Where once was a huge mass of purple slime, is now an empty cave.

Or rather than empty, it's filled with charred remains of the slime.

The stench of the slime got replaced by the smell of something burnt.

But that's still better than before.

"Let's go Ungur."

"Whoof!"

This is Ungur, a dog monster I ended up befriending after I saved him.

He is much smaller than the average dog monster I have seen.

When standing straight on all fours, his height matches mine.

He is probably still a child.

While I waited for this slime to be gone, I went back and hunted some monsters for food with him.

I found out, that Ungur is quite weak in combat, but at least he is quick on his feet, so he won't easily get hit even by the giant floating snake.

Over the short period of time I knew him, I started feeling some sort of connection with him.

At first, I thought of him as a portable food source, but it's different now.

I feel like I have to care about him, like I have to protect him.

We go to the place, where most of the slime's mass was concentrated.

In reality, it was blocking a cave entrance in the ground.

That's the path I always take.

The other minor caves around are just dead ends with absolutely nothing in them.

Walking up to the hole, I look down.

It's quite deep and its steepness makes it hard to descend.

"Down."

"Whoof!"

I point inside the opening and Ungur voices his acknowledgment.

We start to carefully descent the steep road.

Then suddenly Ungur's leg slips and he starts to lose balance.

Reflexively, I try to grab onto his tail to help him.

But instead, his weight drags me down along with him.

Tumbling down like a rock, I accidentally let go of my weapon as I feel pain all over my body.

I crash at the bottom.

"Ugh..."

While holding my hurt shoulder, I look up and see a giant spider about to stab me with its leg.

In the split second, I realized, my weapon is gone, my arm is hurt, there is not enough time to gather mana for a spell.

I can't even grab its leg to fend it off, because its surface is covered in tiny spikes, that secrete deadly poison.

I'm dead.

Just when I give up in my mind, suddenly the spider is met with flames from the side.

"Ungur!"

Ungur growls and the spider, who barely dodged his fire attack, faces him.

The spider dodges more of Ungur's fire breaths while slowly closing in on him.

[Heal]

I need to quickly heal up and go help him.

He can't defeat this guy alone, he is too weak.

The spider gets close to Ungur as he frantically shoots fire at him.

It raises its foreleg and is about to slash at Ungur.

"Dodge!"

Ungur switches to defensive and starts dodging around.

With my arm healed, I start gathering mana in my left palm.

"Jump!"

Ungur reacts to my yell and jumps high in the air.

[Fire lance]

With Ungur out of the way, I pierce the spider with my attack.

It lets out a dying sound as it falls onto the ground.

A brief moment of silence is then followed by excited barks of Ungur, who runs up to me and rubs his cheeks against mine again.

I pat his head with satisfaction.

"Good job."

"Whoof!"

That was really close.

Ungur might be much much weaker than I am, but he is still useful.

And more importantly than that, it just feels really nice, knowing I'm not alone.

Anyway, that hole, which was covered by the slime, leads here.

An expansive den of spiders.

There is nothing but spiders around here.

This area is the one I always spend the most time in, since it's huge and complex.

However, I rarely die here.

It's simply because all of those spiders are weak to fire.

Most of the time, a basic fireball is enough.

And with Ungur here, it will be even easier.

The only concerning thing around here are their traps and possible ambushes.

We start descending down the tunnel, leaving the spider corpse behind.

It's not as steep as before, so I don't need to worry about falling anymore.

We keep encountering the same kind of spider as back there.

The brown colored one with tiny poisonous thorns on its legs.

All of them are complete pushovers.

[Fireball]

[Fireball]

They all die in one hit.

I just have to make sure I actually hit them.

As we advanced, Ungur got used to their movements and started one shotting them as well.

Hmm...

It feels like Ungur has gotten stronger.

And not just skill wise, but also his overall power is higher.

Does he also get stronger when he defeats other monsters like me?

If that's the case, I should let him fight more.

We finally arrive at the end of the tunnel and reach a massive ball-shaped room.

There are holes all over the walls and we came from one of them.

In this room there are countless straight beams stretching from a wall to wall.

Those beams vary in thickness,lengths and shapes.

Some of them are as thin as my arm while others are big enough for a safe house to exist on top of them.

They can be perfectly circular, rectangular or they can have some strange shapes.

Some are vertical, some horizontal.

The beams are then connected by spider webs.

And of course, spiders are crawling all over.

In the very center of the room, there is some kind of glowing orb.

Since the green mushrooms don't grow here anymore, that orb is the only light source.

This entrance we are in, is pretty high up, so we have to descend somehow again.

Luckily, there is a horizontal beam nearby.

I'm followed by Ungur as I jump onto the beam.

But Ungur's back legs slipped off as he landed and fell off.

"Ungur!"

I immediately grab his paws and try to pull him up when I notice a spider trying to ambush me from above.

But I pay it no mind and focus on pulling Ungur up.

Perfectly fulfilling my expectations, Ungur shoots the spider with his breath and defends me, while I finally pull him up.

We have no time to celebrate, as hordes of spiders start approaching us from all directions.

[Phantom presence]

All the spiders, who were vigorously surrounding us, suddenly come to a halt.

Just as I think everything is fine, I hear Ungur's whimpers behind me.

Oh crap!

I always do this here, but now I have Ungur with me.

What now?

Do I turn it off?

If I do, what will I do then?

We can't handle all those spiders!

As I start panicking on what to do, Ungur, who was slowly stepping back, slips again and falls down the beam.

"No!"

Without hesitation, I jump after him.

I somehow manage to catch up to him in mid air.

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Hugging his back, I start to gather mana...

[Tri enchant:]

[Impact resistance]

[Impact resistance]

[Impact resistance]

...and enchant Ungur's fur.

Enchanting body parts can be quite dangerous, but I have no choice right now.

With me still clinging to his back, we crash at side of a wall and then roll down into the middle.

When we finally stop bouncing around, I slowly try to open my eyes.

My entire body hurts.

I can barely move.

What about Ungur?

When I try to search for Ungur with my eyes, I find him completely unhurt to the side, fending off some spiders.

Slowly, I reach for a scroll fastened on my thigh and pour mana into it.

[Heal]

I heal myself to the point of being able to move and then I raise my body.

Ungur can hold off some of them, but when they are coming from all directions, that's impossible.

Guess I have to use the old method.

I gather a large amount of mana in my left palm and face away from Ungur.

[Inferno]

The mana converges and then shoots out in a cone of fire in front of me.

The mass of spiders doesn't stand a chance as my spell burns them all.

When I turn around, I find Ungur struggling to keep them at bay with his fire breath.

There is just too many of them.

I jump to his side and prepare for another round.

[Inferno]

Another blast of fire shoots from my hand and scorches all of the spiders on this side as well.

Inferno is actually really weak power wise, because it spreads out a lot, but its huge area of effect makes it perfect for this situation.

In the past, I used to use it here a lot, but I soon realized, it consumes too much mana.

So my alternative approach was to just use phantom presence and slowly walk through here without fighting.

Unfortunately, since phantom presence affects both enemies and allies alike, I can't use it with Ungur by my side.

A lot of spiders have been defeated, but not nearly enough.

They are still converging at us from all directions.

I find a nearby cave entrance in the floor and point at it.

"Ungur. Down."

"Whoof!"

I jump on his back and together we leap down the hole.

Luckily, since it wasn't too steep, we safely made it through the short tunnel while I completely healed myself.

And on the other side was...

Yet another ball-shaped room with beams, cobwebs and a glowing orb.

Yes...

This area is a huge maze.

I myself don't even remember the exact route to the goal yet.

We don't enter yet though.

If we just nonchalantly jump in there, it will end the same way as previously.

Now then.

"Ungur, don't look at me."

He turns his head and looks at me for a while, but then barks in acknowledgment and turns back.

[Phantom presence]

The thing about phantom presence is, that only those, who can see my visage will be affected.

That's also the reason, why if I move too quickly, the effect lessens.

That means if I ride on his back like this and he never turns his head around at me, we should be safe.

I totally forgot about this back there when I was panicking.

After locating a nearby horizontal beam, we enter the area.

Ungur jumps and lands perfectly on top of it.

This time, no spiders dare to go near us, so we just leisurely walk down the beam.

Now, that I finally have some time to relax, I realize that I haven't been in this particular room before.

But it's not that I don't recognize the layout.

It's because I'm seeing a different type of spider among them.

Up in the room above, were mainly the brown spiders with poisonous legs.

Mixed with them are small black spiders, who like to hide in shadows and ambush.

There were also some big tarantulas, but only a handful of them.

Here however, other than the brown and black spiders, there are two other kinds.

One with green body and extremely thin and long black legs.

And the other one looks like the brown spider, but is colored dark purple.

Now, I haven't ever seen the green one before, but the purple one is really nasty.

The legs, the fangs, even the body.

They all can poison me with just a touch.

Even spitting poison isn't impossible for them.

Fortunately, none of them draw near us.

As we walk across the beam, we arrive at the middle of the room, where the glowing orb is.

I tried breaking this orb once and when I did, it stopped glowing and I was plunged into darkness.

Then I started hearing crawling sounds of all the spiders and feeling pain all over my body.

Finally, after several excruciating minutes, I woke up at the start.

Never.

Again.

Looking around the room a bit, I actually spot a safe house.

It is behind the orb on one of the horizontal beams below.

I didn't see it before, because its view was blocked by the glowing orb and other beams.

Since I haven't been in this area, I probably haven't gotten whatever is in there yet.

We descend down and head towards the house.

As we get closer, Ungur starts slowing down.

Eventually, he stops completely.

"Ungur?"

...

No response.

That's right...

Monsters don't come near these things.

I never really questioned it, since I was happy for it.

But now with Ungur here...

Why is it, that monsters don't go near?

...

What now?

If I just leave him and go inside, the spiders will swarm him.

Hmm...

"Ungur, go back."

Ungur silently turns around and slowly walks back.

"Stop."

After stopping Ungur, I dismount him and release phantom presence.

The spiders start moving this way, but I pay it no mind.

Closing my eyes, I once again touch Ungur's fur.

[Enchant: Phantom presence]

...

After going back a few steps, I slowly open my eyes.

...

I see Ungur standing there.

But there is no fear.

Did I fail?

I look around us and see, that the spiders stopped coming again.

Looks like I didn't fail.

So does it not work on me?

That's actually really good.

"Ungur, stay. I will be back."

"Whoof!"

I leave Ungur there and head to the safe house.

Squeezing through the hole, I find myself in a familiar yet fresh place.

Losing no time, I walk up to the table, to look what it has to offer.

...

It's a book but...

...

What is this?

I got ripped off again.

The book was titled 'Plant encyclopedia'.