“When it comes to any desperate situation, you have to be ready to use anything and everything you have on hand to survive and grab victory from your enemy’s cold, dead hands. And when I say everything, I mean everything.

Back during my days in the army, I was in charge of guarding a border fort built around a small agricultural village. The land wasn’t good for growing many crops save for grass, so they mostly focused on herding animals, namely cows. Every day, they’d bring the animals out of the surrounding walls to graze, and bring them back when the sun would set.

That all stopped when we were put under siege by the Johovians.

They brought a massive army led by one of the most arrogant [Generals] I’ve ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes and ears on. Every day, he’d brag about how they were going to tear down our walls and turn our fanciest buildings into his personal latrine. It was like clockwork with the sunrise, I could hardly take it!

But too bad for both of us, things ended in a stalemate. The [General] couldn’t even scratch our walls, but we didn’t have the means of fighting back, and reinforcements were over a month away. Sure, we could just wait the siege out. Since it was an agricultural village, there was plenty of food stored for everyone. But there was one thing that forced me to act.

With the cows unable to go out to properly graze, they didn’t have anywhere to… go to the bathroom. The smell was bad, and somehow even ended up in the fortified central tower!

But this is where what I said comes into play. I had to use everything I had, and what did I have more of than I wanted? Manure.

Apparently, enough manure packed into a tight area produces a large amount of fumes that not only smell, but tend to be explosive. So that was the basis of our plan.

We broke down some of the walls from our side to let the invading forces in while evacuating all of the villagers and troops to the next set of walls around the fortress, while taking the largest building in the town’s outskirts and decorating it to the nines with luxury. The enemy [General] couldn’t help himself and sat upon the throne we set up. Just above a cellar filled to the brim with manure!

One errant torch from his soldiers, and kablooie! No more enemy [General]! And the thing about armies is that most of their strength is derived by their officers, due to their Skills and other Class effects. So since they were already inside our walls, it was easy to have our own soldiers rush in and get them to quickly surrender.

So when I say use everything you have to win a fight, I mean everything.”

-Personal account of Yargus Acc, retired [General]

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It was a good plan, in all honesty. It even had precedence for working before! It was just that this time, the spiders were up against something more powerful than he had any right to be.

The metal-web lasso dug well past fur and into Howl’s skin. With the force the [Alpha Dungeon Hound] pulled with, the string cut into flesh and drew blood, but he didn’t scream. He didn’t cry, yowl, or beg. He howled and pulled.

The hound’s eyes were alight with rage, a righteous fury that burned incandescent compared to the growing desperation of the veteran spiders. Just about all of them were hanging onto the two ends of the rope, but while their combined strength was more than enough for the [Adult Dungeon Boar], their new opponent was proving to be something else entirely.

It took only a precious few seconds before the victor of the contest was determined. The string around the [Alpha Dungeon Hound]’s leg did not snap, but with a single screaming forceful kick, every single spider hanging on was thrown off and sent flying.

One of the smaller veteran spiders, who was pulling as hard as it could, was sent flying. The poor arachnid went sailing through the air from the force of the release, and every spider and smaller dungeon hound stopped to watch. The veteran flew past all of the traps in a wide arc, and landed right in the front alcove of the web fortress.

Right on top of the vial of blue liquid.

Click winced as the treasure they’d worked so hard to retrieve went rolling across the web floor. Despite the stickiness of the silk surface, the force with which the veteran spider landed on the bottle was more than enough to make up for it.

But the vial soon slid to a stop. On the precarious edge.

Click let out a sigh.

And then the veteran spider got up and bumped into the bottle.

It tipped over the edge and fell to the ground, shattering and showering its contents over a trio of smaller spiders who were gathered there.

AAAAAAAAH! Click screamed in their head at the loss, though they didn’t have time to focus on it for long. There was still a certain [Alpha Dungeon Hound] to worry about.

Howl let out another yell before charging into the fray with his teeth bared. He began to bite and step on the smaller spiders, drawing blood, but still not fast enough to save his tribe from the traps they were already in the way of. It didn’t take him long to realize this however, and he quickly thought up a different plan.

What is that idiot doing?! Click screamed to themselves.

Howl jumped over the nearest [Dungeon Hound], a young Juvenile, and ran right into a flying whipcord. He let out a muffled yip of pain, but quickly recovered. And then jumped in front of another hound to take a series of venom and web shots to his flank. Howl didn’t stop there, however, and began to take even more hits, some dealing heavy damage and others only a minor nuisance.

Click focused an [Observation] onto the [Alpha Dungeon Hound] after every hit.

Health Points

190/204

…

Health Points

177/204

…

Health Points

153/204

It kept going, the massive hound just kept running into the traps and taking the damage all for himself.

If he gets killed by the end of this, then making the other hounds disperse should hopefully be trivial, since he’s the one directing this attack with Skills. Click lifted their mandibles in the facsimile of a smile. What they saw next made Click raise them even higher.

Howl turned towards the web fortress and began to run in a straight line towards it. And every step of the way, a different trap went off and struck the hound. Whipcords, envenomed spittle, even a large, blanket sized web fell onto the [Alpha Dungeon Hound], slowing him down every step of the way.

But as Click saw the suicidal charge play out and the predator’s health slowly go lower and lower, the [Spider Army Commander] felt something niggling the back of their head. In the heat of the battle below, they couldn’t quite place it, but the lead spider knew by now not to ignore those kinds of feelings.

[Command Subordinates]! Get back here now, to the front of the fortress! Go along the sides, stay away from the [Alpha Dungeon Hound] and the traps!

The large spiders complied, and made their way back to the front. Their pace was quicker than Howl’s only because they weren’t constantly being pelted with heavy damage. And that was the only reason they were able to make it back to the front a moment before Howl reached there himself.

The [Alpha Dungeon Hound] let out a bark. “Come!”

Huh? Click hesitated for a moment before a forgotten Skill made itself known once more.

[Skill level up! Decipher Language (7)]

Wait, is he asking me to come? He was stupid enough to run into all of those traps, can he really be dumb enough to think I’ll come down to fight him myself?!

That wasn’t what Howl meant.

The sound of pattering began to fill the cavern, as rough paw pads began to pound upon the dusty ground. A small cloud of dust began to rise up for a brief instant as every single [Dungeon Hound] towards the back made their charge, following the path their leader took through the trap-riddled killzone.

No man’s land was quickly filled with every man, woman, and child hound as they let out a terrible battle cry in defense of their leader, in sadness at his sacrifice, and triumph for the vengeance they were about to enact.

No, no! He ran into those traps to clear them out! Did he know he could survive them and let his underlings finish the job?!

Through the pain, Howl held a dumb grin on his face. He might not have understood numbers all that much, but knew at any moment that his health was greater than zero.

Health Points

61/204

[Observation] allowed Click to be privy to the very same information.

Everything. We threw everything at him and he still has more than a quarter of his health left! Can we even kill him before he and his army kill all of us?

One last howl echoed from every single [Dungeon Hound] present, one last battle cry, an epitaph for the dungeon spiders.

They began to charge. And the first row of gathered hounds tripped on themselves and fell to the ground. The waves behind them tripped in turn on the ones in front of them, and created a massive pile up that made even Howl stop and turn back.

Click swore they saw a spark come out of one of the smaller hounds.

Another one came out and jumped onto the [Alpha Dungeon Hound] who took a step away from the sensation and began to lick at his fur on the point of impact.

Crackle

Every creature present turned to look at the source of the sound.

One of the spiders standing on the fortress’ front alcove, one of the very same ones doused in the strange blue liquid, had two arms lifted into the air, and a line of electricity traveled between their tips.

Well, this certainly changes things. Click thought. What was even in that vial?!