She turned the knob and threw the door open. There was another room behind it, but it looked empty.
Terra went in first, and as the rest of us piled in, a stone panel slid down over the door we’d entered. That left two doors in this room, on the right and left walls. Unfortunately, they looked exactly the same, and neither one of them looked safe. Both of them were huge, curved doors made of iron, with flaming skulls and crossbones mounted on them.
“Damn it,” Terra said impatiently. “I’m getting really tired of this stupid maze riddle. Let’s just open both of them and see what’s there.”
Crash, who’d been looking past me, suddenly dropped his jaw and pointed. “Er, I’m thinking it’s that door,” he said.
I turned around and saw a familiar fiery thread dropping rapidly from the ceiling, attached to the biggest, glowiest, flame-eyed spider of all. Membranes of glowing orange traced its bulging abdomen just beneath the surface of its skin. Its legs writhed madly as it descended, and hissing fluid dripped from its fangs.
My primal kill-the-spider switch flipped hard, and suddenly there was nothing but me and that thing. A war cry burst from my lips as I clutched my sword and ran at the horrifying creature. “Heroic Leap!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, not giving a damn about the mana I’d burn through as I launched into the air, my blade pointed spider-ward.
The sword plunged into the fat, bulging part of the spider and burst it apart, spraying me with sizzling lava blood. I barely felt it. My own blood was pumping too hard to notice.
Elizabeth’s voice cut through the spider-induced haze. “Level Up!” she announced as the white words flashed in my peripheral vision. “You have reached level 21. You have gained 20 health and 19 mana.”
“Great, thanks,” I panted as the leveling glow faded and I blinked my vision clear. “Are there any more goddamned spiders around here?” I practically snarled.
A soft hand touched my arm, and I managed not to attack Nova. “I think that was the only one,” she said with a smile. “And you killed the crap out of it.”
“Yeah, because it was a fucking spider.” I wiped an arm across my face and shivered into a semi-relaxed state. “Well, at least I think I can help us get ready for the boss fight now,” I said. “I’ve got full mana, so maybe you can Mana Transfer some of it around, huh?”
“Good idea. I think I’m okay, though,” Crash said as he checked his HUD. “I’m a little over 50 percent, and most of my big attacks don’t use mana.”
“I’m good, too, I’m at sixty,” George put in. “I totally Mana Drained all the spiders back in the tunnel.”
Nova looked back at Terra. “I’m down to thirty percent, and Terra’s at forty,” she said as she faced me again. “If you’re sure you don’t mind, we could use a little more.”
“Yeah, but get Nova up to at least sixty, okay?” Terra said. “She needs it more than anyone else.”
I nodded. “Take whatever you need.”
Nova cast Mana Transfer between the three of us, until she’d hit around sixty-five percent and Terra was half-full, leaving me at sixty. I would’ve let her take more, but I figured she would refuse. “Okay, before we go in there I have one more buff to cast,” Nova said as she stepped back. “Blessing of Courage.”
White light flowed from her and washed over everyone in the room, restoring everyone’s health to full — except mine, which was already there because of the level-up.
“Now we’re ready,” she said as she headed for the door that the spider had come down from. “So, let’s finish this.”
Surprised but happy to see that Nova had taken the lead, I followed her.
32
The room was big and round and torch-lit, with stone walls, a stone floor, and presumably a ceiling somewhere in the shadows above. There was a massive crack in the wall, all the way across the room from where we’d entered.
And there was no time to get our bearings. As soon as we entered, the door slammed shut and words appeared on my screen: System message: Your party has initiated a boss battle.
“Heads up!” Terra shouted, pointing her sword toward the ceiling where a massive dark shape was descending from the shadows.
Something glowed and flickered above the falling shape, and my gut clenched. The boss was a spider too? I couldn’t believe this. It was like this level was designed just to fuck with me.
The shape dropped into the light and landed on the floor, and it was only sort of a spider. Which made it somehow worse.
It was some kind of spider centaur. The back half was a huge, hairy spider’s abdomen with eight thick, bristling jointed legs, but where its head should’ve been was the torso of a woman dressed in classic hammered metal boob armor, with long flame-red hair, jet black eyes, and a mouth full of fangs. A silver crown with a blood-red jewel nestled on her head.
“How dare you enter the realm of Queen Arachne, you puny mortals?” the she-spider thundered. “My children will feast on your blood tonight!”
She held her arms up, threw her head back, and let out a piercing shriek. At the sound, dozens of dog-sized, flame-eyed spiders poured from the huge crack at the back of the room and scrambled across the walls and the floor, heading straight for us.
I fought against the primal haze that threatened to take over my senses. “Okay, use Mana Drain whenever you can,” I said to the others. “But mostly, just kill these ugly things!”
For some reason, Nova and George shared a quick look. Terra took a step back and called out, “Shadow Cloak!” As she did, tendrils of shadows wrapped around her from head to toe, and for a second, I thought she’d disappeared until I realized she was just really hard to see. Crash stood firm and watched the oncoming wave of spiders, gripping his sword like a baseball bat.
I started attacking the instant the spiders got close enough.
As I hacked and slashed and kicked my way through the nasty creatures, George leaped in front of Nova and blasted a bunch of them with Cone of Frost, freezing them in place. Nova rushed after him, swinging her staff like a club to shatter the frozen spiders. They must’ve worked out that combo back in the tunnels.
I skewered a spider that was dropping down from above me, as an unwary spider just ahead of me was sliced open by a sword-wielding shadow. It seemed like they couldn’t see Terra at all with that Shadow Cloak thing. A grin drifted across my face, even as I cringed away from insectile legs scrabbling on my shin and whirled to cleave a spider in half, spraying myself with a fine mist of lava blood. Guess I shouldn’t have worried about them so much in the maze.
There was a garbled cry from Crash’s direction. I pivoted toward him, kicking a spider that was racing across the floor toward me, and saw a scrambling heap of spiders where Crash should’ve been. But as I raced to help, spiders were already starting to burst, exploding as the Sacred Spiral buff reflected their bits back on themselves. Through the popping and charring mess of dying spiders, Crash thrust an arm forth, grabbing one of the insects somewhere around his face, and shouted, “Sparkle Death!”
Colored beams of light shot from his fingertips and struck most of the spiders away, sending them tumbling to the ground where they writhed around for a few seconds and then exploded. There were still two more spiders clinging to him, but he kicked his leg to send one of them flying, then brushed the other one off with his sword and stabbed it through like a kebab.
“Nice move!” I called out to him.
He glanced over, gave me a thumbs-up, and charged at a fresh wave of spiders.
I spun, sliced up two more spiders, and started running at another small group when a stinging wad hit me in the back. One of those damned burning webs. I raised my sword up over my head to keep the filaments from pinning both arms as searing pain flashed across my body, just in time to whack another spider from the air as it dropped toward me. Then I turned the blade to the fiery strings, snapping enough of them loose to push the stuff off.
As I drop-kicked yet another spider, I saw Terra str
uggling to free herself from what looked like three or four fire-webs, her Shadow Cloak gone. Nova was already running for her sister, and George had just blasted a few spiders with ice — but there was another one behind him, almost on his tail. Literally. I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if one of these creatures grabbed George—they were bigger than him.
I raced toward George, decided I might not reach him in time and thrust an arm out. “Energy Bolt!” I shouted. The spell hit the spider and flipped it onto its back, jointed legs waving in the air as George streaked away from it. With one leap, I closed the distance and sliced the spider open.
“Ice Lance!” I heard Nova shout, whirling to see her shooting a bolt of ice at the spider crawling on Terra — who was on the ground now, struggling to free herself from the burning webs.
I ran toward them with George at my heels, pulling my dagger as I dove and slid on my knees a few feet to reach Terra. With a few quick flashes, I cut the webbing loose and helped her push it off, and she jumped to her feet, brushing at her body with both hands and shuddering. “Thank you,” she breathed. “God, I hate that. Feels like spiders are crawling all over me now!”
“Yeah, I know the feeling,” I said, turning once again to run after George, who was blasting ice at a few remaining spiders. As I shattered the frozen creatures with my sword, Crash sprinted by, shouting as he chased down the last spider.
Seconds after Crash reduced the spider to boiling goo, the spider queen let out a long, wailing cry.
“My babies!” she shrieked, glaring at us with glittering black eyes. “If you think you’ve conquered us all, you’re sorely mistaken, you miserable creatures!”
With that, she threw her head back and released an undulating cry that shook the walls.
This time, what looked like hundreds of spiders surged from the crack behind her in a writhing black mass.
My blood froze at the sight. As I stood there trying to fathom hacking and slashing my way through all those things, Crash raised a hand toward the spider queen and shouted, “Mana Drain!” I actually felt him siphoning mana from her, could almost see the stream pouring into him.
He turned and gave me a horrified look as his skin went pale. “Cover me,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Crash, don’t!” I shouted, suddenly understand what he was about to do with all that mana.
But he ignored me, turned toward the tidal wave of spiders, and raised both hands.
“Killing Tempest!”
I readied a Heal spell as Crash’s words reverberated through the room, and an impossible amount of oily black substance poured out from him, crackling with violet light. The attack split into hundreds of threads, striking spiders and washing over them as it instantly boiled them into muddy red paste. When he was through, there were maybe a dozen spiders left standing.
But Crash wasn’t. He dropped to his knees, coughed sharply and doubled over with blood dripping from his mouth. That’s when my Heal spell went off, pulling him back from the brink, but just barely.
“What happened?” Nova cried as she raced toward him, a few steps behind me.
I reached him and put an arm around his shoulders. “Killing Tempest drops him to one health and one mana,” I said hoarsely as I crouched beside him. “But holy fuck, did it work,” I told him. “I’m supposed to be the crazy one, remember? You okay?”
“Probably,” he gasped, which sent him into another coughing fit. “Or not.”
I looked at Nova. “Please do what you can to heal him,” I said. “George, you stay here and protect Nova. Come on, Terra.” I stood, pointing my sword at Queen Arachne. “This bitch is going down, right now.”
“I hear that!” Terra called, rushing to catch up with me as we sprinted for the queen.
Behind us, I heard Nova call out, “Warrior’s Blessing!” and Terra glowed with golden light.
The giant-ass spider bitch saw us coming and laughed, a terrible liquid bubbling sound. “Have you come to serve yourselves up as my snacks?” she said as she thrust a hand out. A jet of fire blasted from her palm, and Terra and I dove out of the way in opposite directions. “I will crush your bones to dust and bake you into cakes for my children!”
“What kind of stupid taunt is that?” I shouted as I rolled beneath another flame blast. “Star Scream!”
The attack blasted against her armor and broke apart, doing no damage that I could see.
“Shadow Strike!” Terra yelled, leaping forward to thrust her arms out. Black tendrils shot forth and wrapped around the spider queen’s legs, but as Terra split her hands apart, the shadow attack fizzled out.
“She’s too armored! We’ll have to weaken her first,” I said, throwing a glance back at Nova. She was still healing Crash, while George attacked the remaining spiders with ice and wind blasts that blew them apart. “And Nova’s busy, so we have to do it ourselves.”
Weaken Armor would keep me from attacking to maintain the hex, so that was no good, but that’s when it hit me. I remembered Sabre mentioning a skill called Corrosive Armor, saying it was a must-have for a necromancer. That particular skill hadn’t made it into the Titan Gate I played, but there was a move called Armor Acid that had to be similar.
I visualized the skill from TG and focused on doing it, then cast a hand at Arachne. “Corrosive Armor!” I called out.
As a thick beam of yellow-green light shot from me, Elizabeth said, “You have learned the skill Corrosive Armor. It is now available for use.”
Twenty-five mana dropped from my total, but the attack hit the she-spider right in the center and spread rapidly, shriveling her spider skin and seeping into her gleaming breastplate to leave it tarnished and cracked.
“No!” the spider queen screamed as she quickly shot blasts of fire at me, and then Terra. “You will not best me, you insignificant mortals!”
“Wanna bet?” Terra called as she sprang up from a dodging roll. “Shadow Strike!”
The squirming black tentacles shot out again and wrapped around various parts of the monstrous spider’s anatomy. This time when Terra ripped her hands apart, the tendrils cut into the boss and left bleeding wounds — and tore one of her front legs clean off.
Another awful, burbling scream rose from Queen Arachne. Her black eyes narrowed, and she broke into a clumsy, stumbling run with surprising speed for a seven-legged spider.
She was headed straight for Crash, Nova, and George.
“Not happening, bitch!” I shouted as I ran after her. Time to burn through the mana I had left and take her down for good. I cast Body to Soul, converting most of my remaining health into mana, and sprinted after the scrambling spider-beast and jumped.
As my leap carried me higher and further than I expected, I focused every bit of mana into my sword as I shouted, “Revering Vendetta!”
Searing emerald light infused the sword, throwing green beams across the room as I reared back and controlled the arc of the jump to drive straight at the spider queen. I landed on her bulging back end and plunged the sword completely into her, right at the base of her freakish torso.
“Congratulations!” Elizabeth informed me. “Revering Vendetta is now level 5. You may now select an elemental Branch skill from your Skills menu.”
With a final, ghastly wail, Queen Arachne skittered and toppled over, thudding to the ground.
I slid down the spider queen’s corpse and yanked my sword free. As I staggered toward the rest of them, my HUD informed me that it was actually over.
System message: Your party has completed the Fire level. You have earned 50 percent EXP. Your Amulet of Oblivion has grown in power.
My EXP bar filled rapidly, and Elizabeth told me I’d reached level 22 and earned some health and some mana. I barely heard her. I reminded myself to check when we got back to the main chamber as I reached the others and dropped my ass on the floor.
The portal that appeared in the center of the room looked about a hundred miles away.
Terra joined us seconds
after I’d sat down and plopped next to her sister. “Is anybody dead?”
“No, we all leveled,” Nova said as she patted Crash on the shoulder. “Even George.”
“Good. Me, too.” Terra closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. “I never want to see another spider again, ever in my life.”
“Now you’re talking,” I said as heartily as I could. “I’d say we should go back to the main chamber now, since we’re all charged up, but I think we need a few minutes.”
“Good call, boss,” George said as he stretched his tiny body and huddled into a ball. He didn’t even try to climb the few feet into Nova’s lap.
Crash looked at me, shook his head, and grinned. “Trying to beat my crazy title already?”
“Let’s call it a tie,” I said as I glanced at the spider queen’s still-smoldering body, hardly able to believe we’d beaten all four levels.
Unfortunately, there was probably a giant four-armed stone statue waiting to kill us on the other side of that portal.
33
I never thought it would be weird to re-enter a room and find it the same as when I’d left it, but nothing had changed in the main chamber of the dungeon. Even though it definitely should have.
Okay, one thing had. The fire crystal in the Shiva statue’s hand had lit up red, so now all four elemental crystals were glowing. But the statue didn’t move, and there were no monsters roaming the place. Just Big Stone Ugly, the white marble altar, the bonfire, and the closed doors leading to the elemental levels.
There was also no portal out of this place.
We took turns washing up at the pump and gathered around the bonfire. Nova had grabbed the boss drops, but I was in no hurry to identify them. We needed to rest and regen anyway, so there was time to just decompress for a moment. No one else wanted to do much of anything right away either. If the end boss was going to be nice enough to give us the moment, we were going to take it..
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