The group passed through a roughly hewn tunnel. Bioluminescent moss hung from the ceiling, casting an eerie blue light on the gentle downward slope. When Dylan looked closely, he saw small webs hidden between the glowing fibers.

Spiders.

He couldn’t see them. They obviously weren’t the mana-enhanced monsters the dungeon would soon throw at the party, but he was sure they were already surrounded by the little things. He shuddered.

The sooner this is over with, the better.

At the front of the line, Chester paused. He’d come to a bend in the tunnel overflowing with a sudden excess of light. Signaling the others to wait, he took his shield from his back and scouted around the corner.

In less than a minute, he returned, motioning for the group to back up a bit. When they were more than ten yards from the bend, he stopped.

“Looks like the first room,” he said. It wasn’t quite a whisper, but he was keeping his voice low. “Didn’t scout too much into it, but it’s a big open cave. Light’s coming down from a hole in the ceiling.”

“Monsters?” Sara asked.

“Didn’t see any, but it wouldn’t surprise me if spiders run out once we all get in the room. Big webs across the walls.”

“Big in what way?” Dylan asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Are the webs just big or do they look like they came from big spiders?”

“What does it matter?” Rowan’s impatient voice cut through the tunnel. “We know we’re fighting spiders either way.”

“I’m just wondering if they’re a sign of the web-shooting spiders that Dena fought in her combat trial or if they’re just normal webs like those.” Dylan pointed to the ceiling.

“I couldn’t tell,” Chester said. “It’s best to be on the lookout for all the varieties we encountered, just so we aren’t taken by surprise.”

“Obviously.” Rowan again. “Let’s get moving.”

“Just a second,” Chester cautioned. “We should make a plan first.”

“Fine.”

The Guardian looked at the rest of the group. “Rowan and I are up front; everyone else hangs back a bit. Dena,” he addressed the Bard, “what kinds of debuffs can you put out?”

“I’ve got one that will slow any monsters that hear me and another that will put a single monster to sleep for as long as I concentrate on playing to it.” The woman patted the case on her back.

“That’s it?” Rowan asked. “How did you get through your combat trial?”

“I can also slowly damage anything that hears my music, but since I’m not here alone, I figured it would be best not to use that.” She paused. “Unless you want me to make you bleed from your ears?”

“Deceleration will be fine.” Chester interjected. “Once the spiders appear, try to keep as many of them slowed as you can.” He thought for a moment. “Dylan, Jaiden. You two hang back and protect the noncombat classes. This is only the first room, so the three of us should be able to handle most of the fight alone, but just in case something gets through…”

“Got it.” Dylan nodded. He knew Chester was most likely taking the limits he’d mentioned about his abilities into consideration. And as for Jaiden, she was an Earth Mage; even if she hung back with the noncombatants, she could still support the fight at range.

“Let’s go.” Rowan began walking down the tunnel.

Chester let out a sigh and followed.

As they neared the bend, those who had weapons began to ready them. Rowan drew his sword, Jaiden held her staff, and Dena pulled the case from her back. When she opened it, she took out a violin.

That looks too fragile to be taking into a fight, Dylan thought.

She left the case on the ground, and when she stood up, she was ready to join the others.

Chester nodded and entered the room. Rowan followed close behind.

When it was Dylan’s turn, he saw a large open cave, just as the Guardian had described. Roughly circular in shape, it was larger than his training room had been during the combat trial. The walls curved upward until they reached about fifty feet off the ground. A jagged hole stretched across the roof, letting in what appeared to be natural sunlight. Long green vines came down with the light, stopping just over half the distance from the rocky floor.

Opposite the tunnel they’d entered from was the only other path Dylan could see running into or out of the cavern. A wide channel held up with wooden supports. Spider webs reached out from the passage to cover the walls of over half of the chamber. To Dylan’s eyes, they didn’t look any larger than the webs he’d seen among the moss; there were just a lot more of them. If he had to guess, he’d say they came from ordinary spiders, not monsters.

A lot of ordinary spiders.

Chester and Rowan separated themselves from the group, moving about twenty yards ahead of the others. When they reached the center of the cavern, a mass of skittering came from the tunnel opposite them.

Chester signaled a halt and said, “Get ready.”

Spiders poured out of the passage. There looked to be just under a dozen, but luckily, they were all the smallest and weakest kind the group had seen in the combat trial.

Chester lifted his shield and used one of the signature skills of his class on Rowan. Guard. For as long as it remained active, he would take half of all the damage that the Blade Warden would have otherwise received, and every time Rowan got hit, it would help to charge the Guardian’s second signature skill. Retaliation. For every hit Chester or his Guarded target took, he’d receive a Retaliation counter. And once the number of counters crossed a certain threshold, he could unleash them all, empowering his next shield strike with a large amount of damage.

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When the spiders had covered half of the distance to the party, Chester let out a shout, using the last of his skills, Taunt. For monsters with lesser intelligence, the spiders included, the shout would force them to attack him for a period of time related to his class tier. Smarter opponents could resist, but the damage they dealt would be lowered for the length of the skill or until they attacked the person who used it on them.

Dylan watched as the spiders charged the man, thinking about what else he knew about the Guardian class. To support the beating he was about to take, Chester should have been given two additional stats. Defense, which would reduce all damage he received, and vitality, a stat that would function as a battery to help slowly regenerate his resilience in combat.

Everything about the class was designed to take damage. Dylan was glad he hadn’t chosen it.

Just as the arachnids were about to reach Chester and his shield, a haunting cry echoed through the cavern. The spiders slowed, momentum broken; it was as if they were moving through molasses.

Dena had started to play.

The woman had moved forward, standing a dozen steps behind Chester and Rowan. While the sound of her music reached even beyond the chamber they were in, Dylan assumed there was an effective range she needed to be within for her skill to work.

Seeing his opportunity, Rowan acted. With his sword glowing red and waves of heat rippling in the air around him, he struck at one of the spiders as it tried to move past him. One of his skills, Elemental Blade. The weapon swept through the monster’s legs and dug deep into its side. Chitin crackled and a screech pierced the air, competing with Dena’s melody.

Without hesitating, Rowan struck again, moving to another spider. The first, having lost its ability to move, was out of the fight.

The rest of the spiders were soon met with Chester’s shield. His adept movements made it easy for him to keep the slowed monsters from touching more than the metal in his hands. After blocking about five hits, he swung the shield forward. With a bang and flash of light, a spider was thrown backwards. It landed on the ground with its front legs crippled and its head caved in.

It was clear that both the Guardian and the Blade Warden were well practiced with their weapons. More so than could have been possible with just their limited time in the Tutorial.

They must have been professionally trained before coming here.

With the cooperation of the three in front of him, it wasn’t long before Dylan watched the last spider let out a cry of agony, Rowan’s sword twisting its way through its back.

“Easy,” the redhead said.

“It’s not over yet.” Chester steadied his slightly rapid breathing and stared at the passage that the spiders had come from. The echoes of more of the monsters could just be heard making their way down the earthen corridor.

It sounded like a larger group this time.

“Jaiden, if you see a chance, throw a Stone Bullet at some on the edges,” Chester called back.

“Got it.” The woman nodded, readying one of the elementary uses of the skill Earth Manipulation.

This time, when the spiders appeared, they didn’t all come out in a clump and charge at the middle of the room like before. Instead, they entered the cavern in a steady stream, beginning to move around the chamber’s edges.

“Shit.” Chester rushed forward, and shouted at the monsters, trying to catch them all in the range of his Taunt. Most changed directions and charged at him, but a handful evaded the skill, moving around the room uncontrolled.

When the free spiders heard Dena’s violin, they took the sound as an attack and creeped toward her.

Jaiden began to channel mana, and Dylan watched a stone the size of a fist form in the air beside him. When she swung her staff, a move Dylan wasn’t entirely sure was necessary, the rock shot out, smashing through a spider’s eyes.

There was a sudden explosion of light from across the cavern, and Dylan turned to see Rowan standing before a heated mass of spider guts. He must have used Elemental Cleave. It was a skill that took all the energy of a Blade Warden’s Elemental Blade and discharged it in a ninety-degree cone. It was a powerful attack, but it had the drawback of putting all other blade empowerments on an extended cooldown.

Jaiden fired another Stone Bullet, killing a second spider just before it reached Dena, but three more of the creatures were right behind. Dylan was worried he’d waited too long to summon his deck, but then he saw Dena move. She danced around the spiders, dodging their slowed attacks with ease. All the while her music continued uninterrupted.

A third shot from Jaiden took a spider in the side. It didn’t kill it, but it was knocked into the other two besieging the Bard. The three creatures crashed into the ground in a tangled mess.

Dylan’s help was unnecessary.

Chester and Rowan began to get a handle on the spiders still coming from the entrance across the cavern. Dena’s violin attracted any that got through, and Jaiden’s magic slowly whittled them down.

“Above us!” A sudden shout from Sara.

Dylan looked up and watched as another group of spiders crawled down from the hole in the roof. Seeing there was no way that Chester could easily corral the monsters, he decided he’d waited long enough and summoned his deck.

Light flashed and cards danced around him. The fight continued on, and by the time he drew his hand the foremost of the new spiders had already made it halfway down the wall.

Dylan glanced at the cards. Basic Energy, Draw, Mana Bolt, Mana Bolt, Phantom Sword.

With the help of his deck enhancement, he could play both Mana Bolts instantly. Choosing a target, he activated a card and a streak of light shot a spider from the wall, the impact of the bolt enough to make it lose its hold of the rocky surface. Dylan didn’t know if it had died, but even if hadn’t, it was out of the fight for the moment. He repeated the process and then waited.

When a new turn came, he generated energy and then played Draw. Two new cards appeared before him. Basic Energy and Phantom Soldier. He activated both of his energy cards and summoned the soldier.

As Dylan ordered the phantom to guard in front of him and the rest of the group, he saw Alice standing ready with her small hammer. Remembering her words about having a high enough physical power stat to fight, he looked at his hand and found himself with a question. Could he give the equipment he summoned to other people?

Blacksmiths, despite having no skills that focused on combat, generally started with tier 1 physical power. If Alice knew how to handle a blade, she’d be much more capable of exploiting the Phantom Sword’s power than he would.

Dylan was running low on options, so he decided to give it a try. Watching his soldier engage the first spider that reached their group, he generated again on his next turn and summoned the sword.

“Alice, try using this.” He extended the blade to the woman. Surprised for a moment, she hesitated. “I’m shit with a sword and my physical power’s not even half yours.” Dylan tried to persuade her.

“Okay.” She reached out and grabbed the blade.

It worked. Dylan watched as she took a few practice swings.

“It’ll only last for two and a half minutes, but it has a property that lets it ignore ten percent of its target’s defense.”

The Blacksmith nodded her understanding before turning to watch the incoming spiders. When one was about reached them, she struck. The sword swept clean through its legs, much more effective than when Dylan had used it in the combat trial. Glad that it was useful but a little upset about just how much of a difference there was between him and Alice wielding the weapon, Dylan focused his attention on more directly commanding his Phantom Soldier.

He cooperated with Alice to guard their half of the party. They worked to keep Sara and Mark away from the spiders, the Runic Scribe and the Herbalist having no real means of defense should the monsters get past.

At some point in the fight, Dylan had missed Jaiden stepping out toward Dena. She’d covered herself with a layer of rock armor and used a combination of Stone Bullets and a quicksand like technique to help keep the Bard safe and the music coming.

Over the course of the next few turns Dylan drew a Mana Shield and a Mana Spike. Luckily, the soldier and Alice were enough to keep the spiders away from the group during the time he couldn’t play anything.

When he drew an Intermediate Energy, he used it to activate the Mana Spike and instantly killed a kind of spider he hadn’t seen before. With an all-black carapace, it was both skinnier and smoother looking than the other spiders around them. One of the venomous spiders Chester had described from his combat trial.

Its appearance worried Dylan, and he took a lull in the fight to look over the rest of the cavern. He needn’t have bothered. Chester blocked a few straggling spiders at the far entrance while Rowan made his way over to help finish off the last of those trying to get at Dena.

In less than a minute, the fight was over.