As we ventured through the dungeon, I began to realise that this seemed to be a spider's den of sorts.

There wasn't much in the first 7 floors, presumably because they were regularly cleaned out, and the few monsters we did meet were just slightly larger normal spiders. Heck, some were not even trying to kill us.

 

On the 8th floor was when things started going... weird.

After the whole fiasco with the 6 eyed... insect things, we ventured even deeper into the dungeon.

Well, I classify them as an insect, but they were most likely spiders. Except with 6 eyes and 6 legs. 

Now, how can I tell they were spiders even though they only had 6 eyes and legs? Well... we ventured deeper.

 

On the 9th floor...

 

The remaining two eyes and legs were not insect-like whatsoever.

They were human. Genuine human. With opposing thumbs and fingernails.

A pair of hands were where the first pair of legs were supposed to be.

And a pair of eyes... a pair of human eyes right beside their spinnerets staring right at us as they skittered and crawled around on the walls and ceilings.

A horror straight out of a Lovecraftian novel indeed.

 

Shuddering at the memory, we continued forwards, further down to the 10th floor.

Where only weird human-spider hybrid monsters were what dwelled there.

 

Don't get me wrong. I love anime spider-girls just as much as the next guy, call me superficial all you like, but those... things prompt an innate primal urge within me to shout for Hans to get ze flammenwerfer. 

Of course, my good ol' buddy Hans wasn't there with me, not that I have a good ol' buddy named Hans in the first place. As well as using fire in a rather cramped tunnel seems like a very reliable way to breathe in some fresh carbon monoxide, then promptly die.

All of which were not in my todo list for today.

 

So thus, I steeled myself and went in close and personal, giving those Lovecraftian monstrosities some well deserved Close Quarters Combat from a professional ex-military man. Honestly, they should be honoured.

Not only shall they witness it, but they all shall also experience it as I do not plan to leave any alive.

Why? Because they exhibit intelligence.

Often using their aerial manoeuvrability to swing around the walls. As well as all of them actively avoiding Zanko, implying that they learned to avoid him after the first few ones evaporated under his touch, also implying that they have a reliable way of communication between each other.

And the last thing any sane human would want, if they desire to keep their sanity, is those things wielding two knives while flipping around the air like they were part of some Cirque du Arachne. All while aiming only for our vitals.

 

At the 10th floor, we stopped for the day as we found a safe room.

Resting against the cool and weirdly damp and crumbly wall with a campfire warming me up, I decided to make some small talk with Yuki.

"Hey Yuki, if you are so strong, why were you without a party till I arrived?"

She, sitting cross-legged opposite me, replied "I previously only had one party, they tried to frame me, saying I stole a kill they rightfully earned. Luckily the adventurer's tag showed otherwise, proving that I did not steal the kill but since it was revealed that I was made by a monster, no one wanted to be part of my party."

"You were raised by a monster? Woah, that's so cool! It's like I am meeting an IRL Tarzan!" I exclaimed.

"M-monster? Was it scary?", asked Zanko.

"No, Creator was not scary. Also, who is the 'Tarzan' that you speak of?" asked Yuki, looking at me with a strange mixture of intrigued yet deadpan.

"Tarzan? He was a guy raised by apes and thought of himself as an ape. Well, anyway, that's not as interesting as what you said. I heard you call the monster... Creator?"

Yuki's expression seemed to change into a mixture of happy and forlorn, of course with a pinch of deadpan.

"Yes, Creator was..."

 

As Yuki got into her past, I got comfortable, leaning against the wall as the temperature dropped as the night progressed.

As my eyes drooped, my head leaned down, towards my body as my consciousness slowly drifted away.

 

I was in a tunnel, looking around, both sides of the tunnel seemed endless. A figure of womanly proportions approached me.

As it got closer her face became clearer. "Luci? What are you doing here?" I asked as soon as I recognised her. She strangely remained silent, continuing to walk. As she got closer and closer, her face seemed to morph, a set of mandibles protruding from it and her pair of human legs became pairs of spider legs.

Abruptly, she leaps towards me, covering the remaining 100 meters is an alarmingly fast pace.

Grabbing both sides of my head, it screeches at me.

 

"LEAVE!" 

 

"AH!"

I jolt awake, smacking my head against the wall I was leaning against. 

 

Crrr...

"Owww..." I reached my hand up as I rubbed the back of my head.

Crrruuum...

A loud crumbling noise loudly resounds behind me as the wall suddenly gives way.

 

I fall backwards, ending up in a lying down manner as I look up at the ceiling.

Two pairs of human eyes and 2 pairs of spider eyes looked down.

 

Damn. 

"SCREEEEEEEEEE!"

Using its oddly human mouth, it screeched causing 2 mandibles to pop out on either side of the mouth. 

Well, that's new. The previous ones did not have a human mouth.

 

I immediately jumped up to a standing position as Yuki and Zanko both gather beside me, no doubt awoke by the spider monster. Totally not because of my embarrassing shout.

Gathering our equipment, I remarked, "Huh. No wonder the spiders seem to come out of the walls, because they actually are."

Unsheathing our weapons, we crouched down as the monsters slowly crawled out of the hole in the wall.

Luckily, due to how small the hole was, they were forced to come out one by one, giving us an opportunity to farm them like we were playing whack-a-mole.

After slicing and dicing the monsters in our immediate vicinity, I notice that we now have a choice in the paths we take.

I turned around and asked my two other teammates, "Should we go explore this new hole or just continue going deeper into the dungeon?"

And as expected, both of them did not choose and let me decide. Yuki stating "Not enough information to make a clear decision." and Zanko, not wanting to be pressured by any choice he makes, truly, a coward in every sense of the word.

Of course, I only asked knowing that neither of them would have much of an opinion. Viva La Democracy!

 

One unanimous decision later, we all ventured into the hole.

 

Entering the new hole, a notification window popped up.

 

 

Area Discovered:

The Hidden Dungeon

 

 

After living with it for a while, I realised something. For a System, it really doesn't try that hard to remind us it is there. Level-ups, skill gains and every other sort of similar 'little' events will not cause any notifications.

The only things it ever deems worthy to notify us are all the significant achievements.

For example, gaining noteworthy titles like 'King' or 'Champion of the Empire'.

Or like now, entering a location previously unexplored. Hence, many could go their entire lives not knowing of its existence and hence why it is not well known amongst the general populace.

 

The light from the hole got dimmer as we ventured further from the safe zones.

 

From the shallowest shadow to the darkest depths.

Bone-chilling spider-human hybrids lurked everywhere.

A small innocuous patch of darkness could turn out to be a dastardly fall into a demon's maws.

And so we ventured, swiftly but carefully, into an area that none have documented.

Aside from the occasional monster peeking at us, and then promptly dying, nothing else really came to bother us. My anxiety and paranoia heightened from my multiple weeks worth of dungeon diving experience.

 

Well, that was until the waves started.

 

Hundreds of hybrids poured out of every crevice. 

Sone had 2 pairs of human eyes and human hands, while others had 1. And every so often, a creature roughly 1.5 times larger than its peers emerges. Having 3 pairs of human eyes and hands. They were also much tougher to deal with as their bulk allowed them to take more slices and hits before dying. They were, as Yuki would say, "Annoying." 

The brief moments of respite from the seemingly endless waves of nightmarish creatures were the only thing we had to look forward to. Every member of the party looked forward to the end as even though they are evil and terrifying, dungeons are, after all, fair. Proportional to its difficulty, the rewards would scale likewise. Adding on to us being the first, hence the dungeon's proverbial coffers are as of yet, unlooted.

 

Endless waves upon endless wave weaved confusion and fatigue upon our weary selves.

The moments of respite now seemed like a curse as it allowed our bodies to rest but not long enough for our bodies to feel rested. 

Of course, by us, I mean Yuki and I. As Zanko continued, trying to keep his terrified mind sane.

As we progressed past uncountable floors upon uncountable floors, the nightmarish creatures only got worse as we also slowly realised that there were no safe rooms.

Three pair hybrids became the norm as creatures even more horrifying than the previous slowly appeared. Spiders with only human eyes and hands, and rarely, some 3 times the size of normal ones. And some even have mouths in the palms of their hands, tongues wiggling and strongly acidic juices splattered everywhere.

It was at this point that I decided we needed our insurance to come into effect, no matter how traumatized said insurance already was.

"Zanko... huff, huff... I... huff, think you need to help us, huff... I doubt we can hold on any longer" I requested as blood and guts of unknown origins dripped down my body. Green gunk seemingly coated my whole body as my bruised and battered self leaned against the wall. Forcefully pushing my head and looking at Yuki, she seemed to be in a pretty bad position herself. Both of our armours tarnished by the acid, giving them weird darkish brown burn marks and cuts over our whole body, dripping and mixing with the green goop and spider guts.

 

Zanko terrified, slowly jittered his head to my direction. "Y-you think I c-can b-beat them?" asked Zanko. To which I replied, "Sure. Pigeons eat spiders right?", to which Zanko seemed to slightly relax after hearing me say that.

Wait... I said that as a joke. Is he actually some sort of pigeon birdman? Do pigeons and birdmen actually exist in this world?

As the next wave arrived, I told Zanko, "Good Luck. Have Fun. Don't Die.", while slightly chuckling at the last one, as if Zanko could actually die to such lowly creatures. I slowly slid down to the floor, both legs spread out on either side as I fell asleep, somehow.

 

In my dread, in a familiar tunnel, the same sequence happened yet again. Jumping towards me while screeching "LEAVE!", though, this time, I was already desensitized to Human-Spider hybrids jumping at my face.

I calmly grabbed her face before yelling into it, "SHUT UP! I'M TRYING TO SLEEP.", an action she seemed surprised to witness.

The dream slowly faded away with her astonished face in focus.

"Good Riddance." I thought as I fell deeper into my nap.

 

Waking up to the sound of, what sounded like water balloons popping, I turned my head to the right. Witnessing monsters from the abyss of my nightmares exploding into a green-tinged mist sure does fill an empty part of my dungeon weary soul. Looking at Yuki, she seemed to be of the same opinion as she seemed to silently appreciate the spectacle that is Zanko's overwhelming strength.

"O-oh! You all are awake? A-are you seeing this? L-look! I-I'm killing them!" says a jittery, excited Zanko. "Yes, good job insura-... Zanko. Very good job, Zanko."

As we got up, I felt sore all over. That was, surprisingly quite the workout huh?

"Looks like I can't just continue fighting. My body hurts all over. You'd have to fight for a bit more there, sorry about that." I said to Zanko, Yuki also nodding in agreement. Zanko replying, "Haha! N-no problem! I-I think I am f-finally pretty confident of myself n-now!"

 

As we walked and limped forwards while Zanko killed everything ahead, I softly muttered to myself while witnessing the glorious spectacle that is Zanko, "and THIS is the exact reason why we have him. Anticipating the unanticipated."

 

Ahead, a set of giant doors seemingly glowed in the distance. The abominations that are our spider hybrid tormentors seem to avoid the glow. We moved ahead and set up camp. 

Yuki, for once, started the conversation, saying "No wonder many could not find the boss monster of this dungeon. Even after reaching the bottom floor."

And indeed, the behaviour of the spider monstrosities and the glowing doors did scream 'BOSS MONSTER INSIDE'. 

 

We had a bigger than normal silent meal with everyone too tired to chatter. Though silent, the atmosphere was the opposite of negative as everyone looked forward to the end of this ordeal.

 

We went to sleep as our weary souls rest for the night... well what I assume to be night anyways. The dungeon was too dark to be able to tell.

As I thought that, I slowly drifted off to sleep.

 

We wake up the next day, refreshed and energized, and ate yet another larger portioned meal.

 

The three of us stood up and stared at the faintly glowing gigantic doors, apprehensive of what is to come. We slowly walked forwards and together, slowly pushed the doors aside and entered.