of Many he called it. Strange name but perfect description. He could infuse various different Essences into it, giving it a variety of different Abilities. But once he used up all the Essences associated with that Ability, it was gone and he’d have to find more to replace it. A very powerful but costly item. It’d apparently been in his family for a couple generations now. A true legacy item.

  “You have a lot of random things in your inventory,” he said. “How many different weapons do you have in there?”

  “A lot,” I replied, laughing. “Tonfas, hammers, a staff or two. Nothing really bladed, all bashing. I don’t get as much kinetic energy using weapons, there’s some loss through the weapon itself, but sometimes punching things won’t work. I’ve never really been able to get the kinetic energy I need from bladed weapons.”

  “Which weapons work the best for gaining the energy?”

  “Hammers,” I replied. “But most of my fighting style is based on punching and not swinging. It’s easier to move around and punch than swing. Swinging anything requires standing still for a bit and going through the motion. The tonfas are nice because I can just hit things with my arms, like punching, so they don’t need as much wind-up as the hammers but they aren’t as strong overall.”

  I pulled a tonfa out, holding it by the handle so the longer length was under my forearm.

  “These also provide some protection for my arms.”

  “By punching things, how often do you break bones?”

  I laughed.

  “Not that often surprisingly. I have the Resistance Essence which I use to reinforce my body to make it stronger and more durable. I also have Force Essence to make my hits stronger. I use the Motion Essence to create a kinetic absorbing field around my body. So a lot of the momentum and force that I’m hit with is absorbed and turned into energy I can use.”

  “Do you gain energy from thrown objects?”

  “Nope. Which sucks. But I can use the stored energy to make the things I’m throwing stronger, faster, go further, all that good stuff.”

  “So you could be a main tank,” Sunie said.

  I looked over my shoulder at the elf, glaring.

  “No,” I said. “I cannot. Lack of taunt and/or controlling abilities. I can’t make ‘em come to me or keep ‘em on me if they decide some staff wielding elf is a juicier target.”

  “What other elf is going to join the team?” he asked.

  I laughed.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t pick Gracia,” Sunie said. “She’s not a nice one.”

  “I got that impression. Unlike you, whose Abilities are like mine and don’t really fit into a normal party setup, with her Abilities she seemed like she’d have parties lined up to grab her. But since she didn’t, that says a lot about her personality.” Healers were rare, especially ones that could do a little bit of damage.”

  “How do you know what her Abilities were? You never even asked what her Abilities were.”

  “Looked it up later,” I replied. “Even though I couldn’t work with her, didn’t mean another team from my Clan wouldn’t. But once I saw she was primarily a healer, and no one had locked her down to their party, that said a lot…”

  “There’s always a need for her, but like you said, after one run, most people don’t want to work with her anymore.”

  We fell silent again, making our way deeper through the cavern. It was one long tunnel, the same width for most of it, opening to larger rooms. A couple more Stalkers and some Spiders. Sucked that killing the spider’s wasn’t a quest. There were a lot of them. We were only short two Stalkers, which told me that we were getting close to the end of the Dungeon.

  After the last batch of spiders, we got another half dozen egg sacks. I hated the things but was really curious what could make with them. Solace had a lot of spiders in the mountains, and using their parts gave us some interesting enhancements.

  “I think there’s another cavern ahead,” I whispered to Sunie, slowing down. “The shadows at the end are darker.”

  “You know what that means?”

  “Bigger cavern?”

  “Boss battle!”

  I whispered a chuckle.

  Slowly I approached the end of the tunnel, not wanting to accidentally trip the encounter early. That was the problem with some of these boss fights. If weren’t careful, could start it before the team was ready. I’d heard of some teams wiping, some dying, because the boss attacked before they were ready.

  I stopped a foot from the end, definitely able to see the next cavern widening out more than any other we’d been in yet. I could hear water flowing over rocks. It was too dark to see much of anything, but started to hear some claws or something scraping along the rock up high.

  I pointed up, Sunie nodding. There could be other stuff in the cavern, but most likely the boss was up high.

  “Just charge in?” I asked.

  “Might as well,” Sunie answered. “After you of course.”

  I laughed, stood up and walked into the cavern, Sunie’s light following.