POV Eliza

 

After I got past the floor with the beetles, I went to floor 3. There were supposed to be spiders here and I quickly saw that it was true. The plain consisted largely of forests and the remains of spider webs could be seen everywhere. I touched one as a test and it stuck right to my fingers. Rubbing didn't help, on the contrary, it only made it stick harder. I couldn't get it off. Only when I ran a little water over them they could be removed. I wasn't allowed to get too close to the webs as not to get stucked. I used a modified tactic used on floor 2. I approached within sight of a net stretched between the trees and waited. But no spider appeared. I approached cautiously and couldn't detect any spiders. Was there no spider here? But another skill of mine spoke against this. My Sense Danger skill indicated danger the closer I got. So there were spiders here, but I couldn't see or feel them. That meant my value wasn't high enough or they had a stealth skill. I wondered how I could safely lure them out. I checked the items I had brought with me to see if any of them were suitable for throwing. But I didn't find anything useful.

 

Then I mentally searched through my spells. I found a few worth trying. I got close enough to cast my smallest air spell. It was the windgust. He made the whole net flutter. Two spiders then quickly emerged from the treetops and I immediately felt their presence. They rushed towards me immediatly. I threw one of my knives at the first one, but missed. I quickly realized my mistake because there wasn't enough time to cast a spell before the spiders got to me. So I had to trust in my new spear and that I could dodge their attacks. I hit the first spider with my spear, but because of my lack of strength I don't do enough damage to defeat it directly. Now both spiders were on me and attacked directly. They used jump attacks followed by bitting. I was able to avoid one, but the second spider bit me on my left thigh. A sharp pain shot through my leg and I felt a slight throbbing. I ignored the pain as best I could and stabbed the already injured spider. Unfortunately I missed.

 

This went on for a few more minutes. I managed to avoid the first spider, but the second one got me every time. Every new wound hurt until I finally hit the first spider again and was able to defeat it. Only one spider remained. Now that I wasn't distracted by a second one, I was able to dodge it more easily and only had to take one more hit. After defeating the spider, I took a deep breath. Then the throbbings in different parts of my body reminded me of my injuries. On impulse, I applied appraisal on myself. I checked my HP and saw that it went down slowly. I also had the status Poisoned, weak. I had never seen a status condition before. It probably only appeared when you freshly got a status condition. I knew from my previous experiences that poisoning only lasted a certain amount of time, but depending on how potent the poison was, it could kill me. At this rate, combined with the damage the bites had done to me, I didn't last long on this floor, even if the poisoning wasn't strong.

 

However I had too much HP and the poison was only weak so I could still stay on this floor. I went through my options. The healing in water magic was short term and only healed a small amount of HP, but was definitely useful. Then my eyes fell on the Regeneration ability. It could be useful and has been ignored by me so far due to a lack of EXP. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of EXP available to increase the skill. I invested 1000 XP to reach level 1 in regeneration and checked the change. The continuous damage caused by the poisoning decreased. After another increase to level 3, I stopped taking damage. The light poison was just as strong, so my current regeneration exactly offset the damage. But I kept the Poisoned, weak status condition. I memorized that. I realized how powerful this ability was and was curious to see if others also had this skill. My impression so far was that either no one had it or kept it secret, otherwise I would have already heard about it from Aslan or others. Luna certainly had a hand in that too. Was that a bonus for being her champion? I decided not to tell anyone about it and to keep it secret.

 

I spent more time on this level and began to develope hate for spiders. At least this one in the dungeon. I endured many bites and was constantly poisoned. Each spider could apparently poison multiple times, but the poison levels did not add up. No matter how many times I was poisoned, I only ever got the Poisoned weak status condition. At least a defeated spider gave significantly more EXP than the beetles, which made it worth staying on this level for me. There were also a lot of spiders because the other adventurers rarely fought them. I returned to Tyros in the evening mentally exhausted. While my HP was never so low that I was in danger of dying, mentally I could only take so much pain. I hadn't found a chest either, so I carried most of the spiders I had defeated today to the guild. Chests seemed to be rare in the dungeon and at least I earned some money from the spider corpses.

 

At the counter, Sana stared at me in astonishment. I asked myself why and cocked my head to the side.

 

“You have 18 spiders with you? You didn't defeat them yourself, did you? Do you actually know how dangerous they are for your rank? They’re poisonous!” <Sana>

 

I realized I needed to be more careful. Otherwise someone could request to ask unpleasant questions and became aware of me. Plus, I didn't want to worry Sana.

 

“No, I found most of it on the way to sell. I only defeated 6 myself. They bit me hard and I had to struggle hard with the poison. That's why I'm back now to recover. I’ll be more careful from now on.” <Eliza>

 

“It’s good that you understood that. You can get the money for the monster bodies even without defeating them yourself. But don't get into the habit of it. First, make sure that no one else is claiming ownership, especially in the dungeon. Otherwise, if he's stronger than you, you could really get into trouble." <Sana>

 

“Promise.” <Eliza>

 

---

 

I was the first one at dinner that night. When the other three came over, I could tell from Lynn's expression that she didn't look happy. I waved to them and they came closer. As they sat down, I saw several injuries on Ken and Ronnen's faces.

 

“You look bad. What happened to you?” <Eliza>

 

“This is all my fault. The boys were just protecting me.” <Lynn>

 

“Who or what?” <Eliza>

 

“In front of the heroes. The blonde made fun of me and wanted me for his harem. But I refused. The hero unleashed one sleazy pickup line after another. I had an urgent need to get rid of my breakfast. I have no interest in him whatsoever.” <Lynn>

 

"Good this way. But they live up to their image. Were you able to escape?” <Eliza>

 

“The two boys then stood between us. The blonde probably felt his vanity had been offended and told his guards to teach us a lesson. The guards then beat the two boys until they fell to the ground.” <Lynn>

 

“These cowards. How are you two?” <Eliza>

 

“…” <Ken>

 

“…” <Ronnen>

 

“Ken has been completely silent since the incident. It took a lot out of him that he was treated so poorly by his beloved heroes. I was only able to partially heal her external injuries.” <Lynn>

 

“Don’t worry about it, Ken. You did the right thing. Protecting Lynn is much more important than groping in the dust before the heroes." <Eliza>

 

“…” <Ken>

 

“All his life he had the dream of becoming a hero. This is a big blow for him.” <Lynn>

 

“Cheer up, Ken. You can still become a hero. You just can’t become like those idiots.” <Eliza>

 

Ken looked up for the first time since they entered the taproom. There were remnants of tears in his eyes, but also a spark of hope.

 

“She’s right, Ken. Become a different hero than them. Nobody can take your dream away from you, not even them.” Lynn

 

“You need a goal for it. It's easiest when you want to protect someone or something. Then it will become clear whether you have what it takes to be a hero. And I believe in you, Ken.” Eliza

 

I ordered something to eat and something to drink for the three of them. As time went on, Ken became a little more confident and talkative again. Otherwise we spent a quiet evening.

 

The next morning the three of them told me that they weren't going into the dungeon today. They didn't want to meet the heroes. In return I informed them that I entered it, despite the heroes. Lynn made me promise that I should take care of myself and run away from the heroes if necessary. In the dungeon I stood in front of the portal to floor 3. Spiders were waiting for me. This time I tried a different tactic. I wanted to use a lot more magic and tricks. I looked for a quiet spot where there was a web. I was well prepared and brought a torch with me. With that I set the net on fire. This immediately caught fire and two spiders scurried out of the treetop. I was able to impale the first one before it could attack. I was lucky to avoid the attack of the second one. I only took one hit in total before I killed the spider. An appraisal confirmed that I had been poisoned but that no HP had been lost. My regeneration had already healed the damage I had sustained.

 

I spent the next few hours using this tactic. As long as my torch held, I lit the webs and then used wind magic to scare the spiders away. I fought until my MP ran out and I got tired of the pain. Meanwhile, my poison resistance rised to level 5 and was now so high that I no longer got the poisoned status condition. This meant that the spiders' poison could no longer harm me. Should I love these spiders not? My feelings were not clear at that moment.

 

I managed to kill a total of 23 spiders today before the day came to an end and I finished my exploration for today. I noticed again that many adventurers were avoiding the spiders. Without a healer and therefore without poison healing, it was understandable that they wanted to fight the spiders as little as possible. For money there existed a healing potion against poisoning, but it was quite expensive and made visiting the dungeon financially unattractive. The adventurers I accidentally met on this floor all looked at me in amazement, as if they couldn't believe that a little girl was fighting the spiders alone here. For the first time, I really noticed that this dungeon was pretty unfriendly for beginners. The first level slimes could only be fought with magic and the third level monsters used poison. It's understandable that hardly anyone wanted to fight the two types of monsters, especially since the yield was only moderate. But this meant I could pounce on the spiders without fearing much competition.

 

Believe me or not, I would have preferred to be somewhere else instead of hurt myself, but I had to get through this dungeon. I had a big end goal and that was, first of all, to survive. Beating all the dungeons was also only possible if I survived, so I had to get stronger either way. I had to expect that I would meet the idiots again and that they would hinder me wherever they could, if not even want to kill me. This dungeon with its spiders was painful, but I didn't die from the spiders. I also trained my resistance to poison, which will certainly serve me well in the future. I even found an unlooted chest on this floor. It was apparently the only one on this level. In addition to some uninteresting stuff, I found a lot of money for my standards, a ring and two potions, none of which I could identify. It looked like I needed to pay more attention to my Identify skills. I had already discovered last time that identifying objects with a specialist was expensive, too expensive for me. I decided to ask Sana about a teacher. She could definitely help me with that.