Beating the hybrid had been a mixed bag of benefits and losses. He was mildly injured with dents and scrapes in his gear, but he had also gained the two-pronged spear and net. He had found no way to remove the chitin armor without breaking it and so decided to leave it in the rift. His attacks had widened the chinks in the armor anyways.
After a longer recovery to regain his stamina and to cultivate the essence, it was time to move on.
The next boss’ room was a smaller one, only eight paces wide in a radius from the center. From floor to ceiling it was coated in a thick layer of Tier 3 webs. While most of it would be non sticky, there would be many patches of it that would be, and only the spider would know where they were.
The two types of webs were visibly indistinguishable to his eyes and required him to be far too close to tell apart with his spiritual senses.
Hanging from the ceiling were large blobs of webbing which descended to a height where any errant movement would cause them to stick to him or his weapons. He was certain there were pitfalls underneath the floor’s webs too.
All in all, not a good place to fight. The existence of a [Skill] turned the trapper from an easier battle if one properly spaced into a nightmare of uncertainties. With an unknown [Skill] in the mix, Solace outright refused to face the boss with any means that was even a semblance of a fair fight.
So, he decided to just get rid of the spider by any means possible, even if it meant that it wouldn’t directly die by his hand and give him essence.
In his left hand, Solace clutched neither shield nor weapon but the bag of flour. With his right hand, he scooped handfuls out and dumped it in a line just a step past the threshold of the boss room. Like the other foes, it did not yet make an appearance, allowing for him to do the work unimpeded.
He tossed a few hands of flour at the overhanging webs, but found it relatively ineffective.
… Fine. I might as well go all in on this.
He emptied the rest of the flour inside the room and took the now empty bag with him. It was better to guarantee this worked instead of holding back what could be a crucial volume.
Solace then moved back to retrieve the blowtorch and a dry cleaning rag. He set the cloth ablaze, turned off the blowtorch, and lobbed the rag in an underhand throw at the large pile of powder, swiftly slamming the doors shut as the fire starter arced in the air.
There was a brief silence, then traces of smoke followed by the sound of flames. The crackles swiftly transformed into a roar. His enhanced senses could hear the fire spread, violently heating up the room within. He was content to keep his hands firmly pressed against the door to hold them closed as he waited for the end.
That was when he heard a high pitched noise that sounded eerily like a scream. A force slammed into the doors, unexpected and powerful enough to knock Solace back and off his feet, blowing open the entrance.
Fingers of fire flew outwards towards Solace and he scrambled to his feet to get away. He and Xu Wei beat a retreat back to the cave.
“What was that?” Xu Wei asked.
“The [Skill],” Solace replied. “I’m not sure which.”
He wasn’t familiar with many offensive [Skills], only the ones used for crafting. Still, his spiritual senses had detected mana moving in such a way that made him bet that it involved moving air. Whether it was manipulation or one more specialized for combat, however, he wasn’t sure.
A chill went up his spine as he tried to imagine fighting something that could move him or its traps with a [Skill] like that.
Forget the essence. That thing needs to die. Burn, burn!
The fire blazed on for several minutes. It took two more for the flames to die down and it became safe to approach. When they returned to the antechamber and peered into the boss room, they saw that a little less than three quarters of the webs within had been scoured.
Solace cautiously walked in, shield and glaive in hand. The place was still warm and the occasional wisps of smoke obscured his vision, but he was able to locate the boss well enough once he reached the center.
It was in the far back, a spider only a tad smaller than the brood mother but mottled gray and with a bloated abdomen. It looked unharmed despite the inferno, but Solace knew better. The heat from the fire almost certainly overheated it; the creature was vibrating slightly back and forth in an effort to cool down. It was also likely out of mana since the amount it took to survive those flames with an air based [Skill] would be costly for a Tier 3.
He advanced upon the boss and it clumsily tried to flee, its body wobbling as it moved. The monster stuck to the areas of the room still covered in unburnt web, forcing him to carefully navigate the terrain to avoid the patches of sticky silk.
His caution was warranted once the trapper started shooting bullets of pressurized air at him. Much like how mana could be shunted from any part of one’s body, many [Skills] could do the same. There was hardly any warning, no telegraphed turn of the boss to face him, only near imperceptible distortions in the air and a flash of detection from his spiritual senses as the rapid projectiles—faster than the fireballs—slammed into his hastily brought up shield.
The force smashed into his defense, denting the metal and sending him stumbling back a step. His enhanced flexibility and dexterity prevented him from losing his footing. Gritting his teeth, he pushed onwards.
With most of the webs burned up and the boss overheated, it was only a matter of time until Solace cornered the creature and killed it. A tedious task against its [Skill], but one he preferred to do over fighting it while it was healthy and entrenched in a treacherous environment.
The cleanup afterwards was swift and easier than the previous two bosses because of the way he had dealt with the trapper. The nature of the “fight” also meant that, after cultivating the essence, he was able to move onto the next boss rather than wait for his body to recover.
“Xu Wei, I’m going to need the mallet,” Solace said.
The boy pulled it out of the bag. “Ebonskitter?” He asked, using the Corporation’s word for it.
“Ebonskitter,” Solace confirmed as he took the tool. “Empty a bag and help me with the crystals, please.”
The two made their way roughly halfway back down the rift’s tunnel, where Solace began to use the mallet to whack the dimly glowing crystals free of where they were embedded in the cavern’s walls.
The crystals were an interesting material. They emanated light even when broken off, but only when in the rift. Outside of it, they were merely bits of translucent rock. When he had brought a sample to Edison, he had been told that they had no enchantments and no discernable mystical or chemical properties that made them glow—they didn’t even have the faintest bit of a response to mana. It was a mystery that, along with their relative abundance, rendered collecting them for money or crafting pointless.
But that didn’t mean they were purposeless while in the rift.
He gathered as many as his hands and Xu Wei’s bag could hold, fifteen in all, and moved back to the antechamber. Once there, he opened the doors to the ebonskitter’s room.
It was completely dark, not a shred of light save the rays that came from the antechamber through the opened entrance. The floor was a layer of fine ebony colored sand, several areas forming shallow dunes. It was an insidious terrain where the sounds of movement were all but muffled and, like all the other rooms, designed to be in the boss’ favor.
The ebonskitter was the fastest of the eight boss variations. It was also the second strongest spider in terms of raw strength, the bite of its Tier 3 physique certainly capable of cutting through his armor. With its glossy black chitin, it was effectively imperceptible within the environment which allowed it to rush down an opponent with ease.
Normally.
With underhand tosses, Solace began to throw the crystals inside. They illuminated the room, revealing its interior and removing one of the boss’ advantages. He took a couple steps forward to place more, wanting to make sure that he would be able to spot the spider as soon as possible.
Once done, he retreated, giving the mallet back to Xu Wei. He checked his weapons, readjusted his gear, used his Talent to make some changes to his cultivation, and then moved to fight the fourth boss.
Like usual, he entered with glaive and shield in hand. Unlike usual, he also clutched the net with his shield hand and had the extra spear strapped to his back.
At the center of the room, he stopped. His spiritual senses and normal senses were both enhanced via extra cultivation to detect the spider, but he still couldn’t find it. It wasn’t on the walls nor the floor. If it was on the ceiling which was still wreathed in shadows, he couldn’t see it.
“Solace…” Xu Wei said, the boy’s voice trailing off.
He turned to the side slightly to see what the issue was, only to notice that several of the crystals he had tossed into the cave were gone. There was only a slight impression in the sand where they once were. It took only a moment for him to realize what it meant.
A sand manipulation [Skill].
That was when the boss decided to show itself. The ebonskitter exploded out of the sandy floor, a flurry of legs and limbs that sent dust flying into the air as it sprinted towards him.
He hadn’t noticed it with his spiritual senses because it had been too deep, but that didn’t mean that he was unprepared for such an attack. Solace stepped backwards, using the movement to face the direction of the spider. He swung the net forward as the boss closed in, entangling it.
His glaive flicked downwards at the monster. And though he aimed for its body, the boss’ thrashing made him only take a limb. Before he could try for another attack, however, thin pillars of sand erupted from the floor, forcing him backwards and obscuring his vision.
The floor became a sea of roiling sand, the most turbulent areas near the boss. It forced him to retreat even further lest he become mired. As he moved back, the crystals illuminating the room sank into the floor, lights winking out until the room was plunged into virtual darkness. The only light source remaining were the ones outside the room itself which bled through the doorway.
The nature of his retreat had placed him on the end of the room furthest away from the doors. Running back to the entryway was a dangerous option in this position, but he wasn’t concerned. Instead, he used his Talent to drain half of his senses and a quarter of his durability to allocate it into strength, durability, and regeneration. To avoid all of the manipulated sand and properly react to the ebonskitter’s speed, he’d need to be able to do bursts of high effort and recover from them quickly.
In the time it took for him to finish the changes to cultivation, the ebonskitter had slunk back into the sand, leaving only bits of the shredded net behind.
The sand was once more still, causing the cavern to settle into an uneasy silence.
The fight proceeded in a pattern much the same as the first exchange. A charge by the ebonskitter faster than Solace could blink and a response from him by avoiding the attack or trying to punish it. At Tier 3, the spider’s increased intelligence lent itself to devious tricks with the sand manipulation [Skill]. Sinking areas, creeping tendrils, walls of sand, an explosion of particles on one side while the true attack came from the other. His mind and spiritual senses worked overtime to keep up with everything the monster threw at him in the near complete darkness.
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During these exchanges, he focused on preventing himself from being pinned down or bowled over. If he was, he’d become caught and entombed in the sand. It meant that he wasn’t able to ever land any blows, but he was fine with that. Based on his experience working with Edison, he knew that manipulation [Skills] were more mana intensive than [Skills] that specialized in one specific function. As an example, a fireball [Skill] was cheaper than using a fire manipulation one to launch a similar attack.
That bit of information was crucial to Solace’s plan. Because it meant that he could outlast the monster’s [Skill] assisted assaults in a way that he could not have done against the hybrid.
After thirteen exchanges he began to notice the volume of manipulated sand decrease with his spiritual senses, the precision and speed of the particles also dropping like a stone. It could have been a ruse, but the amount of mana that he estimated had been expended was roughly what would cause the mana pool of a Tier 3 person to flag.
That was when he enacted the next part of his plan. Having faced this boss variation several times over the weeks he had delved the spider rift, he had, through experience and research, learned that the ebonskitter detected opponents not with vision but through vibrations and mana. Solace moved towards one of the room’s walls, releasing his own mana from several parts of his body in controlled bursts. He began to pace a few strides side to side around the same spot near the wall.
Being near the wall meant that the ebonskitter had less angles of attack. It was a position that he would have never put himself in when the monster’s [Skill] was at full capability, but it no longer was.
When the ebonskitter eventually came for him, the rift’s implantation of aggressive instincts within the monster overcoming a natural spider’s predilections for a patient ambush, its attack was thrown off by the cloud of mana which allowed Solace to not only react to the attack, but to counter it. He sidestepped the rush and the sand coming from behind him, and slammed his shield into the creature, knocking it aside.
The boss tried to run away, but he refused to let it escape unscathed. As it raced out of his reach, he threw the glaive at it, piercing its abdomen. There was no sound to reveal the extent of the damage, but the blood on the sand was enough of an indication to show that the fight was almost over.
Almost.
He mentally kicked himself to prevent any elation or eagerness from taking up valuable space in his mind as he hunted down the boss with the spare spear in hand. Its potentially drained reserves of mana weren’t confirmed empty, and a beast was at its most dangerous when cornered. There were fewer moments more crucial than the one in the present, and he would take it seriously rather than celebrate the battle before it was won.
Fortunately, the celebration came swiftly after. The ebonskitter truly was low on mana. Every step he took to corner the creature was cautious, avoiding the almost half-hearted movements of sand that barely stirred to impede his moment. When all was said and done, he stood above the large spider and brought the two fanged spear down with all of his strength. He didn’t need to feel the rush of essence to know that the boss was dead after his final strike.
Solace exited the room once he collected his glaive and the tattered remains of the net. Its destruction was unfortunate, as it would have been very useful when dealing with the next boss he planned to face, the jumping spider.
As it stood, there was no way to get another either. One couldn’t return to a rift instance after leaving, and making a net out of the silk within the rift would be a time consuming process that would take over an entire day without the proper tools—even with Xu Wei’s help.
Speaking of time and Xu Wei…
“Xu Wei,” Solace said as began the now rote process of cleaning up from the boss fight, “it’s already been over four hours since we entered the rift and I’m only halfway through all of the bosses. Is there something else you need to do today?”
“Not really, no. I’ve been taking part time jobs that pay based on labor and there’s nothing else I’d be doing,” the boy replied.
Solace could list a lot of things that Xu Wei could be doing instead of wasting time watching him fight monsters in this rift, but he didn’t voice them. Instead, he took a moment to reassess their situation and then decided that it was as good a time as any to take an extended break in preparation for his remaining foes.
“Would you like to learn how to extract materials of value from the monsters?” Solace asked.
“Yes!”
He hadn’t bothered to harvest the materials from spiders in previous delves for various reasons. He had no use for the venom since toxin coated weapons were a pain to use and clean, the spiders within the rift were resistant to the venom anyways, and there was a limited market for the venom outside.
Likewise, proper silk collection was tedious and the stuff sold poorly since there were better alternatives for crafting. Other things he could gather were in a similar situation. After one attempt, he had come to the conclusion that every hour he spent breaking down the spiders yielded materials worth only a quarter of what Edison paid him for that same amount of time.
But that was when the spiders were Tier 2.
At Tier 3, the prices were actually worth his time, and would also be useful material for the future fights. So, he spent the next half hour with all of his cultivated essence allocated to regeneration as he dragged the brood mother’s corpse out of her den and into the antechamber, where he began to break it down with his knife and whatever else he had on hand.
The killing wounds had gotten blood from its open circulatory system all over the interior flesh, making it extremely low grade and virtually worthless for alchemy or eating—though most people avoided eating monster meat anyways due to its innate toxicity that required special treatment to make it edible. Instead, he cut out the venom glands, tying the ends of the glands tight with some of the stray silk laying around and putting everything carefully into their bag.
For the brood mother’s silk gland, he found that one of the wounds had nicked it, allowing air inside to solidify some of the material. A chunk of solid silk was worthless, only silk threads held any value. He salvaged what he could, drawing out the remaining silk as a thread from the spinneret side that he wrapped around an empty water bottle.
The whole time he worked, he explained the process to Xu Wei. The logic, the correct place to make cuts with the knife, and the proper way to store it. When he finished with the brood mother, he skipped over the hybrid due to its lack of venom or silk and instead brought out the trapper’s corpse, with which he repeated the demonstration.
“Understand it all?” He asked Xu Wei when the last of the silk from the trapper was extracted.
“I think so.”
“Good. If you want, you can try to harvest materials from the Tier 2 spiders with the knife you brought into the rift. Anything you get is yours to keep or sell when we get out.”
“Thank you!”
The boy ran off to try his newly acquired knowledge as Solace sat back down to clean his gear and cultivate the essence he gained from killing the ebonskitter as well as reallocate everything in preparation for the jumping spider.
While his gauntlets were off for cleaning, he took the time to eat the remainder of their sandwiches. Fighting was hungry work. The depletion of their food as well as their dwindling water supplies meant that they were on a clock for him to finish the rift. Take too long, and he’d be fighting the hardest bosses while under fueled.
The thought made him stand up and put all of his armor back on. He strapped the two pronged spear as well as the glaive to his back, opting to use the sword as his primary weapon instead. When he finished securing everything else, he made his way to the jumping spider’s doors.
He pushed them open. The interior of the room was the same as the other times he had fought the creature. A cavernous place with stalactites and stalagmites jutting out of the floor and ceiling.
Solace cautiously moved towards the center, his senses strained to try to find the spider. Like the other times, the moment he reached the middle of the room, the boss attacked.
Unlike the other times, he couldn’t react.
The jumping spider slammed into his shoulder before he could bring his shield to bear. It was simply too quick, unexpectedly faster than the ebonskitter. The force of the monster’s attack made him stumble forwards. There was an ugly shrieking sound as the creature’s fangs scraped at the steel of his armor. He caught his balance and swung his sword, forcing the monster to disengage and jump away, out of sight in less than a blink. Solace cut the strand of silk attached to his armor left in the wake of the boss’ movements.
It has some kind of self-enhancement [Skill].
That was the best explanation for its sudden spike in speed compared to what he had expected. It was a manageable development, however. His senses and mind cultivation had enough essence to narrow down the boss’ location to a side of the room whenever it leapt, allowing him to predict rather than react to its attacks.
Unfortunately, that didn’t make it much easier. The Tier 3 jumping spider was twice as intelligent as its Tier 2 counterpart, which was already one of the cleverest of the eight variations. The boss he now faced exhibited behaviors that its lesser variation did not. It over telegraphed false feints, created areas of high silk thread density to try to corral him towards, swung in arcs using its silk and stalactites to attack from even more unpredictable angles.
It was a lot to handle, even for Solace, forcing him to begrudgingly allocate even more essence to senses and mind from dexterity and flexibility; a tough choice which lowered his abilities to actually hit the monster. He didn’t dare take any allocation from regeneration or durability, needing the recovery to deal with all of the spider’s hectic movements in time.
He fought to control a position, clearing it of webs as he adjusted to the jumping spider’s physique and tricks. It took several minutes, a near eternity in combat which began to have him panting, before he had internalized it all and was able to punish an exploitable attack.
The spider jumped from the ground to one of its own threads, using it as a springboard to launch an attack at an oblique angle. Solace smiled as it leapt right at his blade placed perfectly in its path based on his prediction.
Finally—
The boss leapt away from his sword, jumping off of the air itself to get away. That was when Solace realized that the spider didn’t have a self-enhancement [Skill].
It had a double jump.
The monster seemed to understand what Solace learning that information meant, as it dropped all subtlety of its use of the [Skill] altogether.
It began to heavily abuse the [Skill]. Its leaps became twice as frequent and twice as fast with double the angles of attack and force. Paired with its Tier 3 status, it meant four times as much combat capability.
It was too much for Solace to deal with. He had to allocate even more essence from flexibility and some from regeneration towards mind to keep up as it jumped literal circles around him.
As his panting breaths became heaving, he decided to cut his losses and retreat. He simply wasn’t equipped or able to be equipped to fight this boss. Losing out on the actual rift challenge’s rewards would sting, but at least he’d live with four Tier 3 monster’s worth of essence as a prize.
Unfortunately, the spider had other plans in mind. Over the course of the battle, it had strung dozens of strands of silk between him and the exit. An insurmountable barrier due to the fact that he couldn’t cut it and defend himself at the same time.
He gave a sharp exhale of frustration. It looked like he had to fight. Mustering his resolve, he began to focus on conserving his energy to enact a desperate plan. He let certain jumps land that he could have dodged, allowing the armor to take damage and swiping the boss away with his blade so he could regain some stamina. The zone of silk free area around him was allowed to diminish, just ever so slightly, but gradually over time. He reallocated essence towards strength, dexterity, and flexibility but didn’t express the changes.
The jumping spider seemed to take his weaker attempts at defense as a sign of exhaustion, and it redoubled its efforts.
It was after three minutes of this new fighting dynamic that Solace made his bid for victory. As the spider leapt, he released the rest of his mana pool in its direction, as dense as he could possibly make it and creating a small cloud of particles to obscure the visual hunter’s view of him. Using mana like this was wasteful, with any sort of smokescreen [Skill] being far more efficient and effective, but he didn’t have a [Skill].
The moment he tried to use his mana to make the boss miss its next attack and give him a window, it aborted its leap and jumped backwards. The lack of sound following this move indicated that it was content to stand back and let the mana dissipate.
That was fine by Solace. He began to cut at the silk threads between him and the exit, slicing through only the ones he needed to in order to squeeze past.
He was only three fourths of the way towards the doors when he heard the familiar clicking of exoskeleton. Solace wheeled around and used his shield to meet the attack. He warded the jumping spider away once more, but tripped on a low strung strand of silk, giving out a loud huff that could have been mistaken for a shout of fear as his glaive and spear dropped from his back and clattered to the floor.
The spider came rocketing back in. With Solace on the floor, surrounded by threads of silk which made it impossible to get up in time and dodge, it looked like the jumping spider had won.
Looked like.
Because with its Tier 3 enhanced intelligence came an understanding of victory, an eagerness which consumed the creature’s mind and made it tunnel vision on its adversary at the expense of its surroundings.
Mid-leap, at an angle which would allow the monster to pin Solace down and trap him with its webs, it clipped part of its body into one of its own near invisible threads, knocking it ajar like he had planned.
In that instant, Solace threw his glaive at the spider, forcing it to double jump—directly into the also thrown two pronged spear. With the majority of his essence allocated in strength, dexterity, and flexibility, Solace shot up to his feet and sprinted towards the creature, cutting, ducking, and weaving through the threads in his way.
Before it could land, before it could reset its leap and its [Skill], his blade caught the creature in a diagonal slash, bisecting the monster in one swipe.