Eventually, the darkness faded. I found myself standing at the dead-end of a cave. The path was lit by small clusters of blue glowing mushrooms. While the fungi were fun, the situation I found myself in was absolutely not. It seemed typical that I would find myself trapped in my first dungeon. It was an incredibly common trope in many light novels, and I should have been more careful around the door. The only thing that could have made my plight more stereotypical is if I was pushed into it by a bully trying to kill me, probably over a beautiful girl.

I needed to get my head in the game. I was stuck in hostile territory and needed to stay alert to danger. I re-packed my backpack, making sure that nothing was loose or would rattle around inside. I then tightened all of the straps I could, bringing it tight to my back, and closing in some of the pockets. It was slightly uncomfortable as it pressed on my wings, but I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t annoy me in combat, as I knew a fight was just around the corner. Perhaps literally.

First, I needed to check my general surroundings. After a glance and a check of each wall, I could tell that there was no exit right behind me. The rock was a dark grey and seemed like a type of limestone. All of the rock around this part of Texas was limestone, so it was familiar to me. It was full of small shells and other bits of rock and often was interspersed with holes. The surface was extremely rough and had the occasional jagged bit sticking out, definitely sharp enough to scratch or cut. It would probably behoove me to avoid the walls and stick to the center of the caves. It was a safe bet that spiders could be hiding in the cracks and shadows that the uneven fungal lighting caused.

After I felt confident that there was no easy way back, I was ready to go. Just as I started moving through, I felt an alert ping in the back of my head. Hoping for information regarding the dungeon, I quickly opened it.

Oh good. I just needed to get down to floor five in a 4 to 5 man rank 2 dungeon, and I was set. I was not confident. I thought that I was fairly strong compared to most rank 2 people, but I was a cautious person by nature. I did not like the idea of risking my life for a potential reward. I only wanted to enter into combat when I knew that I would win, and I did not like my present odds. That being said, there was probably no better place to train my new magic skills. I would just have to be as careful as possible.

As always, I didn’t like my odds of remaining hidden, particularly against spiders in their territory. My horns still produced dim light, and it was difficult to hide them. I attempted to wrap them in my extra shirt, but the amount of coverage that it offered was minimal, and it was hard to make it stay in place, so I had to forgo the extra stealth. Regardless, I would constantly use my quiet movement skills. The stealth derivation at the max level would make it extremely helpful, and there was likely a no better place to power level the skill. If I could get the jump on my enemies, that would improve my chances of survival greatly.

As I silently crept down the path, I kept a wary eye out for any potential attacks. This was only the first floor, so the enemies shouldn’t be too difficult to fight and kill. What’s more, considering standard dungeon convention, this should be the smallest floor and would give me an idea of what I was in for when I got into deeper levels.

Ahead of me, I could see that the cave opened into a larger space. I slowly crept closer, trying to hold my breath and limit the noise as much as possible. The open space was roughly shaped like an egg cut longways, with the point towards me. There were several egg pods strewn about the ground and guarding them were four large arachnids. Each one was around the size of a medium dog, thankfully nowhere near the size of the statues. Looking up at the ceiling, I spotted five more of the big bastards, patiently waiting for an unsuspecting dungeon delver so that they could get the drop on them. Well, they wouldn’t get the drop on me. That was for sure.

I identified one.

An appropriate name, given their black spindly legs and their skull patterned thorax. I wanted to test my melee attacks against these spiders to start with, so I decided to try and draw them into the tunnel with me where I could limit their ability to surround me. To start with, I needed to bait them towards me.

Raising both hands, I started a lightning channel aimed at the closest spider to me. Lightning arced and crackled across the distance, striking the spider along its thorax leaving charred lines wherever it touched. The bug shrieked in pain as the light and crackling lightning alerted the rest of its kin towards their intruder. With a series of thuds, seven arachnids descended to the ground on thin threads. I guess I missed a couple. Altogether, there were ten on the ground headed towards me, while one sat in a smoking pile in the back. Not willing to stop the lightning channel, I continued blasting as they approached, slowly retreating down the cave.

It seemed as if lightning was particularly affecting against them, as when they were hit the bugs tended to seize up in pain, and they were dying much quicker than I thought they should. As the second and third spider fell to my lightning, I dropped the channel and rose two storm-charged clawed hands to prepare my attack.

The first arachnid jumped at me, and I pierced its head with a straight blow, using my pointed fingers as a spear. Quickly throwing it off, I brought my right hand around and used my claws to slice into the next beast. And the one after that, and the one after that. One by one, the bugs threw themselves at me, and one by one they died. When it was down to the last spider, I used my foot charged with lightning to send the eight-legged monster careening into the limestone walls of the cavern. The fight lasted around a minute, and I was down 42 mana. Not bad. If the rest of the encounters of this level were set up the same way, I would have no problems similarly dealing with them.

Thankfully my gauntlets were watertight, as the goo from the inside of the spiders was literally dripping off of them. It was dark green and smelled vaguely metallic but at the same time almost sickly sweet. It reminded me of rot. Considering that these monsters were rank 2 yet were still so weak, it was safe to assume that they had some significant damage output. All of the bugs were trying desperately to bite me, so I could essentially guarantee that they had some kind of poison. I had no desire to become better acquainted with it.

As I moved into the room with the egg sacks, I looked back at the corpses of the bugs and realized that they were glowing with a blue light and giving off dust-like blue particles. In the order that I defeated them, the corpses vanished. Checking back over their remains, I found a spool of white spider silk and a single silver coin. I placed both into my backpack, before obliterating the large eggs with blasts of lightning. I needed to make sure that no spiders were creeping up on me from behind, so I needed to leave none alive.

From this large room, I saw two more pathways, one heading left, the other heading right. Whenever you were trapped in a maze, the sure-fire way to escape was to pick a wall and walk down it. I decided that I would be heading to the right on this floor. I had no way to leave markers in corridors I’d already been down, so I used some of my scrap paper and a pen to keep track of the twists and turns. Luckily, I didn’t run into any patrolling spiders down the hall I was walking. As I continued, I constantly regenerated mana, and by the time I reached the next monster room, I was topped off once again meaning that I had been walking for around 15 minutes, based on my mana regeneration.

This room was very similar to the previous one, with multiple egg sacks scattered around the ground, and a collection of spiders caring for them. In this room, though, there were 15 spiders on the ground and at least ten more on the ceiling. I wanted to deal with this one like before, but there were far too many spiders to just rely on a lightning channel. This time, I decided to charge up a pressurized air blade as well and save it for when the bugs got in close.

I charged up the blade, draining around 50 mana for it, and then held the spell in place. Just like before, I crept to the edge of the chamber and then starting using the lightning channel. In the interest of taking out as many of them as possible, I tried to force even more damage into the attack and saw a noticeable increase in the damage the spiders received from it. If before they were getting singed and charred, now their limbs were being blown off. When all of the spiders fell onto the ground, I decided to cease the lightning channel and push further into the room.

The spiders began to swarm towards me, crushing the injured beneath them as they hungrily rushed me. I waited until they were within four feet to unleash the wind attack. Around two feet off the ground. The blade swept out from me, obliterating any bug it touched, leaving them in gooey pieces. The few that survived were thrown back and stunned, and I made short work of them, moving from target to target, piercing their heads with my heel. What’s more, the eggs were also crushed in the pressure wave, meaning that I had greatly decreased the amount of cleanup I needed to do. I gathered another three silver coins and one more spool of thread and continued into the dungeon. There was only one path to take from the room, so my choice was obvious.

While the air attack was powerful, its major disadvantage was how loud it was. The sound that the blast created echoed through the halls and the spiders all around were probably alerted to it. The lightning channel was not quiet, but it was more of a crackling noise when compared to the piercing blast of a lightning bolt. I wanted to use my powerful attack as a test of its effectiveness, and a test of how the spiders react to an incoming threat, now that I knew I could take on large quantities of the drones without worrying too much. There was nothing else left but to keep on going, looking for the exit of this place.

I had been stuck searching this floor for around two hours now. I could imagine that with a team the exploration would be much faster, and I wouldn’t need to worry so much about stealth, but the pace was fine for now. Through that time, I had encountered another three rooms full of spiders, obliterating them each time with pressurized wind blades. It was surprisingly easy going considering I was in a rank 2 dungeon, but I figured that it was probably tooled towards people who weren’t beta testers, and I imagined that I had a bit of a leg up on them. I also had yet to encounter a spider whose level was over 6, so that could be a major factor as well. I had been bitten a single time through all of the monster rooms, and it managed to deal a staggering 25 poison damage. After that, I decided that I would be much more careful around these monsters, and I did everything I could to keep my distance or finish them off where they would be unable to harm me.

I was now coming into another large chamber, but this one was a bit different. In this chamber, there were the same scattered egg sacks like there were before, but there were also two gigantic ones, almost as tall as I was. In the back of the room was a large double door, and based on appearance, it could only be the entrance to the next floor. I was ready to see what lay ahead, but the occupants of the room meant that I needed to find a better plan of attack than before.

There was the same scattering of drones on the ground and ceiling. They numbered around 30 from what I could tell, which, while it was a very large number, was quite manageable with my AOE attacks. The real problem was the other spiders in the room. Guarding the two gigantic egg sacks were four massive orb weavers, each one around the size of a Great Dane. Their armor looked much thicker than that of the drones, and each one had a nasty pair of blades in place of the normal spider legs.

I identified them.

The four spiders were identical in every way, including their level, but it seemed like they had hit the first major milestone for rank 2 monsters. I guess I knew what was in store for me when I hit level 10. I seriously needed to get my strength and agility up to their new max values so that I could be more competitive in combat. The additional health would be handy as well.

My plan of attack for the room was relatively simple. I would need to go all out. I would cast both pressurized wind blade and lightning barrier and would have them active when I entered the room. Then, I would start the lightning channel to damage the big spiders from a distance. I would bait the drones together, wiping them out with the wind blade, and then I would claw down the rest of the spiders one by one, keeping them at bay with the lightning spheres. At all times, I would need to be ready to flee the room.

There was no time like the present, so I headed back down the path to where I could be a little bit quieter and began to pressurize air while simultaneously forming lightning balls. After 20 seconds, both spells were cast, and I was ready to go. Just like always, I started by blasting lightning channel through the doorway of the room. The one warrior I hit shrieked and moved to shield itself with its blade arms. In a strange move, it and the rest of its comrades refused to approach, which was a matter of concern. The drones acted just like I expected them to, dropping from the ceiling and rampaging towards me en masse.

It's hard to describe what around 30 giant spiders piling towards you looks like. All I can say was it didn’t look great, and I was excited for them to be splattered on the walls and not in my face. I turned the lightning channel towards the drones, charging it up as much as I could to slow down their approach. I watched my mana, and as soon as I hit 110 left, I cut the lightning channel and charged into the maelstrom of legs and bodies.

The lightning spheres kept the drones from approaching just as it was supposed to, but I was burning through spheres. The drones were too stupid to realize that if their friend died in a lightning ball, it meant that they would also die, so they just kept coming. Keeping the lightning cloak active ate up even more precious mana, so I needed to make my move soon. They hadn’t quite surrounded me as I wanted them to, but after a lucky spider got a bite in on my left boot, I let the pressurized blast go, and it did its work.

The drones were wrecked, and I had managed to take out all but four of them. I immediately went around and finished the four off, trying to minimize the amount of fodder I had to deal with. My lightning orbs were gone, and I only had 82 mana left. That was when things went wrong. First, I looked behind me to make sure I had a way to escape if needed, but there was something wrong.

Above the door I had entered in from, was a spider that looked disturbingly like the rock around it. It had four extremely long front legs interweaved with webs which it was currently using to block my way out. The spider itself remained still, but my escape route was gone. I identified the door.

That pun-named son of an arachnid! I was stuck, and considering the strange name, my guess was they functioned as permanent dungeon traps. I wasn’t even sure I could kill them. In the center of the room, I found the second thing I had missed.

As I was being swarmed by the drones, I made the mistake of not keeping my eyes on the warriors in the middle of the room. Apparently, they had been cutting open the giant eggs, because I now had the chance to observe the extremely unpleasant sight of two giant spiders covered in egg juice angrily looking at me and clicking their pinchers.

I identified them as well.

Yeah, that probably wasn’t good.