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As the spider queen fell head first, I tracked its motion carefully. It couldn’t reorient itself without webs attached to something… but it wasn’t going to be that troubled by the fall itself either. The front legs would hit first and move them into something resembling a proper landing. Of course, that was only if it didn’t land directly on my spear. The spider couldn’t move its mouth relative to its body, and it couldn’t change where that body was going.
In retrospect, of course, it was a foolish move. Not because it didn’t work- it worked flawlessly, except for the slight fact that my spear wasn’t made out of iron or anything unbreakable. It stabbed several feet into the spider before snapping somewhere in the middle from the weight… enough to kill the spider but also to lose me my main weapon for the moment.
As the giant spider crashed to the ground, most of the other spiders started to scatter. It might have been because their numbers were running out and the dungeon wanted to preserve them, or maybe it was just whatever natural instincts they had. Either way, the nearby ones were finished off quickly by Alhorn and Khyrmin. Once he saw they were retreating, Kasner didn’t waste any more mana on spells.
As the spiders faded out of existence, we move around picking up magic stones and arrows, as well as checking out our wounds. Fortunately there weren’t too many of those, and Kantrilla had enough mana to cure the poison with some remaining. Alhorn helped heal some of the wounds, but there weren’t too many of those. Khyrmin had helped with making sure there weren’t too many enemies to deal with, and the dungeon was technically lower level than us. Well, the rest of the party anyway- and except for the beneficial effects of a class I was basically higher level than the dungeon.
“We should take a look around,” Khyrmin said. There wasn’t really much to look at, but I knew what she meant. This wasn’t a large dungeon, so the boss was probably somewhere near the core. If we could take care of that… well, most of the monsters were already dead. This might be our best chance.
Halette and Socks poked and sniffed around the room. I couldn’t really be of much help there, with my Awareness being so much below theirs. I did have enough mana to help them out with a little bit of light magic- and I meant very little. The mana itself wasn’t the problem so much as my proficiency.
Finally, Halette found something. “Here. There’s a bit of a seam for a secret door but I can’t find a way to open it…”
Khyrmin shook her head, “There isn’t a way to open it from this side. We’ll have to break it open.”
At that point, I wished I had my old heavy mace. That was perfectly suited to breaking down a wall. Now I had… a dagger. Well, it was actually not that bad. I stabbed the adamantine dagger into the wall. It was like stabbing through drywall… though the black bricks that made up the dungeon were actually several times stronger than regular brick. However, I had almost 500 Strength and the adamantine dagger was very, very sharp. I stabbed a few more times, then kicked at the section of wall. It fell apart, letting us see… another empty room. “Tch.”
“It’s similar to the walls,” Khyrmin commented, “But it’s a crystal instead of brick. Light won’t reflect off of it.” Alhorn, Halette, and I started tearing away bricks from the wall one at a time. “Better hurry, spiders will be coming back.” With that comment, once it was large enough for me to fit in I squeezed through. I quickly bumped into something, then grabbed it. I threw it to the floor… with a thunk. Then I stabbed it with my dagger instead. There was a cracking sound, and I briefly saw the outline of the basketball sized crystal as light burst out from it. “Let’s go! Towards the entrance!”
With that, the entire dungeon started shaking… not like a serious earthquake, but just slightly. There were also faint rumbling and cracking sounds. Socks led the way back along our trail towards the exit. This also meant she was the first one to see many of the spiders, which she jumped on and crunched with her teeth- and she was always disappointed that they faded away into nothing shortly after.
I fought with my shield and dagger- the dagger didn’t have nearly as much reach as the spear, but it cut through the spiders like butter. I used the shield both to block and to bash spiders- using the edge to smash them against the ground.
I was glad Socks knew where we were going, because we were moving too fast for me to keep track of the twists and turns. Soon enough we got back to the first floor, and from there it was basically a mad dash to the entrance. The first floor was basically clear, so there were only spiders coming up behind us… and most of them were slower than our group. Kasner was the slowest, but Khyrmin snatched him up in one arm.
Kasner looked behind us, coating ice over the following spiders, big and small. Then he conjured some lightning and shocked the bundle of them. By that point, the trembling of the dungeon had begun in earnest.
We raced out of the dungeon with yet more spiders behind us… but Ehlark was waiting outside. The various plants nearby moved to crush and tear the spiders that followed us out, and Khyrmin handled most of the rest.
“We should keep going,” Khyrmin noted, “The dungeon’s collapse might shift the terrain some.”
We continued moving until about a half mile away, and Ehlark looked over our group to tend the new wounds we had accrued on the way out. “Well, looks like you upheld your end,” he looked down at Kasner, “I will uphold my end… after we all get a day of rest. It will be best for you to be at the top of your health, and I need to be completely full on mana.”
I had barely remembered why we were going through all that. Destroying a dungeon was so interesting… and though I was worried for Kasner, we were literally doing everything we could to help, so worrying about it hadn’t been doing me any good. Once I realized we could finally get his leg regrown, it brought me- and the rest of the party- a great sense of relief.
Thanks. Hopefully they can ho back to figuring out his level problem. Or at least trying to take advantage of it to learn as much as possible . It should make for interesting class choices whenever he gets to 5 again.