To the parents of Colvin:

Thank you for inquiring about your child’s score in the most recent math test. I would like to inform you that it was in fact graded correctly and that no, I am not “as blind as an [Echo-Bat] in a bustling tavern and as dumb as a [Magma Eel] living in the Frozen Wastes. However, your reasoning behind these concerns bring up concerns of my own.

I recognize your positions in the Shostran Royal Academy, and how you were able to use your connections to allow Colvin to obtain the [Mathematician] class at such a young age. The attribute bonuses and abilities provided by the Class will no doubt be of great help to your child in their academic career. However, they are no substitute for hard work.

Yes, even with such an illustrious Class and rare abilities.

For example, the [Arithmetic] Skill that is a well-known staple of all academia-oriented Classes, can only be used to perform addition at level one. Multiplication is unlocked at level ten. Guess what the test was on?

When I first obtained [Arithmetic], I was able to raise it to level twelve just by trying to follow a recipe when making dinner. If your child had simply done their assigned homework since they obtained their Class a month ago instead of relying on an underleveled Skill, they would have no doubt received perfect marks on the test.

Having a Skill is no substitute for hard work, and the Skill needs to be leveled and gotten used to in order to be properly effective. As members of the Shostran Royal Academy, I’m sure you are very well-versed in the intricacies of the System that grants us Skills and Classes, so it seems that this tidbit is missing from their extensive records. I graciously offer this information to be added in.”

- Letter taken from a parent-teacher correspondence at Saint Coteslia Elementary School

 

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The tearing of flesh abruptly stopped and was replaced with the clinking of mandibles on bone.

That was fast.

Click couldn’t help but feel disappointed at how quickly they’d gone through their meal, but not as disappointed as Bored, who immediately began trying to break through the skeleton to reach what little marrow lay inside.

The other spiders decided to head back to the web structure to continue their work, feeling that going through the trouble of extracting that last bit of food wasn’t worth the effort. However, Click could still see them make sidelong glances towards the larger arachnid every once in a while.

If you’re so jealous, you could do the same thing too. The lead spider looked at the diminutive skeleton being manhandled. Bored might have figured out that there’s more food inside the bones out of desperation to get a proper fill, but that’s not stopping any of you from copying.

Click decided not to relay that comment using their Skill, [Command Subordinates], which could either take control of another spider or relay instructions and information, depending on how it was used.

 

Skill Name	Level	Description
Command Subordinates	20	Command subordinate members of your organization. They will follow your will as if it were an instinct. Can target specific subordinates to command. Instinctively know how much charge this Skill has available.

 

Click didn’t exactly know the source of the strange power, how it worked, or why they were lucky enough to receive it. All the spiders were seemingly born with an enigmatic voice whispering in their ear. It put numbers to their strengths, let them morph into new forms when they proved their worth through gaining experience, and granted special abilities called “Skills” that could be called on with merely a thought.

[Command Subordinates] was one of those Skills available to Click, along with several others. [Venom Gland], [Silk Spinning], [Observation], [One Army, One Being], [Decipher Language], [Establish Hierarchy]. Each had a name, a level, and a description.

The first two were standard abilities every spider had, the ability to envenom their fangs and spin webs. [Observation] let Click look at the stats and Skills of another creature that apparently had access to the same strange source of power. Which regrettably, or thankfully, was everything in this cave that could kill them. Knowledge was power, after all.

[One Army, One Being] let Click group several spiders together for the purpose of using their Skills. It saved on whatever juice [Command Subordinates] ran on, since Click only had to make a single use of it for each group, rather than each spider.

And finally, there was [Decipher Language] and [Establish Hierarchy]. They came about not through Click’s subspecies as a [Spider Army Commander], but through something called a Class. The lead spider didn’t exactly know what a Class was other than it had something to do with what you did rather than what you were, but they had a feeling that they weren’t… supposed to have one.

[Anthropologist], level four. Who knew what that was, but it was Click’s class, and it had some connection to the now-gone intruders.

Those enigmatic bipeds communicated through sound, and the Skill [Decipher Language] had allowed Click to find meaning in their otherwise seeming gibberish. But when it came to [Establish Hierarchy] however, Click was still in the dark. It was still at level one and its description read “Establish a chain of command within subordinates.” Click saw the intruders doing something like that, with a shorter, bearded member of the group being the one in charge of smaller groups that each had their own sub-leaders.

Skills could be manually activated like [Command Subordinates] or were passive like [Silk Spinning] where they applied their effect at all times. Trying to explicitly call forth [Establish Hierarchy] yielded nothing, so it was likely passive, but Click had no clue how to actually use it.

Another problem for another day.

“URRROAAAHHH!!!”

Definitely for another day, we have a new problem for right now! [Command Subordinates], everyone to their positions!

Click turned their eyes towards the entrance to their corner of the cave in anticipation and almost choked on the last bit of food in their mouth. Several silken ropes lay on the ground at the entrance to their territory, unwound and unbound to the ceiling.

Correction, stop in front of the web! Click shouted through their Skill, causing the others to quickly come to a halt. A few of them even had to take a few steps back to properly be in position.

Afterward everyone was in place and waiting for several long moments, it didn’t take long before a pair of [Juvenile Dungeon Hounds] to saunter into view.

Their pace was slow, and their heads slowly swiveled on their necks to take everything in around them, but they seemed to pass over the shadows. Nooks and crannies were passed by without a second thought. The fallen rope traps were merely given a quick sniff, nibble, and a huff.

The hounds then spotted the massive webbed structure at the back, inhaled, and began a slightly faster trot towards their meal.

The sheer arrogance, don’t they realize what they’re walking into? Every [Dungeon Hound] knows what they’re risking by facing us. Click thought, but then froze. Something was very different from these two hounds.

They were big.

Nowhere near as large as a proper [Dungeon Hound], these ones were still juveniles, but they were still larger than the ones who had just attacked.

Click took a closer look, and saw that their fur had a fuller sheen to it in the dim light, and their ribs didn’t stick out of their sides like the previous hounds.

[Observation]

 

Juvenile Dungeon Hound (Level 1)	Name: N/A
Soul Link: Rockfort Hamlet Dungeon Core Ṁ̶̡̄̒͜o̷͚͍̊͒̃̓̿ǰ̵̧̢̭̫̪a̷͇̋̿̿̽͘ ̵̨̛̥͎͉́̋̈͘D̵̝̭͇̓̎̅ȋ̷̯͔̤̑͋̑t̴̛͉͈̟̽̑͑h̸̪̲̩̗̀̉̃͝͠ä̵͕̼̠́̊̓̕b̴̗͕̏͊̂̓̚ä̷̡̰̱͕̒̌̋	Classes: N/A

Statistic	Amount
Health Points	30
Body	15
Intellect	3
Soul	8

Skill Name	Level	Description
Iron Fangs	1	Teeth are reinforced to be harder and sharper
Pack Tactics	1	Instinctively understand the desires of the rest of the pack
Prey Detection	1	Instinctually sense the location of prey, and its movements

 

Tables flashed into Click's vision, relaying names, numbers, and meaning without any symbols, bringing the information directly into Click’s mind. It was an experience they’d gotten used to soon after being born by being shown such information about themselves after every step of improvement. Obtaining the [Observation] Skill and being able to see this information about others made Click an expert, as it was their go-to ability when they were in a novel situation.

And this definitely counted as one.

Everything is level one. Click tilted their head, trying to make sense of what was essentially a blank piece of paper. They’re too big to be newborns, and there’s no way they hunted the food they needed to grow this big without leveling up their Skills. Were they being fed this entire time?

Click remembered the last three hounds who showed up mere minutes ago.

Not when there’s so little for everyone to eat. Something’s going on.

The lead spider wasn’t one to take undue risk, especially in the face of an unknown enemy. But when that enemy was coming to eat you, there wasn’t much room for reconnaissance.

[Webslinger Spiders], pick up a [Shadow Spider] or two each and start rappelling down to the hounds.

The smaller arachnids did as instructed, and quickly made their way down from the ceiling towards the two meandering hounds, who hadn’t even bothered to look up once. The smattering of spiders landed on the monsters’ short fur and immediately began biting.

The duo began howling in pain while jumping up and down, as if trying to make sense of the new sensation. Eventually they caught on and reacted by rolling in the ground.

[Shadow Spiders], grab back onto the [Webslinger Spiders]. [Webslingers], go back up.

The spiders did so, barely managing to avoid being crushed under the weight of the two [Juvenile Dungeon Hounds].

It can’t be this easy…

As soon as the hounds got back up, they looked back towards the web structure and continued their trot. Click commanded the spiders to come back down and begin biting again.

Right?

And then more rolling.

And more going back up.

This time, the duo seemed to learn their lesson. Rather than trot towards the web, they looked up and began to bark at the spiders hanging several feet above them.

They continued for several seconds, and even tried jumping a few times, but none of them got close to their attackers.

This has to be a trap, right? Click peeked further out of the web and looked towards the corners and even further out to see if there was another group of [Dungeon Hounds] secretly advancing on the spiders’ territory.

There was in fact no one advancing on them, secretly or otherwise.

As Click tried to puzzle together what was going on, the pair of hounds grew bored of their impotent attempts at taking revenge, and turned back towards the web.

That was a warning, you’re supposed to run! Click screamed the words internally and clicked their mandibles together in frustration at how they couldn’t get the information across externally as well.

However, Bored practically vibrated in place at the base of the webbed structure.

At least one of us is happy.

The hounds abandoned their previous trot and dashed at the web. Growls sang on their lips as drool glistened on their immaculate fangs.

Bored took this as its cue to charge back, quickly closing the distance between the two groups in little time.

However in that little time, the smaller spiders hanging from above, having gotten into the pattern of Click’s previous commands, followed along with the cycle and began swinging from the ceiling. They managed to keep pace with these hounds, whose dashes weren’t as mad or desperate as the previous one, and landed on top of them once more.

Bored was still closing in on the other side, with three feet between them, two, one-

The pair of hounds’ legs gave out from beneath them and they tumbled to the ground in front of the massive spider.

No howl, bark, or even a whimper. They simply fell with life leaving their eyes.

Bored, ready to take the two hounds down with a twin clothesline, stopped just in front of them. The massive spider slowly lifted a pair of legs and pushed them into the snouts of each of the hounds, then waited.

No response.

The overflow of energy within the Alpha spider evaporated instantly, and Bored began to sag into the ground, the weight of disappointment too much for its eight powerful legs to support.

Great, now none of us are happy. Click let their mandibles droop and walked over to their war spoils. The spiders could at least eat better today than they had in the past few weeks.