Rune Seeker

Two minutes—and four dead spiders—later, the party arrived at what had to be their destination. Once a large, square building, from the vague outline through the webbing, it could now only be described as one thing.

A nest.

The front door stood invitingly open, a short entryway leading to a large, open room sheathed in more webbing. Light from the glowing roots cast the space in an ominous glow that shifted and skittered, like spiders moved within the ever-present webbing, and a faint clicking could be heard echoing and repeating throughout the building.

“Can we maybe go another way?” Yanily asked, prodding at the webbing with his spear. At the first touch, which popped the web like a pimple, dozens of tiny spiders burst out and rushed towards the inner sanctum within the building. Yanily, for his part, leapt back and leveled his weapon at the tiny creatures as they sped away. With a faux thrust of his spear, he threatened, “Yeah, you keep running!”

“You sure showed them,” Nivian said dryly. “Looks like there’s only one way to go.”

“Yes, which makes me wonder about the quest,” Hiral said. “How can the researchers not have been…” He was halted by the notification window springing up in front of his face.

Dynamic Quest: Update

The Lady of the Web has found the researchers.

Reach them before she begins feeding.

“You had to say something, didn’t you?” Seena asked him, and Hiral could only shrug. Whatever system controlled the dungeons and the notifications—the PIMP, probably—seemed to like slapping them with the dramatic notification windows.

“Only one option does make it easier, though,” Hiral said, pointing the same way the small spiders had gone. “This lady is probably that direction.”

“And she’s probably also some gigantic spider-monster as big as the King of the Swamp,” Yanily said, his spear still at the ready.

“Again, easy to find,” Hiral said, elbowing Yanily gently in the side. “Besides, I bet she’s good experience.”

“We’re not even getting the experience!” Yanily whined, but Seena gave Nivian the shoulder tap, and the tank started forward, the others naturally falling into formation behind.

Totems erupted out of the ground ten feet ahead of them, but they stayed facing directly forward.

“Looks like nothing’s hiding around us,” Seena said, the group passing the entryway and moving into the first major room.

Shadows moved across the walls, almost like flickering torches, but a closer look through the webs showed hundreds—no, thousands—of the same tiny spiders from before crawling across the glowing roots beneath the silky gauze. Straight ahead, a large ramp led up to the second level, raised edges along the side hinting it had once been a staircase underneath. On both sides, the silky, sticky webs hung like curtains between thicker strands crisscrossing from floor to ceiling. And there, within the gossamer nets, hung obviously monkey-sized cocoons that twitched and writhed. Some were the same whitish-gray of the webs, while others had pooled red at the bottom.

“Yup, very inviting foyer,” Hiral said.

“More a parlor, I’d say,” Wule said.

“Up?” Nivian asked, ignoring the commentary, his eyes on the webs all around them.

“Yes,” Seena said, and the party moved ahead.

Five feet further, and something thumped behind them. Hiral spun to find the thinly webbed doors now firmly shut. But even as he watched, hundreds of the small spiders dropped down from the ceiling or ran across from the side, each trailing a silky thread, and completely sealed the doors within a few blinks.

“Not going back that way,” Hiral said, though a quick look at the timer showed them at six and a half minutes. They didn’t have time to go that way.

“We’ve got bigger problems,” Nivian said.

Hiral looked back to the front, then up the ramp, as a cart-sized spider pulled itself out of the web. Unlike the Ghost-Web Assassin Spiders, this thing was a hulking, armored monstrosity, with a bulbous body, legs like warhammers, and enough plating around the head to make a castle proud.

(Elite) Ghost-Web Barricade Spider – Mid-D-Rank

The name above the spider’s body accurately described it, and the health bar was easily four times as long as the assassin spiders’ had been.

“Assume it has the same venom as the assassins,” Seena said.

“And the same armor quirk,” Nivian said as the barricade spider stood at the top of the ramp, clearly blocking them from progressing.

“Doesn’t want us to go any further,” Hiral said, leveling his RHCs at the monster. “May I?”

“Do it,” Seena said, fireballs beginning to spiral into existence above her outstretched palm. “If nothing else, it’ll wear down its armor.”

“Right, I have a plan for you,” Seeyela said to the double. “Be ready.”

“Hiral’s plans make me nervous… Why do I feel like yours won’t be any better?” the double asked, but Hiral stopped paying attention to the exchange as he pulled his triggers.

Searing bolts of Impact cracked into the plating over the spider’s white face, deflecting off to scorch the webbing around it, but the monster didn’t even flinch. Worse, its health bar didn’t budge.

No, that’s not quite right. There are two little dots above the red bar now. What do they mean?

“Again,” Seena told him, three fireballs now floating above her hand.

Hiral pulled the triggers, and just like before, both bolts bounced harmlessly off the barricade spider. Two more dots appeared above its health bar.

“It’s not working,” Hiral said. “And do you see those dots? Did the assassin spiders have those?”

“Maybe we just need to hit it harder,” Seena said, the fourth ball of fire appearing. She snapped her hand forward, and the fireballs raced from where they hung to slam into the giant spider.

FWOOOOM. The explosion filled the second level at the top of the ramp, flash-burning the hanging webs all around and even sending a wave of heat rolling down the slope to wash over the party.

Hiral’s hands reflexively came up to shield his face, and when he lowered his arms, he found the Ghost-Web Barricade Spider sitting calmly at the top of the stairs. Sure, some of the strands of webbing previously hanging from its body had been incinerated, but there wasn’t even a scorch mark on its white carapace.

And now there are twelve dots above the health bar…

“Right, jump in and punch!” Seeyela said, pointing at a pool of emptiness on the floor in front of Right.

The double looked at it once, kind of shrugged, then jumped feet-first into the portal, immediately dropping out of a matching hole in the air above the barricade spider. As soon as his feet touched the carapace, he simultaneously dropped into a crouch and brought his Meridian-enhanced fist down onto the back of the spider. Purple flame exploded up in a column that reached the ceiling, and the monster’s legs buckled slightly from the impact.

But its health bar didn’t drop—not in the least.

More dots? No… less. Eleven now.

Right, still on the back of the spider, wasn’t finished yet. He slammed his fist into the same spot a second time. Fire roared into the air, and as Hiral watched, the force rippled out in a spiderweb pattern across the huge monster and down its legs.

Ten dots.

Right raised his fist for a third punch, but suddenly the huge spider twisted and bucked, its smooth body leaving nothing for the double to hold onto, and he was hurled off the side of the landing. Had Seena not just destroyed the webbing with her fireballs, the move would’ve easily seen him tangled and caught, but as it was, he flipped casually through the air to land on his feet back on the first level.

With nobody else around the spider, Hiral pulled the trigger on his RHC. The blast did nothing but add the eleventh dot back above the spider’s health bar.

“Ranged attacks increase its defense,” Hiral said. “Some kind of barrier that, in turn, absorbs melee attacks. Those dots are how many hits it can take, I think.”

“Up close and personal it is,” Seena said, cracking her knuckles. Then she pointed. “Go get’em, Yanily.”

“What?” Yanily asked, doing a double-take between the huge spider and the party leader.

“Kidding,” Seena said, the corner of her mouth quirking up, and she tapped Nivian on the shoulder.

The tank blurred up the ramp with his movement ability to appear in front of the spider, shield sweeping out to bash across the monster’s face with an echoing crack. That same spiderweb glow pulsed out across the white carapace from the point of impact, and one of the eleven dots vanished.

“That did it,” Hiral said, sheathing his RHCs and reaching for the sword over his back, but the barricade spider didn’t simply sit back and take it.

Now that Nivian was suddenly right in front of it, one of its massive legs lifted into the air absurdly fast, then came down with tremendous finality. With the leg nearly as big as Nivian was, the tank twisted to the side to avoid the blow instead of trying to take it on his shield. As soon as the warhammer-like appendage crashed down, it sent out a shockwave through the tight webbing, rippling it like a foot-high wave that crossed the length of the room in the blink of an eye.

Losing their balance, most of the party dropped to their knees at the foot of the ramp, but Nivian didn’t get knocked away—just knocked down—and he looked up from where he knelt to see the other leg falling for his head. Blue flashed just above him, a dome of energy appearing from his Orbital Shield to take the blow, and Nivian rolled to the side, then popped to his feet. Left to right, his three-necked whip slapped across the monster, throwing fire and spitting lightning into the air, flaring the spiderweb-pattern shielding.

That took three dots!

“Every hit steals a charge of its defense!” Hiral shouted, back on his feet.

He hauled the sword off his back, streaming energy into it to solidify the energy blade. Six feet long and literally glowing with power, he cocked the weapon to the side and set his feet. Then he poured energy into the Rune of Rejection beneath his boots and launched into the air at the same time Right and Yanily vanished.

Ten feet above the spider in an instant, Hiral didn’t bother increasing the gravity as he came down and swung. The energy blade cracked into the carapace-covered back. Energy spiderwebbed out from the point of impact—reducing the dot count to six—and he landed smoothly on the spider’s back. Two more pulses of spiderweb energy washed across the monster as Yanily and Right landed their own blows, and the beast suddenly bucked back to throw Hiral like it’d done to Right.

A quick activation of his Rune of Attraction kept him glued to the spider’s back, and he swung his feather-light sword back and forth in quick succession. Nivian, at the same time, engaged the spider from the front while Right and Yanily moved around to flank it.

Flash, flash, flash. Pulses of spiderweb light arced across the spider’s body, the lumbering monster trying to keep up with the rapid attacks from all sides. Its legs lifted high into the air and then came down with earth-shaking impacts, but the party had already seen that trick, and they stabilized their balance before the wave passed. And, without the element of surprise on the technique, the spider wasn’t able to move fast enough to capitalize on any openings. Worse for it, Hiral wasn’t going anywhere. His sword scored hit after hit until the last dot finally vanished. Then, just like that, his next hit left a shallow gouge on the white carapace.

The health bar, practically right in front of Hiral’s face, only dropped a bare percent—if that—but it was finally moving.

Left, meanwhile, had also joined the other three circling within melee range of the beast, dancing around its thrashing limbs and leaving a stream of hanging water in the air. Back and forth he went, holding his strike, until finally Nivian caught another blow on his Orbital Shield. Left burst forward, his Dagger of Sath sweeping up and under the spider’s suspended leg to slam into the joint between the heavy plates. The small dagger, little more than a toothpick compared to the huge beast, didn’t even make the monster’s health bar twitch—until the hanging stream caught up. Dozens of feet of trailing water rushed to the dagger the moment it stopped moving, and then exploded out the other side in a shower of green blood.

“Kaaaaaah!” the spider keened in pain, stumbling backwards as the front half of one of its legs spiraled in the other direction to land at the foot of the ramp. Blood poured from the severed limb, and its health dropped by a solid ten percent. Seeing an opening, Right and Yanily lunged in on both sides, pounding on the spider with eruptions of purple fire, and its health bar continued to drop.

Hiral, meanwhile, spun the Emperor’s Greatsword into a reverse grip. Multiplying the gravity by more than sixty times, he drove it into the barricade spider’s back. The sudden blow—and the weight behind it—drove the spider to ground, its legs splaying wide around it as its stomach hit the floor. The tip of the blade itself only penetrated a few inches through the spider’s armor, but it struggled to get itself up, legs flailing and failing to find purchase.

Instead of swinging the weapon again, Hiral poured more solar energy into it, multiplying the weight over and over. Simple physics cracked the shell open as the blade slowly fell deeper into the spider. In front of him, the health bar dropped like it had a leak in it, steadily declining, but still over half full.

As Hiral leaned on the blade, roots grew out of the webbing on either side of the spider and wrapped around the spread legs to hold them down. With the creature’s movements restricted, Right and Yanily vaulted over the limbs to land beside Hiral, then each slammed their own blows into the crack Hiral had opened.

Carapace shattered like cheap ceramic to reveal the fleshy bits beneath, and Yanily took a step back, his spear spinning in his hands. “I’ve got this.”

He vaulted fifteen feet into the air, so close to the ceiling he almost hit his head on it, then twisted his spear around to aim it at the spider’s back. A pulse of solar energy from the weapon, and the spear practically shot down, dragging the spearman with it. Yanily drove his spear the length of the entire blade into the spider’s flesh, the monster twitching in pain but unable to free itself from the Snaring Roots. Purple flames charred the flesh around the weapon, and Yanily gave a twist and yank on the blackened wood of his spear haft, then ripped the weapon free.

The Ghost-Web Barricade Spider’s health dropped to just a few percent left, at which point a Spearing Root burst out of the ground right in front of the monster’s face, straight through an eye and into the brain. The root emptied what was left of the health bar, and the beast finally stilled.

“Good,” Seena said, jogging up the ramp with her sister and Wule at her side. “Wasn’t sure if that would count as a close-range attack or not.”

“Even if it didn’t, I think we could’ve handled it,” Hiral said, cutting off the solar energy to his sword and pulling it out of the spider’s back. A sharp flick removed what little blood stuck to the crystal part of the blade, and he sheathed it against the plate on his back once again. “Looks like another hallway,” he added from his vantage point on the monster, pointing behind it.

“Then we’d better hurry,” Seena said. “Four minutes left.”