Stray Soul

After a few moments of trying to read what the note was saying, I gave up and started making my way down, and expected to encounter the adventurers in one of the stairways of floor -2 or -3, or maybe even -4 as they didn’t have anything to do in the higher floors now, and seeing as they can go through a floor in an hour or two, they should’ve been able to go quite deep while I was gone.

Though I hoped they weren’t in something like a boss room or something, or that’d be a problem.

And yes, though we’ve not seen any yet, there can be bosses in the conventional sense in dungeons. Though they are more often than not just stronger monsters that have taken control of a part of the floor they are at. So, no magical shenanigans like the dungeon loading a single monster with stupid amounts of mana!

I mean... if a monster is near the dungeon core, or in the same floor as it, its going to get loaded with stupid amounts of mana, but all the other monsters near it will also be loaded with stupid amounts of mana so it won’t be able to easily claim a chunk of the floor for itself and be classified as a dungeon boss.

Though if any of the monsters on the same floor as the core came to the upper levels, they’d definitely crush any competition and become a floor boss, though dungeon monsters very rarely leave their floors, and when they do, they don’t go more than a floor up or down.

So, thankfully, I won’t have to worry about any F ranks or such making their way to the upper floors and blocking me from progressing.

Though more than 2-3 G ranks would be a problem too... but if I am quick, and stay in the stairways most of the times, and quickly move between them, I should be somewhat safe...

After another hour or so, I was at floor -1, and after listening to the door for a few minutes, I left after being sure that there were no monsters waiting for me on the other side.

And the floor was... filled with fucking spider webs... it was expected, but I also expected less of them.

I couldn’t even see any spiders, but both of my sides were blocked off by spider webs, and the only way for me was forwards.

But I didn’t really feel like playing by the rules, and being overrun by golems, wandering undead, and giant spiders.

So, I went to one of the walls made out of webs and started inspecting it.

The spider fake wall was made out of dozens of strings of silverish spider web, each of which looked and felt like a thick rope.

Extending a branch to it, I felt that it was sticker than any other spider web I’d ever seen, but not overtly so that escape from it was impossible for something of my size.

I wasn’t cute sure if I’d be able to cut through it though, as I wasn’t sure how thick the wall exactly was, but if I had to guess, I’d say at least 5-10 centimetres, or 2-4 inches, thick.

“Yeah... I am not breaking through this without alerting the spider that made it...” I muttered and went back up the stairway to try another one in the hopes that the way from it wasn’t blocked.

And after trying few of the stairways, I found one that had an opening where I could follow the curvature of the outer walls, and after travelling a short distance, I found a staircase that led down and entered it in the hopes that the floor below this one would be safe from the spider menace.

To my dismay however, floor -2 also had big spiders apparently as, after I came out of the door, I saw thick walls of silverish spider web covering 2 of the ways I could go.

Not wanting to go deeper into the floor unless it was absolutely necessary, I went back to floor –1 and started looking for more ways down.

After an hour or so of looking around, I found a few more which I could use to go to floor -2, but I couldn’t go between the stairways in the floor -2 as the spiders had done a great job walling the sides, and forcing you to go deeper into the floor.

But I didn’t exactly have to play by the spider’s rules as the dungeon they lived in was build by actual people, not carved out of rock by the dungeon itself, so, as floor 0, -1, and -2 seemed to be simple office spaces, I could just memorise the layout of just one of those floors, and I’d know the layout of all 3 floors!

Going back to floor 0, and memorising its layout, or at least the layout of the outer edges where the stairways were, would take a few hours.

But the adventurers should be sleeping about now, so I don’t need to be exactly quick.

I need to only be done after 5-6 hours, which should be enough time.

Then, I went back to floor 0 and started memorising the outer edges of the floor like I said, and, of course, avoided the golems like a plague.

Most of them were simply lower levelled than me, yes, but I was also not sure how my 100% organic body would fare against a creature of stone.

And knowing—guessing that their weak spot was the small blue orb on their faces didn’t really help.

But after a few hours of scouting, I was confident in my ability to navigate through the lower floors using my memory of floor 0, and made my way to floor -1.

And opening the door to floor -1, I immediately encountered a gigantic spider that was busy blocking the way I was planning to go to.

The moment I saw it, I moved to quickly kill it and be done with it as, even though it was one disgusting bastard, I was confident in my ability to squash down a single spider. However gigantic it may be.

*SCHREEE—*

Though before it was fully squashed it let out a disgusting screech.

And I stopped for a moment, hoping that nothing else had heard it. But to my dismay, soon I started hearing screeches of spiders that were getting closer.

*SCHREEEE*

And being the manly man I was, I immediately entered the stairway, and closed the door behind me, and hoped to wait out the wave of spiders that were coming my way to avenge their brethren.

Then I listened through the door as the spiders came closer and closer, waiting for them to scatter off.

I knew that I could always just retreat and go through another door, but I was planning on just waltzing through the half completed wall the spider was making, and start exploring floor -2.

But while my mind was wandering off, as I recognised my position as being mostly safe, I heard a clicking sound coming from in front of me.

*click~*

And the door opened to reveal a gigantic spider behind it, and for a moment our eyes met, before it started letting out a disgusting screech.

*SCREEE—*

But I saved us both the trouble and crushed its head right then and there.

Though it opening the door, screeching, and then promptly dying alerted the other 3 spiders that I could see from the door.

“...Why couldn’t you’ve just fucked off and saved us all the trouble?” I muttered as I waited for the 3 screeching spiders to come forwards, and attack me.

But they just stay there, behind the door, not wanting to be squished like their brethren.

And after a few moments of contemplation, I decided that I was more than strong enough to take on 3 more spiders, and just went through the door.

One of the three tried to pierce its fangs into me while I was squeezing my way through, and I felt something pierce through my skin and into my flesh.

“Poison.” I said matter of factly, and was I surprised that the giant spiders were also venomous? Nope. Not at all.

Fully pushing myself out of the doorway, I all but ignored the attacks of the spiders and start crushing them all.

After a few minutes, my body and the ground around us was covered in greenish-blue blood, and the corpses of 5 gigantic spiders laid around me.

“Well, that was... easier than I thought...” I muttered to myself, as system messages appeared in front of my face.

*ding*

Congratulations! You have defeated 5 Dungeon Spider (G)!

450 exp gained.

Congratulations! You have levelled up 3 times and become level 37!

Opening my system window, and seeing that I had 36 stat points with only 10 free ones being left, I looked at my mana points, and saw that the fight had barely put a scratch to it.

But I still wanted to keep my mana regeneration somewhat in line with my mana points, so I put 30 points into wisdom and bringed it up to 100, and put the last 6 into intelligence, and brought it up to 112.

Then, after a bit of looking through the corpses of the spiders, looking for anything that could be useful to me, I defanged them, and took some muscle out of them.

But for the most part, I left them as is.

Afterall, they were grotesque enough. No need to turn them into proper horrors.

Then I started moving towards the door, and broke down the half build string wall while at it.

And, going down to floor -2, I sadly didn’t see any spiders that were breaking down the nearby walls.

For a moment I thought if I should try eating away at the string walls using the spider fangs I got, but I decided that it probably wouldn’t work anyways, and started going deeper into the dungeon.

I avoided going into rooms for the most part as I couldn’t be bothered with the undead that may or may not be inside them, and quickly made my way to the nearest stairway using my memory.

And, luckily, I didn’t have to fight any monsters as my destination was pretty close.

“...Well, that’s just fucking rude, isn’t it?” I muttered after turning a corner and seeing a pile of rock and debris blocking the way.

Though it didn’t seem like it had come here from some sort of cave-in or something similar, no no no, this was the same fucking rock that made the mountain.

The stupid bugs had transported them down here, as if giant as spiders with their thick silken walls weren’t enough of a problem.

I then inspected the rock wall for a moment, wondering if I could perhaps breakthrough it. But decided quickly it was a futile effort. More so than trying to tear down one of those silken walls.

Continuing on my way, I tried to avoid any heavy thuds, that I assumed to be coming from golems, and though I had to hide in rooms sometimes to avoid them, and fight with both stationary and wandering undead, and a few more spiders, everything was going well... except the fact that I couldn’t find an exit.

All of the exits were either blocked off by spider webs, or rocks mined by the bugs on the upper floors.

And no, the dungeons did not have to worry about storage for the rock they mined as they usually use the rock they mine to reinforce the walls of their tunnels, so a really small amount of stone is created when a dungeon starts mining a tunnel.

So, this was a deliberate decision by the dungeon, or the monsters inside it.

And I was at the end of my patience, so instead of using my oh so useful memory map of floor 0, I decided to take an approach that I should’ve taken way, way before!

In front of me were the corpses of 2 gigantic spiders, which had my lesser souls in them, and after spotting a silk wall, I just ordered them to eat its edges, so it’d fall down, and could be pulled away from my way.

And like this I spent the next few hours, killing any undead, and adding any spider I came across to the ranks of my web-clearing brigade.

By this time, I was sure that I had no hopes of catching the adventurers in their sleep, and joining them in their exploration, but I was still going to make all 5 of my newly formed spider brigade members to tear down any walls I came across to reach the edge of the floor!

William’s current Status Window. (He gained a few more levels while exploring)

Level: 41 Exp: 44/194 Rank: G

Health Points: 0/1.008 Mana Points: 2.100/2.100

Strength: 0 (120)

Vitality: 0 (100)

Agility: 0 (80)

Intelligence: 130 (80)

Wisdom: 116 (60)

Charisma: 0 (30)

Free Stat Points: 0

Skills: Spirit Communion (C), Ethereal Body (S), Mana Sense (H), Bind (H), Soul Sense (H), Soul Manipulation (H), Mana Control (H), Mana Strengthening (H) + (Sprint, Dash, Harden, Haste)

Titles: Reincarnator (S), Otherworlder (A), False Idol (G), Soul Shepherd (F)

Quests: Meddling with the Unknown (S), What Lays Beyond? (F)