Jeremy stopped crawling and glared up at Flint. “Where were you earlier? I could have used your help.”
“I was busy pushing the axe off the ledge as the spider queen was taking you into her lair to eat. I wounded the spider queen, and this is your only chance to kill her. If you let her recover, she will destroy you, and you will have failed your sacred mission.”
“How could you push the axe off the ledge without a body?” Jeremy asked.
“It wasn't easy. Now turn around, crawl back into the spider queen's lair, and kill her.”
“I'm leaving. You don't have a body, so you don't care, but I nearly got eaten. I'm scared.” Jeremy started crawling forward again. “You kill her since you can move objects. I'll wait at the entrance.”
“JEREMY TITLEY WILKINS, YOU ARE A COWARD!” Flint shouted in Jeremy's mind, his voice oozing anger and contempt. “I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU. YOUR ENTIRE LIFE HAS BEEN A MISERABLE EXERCISE IN COWARDICE!” Flint slammed his cane on the stone ground and paused, glaring down at Jeremy. “Your dad left and barely speaks to you. I think you know why. You run away at the slightest sign of danger. You never stood up to your brother; you always ran away and hid. When you were flying a drone with your friend, and some older kids showed up, you let them have the drone and ran away. They didn't even want to fly it—they destroyed it just to be mean. When your friend Urg was dying in front of you, you ran away like you always do, like a coward!”
“I didn't have a choice,” Jeremy said, shaking, tears running down his face. “They'd have killed me.”
“You keep telling yourself that, coward. But we both know the truth. You didn't even try. You ran away because you were scared, and running away is what you do.”
“That's not true,” Jeremy protested, but it was the truth. Flint's words hurt Jeremy more than anything else imaginable. Because every word was true.
Not thinking about how terrified he was. Jeremy turned around and crawled into the queen's lair.
The spider queen was absent, but a trail of green blood led to a smaller opening. He approached the opening, doing everything he could to keep quiet and remain unseen.
You know you're trying to sneak up on a monster with eight eyes, right? he asked himself, trying not to laugh hysterically.
He saw little choice. He couldn't attack from outside, and for all he knew, she planned to stay in her hidey-hole indefinitely.
His leg and hip were slowly healing, but he was a long way from being able to walk, and every time he bumped or jostled the healing bones, he ground his teeth together, wanting to cry out in pain.
The entrance to her hidey-hole curved, and he couldn't see past it. Detect Traps revealed multiple red threads crossing the entrance.
“I will guide you through the traps, Jeremy,” Flint said. “Crawl under the first two threads.”
Jeremy crawled under the first two threads, moving slowly, making no noise. He was pretty sure a sound at this point would mean his death.
“Now, Jeremy,” Flint said. “I will guide you past the next three threads. Move slowly and do exactly what I say. Now put your hand in the crack on the right side of the tunnel, pull yourself slowly up...”
Jeremy pulled himself up onto the wall with extreme difficulty to get past two more threads. His leg and hip hurt so much he wanted to scream, but he moved in complete silence. Then, per Flint's instructions, he slowly lowered himself to the floor again to crawl under the third thread.
The passageway expanded into a cavern. Thousands of eggs covered the cavern floor. Their mother, the queen, perched on the wall directly above the entrance. The axe had cut deeply into her side. She was still alive, but her eyes were dim.
Jeremy stayed still. The slightest movement could give him away. Scratching and chittering noises revealed some of the eggs had hatched. He moved slowly, silently, into the cavern, taking extreme care not to make the slightest sound or reveal his existence. A baby rat-sized spider crawled less than an inch from the hood of his cloak; another scurried over his leg, unaware of his presence.
“Stay calm,” Flint said. “I don't think the babies are old enough to pose a threat. If you're lucky, you'll get one chance to ambush the spider queen. I'd suggest you not waste it.”
Jeremy moved forward inch by inch. The cavern wall had bumps and cracks he could use as handholds. Slowly, he climbed, ignoring the pain in his healing leg and hip, almost crying out when another baby spider crawled over his hand, thinking he was part of the cave. He kept climbing, careful, careful: three feet up, then four, six, eight.
And then he was there, a little higher than the spider queen, who didn't seem to notice him. He slowly pulled his sword from its sheath, silent, always silent, and jumped on the spider queen, sticking the sword as deeply as he could into her wounded side. She screeched and spun around, trying to throw Jeremy off her back. The baby spiders screeched in response to their mother. He rode her back, stabbing her in her wounded side and then in one of her eyes. She flipped over backwards. He flung himself to the side, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the huge spider. Dodging her bite, he kept stabbing.
And then she was still. Sweat poured off his face into his eyes. He was shaking from fear and exhaustion and had thousands of unhatched eggs and screeching, chittering baby spiders to deal with.
When he finished, he was Level 12 and over 3000 dc richer.
YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!
YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!
YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!
Name: Jeremy Wilkins
Race: Human
Sex: Boy
Age: 10
Character Class: Child-Rogue
Level: 12
Health: 4
Mana: 7 (+18 rapid recovery) (Charmed object)
Attributes:
Strength: 11
Endurance: 4
Vitality: 5
Dexterity: 16
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Agility: 17
Perception: 19
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 5
Will Power: 4
Charisma: 4 (+1 clown nose)
Extra point: 3
Active Skills:
Identify: 4
Sneak: 7 (+2 magic shoes)
Detect Traps: 7
Charmed Object Activation: 2
Passive Skills:
Enhanced Physical: 1
Poison Resistance: 6(max)
Mental Fortitude: 4(max) Mind's ability to deal with trauma.
Pain Tolerance: 4
Skills:
Melee Weapons: 4
Knife Throwing: 1
Archery: 1
Spells:
None
Dungeon Account:
7947.45
IF YOU WISH YOU MAY CHOOSE A SPECIALTY!
Child Thief: Your character specializes in taking what belongs to others.
Gain bonuses in Dexterity and Sneak skill.
Yes/No
Child Scout: Search dangerous areas, report to others, and fight if necessary.
Gain bonuses in Sneak, movement, and weapons.
Yes/No
Child Swashbuckler: Your character specializes in combat and leadership.
Gain bonuses in weapons and charisma.
Yes/No
He was alone, so Swashbuckler was useless to him, and the other two didn't interest him any more now than they did before. He selected no for all of them.
***
“That could have gone more smoothly,” Flint said, walking around what used to be the spider queen's egg-laying chamber. “But you're still alive, and that's the important thing.”
Jeremy ignored his companion. He felt horrible about killing monster spider babies and stomping on the remaining eggs to crush them, but he had seen little choice. If he didn't kill them, they'd grow up and try to kill him.
Where was the monster loot? That was why he'd killed the monsters in the first place. He searched the cavern carefully. In a distant wall of the cavern, he found a faint, asymmetrical drawing of a chest. After rearranging the stones to make the drawing symmetrical, a doorway appeared.
He carefully pushed it open. It was a small room with a chest in the middle and no traps he could sense. He opened the chest.
In addition to a gold vial that Identified as Potion of Greater Healing, which he promptly drank, there were ten poison-antidote potions and a silver potion that Identify revealed as charmed potion. The chest also held a beautiful bow and a quiver of 30 arrows. The bow, the quiver, and the arrows blended perfectly with their surroundings.
Using Identify, he got
Child's Charmed Spider-bow of Aradok.
“The rest of the loot has to be around here somewhere, Jeremy,” Flint said. “Keep searching.”
Where was the rest of the monster loot? He continued searching. He ended up spending the night in the treasure room after putting his extra Attribute points into Perception, bringing him up to 22. By removing the torches, he found a tiny glowing drawing of two interconnected triangles on the ceiling. Standing on one end of the treasure chest and fiddling with the drawing, a door appeared on the cavern ceiling. Opening it, he found a tunnel. He pulled himself up into the tunnel, grateful for his Strength and Agility, and crawled down the tunnel until it ended in a small room. In this room, he found a smaller chest with ten more flasks of poison antidote, three arrows, Child's charmed arrows, charmed with poison and to hit, and five dull red vials that Identify didn't work on. He took it all back to the treasure room.
He opened one of the red vials and poured a droplet onto the floor. The droplet hissed and burned, sinking into the stone floor.
YOU HAVE BEEN POISONED!
He started coughing and throwing up. His Health dropped. What? He hadn't even touched the stuff! He must have breathed in a tiny amount of the poison. He staggered out of the cavern and almost took an antidote potion, but his Health didn't drop past 2.
Then he grinned and started laughing. This was what he was after. The most poisonous monsters in the dungeon had to have poisonous monster loot. Right?
The next day, he paid the Big a visit. After his experience with the spiders, finding the entrance to the Big's labyrinth was easy. He returned to the location the clowns had taken him, found a picture of a large person on a nearby wall, and adjusted it until a door appeared.
Sneaking back through the Big's labyrinth and running through it as fast as he could, he wasted no time climbing the wall of the Big's house and entering from the same window he'd used previously. From there, it was a simple matter to put a drop of poison in the Big's pot of bubbling stew.
He ran out of the labyrinth again before the Big could discover him and give chase.
The Big was largely invulnerable to normal weapons, but perhaps not to some particularly deadly poison?
Late that night, 1256dc showed up in his dungeon account.
You have... poisoned the Big?... Well, the Big is dead, and that's what counts. You have gained your first title! Big Slayer!
The title Big Slayer showed up on his stat sheet in tiny letters.
He focused on the title.
In the dungeon, you will gain titles and marks. A title is a badge of honor, and if you get enough of them, people near you will feel they are in the presence of a hero. A mark is the opposite of a title. You receive them for doing bad things or dishonorable behavior.
So, poisoning a Big gave him a tiny title? Good grief.
He came back the next day, careful in case he'd failed.
Inside the Big's house, he found the monster's body curled up in its bed, still in the process of being reabsorbed by the dungeon.
He searched the Big's house and found four items of immense interest. On the same shelf where the magic loom had been was a palm-sized structure with a tiny forge and an anvil inside. Identify revealed it as Charmed Object.
He suspected he'd found a magic smithy. Considering what the magic loom had been capable of, this item could be very useful to someone who knew how to use it.
The magic loom he'd stolen had vanished with Clown Lord's demise. This was too bad. Jeremy wouldn't have minded weaving some more magic clothes.
Everything else on that shelf was junk—several of the Big's teeth and a broken, non-magical fiddle. Even the monster hide covering his shelves Identified as
Monster-hide, low quality.
When he searched the house carefully, in case he'd missed something, he found a small secret compartment by crawling under the Big's stone bed. A tight fit, even for him. The compartment held a small cloth bag containing three walnut-sized seeds. A message was written on the bag.
Plant them and see what grows. Plant them where? There was nothing in the dungeon remotely resembling dirt.
“Good work, Jeremy,” Flint said. “Of course, if I had a body, I would have killed the Big with my bare hands, but all things considered, you did well.”
Jeremy continued to ignore his unwanted companion. Just because he couldn't get rid of Flint didn't mean he had to talk to the being.
Back at The Fun House, he pumped the magic smithy full of mana until it was full-sized. His Charmed Object Activation skill went up to 3.
Entering the smithy, he attempted to move the hammer hanging above the forge, but could not do so, or move anything else in the smithy. He eventually gave up and let the smithy slowly revert to its former size.
“Perhaps you are not at a high enough level to work with a powerful charmed object like this one,” Flint said.
Jeremy glared at Flint. “Okay, Flint, Mr. Know It All, what do I do now? Where are the other monsters on this floor?”
