The Spider descended from the ceiling with deceptive elegance, sliding down on a glinting ribbon of steel silk so thin as to be barely visible. It landed gracefully in the middle of the room, looking at us with what seemed like… bored indifference? Discerning a magical spider’s emotions was unfortunately outside of my skill set.

It took only a moment to understand why it seemed so unconcerned. Strewn across the ground were dozens of human skeletons, and glancing upward, I could see still-decaying corpses wrapped up in the Spider’s web. Adventurers who hadn’t heeded the warning signs.

Despite having been fighting together for barely a few hours, our party fell into the formation we’d already gotten used to; still, I could see Leon still inching to draw his sword and fight among the frontline, but he disciplined himself, bow at the ready.

Silently, I cast my buffs over the entire group; the Spider may have been looking down on us, but even though I had full confidence in our ability to defeat it, I wouldn’t allow us to do the same mistake.

We approached cautiously, one step at a time, but in the end, the Spider’s sense of self-preservation prevailed and with a lightning-like leap, it was instantly upon us.

In an incredible feat of gymnastics, the Spider leaped over the two front liners, blitzing straight towards Leon, who, between his gray mane and wrinkled skin, it had likely assumed would be the weakest member of our team.

It wasn’t entirely wrong either, since as the only living and breathing member of our party, he possessed a certain frailty that the rest of us didn’t have. But his decades of experience spoke for themselves, and it was only by a silver that the gargantuan Spider avoided being stabbed through the eye by an arrow. 

Finding itself on the back foot, the Spider jumped away, retreating to a fair distance as it warily eyed the older man.

“I thought you were supposed to use the bow to shoot it,” Sarah commented, having turned just in time to catch the end of the action.

“Focus,” Leon chastised her, and he sounded slightly out of breath, “this one is no joke. Don’t let your guard down.”

She paled before nodding grimly.

“Do we wait for it to attack?” Shiro asked, uncertainty clear in his voice. “It’s faster than us, even with the buffs…”

It was a good question, and I was at a loss. In my adventuring days, I had tended to leave these kinds of tactical decisions to literally anyone else. I glanced at Leon, but he just shook his head; he was in teacher mode and would give them no hints.

Before I could explain this to the kids, I was interrupted by a flash of movement coming from the Spider — it seemed it had had enough of waiting and was ready for attempt number two.

It attempted the same move, the graceful somersault into the backline, but this time my minions were ready. Sarah nicked one of its legs as it flew over her, drawing first blood in this fight, nearly severing it part-way. It trailed blood as it landed in front of me, but it seemed determined to trade a wound for a wound. It glided towards me with dazzling speed, and only at the last moment did I gather enough of my wits to Blink forward, suddenly appearing behind it.

Honestly speaking, I had expected it to barrel into the wall after finding its target gone, but I should have given the Spider more credit — it shot a thread of towards the ceiling, using it to change its trajectory and swing like a pendulum back to safety.

“We need to trap it somehow,” Sarah said, keeping her eyes on the oversized arachnid. “If we continue like this, it’ll just keep evading forever.”

“Do you have any ideas, then?” Shiro asked, but Sarah just shrugged. He then turned to me. “Can’t you cast Slow on it, like the other spiders?”

“I could try, but it’s very unlikely it’ll affect it much, if at all. The thing is suffused with mana, this—”

The Spider must have taken offense at my explanation because it didn’t give me enough time to finish. Without closing the distance, it shot a string of web right towards my head, and it was only Shiro’s vigilance that kept my face intact as he literally slapped it away with his bare hands.

“Try anyway,” he said, completely ignoring the blood on his hands.

I suppressed my annoyance at being ordered around by a mere child, and one in a subordinate position at that — after all, I was the one who’d all but put the two in charge of the tactical side of our expedition. I had no room to complain.

With an effort of will, I cast Slow on the Spider. It stuck, if barely, but perhaps even the lessened effect would be enough to make a difference.

The Spider must have noticed the hostile action, as it released an unearthly shriek, charging again towards our party.

Despite my reservations, Shiro had been right; as the Spider tried to leap again, the minute difference in speed was enough to earn Sarah a good strike against the arachnid, but even more importantly, it allowed Shiro to throw himself into it, grappling onto one of its hind legs.

The Spider crashed to the ground, unbalanced by the sudden weight, and began flailing wildly in an attempt to unlatch the Hero holding onto it.

Despite its struggles, the fight was essentially now over. Even though it managed to injure the boy several times in its effort to free itself, Shiro’s grip seemed only to strengthen, and with the Spider pinned in place, Sarah was able to get some good strikes in, going straight for the vital areas — or, I suppose, what looked like vital areas. Spider anatomy was none of our specialties.

Leon and I were content to sit back and let the kids finish the fight on their own. After all, it was mostly their own victory. 

Eventually, the Spider ceased struggling, its remaining legs curling up as it gave its last breath.

“Huh,” Shiro commented, a look of bewilderment on his face as he took in the faintly smoking corpse of the monster. “I expected it to be weak when rooted in place, but that felt almost a bit too easy.”

Sarah raised an annoyed brow at her comrade. “Will you stop jinxing it? It’s already dangerous enough as it is.”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “Relax, it’s dead now; or, what, do you think it’ll explode into a swarm of smaller spiders?”

“You did not just—” Sarah began, but she never got to finish her sentence as the Spider corpse began to glow ominously. Cursing, she held her sword at the ready, glaring daggers in Shiro’s direction.

I couldn’t help it — I laughed, and Leon joined in a second later. Sarah gave us a confused glance, which only made me laugh harder.

A second later, the Spider dispersed into a smoky substance, seeping into the floor and leaving behind only a few parts — the mandibles, I could see, and something else — of the fallen Spider.

Sarah glowered unhappily. “Yes, yes, very funny.”

“You need to stop believing in superstitions,” Shiro told her, fanning her embarrassment.

“Whatever,” she said, turning around to inspect the loot.

The mandibles and an oversized silk gland seemed to be our spoils for this fight. No wonder Adventurers still attempted to clear this dungeon — the silk gland of a Steelsilk Spider would fetch a pretty penny, especially one as big as the one before us. The mandibles, as well, could be fashioned into some interesting weapons.

“That’s all?” she asked, sounding disappointed.

“That’s actually a good yield,” Leon commented.

“I was expecting it to drop weapons, or gold, or something like that,” she said, and Shiro nodded in agreement.

I raised an eyebrow. “Where would a giant spider keep any of that? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Sarah scoffed. “I don’t know, a pocket dimension, maybe? And there’s a lot of things that don’t make sense about this world.”

“Yup,” Shiro agreed. “Though, I’m surprised it dropped anything in the first place. And that it disappeared like that, actually.”

“What’s so weird about that?” I asked, puzzled. It was basic magical theory. “The monsters in these dungeons are basically more living mana than animal. If they die, the mana doesn’t have something holding it together and disperses.”

“And the drops?” Sarah challenged.

“Parts of the monster with a lower mana density,” Leon answered, and the pair looked surprised to see him replying to a question about magic. He smiled, continuing, “Any Adventurer worth their salt knows this. They have just enough mana content not to disappear, but it’s still way higher than what you’d find in a normal animal. This makes monster parts very valuable.”

“Huh,” she said, as she bent down to pick up one of the mandibles. She ran her thumb across its length, eliciting a hiss when it pierced her skin. “Damn, you could probably make a mean dagger out of this.”

“That’s how they’re usually used,” Leon confirmed. “Or in your case, it’d make sense to have them fashioned into a set of knuckles,” he said, turning to Shiro. “You seem to be going for a brawler type of fighter, right?”

Shiro scratched the back of his neck, wincing slightly. “I haven’t completely decided yet, but yeah, it seems to fit me the best right now.”

Leon nodded. “We’ll have them crafted when we get back, then.”

Sarah was still crouching over the remaining loot. “And what’s this?” she asked, pointing at the still-warm organ. “It looks gross.”

“It’s the Spider’s silk gland,” Leon explained. “It should have a fair bit of silk in its malleable state, so there’s a lot of things you can make with it.” He scratched his chin, thinking. “We can sort it out when we get back, though.”

Sarah nodded, picking up the rest of the items, and her nose scrunched in disgust as she handled the fleshy organ. She walked towards the back of the room, dumping the loot in the arms of the already over-encumbered baggage wight.

“Okay, so, what now?” Shiro asked, looking to me for guidance. I raised a questioning eyebrow at Leon, answered the silent query with a shake of his head. “We continue on, then. Got plenty of the dungeon left to explore.” 

“Didn’t you want to test out how the stat points work?” Sarah asked as we moved towards the far end of the cavern.

“We can do that when we stop for the night,” I replied. “For now, focus up. It should get much harder from now on.”

She nodded, and we fell into our usual formation as we left the cavernous chamber through another narrow tunnel. Whereas the first tunnel was mostly featureless, unremarkable rock, this one had walls covered in a softly glowing moss.

Enraptured, Shiro approached the wall, placing his hand on the mossy surface only to instantly retract it with a hiss. I could almost hear the eye-roll in Leon’s eyes as he chastised the young Hero. “If it’s alive and in a dungeon, it’s almost definitely trying to kill you.”

“That would have been helpful to know before I touched it,” the boy sulked.

Leon shook his head. “Not with you. You’re the kind that only learns not to touch hot coals after getting burned — and twice, probably.”

“No, I’m— actually, that’s probably true,” Shiro admitted sheepishly. “What does it even do?” he asked, glancing at the glowing wall.

Leon shrugged.

“Judging by the distribution of mana, it should simply be highly corrosive,” I answered in his stead, after giving the walls a look-over with Soul Vision. I was using it for academic purposes so it wasn’t cheating.

“Well, then. No touching the murder moss,” Sarah concluded, putting an end to the discussion.

We walked through the tunnel for nearly a quarter of an hour without running into any monsters, which was definitely odd. While big patches without monsters weren’t exactly uncommon, they didn’t usually happen in dungeons with a linear layout like the Steelsilk Grotto had been so far.

A handful of minutes later we encountered a fork in the tunnel. I smiled inwardly, feeling vindicated.

“Which way should we go?” Shiro asked, trying to peer into each of the twinned corridors.

“Whichever way you like,” Leon answered with a shrug.

Sarah raised a finger to her lips, giving it a lick, then held it up for a few moments, her brow crunching into a frown. After a few moments, she shrugged. “I got nothing.”

“Whatever, let’s just pick one at random,” Shiro suggested.

“Left, then.” Sarah decided, and I made to follow the rest of the group as we delved deeper into the dungeon.

I took one last glance at the other corridor, and for an instant, I thought I could see a pair of glowing eyes blinking lazily in the distance