YUCK!

  Bugs, centipedes, and grubs of every imaginable size, shape, and color, ranging from an inch to over three feet, covered the floor, walls, and ceiling of the poorly lit stone tunnel. If that wasn't bad enough, they emitted foul, pungent odors, and horrible buzzing and scratching noises that made Jeremy's skin crawl.

  If he'd been one of those people who squealed and ran away from roaches and spiders back on Earth, he'd have run screaming down the hallway.

  He did Identify.

  A dull red roach-like insect the size of his thumb was—Creepy Crawly dungeon monster. Spits acid.

  A dark green inch-long wasp-like insect—Creepy Crawly dungeon monster. Venomous.

  A yellow beetle the size of his hand—Creepy Crawly dungeon monster. Electric attack. Has sharp fangs.

  Run run run run!

  These were just three of the many types of grubs and insects that infested the third floor. Curious, Jeremy checked his experience, concentrating on his stat sheet to get the details.

  51,806 experience points needed to reach the next level.

  He stepped on a foot-long centipede. Killing it with a satisfying crunch. 51,805 experience points needed to reach the next level.

  Jeremy sighed. One experience point per creature. This could take a while, but there were a lot of creatures.

  The insects seemed to sense him and move slowly in his direction. Without Sneak being active, they'd be crawling all over him by now. But at least this gave him time to think.

  There were thousands of insects, and at one experience point apiece, the points would add up. The problem was killing them. If he killed them one at a time, it would take forever.

  Time for an experiment. He pulled out his flask of Chrysalti spider poison and his old dungeon cloak, used his water bottle to soak his cloak, poured a drop of the poison onto the cloak, then kneaded the cloak until the entire cloak was soaked with diluted poison.

  He was already wearing armor and his spider silk cloak. He put the poisoned cloak on over them. The dungeon creatures would go for his face and eyes, so he covered his face and head with a makeshift scarf made from a piece of his cloak.

  Then he dropped Sneak.

  On a positive note. Sneak worked, at least for dungeon insects.

  On a less positive note, every creature in this part of the dungeon converged on him at once, covering him, eating through his poisoned cloak, and crawling over and under his clothes and armor, somehow getting past them to bite the skin underneath.

  Then came the pain. First, the biting and stinging pain. Then, burning pain as some crawly thing coated his arm with acid. Pain went through him as several creatures shocked him, making his whole body spasm, leaving him temporarily paralyzed. Notifications popped up on his stat sheet.

  You Have Been Poisoned!

  You Have Been Electrocuted!

  You have been subjected to acid!

  Soon, new passive skills appeared.

  Acid Resistance:

  Electric Resistance:

  Bite Resistance:

  Jeremy laughed between electric shocks. It was working! He was becoming stronger!

  He rolled over on the ground in a frenzied dance between electric shocks, trying to crush the insects that had gotten under his clothes and armor. But the poison was working.

  He gained a hundred points of experience. Then another hundred.

  The creepy crawlies were on him like starving piranhas on a bloody steak, covering every inch of his cloak, clothes, armor, and body, a few even crawling beneath his makeshift scarf. He struggled to keep them out of his eyes while rolling around and crushing them with his hands and body. This was the fastest way to kill the small creatures, and he wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible and level up.

  It hurt a lot.

  You Have Been Poisoned!

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  You Have Been Electrocuted!

  You have been subjected to acid!

  You Have Been Poisoned!

  His Health dropped down to 3, and he was too sick and paralyzed from poison and electric shocks to move, let alone give himself medical aid. His health dropped to 2. He wondered if he was going to die.

  Finally, the wave of flying insects and creepy crawlies receded. He found the strength to roll over, once, then again, using his body to crush the few still crawling on him.

  And then it was finished. For a long time, all he could do was lie there and groan.

  He eventually recovered enough to sit up and drink a healing potion. He removed his clothes and armor and poured water over his body, rubbing himself gently to brush away the acid and any other traces of these filthy creatures. The painful experience had earned him 5,321 experience points; there should be a lot more than that. Every inch of his body had bite marks and burns from acid and electric shocks.

  But his passive skills had improved.

  Acid Resistance: 1

  Electric Resistance: 1

  Bite Resistance:1

  Poison Immunity: 1

  His Mental Fortitude had gone up a point and was maxed out again. His Poison Resistance had evolved into Poison Immunity. And he'd received a spell.

  Arkys has granted you your first spell: Summon Familiar.

  This spell allows you to summon a loyal familiar. If your familiar dies, you may re-summon it, though it will lose any progress it might have gained before its death.

  The spell appeared in his mind. It seemed to require little more than chalk and chanting to focus the large quantity of mana he'd need.

  Flint, who'd been suspiciously absent when the dungeon creatures attacked Jeremy, appeared next to him and spoke. "You did very well today, Jeremy. Using poison against the creepy crawly monsters shows surprising intelligence and resourcefulness from you."

  Jeremy ignored him, painfully putting on his clothes over his partially healed skin. Looking around the passageway for anything unusual, Jeremy found something. Lodged deep inside a small cavity on a ledge near the dungeon ceiling was a pebble the size of his thumb.

  Identify got him.

  Dungeon pebble.

  Though the pebble didn't appear to have a purpose, Jeremy didn't think it was there by accident. He stuck it in his pack.

  Reactivating Sneak and creeping forward, he found the hallway divided into three creepy-crawly covered passageways. If there was an end to the passageways, he wasn't seeing it.

  Jeremy sighed. This floor could take a while. He sat down near the entrance and proceeded to eat a breakfast of dungeon rations and Lard Lump's donuts. Sweetened, fried flatbread, really, but like all of Lard Lump's cooking, incredibly good. He tried combining the dungeon rations with the flatbread, but that made everything taste horrible. So he forced himself to eat as many ration bars as he could and save Lard Lump's food as dessert.

  Flint cleared his throat. "It would appear this entire floor consists of tiny, unpleasant creatures and is more trouble than it's worth. I would suggest we take Banxi's advice and run through this floor of the dungeon as fast as possible."

  "You want me to do what?" Jeremy asked, surprised. "I just gained three more passive skills and evolved my poison resistance. I was expecting another 'a strong adventurer would kill them all with his bare hands' speech."

  "You are never going to be a strong adventurer, Jeremy. But, thanks to my expert tutelage, you've come a long way to becoming less weak."

  Not sure what to say, Jeremy waited for Flint to continue.

  "I believe clearing the third floor of the dungeon will be slow, tedious, and will gain you little. And there is another matter. Most humanoid lifeforms find large numbers of stinging, biting insect-like creatures to be traumatic, and your mental trauma resistance is maxed out, again. Persisting to engage in traumatic activities could damage your mental faculties, drive you insane, and possibly damage your soul."

  Jeremy cast his crude light spell, feeling the mana leaving his body while working on gaining more control of his spell and hopefully leveling it up. "I see," Jeremy said, amused. "That's what this is about. Fortunately, insects don't bother me."

  "I am connected to you, Jeremy, and I can tell they do bother you. And while a few days in here might be fine, there are a lot of passageways to this floor of the dungeon, and if you choose to stay, you will be here for a long time."

  Great. Thanks to Flint bringing it to his attention, the incessant buzzing of the creepy crawlies was getting on his nerves. "I'll be fine, but that does raise the question of why my mental trauma resistance is maxed?" He pulled out Book. "Book. How do I raise my resistance to mental trauma?"

  Book vibrated with excitement. Jeremy opened it.

  Beeg Dumi used stress potions to deal with the mental trauma of being an adventurer. Then he encountered a monster with a strong mental attack that left him paralyzed. The monster ate him alive, and Beeg Dumi was miserable.

  Smirt Giy realized that Intelligence, Wisdom, and Endurance all help with mental attacks and mental trauma, but the most useful attribute for resisting and overcoming mental attacks and trauma is Will. Smirt Giy used his spare stat points accordingly and was thus able to resist the effects of the monster's mental attack and kill the monster.

  ***

  Jeremy sighed. It would seem he needed to put more points into Will.

  Not seeing any better options, he camped in front of the third-floor entrance, now a stone wall.

  After eating, he pulled out a piece of chalk he'd saved from the dungeon school and carefully drew a large circle on the floor, about ten paces across, and then drew a smaller circle inside the larger one. Once this was done, he wrote out twenty symbols of summoning between the two circles.

  He wondered what his familiar would be? He hoped for something large and strong, like a griffin. How would he feed a griffin? Would a griffin eat creepy-crawlies?

  He drank a mana potion and started the chant.

  The magic circles blazed with his mana. He felt sick as his mana dropped to 0.

  He forced himself to complete the spell before drinking a second mana potion.

  For a long second, he thought the spell had failed.

  But warmth from the second mana potion flowed into his belly. His mana continued dropping as the spell devoured his mana. He drank a third and fourth mana potion before his mana stopped dropping, and his spell was complete.

  A mist formed in the middle of the magic circles, then slowly receded, revealing—Nothing?