“Did you see that?” I asked my two companions.
“Uhhh, maybe we should think about going back,” Artus said. “That was a very large spider.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I gulped. I hadn’t gotten a clear idea of the monster’s size, but it was somewhere between “German shepherd,” and “draft horse.”
There was another movement that I caught out of the corner of my eye, and I looked at the far side of the room to see a spider limb the size of my own leg poke through the wall of webbing before it retreated back into the safety of the silk strands.
“That was the same spider, right?” I asked as I readied my axe and short sword.
“Uhhhh. I don’t think so,” Artus gasped.
“There is one above us. It is really pretty!” Allurie said behind me, and I looked up just in time to see the giant spider fall on top of us.
The monster wasn’t quite the size of a horse, but it probably could have taken down a pony. It fell with its eight legs spread out, and I saw that its abdomen had a red outline of a skull on it. It seemed to be a pretty clear indication that the developers were hinting this spider was super poisonous.
“Watch out!” I shouted as I shoved the short sword I held in my left hand up into the body of the giant spider. My first inclination had been to roll out of the way of its pounce, but the creature wasn’t trying to bite me, it was going after Artus, and the fenia flinched with my yell.
My sword pierced into the spider’s body, and I shoved the top flat part of my axe against its bloated abdomen. It let out a screech that filled the room like a cymbal crash, and I grunted as I twisted to slam the beast on the ground. A gallon of spider guts splattered onto the stone ground when the creature landed, and its front two legs scraped against the tile in a wounded attempt to get away from me.
I had already jumped next to the creature, and I brought the hand axe down on the thing’s eye cluster. The blade of my weapon sank in deeply, and the creature’s arms thrashed out again with a final seizure.
“Leo!” Artus yelled, and I spun to the side in time to spear the face of another spider jumping at me with my short sword. This one was a little smaller than the first spider, and my blade penetrated the creature’s carapace right in between its two eye clusters.
The force of the creature’s body hit me like a tackle from Calic. The handle of my short sword twisted in my grip as I fell, and I had to let it go when my naked back slammed into the stone. The creature’s mandibles moved sideways across its face, and the two limbs wiggled back and forth as its fangs tried to puncture me. I had wedged my axe under the body of the thing, and even though it looked as if it was about to die, the monster was hell bent on getting a taste of my naked flesh before it gave up the ghost.
I growled as my stomach tensed, and I pushed on my axe blade. The monster’s legs scraped against the stone around me, and I managed to bench press it a few inches off of my chest with a combination of the axe in my right hand, and my empty left hand pushing on the monster’s underbelly. As soon as I had enough space, I wriggled my knee under the creature’s bulk, and then I kicked it off with a thankful grunt.
“Leo, you are amazing! You lifted that spider up as if it was--” Allurie’s words were cut off when another spider descended from the ceiling and landed on top of the silver haired elf woman. She let out a yelp when she fell, and I sprang to my feet as quickly as I could.
Artus was standing next to the woman, and he had been quick enough to slam his emberbrand into the spider’s jaws. The thing was twisting around angrily, but the fenia wasn’t letting go of his magic torch, and the spider couldn’t get its fangs into Allurie with the brand hampering its movement.
I sprang past the cat-man and slammed my axe down on top of the spider. It let out a shriek of pain, but I just hit it again, and then again, and a third time before the top part of its head area split into two pieces like a giant pumpkin.
An ichor like brain fluid poured out of the creature’s body when it died, but Allurie managed to squirm out from underneath the beast before any of the brown sludge could get on her uniform. I grabbed her arm to help her up and noticed that she had kept a hold of the wine wand and two emberbrands when the creature attacked her.
“It wanted to eat me, and not in a good way.” She shook her pretty head at the creature. “But you saved me, Leo! I owe my life to you now! Hooray! It is so romantic!”
“Don’t get carried away. There might be more of them,” I said as I pulled another short sword from my belt and turned to face the rest of the web filled room. The three of us stood in silence for a few moments, but there was no more movement from the clouds of silky rope.
“I think that was all of them,” I said as I moved over to the spider I’d left my short sword impaled in. I yanked the weapon free, cleaned its blade on the hairy body of the giant monster, and then started to hack my way through the rest of the webbing.
We reached the other side of the room, and I found a stone door there. There was a metal flip handle on the edge of the door, and I lifted the rod to release the tension bar on the other side of the door. Then I pushed it open, and the three of us moved into the next room. I probably should have been a bit more cautious, but the spider guts smelled pretty bad, and I wanted to get out of this room quickly.
“Wonder what happened here. Looks like there was a battle,” Artus commented after I’d closed the stone door on the spider room.
There were five skeletons in the room, in fallen poses that made me think they had fought against something together. They actually faced away from the spider room we had just exited, and I wondered if these fallen adventurers had retreated to this space in an effort to escape something. It looked as if they had all once worn leather armor, but just as the skeleton we found on the floor above, these bones were beyond old, and their armor had deteriorated into something with the thickness of a paper shopping bag. Their weapons were mostly piles of rust, but I did see that one of the skeletons had a silver colored bracelet.
I tiptoed across the rubble and bits of bone, but I still managed to stub the toe on my left foot against one of the decaying corpses. The bones almost turned into dust when I pulled the bracelet off, and I flipped the circle of silver over in my hand to examine it.
Bracelet of Medium Armor- Once every four hours, the user can become encased in a weightless shroud of resistance. This armor works as if it was chainmail and will deflect most non-magical attacks. The effect lasts for three minutes and can be triggered by uttering the word “Armor.”
“This is cool. It creates magical armor around whoever wears it,” I told my two companions.
“How do you know? Most magical items need to be tested by scholars to determine their effects. Or an Identify Mind spell needs to be used by a shop owner.”
“I’m not sure how I know. I can just look at it and tell what it does.” I moved to put the bracelet on my wrist, but it wouldn’t fit over my hand. “Huh, that is weird. I would have thought it would enlarge to fit me. I think the ring did.”
“How do you know the ring changed sizes?” my friend asked.
“It fit on Allurie’s ring finger--”
“Wedding finger,” she corrected.
“Whatever, and it fits on my middle finger. My hands are much bigger than hers.”
“Oh, yes. They are,” she sighed as she licked her lips.
“But this doesn’t fit. Too bad,” I said as I tried it on my other hand. It looked like Artus’ paws were also too large, so I gave the bracelet to Allurie.
“Oh, Leo. This is the first piece of jewelry you have given to me. I will cherish it always,” the elf girl said as she slid it onto her slender wrist. “I can’t wait until we get to JerJay’s home. Then I can give you my bo--”
“Ah, ah, ah. Remember your job?” I asked.
“Oh, sorry.”
There were two more doors in this room, and I picked the one on the left first. The door was unlocked, and I saw that there was a lo
ng hallway filled with more spider webs at the end.
“Dang. More spiders. Guess this is to be expected.”
“You are expecting giant killer spiders?” Artus asked with surprise.
“Well, or goblins, or kobolds, or giant rats. I’m starting to get a feel for this dungeon.”
“Ewww. Rats are gross. We have to keep them out of the kitchen,” Allurie said.
I nodded at the elf girl, and then moved to cut more of the spider webs away. The hallway turned into another large room that was filled with more webbing that tickled my bare skin and feet. There wasn’t as much as in the previous spider room, so I guessed that there was only one or two of the monsters in the room. Sure enough, I spotted one crawling on the ceiling almost as soon as I entered. It wasn’t as big as the ones from the other room, but I could tell that the monster was angling to get the drop on us.
I pulled a dagger from my belt and flung the short blade upwards. The thing spun end over end and buried into the body of the creature where its legs connected. It let out an angry screech and tried to scurry away, but my attack had messed with the monster’s use of its limbs, and it couldn’t seem to hang onto the ceiling. The beast plunged from its climb, and then lay twitching on the ground a few dozen feet from us.
I pulled my short sword back out and waited for another spider to attack. A few more minutes passed while the spider continued to twitch on the ground, but as soon as its legs curled up above its body in the classic spider death pose I guessed that it was probably the only monster in the room. Once I thought it was safe to stand closer to the wall of webbing, I moved to retrieve my thrown dagger, and then gestured for my friends to follow me.
I cleared more of the silk strands and found a web wrapped body in the middle of the room. I didn’t know how old the corpse was, but the shape was much smaller than a human, elf, or fenia, and I didn’t think it looked as wide as a dwarf. I thought about cutting open the webbing to see if there was any loot inside, but the stench of the spider’s corpse a few feet from us reminded me that the cocooned body would probably smell all sorts of terrible.
The next room lacked spider webs, but there was other evidence of a battle here. More skeletons of fallen adventurers and ancient looking weapons that were almost rusted out of existence. I didn’t see any jewelry or armor that I could loot, so I moved to the next door.
“What do you think killed these people?” Artus asked.
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t the spiders,” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
“You saw the cocoon in the previous room. That is how spiders kill. They will use their poison to liquefy the bodies of their victim, and then they will suck them dry with their fangs. I’m thinking that these people fought something else, and the spiders moved in after this place was left abandoned.”
“Huh, good point. I’m not much of a warrior, and didn’t think about it that way.”
“I am thinking that there was a battle down here between humanoids. The rooms of skeletons are separated, so I think that once upon a time there might have been an invading army that tried to get into the castle through this area. The defenders had fallen back multiple times against a larger force. This battle might have happened many thousands of years ago.”
“Interesting hypothesis.” He nodded as he looked over the room again.
“Do you still hear the drumming?” I asked both of them as I moved to another door.
“Yes,” Artus said, and Allurie nodded.
“I’ve got a guess for that as well. I’m feeling better about escaping this place. If I’m right, we’ll find an exit out of here that will put us well outside of the city walls, maybe even in the Laven Mountains.
“That won’t be good. Those mountains are supposed to be filled with monsters.”
“We’ll figure that out when we get there. Let’s continue searching this level first.”
The next room was another web filled spider nest, but it was home to only one of the beasts, and I managed to dispatch it easily with my magical hand axe. The room after that was filled with more skeletons of fallen warriors, but there was no loot that I saw. Then we came to another stairwell. The gate here was open, and it hung on one hinge.
“As I thought. The castle was invaded. Whoever attacked never made it to the gates we had found. Maybe the very first skeleton we found had come up to the top level to warn them or something. I dunno for sure of course, but I do think we can get out of here if we keep going down.” I stepped toward the gate and could hear the distant sound of the drums from below. It actually did sound a lot like a dance beat, and I wondered if the game was setting up some sort of dramatic boss fight encounter with cool music.
“I’ll follow you, Leo. Grrr. Thank you for saving me.” The fenia put his paw on my bare shoulder and nodded at me.
“Let’s head down. Deal with whatever we find, and then get the hell out of this dungeon,” I said as I led them down the stairs toward the rhythmic drum pulse.
For the hundredth time, I wished I had my starter clothes, or at least pants and a pair of boots. I was sure there was a boss fight right around the corner, and I couldn’t believe I was going to have to do it naked.
Chapter 20
The staircase leading down to the third level was much longer than the previous two sets of steps, and it seemed that we walked for almost a hundred feet down the spiraling descent. The drumming increased in volume with every step that we took, but I could still tell that the noise originated from a bit further away.
We eventually reached the bottom of the stairs, and the floor of this level was made of gravel mixed with sand. The walls of the dungeon had also taken on a less man made look, and appeared to have been carved out of the cavern walls. It was all still in the shape of a tall hallway, and I saw the distant glow of emberbrands on the far wall some sixty feet from us at the end of the corridor.
The gravel wasn’t very rough, but a bunch of the pebbles still stuck to my bare feet when the three of us walked toward the beacons of light. Our own lights showed that the walls were painted with all sorts of strange spider images on them. They weren’t quite art in the way that a three-year old’s drawings weren’t art, but I could tell that whoever the original artist was, he or she had tried to display the big spiders with the red bellies along with other small brown figures.
We reached the end of the hallway, and the only way to go was left, but there was another set of stairs here, and I saw that it led down to a massive cavern. The drum sounds were booming loudly from this direction, and I knew that I had found the boss fight. I gestured for Allurie and Artus to wait behind the curve of the hallway while I moved forward, and they both nodded.
I crouched low, and kind of crawled on my bare knees to the edge of the hallway wall so I could stare down into the cavern. The place was probably larger than the bathhouse above us, and I saw that two streams of water actually ran through the opposite sides of the place. There were several large bonfires in the middle of the ground between the two flowing bodies of water, and each bonfire had small figures dancing around it.
They were rather far away from me, maybe four hundred yards down the stairs or so, but I could still make out the features of the creatures. They looked like small humanoid dogs, dressed in clothes, but with tails that looked scaly as if they were really lizards under all the fur. Their faces kind of looked like Yorkshire Terriers, and I guessed that Allurie would probably think they were cute.
Except that they weren’t cute. Each one carried a weapon in its hand. Either a club, a rusted sickle looking sword or a hammer. I guessed that they were small, maybe only three and a half feet tall, but there must have been a hundred of them down in the cavern below, and I didn’t think there was any way that I could battle all of them.
There was a sudden halt to the drumming, and the small monsters stopped their frantic dancing. My heart leapt into my chest for a second, and I thought that they must have broken off their celebration because they
knew I was hiding above them, but then I saw a figure walk into the bonfire-lit area from the darkness beyond. This figure stood much larger than the other monsters, and he had the body of a powerful warrior and a face that made me think of a half human, half jackal.
“Gnolbolds,” Artus whispered in my ear. I hadn’t heard him sneak up behind me across the gravel, and I almost leapt out of my skin. “They are like goblins, only they are a little smarter, faster, and normally follow one strong leader that is bigger than the others.”
I nodded at my friend’s words as I studied the large figure at the center of the clearing between the fire pits. The monster wore a long sword sheathed at its hip, and it raised both of its arms into the air with a loud barking sound. The other gnolbolds started yipping short barks, and the leader gestured for them to continue for a few more moments.
Then it started talking.
I half expected my UI to pop open a subtitle window, but it didn’t, and I had to guess at what the creature was growling to its followers. It started with some wide arm movements to the fire, and then it pointed to the two streams of water and back into the darkness where it came from. At last, the creature pointed up the stairs towards where Artus and I lay spying on them, and we both lowered our heads against the gravel by the stairs. The beast kept barking, or growling, and I guessed that it hadn’t seen us.
Then the creature made a final bark sound, and I peeked over the ledge again to see that another group of gnolbolds had emerged from the darkness carrying a person on top of their shoulders. It looked like a dwarven woman, and she struggled against the ropes that the small dog men had tied around her chest.
“Let me go you shit for brained assholes! I’m not interested in being your slave!” the dwarf woman screamed at the top of her lungs, and the boss gnolbold winced with the lash of her voice. Then he pointed up the stairs, and the group of dog men began to carry the bound woman up the steps.
“Stop it! Where are you taking me? You idiots don’t know who you are dealing with! Give me a weapon, and I’ll kill all of you ugly mutts in a few minutes. Stop!” the woman shouted as they carried her toward us.
Lion's Quest: Undefeated: A LitRPG Saga Page 29