Another hour of slowly moving down the dark tunnels and another few dozen of Balra and Bramble spiders had left me exhausted. The real danger of doing these dungeons by yourself wasn’t the beasts, it was the mental and physical fatigue of being on guard for hours at a time. I was feeling mentally drained by the time I made it to a large room that opened off from the tunnel.

I could see resource indicators on my map suggesting spiders were in this room off to the sides. I couldn’t see anything near the middle of the room, just more darkness. I hoped the next dungeon I explored was a sunlight plain. I tossed the broken hallowed lantern out into the room and let it break. I had a few replacements and this one was almost used up anyway.

The lantern reached about forty feet away to the base of a massive weave before breaking and trickling the glowing fluid out. It provided enough light in the absolute darkness of the cavernous for me to see thousands of spiders crawling along the web. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I knew what would happen next.

Like it was waiting for me to notice a large Weave Guardian dropped down and sealed off the exit back to the tunnel. I assumed this was happening in a few places in the room where the weave markers had been on the map. There was a loud scream of a Balra Guardian off in the distance. I sprinted over to the wall and put my back to it while grabbing a new lantern out of my pack and placed it on the ground near me. I wanted a defensive position to start this series of fights.

This would be the first time I had to fight both the Balra and Weave Guardians at the same time. I tossed out a few simple bombs to cover the area immediately in front of me and tried to think. The Weave Guardians always stayed in their webs, the Balra were mobile. I couldn’t let them drive me into the massive web in the middle of the room, I had a feeling I wouldn’t get out of that one easily.

Before I could think of a plan I saw a Balra Guardian charging out of the shadows. I had some warning of it as it crossed the spilled lantern and gave me enough time to toss a standard bomb and detonate it against its underbelly. The explosion was much quieter in the larger room, my ears straining to listen for more of the scratching sound of their movement.

There was silence for a few minutes before more scratching and this time two charged out of the darkness. They both screamed in unison and the sound was disorienting. I triggered the simple bomb to clip one of them but didn’t have enough time to get a standard bomb in place. I set my spear and braced for impact as the first one impaled itself. The second one got around the first one and tackled me against the wall.

It backed up and went to charge into me again but I side stepped it and it slammed against the wall. Disoriented for a moment, I grabbed my dagger and stabbed it through the opening near its face. It took a few tries to get in the right place but it died all the same. One fourth of my health bar had been knocked off when I hit the wall, these things weighed so much.

I chugged a health potion and caught my breath. The timing between the first one and the second two was suspicious and reminded me of the waves from the Old Mining Camp level two. I had a sinking suspicion there would be three the next time. I only had twelve more standard bombs and twenty simple bombs. I couldn’t sustain for a dozen waves, I would need to go on the offensive.

I creeped around to confirm that the exits were all blocked off my Weave Guardians. I could explode my way through them fairly easily but that would leave the waves of Balra at my back. I spread a few simple bombs over the ground as I explored the area around the massive weave. The room was roughly circular with four exits including the one I entered from.

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There was more scratching and three screams echoed out this time. I was close enough to wave the Balra appear beside the weave, confirming my idea that these were waves. I dashed back over to the wall and braced my spear. I needed to take them out as quickly as possible and try to figure out how to stop the waves. I triggered the bombs as they passed over them and killed two before spearing the third one.

I walked over to the spot the Balra had spawned over to look for a portal like the one from the survival events. There wasn’t a large glowing portal this time but I did notice a large hole was actually under the weave. I saw a huge shape down there moving so I kicked the broken remnants of the hallowed light over the side of the hole and triggered Identify.

Balra Queen - Level 40 - Health 1000/1000 - Armor 10

I had found the Balra Queen. Once I killed it the dungeon would be over. I started to go over a plan in my head when something smacked into my back and knocked me down. I crawled away and looked over to see a huge Weaver Guardian advanced on me from the ceiling, spinning a web as it went. At the same time I felt a burning sensation spreading from my back where it had hit me. A poison notification popped up in my view.

“Damn!” I yelled out in frustration.

I aimed my spear towards the massive spider so that it couldn’t easily reach me and raced to think of a plan. The scratching sound appeared again as four Balra Guardians spawned not even ten feet from me. Desperation hit as I blindly tossed multiple standard bombs towards the hole with the queen in it and detonated them as quickly as I could. The sound of all the explosions resulted in a massive roar that seemed to swallow the entire world. I couldn’t see if the Balra Guardians were dead as the spider avoided my spear and was almost on top of me.

I aimed my spear at its new direction and watched as it halted in the air. It was waiting for me to move or get distracted before it would attack again. This was the smartest behavior I had seen from the supposed unintelligent beasts. I risked a glance over to see the Balra were not advancing, they must have been dead or critically injured.

I went to roll over and stand when my leg gave out from under me. With horror I realized I couldn’t move it at all. A new notification was in my vision beside the poison icon.

You have been paralyzed! Venom from the Weave Guardian has entered your bloodstream. It will spread slowly until it has run its course or an antidote has been administered!

Damnit! I had no way to create or find an antidote and I was a sitting duck for the next wave. There would be five of the Balra Guardians next time and I was running out of bombs. I only had one way to clear the dungeon and that was to kill the Queen. I took another look at the spider hanging in the air above me and shot it a rude gesture to no response.

“Here goes nothing!” I said out loud into the silent cavern.

I tossed all of my remaining standard bombs down the hall at the base of the weave and began to detonate them. The spider either sensed what I was doing or was instructed by the framework to attack. It raced down its web towards me, easily avoiding the spear I was holding up in vain. More of them appeared in my vision heading down towards me. A scream echoed out from the Queen and ten Balra Guardians spawned all at once and charged over as I detonated the two more bombs. I felt my numb legs get trampled by a Balra as one of the Weave Guardians landed on my other leg and bit down.

With a cry I tossed my last standard bomb over the side of the hole and detonated it. I saw a notification ping in my vision as the Balra and Weave Guardians disappeared. My health bar was at one tenth full and the poison and paralysis icons faded away. I tried to chug a potion but a violent spell of nausea hit me as I puked off to the side. I flopped over to my back as my vision began to fade. I was able to drink the health potion and spare a thought about how much I missed Van and Marci before the world finished fading away.