Chapter 17: 1.17 Nightmare Rumble

It was slow, incredibly slow. Perhaps it had been weakened by the fire? Or maybe it was because it was so large. Was this how flies operated? They seemed to be incredibly quick with flying away when you were about to swat them. It was quite ironic that in this situation I was that fly. Dodging didn't seem to be an issue for me. I had gotten more than used to these legs in the meantime, and thanks to my coffee bean peeling experience I managed to get quite a few stabs in between dodges. 

Unfortunately, this beast's exoskeleton was incredibly tough and my spear did not pierce deep enough to properly wound our enemy. Velariah and Draco seemed to run into the same issue. They were trying to wound this monster's legs since they had a far easier time reaching those than the main body. It wasn't a bad strategy, if we could immobilize this foe, we could easily finish it off, just like Velariah had done with the Saibon boar.  

I had decided to join them in their effort as this guy's, or lady's (I had no idea, honestly) seemed unpierceable. I would definitely have to get a better weapon later on. It turned out that not getting any armor was a blessing in this scenario. A few times had one of its legs moved to knock me down but I had narrowly dodged each and every time, I doubted I would have been able to if I had been any heavier. Something I would have to look into later as well.  

Seriously, this thing was far tougher than I had expected and hoped.  

I relegated myself to wounding the legs as well. It worked to a certain degree, but not much, not enough for sure. We had drawn some of that creepy green blood here and there but nothing serious. Not even Draco's huge axe with full-on impact managed to draw more than scrapes. This was not going well at all. 

''Draco, get its attention.'' I knew at least one very sensitive spot thanks to personal experience. However weird that may sound.  

Draco swung his large axe upwards hutting the large spider's head, that seemed to draw its attention as it lunged forward with its fangs and massive jaws. He managed to block the attack with his axe while Velariah went for the eyes, she managed to completely cut one open, causing purple liquid to ooze down. My face distorted in disgust. That was revolting.  

I walked to the beast's abdomen that was swaying around as it tried to attack Velariah and Draco. I scanned around its underside; I was looking for something specific.  

After a few ducks and sidesteps I had finally found it. Its spinnerets were practically similar to mine and just looked enticing to stab a spear in. When it stood still for a few seconds I struck. I struck again, and again in quick succession doing whatever damage I could before it could properly react. 

Yeap, that did the trick, finally we had done some real damage, green blood oozed from its completely severed appendage. This would disable its ability to shoot web, if it planned to do that. That was one weapon down.  

The scream in my mind returned, full of bloodlust.  

Oops. I may have made it angry. I mean, even angrier than it had been before.  

It was a useful move from my part but I doubted it would be enough to kill it. That was nowhere near enough blood to cause it to die of exsanguination. What else did we have? Our weapons didn’t seem to do much. Despite being coated in my venom, it seemed to have no effect. This led me to believe that this spider, like I, possessed some venom resistance ability. That was a bummer, I had quietly hoped this would be an ace up our sleeve. 

Ace up our sleeve.... 

I got an idea so crazy it might just work. I seemed to get a lot of those as of late.  

''Vel, with me!" I yelled to Velariah as I withdrew from combat. ''Draco, hold on for a moment please.'' 

''Understood!'' He shouted back. 

I saw his body engulf itself in a green light and grow bigger. His size grew by about thirty percent and I saw his scales turn pitch black. He roared with resounding voice and caught the spider's attention. That seemed like a neat ability, but I doubted he could keep it up for long. He had told us before he couldn't keep his spells active forever.'' 

Velariah ran away with me and asked me what I had in mind.  

''You still have that crystal?''  

''You mean the fire one?'' She reached into her bag and held it out for me. 

She was very assertive, I liked that about her. No questions just action. Since time was of the essence it was all the more welcome.  

I took the crystal and pushed out some sticky silk of my behind.  

''What are you doing?'' She asked. 

I didn't bother to answer the question as I was completely focused on what I was doing. I took a strand of the sticky silk and the crystal and bound it atop my spear. I made sure the top of the crystal was free so it could be easily triggered.  

''Oh.'' She let out. ''I start to get an idea of what you're planning to do.'' 

''Good, then I don’t need to explain I need some bait to open its jaws.''  

''Oh.'' She let out again.  

I could tell she was not looking forward to that idea. I couldn't blame her.  

''Will you be okay?'' I asked, I didn't want to put her in danger. 

''I'll be fine, that thing is awfully slow.'' She joked about the situation.  

I hoped she was right. I trusted her, she had better not get eaten on my watch.  

Confident that I had fastened the crystal properly I walked back into the fight with Velariah. Draco seemed to have hold his ground fine but he seemed to be slowing down. His time of being empowered was probably running out soon. 

''Draco fall back!" Velariah shouted to him. 

''FLIES, FLIES, MEAT!'' The beast screamed again. 

This spider would soon be bested by these pesky little flies, or so I hoped. This didn't seem like a long shot to me at all, so I had good faith in my abilities. I hoped I didn't just jinx everything by thinking that.  

Draco took a few steps backward as Velariah entered the fray, instantly getting the monster's attention as she aimed for the eyes again. Draco's scales turned back to their old green and he leaned on his weapon, heavily panting. I thought he would be out for a while, we'd better finish this quickly. 

Velariah was a master actress. One of the spider's pedipalps had struck out aiming for her, but she had blocked the attack with her sword but let herself fall on her bum. I quietly stepped behind her in hopes of not drawing too much attention. This monster's attention span seemed to be rather short and I couldn't disturb it right now.  

The queen hellspider opened its large jaws and extended her fangs. I had to time this properly. 

''FEAST, FEAST.'' It screamed in my mind. 

When it was about to strike, I hit the top of the crystal, activating its detonation sequence before I stepped over Velariah and literally shoved my spear so far up its mouth that I was pretty sure I had done some decent internal damage in the process. Here was to hoping my plan worked. 

And here was to hoping I wouldn't have to pay for not returning the ''borrowed'' spear. 

Velariah quickly rolled away and I stepped backwards as well as our foe was in the process of analyzing what the hell just happened to it. 

''WEAK, YOUR ATTACKS ARE WEAK.'' 

Is that so? 

A muted explosion sounded from the spider's direction, followed by a lot of incomprehensible screaming in my mind. I once again had my hands on my ears trying to deafen the sounds it produced.  

I ran away with Velariah as our enemy was incapacitated and struggling to stand. I had to cover my ears hard to not go deaf, this monster was far worse than the average hellspider when it came to producing piercing screams.  

The monstrous spider started to collapse and I saw smoke rising from several parts of its body. The sight was intriguing yet macabre. I had to keep looking to see if it would do anything but would rather have looked away. Fire started to seep through openings in the beast's exoskeleton and green blood dripped from many new orifices. In short, the animal was being consumed by fire from the inside out. 

What the hell was in that crystal? Was that white phosphorous or something? it sure acted like it, with the fire eating through anything it touched. More fire started to engulf the creature as it was still attacking my eardrums with everything it had left. It was getting weaker and weaker but it still hurt like hell! 

Draco picked up his axe and was about to charge in again.  

''Draco, wait!'' 

He halted and looked at me questioningly. 

''No need to rush in and do stupid things, I can sense it dying.''  

He put down his weapon and sat down in the dirt. He was obviously still recovering from the fight and I couldn't have him kill himself because of a stupid lapse of judgement. 

The screams died out but the monster's body was still twitching and burning. I would avoid getting too close until I was absolutely, positively sure that it was dead. Velariah in the meantime started walking between spiders and cut off their fangs in silence before placing them in her pack. I automatically assumed that those were the trophies required as proof of slaying. That made me wonder how the guild was going to verify that the nest had been exterminated. Did they know the exact amount of spiders inside? 

I let the elf do whatever she was doing. It seemed like a grim task but somebody would have to do it. I would be fine with it as long as that person wasn't me... 

''You plan on helping me out?'' Velariah asked from a distance as she knelt at the next corpse.  

No, I wasn't. Let me just come up with an excuse real quick. 

''Sorry.'' I said as I shrugged with all four hands. ''I seem to have lost my spear.'' 

I couldn't see her roll her eyes from up here but instinctively I knew she did just that before she turned her head and went to work.  

That went easier than expected. She didn't even bother to mention I still had a sword.  

''You okay, Draco?'' I turned to the reptilian man behind me.  

''I'm fine. I'm just... exhausted. My body enhancements always drain me quite a bit.'' 

''Noted. You did great by the way.''  

At least combat was over and we survived without any injuries. That was a good start. I'd call this quest a great success. Now we had come to the fun part: Looting.  

Well, maybe it wasn't as fun. At least Velariah was doing the nasty work.  

''So were you. You have an... interesting way of fighting.'' He said as he stood up to full height again. 

Well, he wasn't wrong. I was new to fighting in the first place and as Sun Tzu once said: True excellence is subduing the enemy without fighting. So, if I could defeat monsters like that with nasty tricks and reduce time spent fighting I would. Thinking was half the fight. At least in my opinion it was.  

Velariah continued harvesting the fangs of the spider corpses that were outside of the hive system. Halfway through Draco had started helping her. I couldn't be of much use without my weapon, at least I pretended I couldn't be, I could always borrow Velariah's knife, of course.  

Draco had hammered the spider queen's corpse's head several times just to make sure it had been killed off properly. He had then chopped off the huge fangs and put them in his large backpack. There was no way those would have fit into Velariah's pack.  

As I saw the packs fill up with spider parts my heart sank as I realized that would mean we couldn’t take as much coffee with us... 

I should stop thinking about coffee I can't drink it anyway. 

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Once we had everything from the outside packed and ready, we decided to take a look inside the tunnels again.  

The tunnel we entered was completely empty, but after a while we appeared to enter a large central chamber with about a dozen dead spiders. I observed the surroundings and found a lot of smoldering remains of what I believed used to be silk. This was obviously the central part of the hive but everything had been burnt to crisps. When I walked over to a hellspider corpse I noticed its hairs were completely gone and its exoskeleton resembled something that I could only describe as ''deep fried until actually burnt''. The sight, and the smell were disgusting and almost made me vomit.  

I quickly stepped back and observed that its eyes were open. Literally open. As in, they were popped like popcorn and the liquid inside was gone. It seemed the fire had been effective. 

Effective, but it had left behind something that was beyond disgusting. 

Velariah and Draco worked on carving and I explored the surrounding tunnels. I had found a few more corpses and brought them to the central chamber without actually touching them with my hands. I was not going to touch spiders, especially not when they were deep fried and charred like coal. What I had done was turn myself around and splat some sticky silk on them and then drag them behind me.  

I had cleared all the tunnels and deducted that there was only one central room. I imagined that this room must have been a room where eggs had been located. I was happy to have burnt the whole place down. Even if they had laid eggs, killing with fire was better done late than never.  

The only good thing about these dead spiders it that if there were so many, they would bring in quite some coin at the guild. I wondered if they made a mistake with offering one silver per spider killed, it seemed it was too much. Had they known there were this many and underestimated the number of spiders? I had lost track of how many we had killed. I guessed I would see once we delivered all the fangs to the guild. 

When I walked back for the last time with a spider in tow, I felt one of my feet hitting something in the mud. It felt like there was something in the ground here as I felt soft sound vibrations through my leg hair. As if there was a hollow room underneath it. I would have definitely missed it if I hadn't had these hairs. I had finally figured out what they were used for, I thought. 

Curiosity had gotten the better of me and I started digging through the blackened dirt the same way I had dug the hole for the grave earlier when Velariah asked me what the hell I was doing. 

''There's something down here, and I'm going to find out what.'' 

Saying that brought me back to something I had read about seemingly ages ago. Somebody had suggested that the first person who discovered honey must have thought: ''I know those little fuckers are hiding something delicious in there and I'm going to find out what.''  

''Hold on a sec.'' She walked over me, drew her sword, and stabbed down into the dirt.  

It got about halfway down the blade before I could hear an audible thud. It had hit something and from the sound of it, it seemed like iron had just hit iron. Interesting.  

''What's that?'' I asked. 

''No idea. Let's find out.'' 

Maybe I had hit a treasure chest? Would my luck finally change course? I could only hope as I started digging again. The thought of riches kept me going.  

Beneath the hardened top layer of burnt dirt the ground below it was surprisingly loose and I managed to get through it quite quickly thanks to my extra spider limbs without the need to get my hands dirty or external tools. Who needed spades anyway?  

Eventually a flat metal surface came into view. It didn't seem like a treasure chest to me. It was literally a flat metal surface with many spots of rust. I didn’t give up hope and kept digging until I had laid bare a large three by three meters metal square. The square was surrounded by bricks that made up a layer beneath the dirt. I didn’t bother to uncover more as I couldn't feel a hollow space under them.  

Upon inspecting the plate, I immediately got the notion that it was some kind of door. It seemed it consisted of two doors. upon very close inspection I could barely make out a line in the middle that separated both halves.  

There was no keyhole or anything in sight and I tried pulling the plates up but had no luck. 

''So, what's this? It looks like some kind of door.'' 

Draco filled in. ''That's because it is a door.'' 

I yelped. When did he get here? 

Velariah grinned at my reaction but Draco continued without making a remark. 

''A dungeon door to be exact.'' 

Oops. And I had tried to open it. I had let my curiosity get the better of me again. I should be more careful. Who knew what could be behind that door and jump at my face the second I opened it? 

''Normally you open them easily but this is an odd one.''  

He looked around the plate and brushed some dirt off. He then looked around the edges and knocked on the stone floor surrounding the door. 

''I don't see any way to open it. No rune, no lock. Unless it is supposed to open without any of those, we should be wary.'' 

He seemed to have some knowledge on the subject. I hoped he had been inside dungeons before, it would be great to have someone with experience. 

''What is that supposed to mean?'' Velariah asked before I could. 

''Normally there are four ways to enter a dungeon, technically three because the first one is simply entering, some dungeons don't have doors. The other three are a simple unlocked door, a lock or a rune lock. That is from low level to high level in that specific order. If a door does not have any of those lock mechanisms it could be an anomaly.'' 

That sounded dangerous but I was confident in my luck, or rather, my bad luck. 

''Vel, can I borrow your sword?'' I asked. 

''I don't know, can you call me by my name?'' 

Mean. 

''Velariah, my lady, could I please borrow your sword? I would be forever in your debt.'' I asked, coating the words in honey. 

''Sure.'' She unsheathed and handed her sword to me. 

I took the sword and pried it between one of the plates and the stone that made up the frame on which it was positioned. I weighed down on the sword exerting more and more force while trying not to break the sword, I'd hate to pay for that. 

The door sprung open and I was lucky to have the reflexes to block the sword with my pedipalps before it would have hit my face. Nice, I seemed to be getting the hang of this body quite well.  

Draco had been ready to bring down his axe if anything emerged but due to the sheer size of the door it hadn't opened much and pretty much instantly closed again. This time I could open it with just my hands. It appeared it had simply rusted shut.  

''See, I knew my luck wouldn't disappoint me.'' 

It was true. There was no way I was going to find an ''Anomaly'', whatever that was when it came to dungeons, it sounded exotic and rare. I just did not have that kind of luck. At least being unlucky was something I could rely on. 

''So, what do we do?'' I asked my companions as I closed the large metal door again.  

I hadn't even taken a look inside.  

''First of, we should report to the Lore keeper. If this is an undiscovered dungeon, we need to make sure they are aware of it. Secondly... Actually, I have no idea what comes after that. Draco?'' 

Velariah called upon Draco to fill in the gaps. 

''You report a dungeon to the guild yes, after that it usually gets a name and a grade. This one should be fairly simple so maybe silver tops?'' 

That sounded comforting. At least if anything jumped out, we should be able to handle it with the three of us.  

I actually wondered how dungeons worked in this world. Would they have mob respawns with certain rules or would they be a one-time clear only? Would they have bosses? Riches? Resources? I had to see it for myself, my curiosity was once again swelling up inside me.  

Ugh, I had to stay focused. I had no armor whatsoever. I had lost my only weapon. Well, technically I had more up my sleeve but I didn't want to jump into the unknown with only my body to use as biological weapon. A spear may not be my favorite weapon to use but it was by far the simplest to learn and use. That had been one of the things I learnt from Japanese history, the Sengoku Jidai had been one of my favorite historical eras after all.  

I wonder what Velariah would think if I told her about the Naginata. A sword on a stick sounded like a ridiculous concept and I hadn't seen anything here that resembled it or came close, unless you counted the halberds that was.  

Yes, restocking and preparing would be the rational choice here.  

Before we left the hive, I made sure to bind down the door with webs, you know, just in case. Couldn't have a random boss monster running around the world all of a sudden. I didn't need competition.  

The way back was quiet but I kept thinking about what all this meant and what the possibilities were going to be. I was so lost in thought and just repeating the same motion with my legs over and over that I almost forgot the cherry bushes next to the forest, almost.  

I made sure to pack as many as I could in my own pack before I started filling Velariah's and Draco's too. Draco was having a confused look at me while I worked. I was pretty sure he was wondering why I was so obsessed with these. If only he knew that this is where coffee came from. Maybe I would tell him some day once my coffee empire had taken over the world. 

Yeah, the empire thing was highly unlikely. I would leave that part to Valtheril.  

I wonder if I could have alchemists find a way to decaffeinate the beans. That would be a dream come true... 

The sun had reached its peak and slowly started its descent. The days seemed very drawn out on this world so it wouldn't be dark for a long time. I was secretly looking forward to tomorrow. It would finally be time to get some weapon and armor shopping done. As long as prices weren't scuffed, I wondered what I would be able to afford. Food had been very affordable so far and it seemed I would get a large sum of money from this quest even after splitting it with two others. I felt like I had actually accomplished something.  

It would be interesting to see if what I had suggested to Draco would actually work. He was pretty effective at tanking already due to his body enhancement magic but the drawback of using it could be incredibly dangerous in prolonged combat. If we were able to get him something he could use to defend himself better he would be far more effective.  

That reminded me of something else entirely. A new dungeon had popped up and our party was nowhere near ready to take it on. If we were going to explore that I wanted at least a healer to go with us. If my suspicions based on Earthen knowledge were correct, dungeons would be swarming with enemies. The extra protection would be very much welcome.  

That brought us to the next problem: Who would join a freak party like ours. I had to be real here, we had not one, but two half monsters in our group, of which one came straight out of a nightmare. Draco wasn't as repulsive perhaps, but he had to do with a fair deal of racism already I couldn’t imagine how I would fare if I had not had the abilities that I had. 

Then there was Velariah as well who could pass as a monster...  

I let out a suppressed laugh and Velariah looked at me with large eyes as if I were crazy. Well, she wouldn’t be entirely wrong. 

Yup, finding a healer would be hard. 

I discussed the matter with Velariah and Draco as we re-entered the village and made our way to Velariah's home first to drop off the cherries. I didn't need the guild knowing about those. Velariah had suggested that her father could probably find someone who may be interested but I was against the idea.   

I was honestly getting a bit tired of all the work her father had already done and would keep doing. There was also the fact that I would actually like to get to know the person to make sure they would fit with us. I would hate to get an aristocratic person to join our party who would think they were better than anyone else.  

I had asked if it was a possibility to look for people in the guild. Apparently, we could submit a form at the Lore keeper indicating that we were looking for specific people for our party, I should have known about that sooner. If we had any applicants, we would be able to interview them and see if they were a fit for us. It pretty much sounded like a job application but it should work.  

While we were at it, we should also look if we could find a ranged damage dealer, maybe two. A well-rounded party would be key to success, at least that's what I had been told. When had that ever failed me? 

I had most likely just jinxed it again. 

Never mind. 

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