It was one thing to know from a theoretical standpoint what to expect of zero gravity. But it was another to experience it.

And it was disorienting.

The ground, or the ceiling, was almost eight meters away. And had they not prepared for it, the floor would probably have them die here, drifting in the air. But prepared they were.

In two tandem teams, Lono and Michel, Moana and Paolo, would push at each other to create the momentum needed to reach the station walls. As for Sophia, Prince had eagerly volunteered himself to give her an air baptism.

But that last part of the plan wasn't going alright and the tressym was flapping his wings madly to overcome even the shortest distance.

"Prince?" She asked, growing anxious.

"It's okay. I understand now. Without gravity, I can't glide to gain speed. Flying on this floor is going to be so bothersome."

And so he kept flapping and building up extra speed until they too reached the walls and finally regrouped with the others, crawling.

"You had us worried here," Michel commented but his tone was that of a joke.

"We all made it fine. That's all that matters. Now, let's see how sticky that spider silk is."

It was after all one of the floor features. And if they could test and then use it to their advantage it would drastically change their perspective on the floor. Or it might be a giant trap they could not hope to escape from, in which case, Sophia would burn it. But whatever it was, they had to uncover it first.

And so, Lono took the risk for the lot of them. But everyone was already feeling relieved when he took his second step, waiting for his assessment.

"Yep. It's sticky as hell. But so long we do not fall flat onto it, either in combat or by accident, we should be okay."

That still sounded generous for a deadly trap albeit one that was supposedly spanning the entire floor, or a good part of it.

"Okay everyone, let's 'stick' to the plan and wait a little longer. We need to know what those spiders are made of before committing to anything." Sophia reminded them of the plan while trying to crack a joke.

And they did not have to wait for long. As a swarm of tiny spiders the size of their palm attacked them.

"Prince, what the fuck?" Her archery was rendered useless by their sheer numbers and so she switched to her blades.

"Those are baby spiders to you. Still in the infant stage. Don't worry, there will be less adults. The mother and the kids turn cannibal on each other for the first three weeks." Prince tried to reassure.

And yet, he had promised no swarm and that very much qualified, no matter how small they were. Their venom should be just as potent as the big deal, which was the reason why they all had reinforced their armors with crude, temporary, extra padding.

The only part they could not protect was their heads, and mostly because only Lono had a helmet, but also for the lack of material and skills. Every attempt they made at producing a hood-like protection for their heads and faces had failed.

But with only their head left unprotected, and the spiders' inability to bite elsewhere, they should be mostly fine. Until the spiders realized that glaring weakness, that's it.

The nasty little creatures were fast, but then, not fast enough. And they were critically defenseless to any attack that would hit, especially on their back.

So Sophia found she could reliably kill about 5 spiders every 3 seconds.

They were halfway done with the baby spider and dealing with the few stragglers that didn't lose their will to fight when the adults finally came to the rescue: exactly eight adults including the matriarch.

While they were undoubtedly dog-sized, they were clearly not all in the same weight category, from medium to big. The matriarch was about as big as a freaking great dane.

Sophia reacted by drawing her bow and started shooting.

At first, she got her arrows aim wrong. But by the end of her opening salvo, she had learned enough to hit three of her targets. And she finished that fight almost single-handedly, with two more salvos, though she had almost emptied her quiver to do so.

There were now fifteen arrows floating around or stuck to a wall or a web. It would be a pain to have to retrieve so many each time she would be pulling up that sort of stunt. And so she had to get better, and fast.

"Lono, can you secure me?" She asked with a sigh of frustration. "I'm going to fish my arrows."

And so Lono secured a line around both their waists securing it to the web itself.

"Done." He announced and so she jumped straight to her first arrow, retrieving it before pulling on the rope to get back into position, rinse, and repeat.

Sophia took thrice as much time getting back all fifteen arrows that the fight had lasted. It had been necessary but surprisingly time-consuming. As the last time she took so long retrieving any number of arrows was the time she had stuck one on a 'tree' high branch on the first floor. A valuable mistake she had not repeated ever since.

"What's your expertise?" She asked Moana as she made her last trip back to their position and took her remaining arrows back from her.

"Aside from the size, nothing much out of the ordinary about those spiders: similar head, thorax, and abdomen. The right number of legs. I don't know if the forked claws are normal. If anything, the most unusual about their appearance is their coat pattern."

Electric blue and milky white were indeed odd, but nothing they had not known already.

No other spiders had come to investigate the local disturbance in their giant web. So either they had bigger fish caught in their net or they truly did not care that much about anything but their 'close' family, as Prince suggested. A family of nine adults and about a hundred kids, that's it.

They all had plenty of time to recover. And so that concluded their first fight on the fifth floor.

★☆★

What had they learned from that encounter?

First, phase spiders, regardless of age, could teleport everywhere they could see and they had far too many eyes for it to be balanced. Second, phase spiders still needed time to activate that power and were left vulnerable to sudden unanticipated threats, like her arrows. Third, a single family of those was manageable for a group, but would probably prey onto anyone trying to go through that floor solo. But several angry families ganging up on them after too many of their neighbors had died? That would be an entirely different fight.

It had been a valuable experience. But it also seemed wise to leave the spiders be unless they had no choice.

"Alright Guys, I don't know about you, but I'm all for avoiding a repeat of that fight. What do you think?" Sophia decided that voicing that opinion early was the better part of valor.

"You took care of all the adults by yourself. But that swarm of younglings... it was terrifying." Michel admitted, uncharacteristically open about his feelings.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

And the quieter voices should always be listened the more.

"It was fine to me. But you killed more than everyone else combined, so, if you think that's a bad idea, I'm going to follow you on it." Lono said to which Paolo immediately gave his plus one:

"What he said."

So everyone waited for Moana to voice her opinion:

"Seriously? I haven't even contributed to the fight! Although I must reckon we haven't nearly stocked up enough alchemical anti-venom for a prolonged fight, assuming we might survive it at all."

And that was Moana, always as optimistic as your typical medical advisor.

But Sophia quickly got her attention on Prince instead.

"Not that I like to play devil's advocate but you all did fine in that fight. You came totally overprepared for that fight and annihilated them. Those are the hard facts. Are you spooked because of one inconsequent variable? Because you shouldn't."

"Why didn't you warn us about how many younglings we would have to fight?" Sophia asked, purposefully using Michel's word for it.

"I honestly didn't know." Prince defended himself once again, in the exact same fashion. "Do I need to remind you about the cannibalism thing? Those 'younglings' must have been freshly hatched."

It was infuriating but he was right. Three weeks of kin-cannibalism was one hell of population control.

"So we already encountered the worst scenario?" She retorted doubtful "Not sure I'm going to take that opinion at face value. Everyone?"

They all nodded in agreement.

And so that settled it. Despite the silky road advantages, they were going to take the path less traveled instead.

★☆★

Even taking the safe path, sticking to the armature of the walls as a lifeline, they encountered plenty of hungry spiders willing to fight. For mainly two reasons they had identified later on:

First, spiders' eyes as it turn out, were keener than humans, and contrary to them, they could see in the shadows of the station artificial light just fine. And second, alarm thread: just like a real spider, they had control over the thickness and durability of their silk. And they were able to make some that were so thin that they were practically invisible, and 'sounded' the alarm, so to speak, the moment they snapped.

And those two sets of tools were the keystone of the spiders' second strategy: the reckless ambush from above, in which they would get down, try to kidnap one of them, and fight them all in a frenzy — probably because they already knew they were dead — each time the combination of Michel and Sophia talents foiled their plans.

And of course, there was that first time, when they got surprised, Lono got captured, and they had to put the fight back to the spider's family and two of its neighbors to get him back before he got predigested from the inside by the spider's nasty venom. Unpleasant though unforgettable, that moment had done wonders for their team cohesion and helped them get a sense of this floor's difficulty.

It had been both a trap and an ambush attack, meaning that someone like Sophia, but alone and overconfident about their stealth, would have 100% died here never knowing what went wrong. To counter hit, you need another boon dedicated to either detecting traps, or small-time but acute precognition like Michel, or anything else doing the trick.

The point was: anyone who had made it alone from floor one to four unscathed entirely through stealth would learn from their mistakes of over-relying on it. As the spiders did those trap-ambush things purely on instinct and would dive — propulsing with their very silk — to grab their prize before they even confirmed something was there.

As for teams, that forced them to go on a risky rescue mission, lest they would be slowly but surely taken out one by one. And if teams weren't balanced enough and the one pulling most of the weight was also the one that got captured? Well, that was too bad for that team cause they got screwed.

Though Sophia genuinely thought she had done her best so that scenario never happened to her team. Sure, the most recent addition to the team had less time to train under the same regiment as the rest of the team and were lagging behind. But Michel was already impressive from the moment they met him. And she had no concern whatsoever about Paolo's abilities, should she ever end up in that shitty 'damsel in distress situation' and unable to save herself.

Anyway, that explained the new theme for this floor difficulty: the spider had an okay team play and very meager strength, but they also had the number on their side, home advantage, again, and a very nasty trap-ambush and hit-and-run strategy using their unique blend of natural ability and magical talent to get the job done.

It was completely different from the raptors or the armors, but still somehow, an unquestionable one-up on the difficult side of things.

Yet, after that catastrophic first ambush, detecting, avoiding, pre-emptively triggering, or foiling the spider ambush attack, had anything else failed, had been their go-to strategy. It had been a strain on both Michel and her cause of the sheer amount of focus their respective tasks demanded. But so far, it had done the job alright and increased the team's confidence in their teamwork.

But then, even progressing as they were at an incredibly snail-pace, the day had felt too short. It might be the dim light or the lack of diversity in their environment, but they felt physically tired long before their mind could catch up. And so it was time for the difficult question of setting up for the night in that hostile environment.

But Prince completely killed the debate with his timely intervention:

"Let me save you the trouble." He intervened unsolicited, again. But this, Sophia was really happy he did

"I will use that freaking bell collar for the duration of this floor or until that particular threat is behind us. And I don't want to answer any questions about what you are about to see, ever. And I'm only doing this cause I'm contractually obliged to help. And because you have no viable alternative: spiders are ambush predators and getting you in your sleep or better, already tied up in a nice package like a tent or a sleeping bag, would be the clear-cut best situation for them.

Needless to say: we can't afford a team wipeout. So because no one else has the right tools to deal with that issue. But please don't rely on it because I agree to use it this one time. And Do your Fucking Research! Or I would be freaking angry at the whole team and for good reason: Cause it's going to hurt me every single time. And that definitely not something I want to subject myself to without exceptional reasons."

And so everyone had been left a bit stunned by his speech. And no one had the time to process and react to what he just said before he presented himself to her, waiting for the collar he needed to perform the spells imbued onto it.

She quietly obliged and the tressym took it from her in his mouth, which did not prevent him from saying with a perfect locution as ever:

"Of course, that going to cost you a premium." He warned her. "Consuming two spells a day when my salary is only of one is not self-sustainable afterall."

"Don't worry about it." She dismissed what the winged cat had just said once she had fully recovered from his previous statement.

"The bell is already charged. And I'm sure everyone would agree to help recharge it tomorrow with whatever we might have left. You already carry enough of that burden yourself for something that benefits the whole team. Besides, I would be a bad boss giving with one hand and taking back with the other, don't you think?"

That had the effect of startling the tressym just as much, still struggling with whatever unpleasant cultural paradigm shift he had to deal with.

"Okay~" Prince answered, uncharacteristically laconic before he turned around, flew a few meters away, and started unleashing the collar power, which did conjure an entire building, all out of nothing but memories.

First, the 'ground' covered itself in a foundation of grey marble with black marble contouring. And then came the wall, still in marble, but rose and white. An architectural prowess of engineering as each stone had been pre-cut with clearly industrial precision and yet assembled with ancient techniques. Even the wood encased in the walls, fastening each block together, had appeared just long enough for Sophia to notice before they disappeared. And finally, the roof had been something else: though the technique had been nothing special, the tiles were freaking pearlescent.

But the spell wasn't quite down yet and soon, each window and the door had been surmounted by gentle blue flame storm lantern, artistically made wood shutter popping into existence before seamlessly securing themselves into the wall through pre-made holes Sophia had failed to notice.

And then their 'shelter' for the night was done.

It was probably a far cry from the memory that conjured it into existence but suddenly, Sophia understood things Prince had told her on three separate occasions, thanks to that place the tressym had held dear but unfortunately lost forever.

It was quite a gorgeous and unquestionably magical place. A sophisticated, luxurious, and yet somewhat unpretentious architecture, unlike the Graeco-Roman temples. It was a house first and foremost, built with absolute care for functionality, space efficiency, and a maddening amount of standardization.

Sophia could easily imagine the full picture: an entire city, metropolis, or maybe even megapolis, filled with bigger, multiple-story versions of that nice little 'cottage'. The problem was: what sort of civilization could afford such a cost, whatever the scale?

And it explained Prince's warning about not wanting to answer questions.

That construction, though possible on earth with modern techniques, would be so cost-prohibitive that no one would consider it. And unlike the modern version of the greek temple style, this was clearly not a place of political, historical, or religious importance. Maybe a crazy billionaire could afford it. But on the industrial scale that the building was implying? That was beyond crazy.

Even if Prince had been okay with questions, she would have a hard time simply ordering them up.

And the civilization that achieved it? Could Earth even hold a candle to it?

And yet, it had nothing to do with Prince's pain, as emotions did not care about architectural genius or the grandeur of the civilization that had built it. It was all about his loss, something he would always long to have back but couldn't, as the item's description said. It was clearly a disguised cursed item.

"So, you are going to keep staring all night or are you coming in?" The tressym asked, opening the door by pushing strong on its side. "Gravity is restored here, by the way, don't ask me how."

And then, he disappeared inside and everyone soon followed.