Two pony-sized spiders came for him. He fired his bow, hitting the first spider. From the speed at which they continued charging, he suspected he'd done little damage.
He ran. The lead spider bumped the rope hanging from the axe. The axe fell on the spider behind it with an audible crunch.
That left the lead spider he'd hit with an arrow previously, and, hopefully, wounded. He kept running, hoping the spider would weaken.
The spider might be slowing down. It was hard to tell. He slowed down, pretending he was tired.
The lead spider caught up with him and attacked. With a clicking screech, it sprayed him with webbing and tried to bite his head off. The webbing fell from his spider silk cloak, unable to gain purchase. He jumped back, dodging its mandibles and stabbing at its eyes. It had eight of them, but he somehow missed.
It jumped on him, knocking him over. He stabbed its underbelly with all his strength, his sword immediately covered with green blood. He kept stabbing until the spider stopped moving.
He pushed the lead spider off him in time to be attacked by the second spider. The second spider's body had been damaged by the falling axe, and it had lost two legs, but it was still in the fight.
It somehow clambered up a wall and dropped down on top of him, smashing him into the floor. He stabbed its belly but lost his short sword in the process. The spider bit him, not hard enough to penetrate his spider-silk cloak, but enough to hurt. It picked him up with its mandibles and slammed him against a wall. He groaned, grabbed his knife, and stabbed one of its eyes. It bit him again. He kept stabbing it until it stopped moving and began to dissolve.
He got a notification.
Name: Jeremy Wilkins
Race: Human
Sex: Boy
Age: 10
Character Class: Child-Rogue
Level: 9 (689/3844)
Health: 10
Mana: 7 (+17 rapid recovery) (Charmed object)
Attributes:
Strength: 10
Endurance: 5
Vitality: 6
Dexterity: 13
Agility: 14
Perception: 16
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 5
Will Power: 4
Charisma: 4 (+1 clown nose)
Extra point: 1
Active Skills:
Identify: 4
Sneak: 6 (+2 magic shoes)
Detect Traps: 6
Charmed Object Activation: 2
Passive Skills:
Enhanced Physical: 1
Pain Tolerance: 3
Poison Resistance: 6(max)
Mental Fortitude: 3
Skills:
Archery: 1
Knife Throwing: 0
Melee-Weapons: 4
Spells:
None
Dungeon Account:
4825.82dc
Exhausted, he drank a healing potion and lay there. There had to be a better way to kill monster spiders.
Flint appeared. “More are coming! Quick! Run!”
The healing potion had healed his injuries, but not his shaking or exhaustion.
He staggered to his feet, grabbed his weapons, and ran, somehow evading the traps and remaining spiders on his way to the lair's entrance. Reaching the entrance, he shut the door and left.
That evening, Jeremy practiced his knife throwing. He was ten paces from the target now and wouldn't say he was great, but his knives were sticking to the target more often than not. His knife-throwing skill had gone up to 1.
He put his extra Attribute Point into Strength, bringing him up to 11. He was fighting monsters bigger than he was and needed all the help he could get.
“My plan for the day would have been much better, but all things considered, the day went well,” Flint said. “And if I had my body, my knives would have been in the center of the target, so you lose again.”
“Shut up, Flint.” Jeremy retrieved his throwing knives. “How many spiders are left besides the queen?”
“Difficult to say. But I expect the spiders will become larger as we approach the queen in her main cavern.”
“Great.” Jeremy continued to throw his knives. The first knife bounced off the target, but the rest stuck. He really was getting better.
That night, he dreamed of unending, claustrophobic tunnels as the evil wizard, Mezirma stood over him. “You're not even an insect,” he said. At this point, Flint appeared. “I agree, Mezirma. Perhaps I could attach myself to you? You're probably most of the way through the dungeon by now.”
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Jeremy woke up with a groan, tempted to ask Flint about the nightmare, but decided against it.
He was getting better at navigating the labyrinth traps. After finding a suitable ledge in one of the tunnels, he painstakingly climbed up the stone wall and set up his axe trap before going deeper into the labyrinth.
He found three spiders this time, larger than the previous two.
He fired four arrows quickly, wounding two of them, and ran.
He waited for the right moment before he pulled the rope tied to the axe as he ran past it, causing it to fall on the lead spider, the one he hadn't wounded previously.
Continuing to run, he let the two wounded spiders chase him until they were far enough apart before he fought the lead spider
As the spider jumped and sprayed its webbing, Jeremy slid underneath, slashing its underbelly with his sword, shoving his blade brutally upwards into a heart or some other vital organ. It let out a chittering scream and died twitching on the stone floor before vanishing.
“Get up, Jeremy, the next spider is coming!” Flint said.
With a groan, Jeremy got up. This spider stayed low to the ground, shooting off its webbing and trying to crush Jeremy's legs with its mandibles. After what seemed like an eternity of sparring, he wore the spider down enough to see an opening and stabbed it in one of its eyes.
When the second spider was finally dead, Jeremy collapsed on the dungeon floor.
From the two spiders, he gained 436 dungeon coin, more experience, three more healing potions, and two poison potions.
The lead spider failed to show up, so Flint and Jeremy backtracked and found the axe had done a number on it. The third spider was half dead, lying in a pool of green blood. Jeremy almost felt bad about finishing it off.
“That could have gone worse,” Flint said, “I fear the queen may pose a problem, however.”
“Indeed,” Jeremy said. The queen was huge, and Jeremy wasn't sure how to kill it.
After a restless night, Jeremy returned to the labyrinth.
Entering, he ventured deeper than he had before, encountering no life until he reached the queen's lair.
Careful to make no noise, he found an outcrop of stone twenty feet above the ground at the entrance to the huge cavern where the queen lived, the same cavern he'd stolen the spider silk for Clown Lord, what felt like a lifetime ago.
With considerable effort, he climbed up to the outcrop with the axe on his back. Once again, he balanced the axe on the stone, tying one end of his spider silk thread to the axe handle just below the blade. Returning to the floor, he tied the other end of the thread to a dungeon ration bar, so the bar just touched the floor, and entered the queen's lair.
The queen was larger than he remembered. She was at least twenty feet across and six feet tall. It would be hard to miss a target like that, even for a novice archer like Jeremy.
He got off five shots before she charged. Invisible legs moved like lightning, propelling her off her web straight for him. He fired twice more, dropped the bow and arrows, and ran from the queen's lair, back the way he'd come.
The spider queen followed, somehow avoiding Jeremy's trap as she entered the passageway. He made it another twenty paces before there was a blap! blap! blap! Webbing covered him.
This was a weakness in his plan that he hadn't anticipated. His spider-silk cloak was resistant to the effects of her webbing, but the surrounding stone was not. Her webbing pinned him to the stone floor as he fought to squirm free. He didn't dare expose any part of himself; the webbing would stick like glue to anything not his cloak or charmed sword.
Through the webbing, he saw the spider queen look down on him, triumphant. She spun more webbing and rolled him on the floor, turning him into a giant cocoon, making it hard for him to breathe. He remembered the other sacks of webbing he'd seen the first time he'd visited and how she'd sucked out their juices. He began to panic, screaming and fighting against the webbing with all his strength.
Then she bit him, her mandibles coming together with bone-crushing force on his legs and hip. His cloak protected him from the poison, but her mandibles were strong enough to break bones.
He cried out. He was going to die! He was only ten! This wasn't fair! Mom!
The queen picked him up and carried him away.
He heard a shoooonk and a crunch, and then a loud chittering scream from the spider. She dropped him and skittered away.
Shivering from the shock, Jeremy wasn't sure which of his bones was broken, his right leg definitely, maybe his hip? He slowly and painfully reached for his sword and cut himself free, every second fearing the spider queen would be back for him.
After what felt like hours, he freed his arms enough that he could reach into his pack, pull out a healing potion, bring it up to his mouth, and drink it. Then another, then another, very glad he'd been saving them up instead of using them for minor injuries.
Instead of itching, he felt outright agony as his bones slowly moved back to their rightful places and knitted together. Bones took a lot longer to heal than skin and muscle. He lay there for what felt like an eternity.
As he healed, he used his sword to cut his way free of the rest of the webbing. It took him hours, and his leg and hip hurt so much that he wanted to scream.
Once free of the webbing, he activated Sneak and crawled toward the lair's entrance. The axe was on the ground, covered with green blood. The queen was wounded.
He lay there. He'd almost died. If she hadn't bumped into his trap, he would be monster food.
He needed to leave this labyrinth and close the door behind him. He'd return when he recovered, or maybe he wouldn't. What had he been thinking? Trying to kill something like the spider queen by himself? Was he completely insane?
Jeremy crawled towards the labyrinth exit. He'd lost. He was lucky to be alive and was getting out of here while he still could.
Flint appeared in front of him, looking angry. “Turn around, Jeremy.”
