Zarian acted with a more relaxed attitude at the start of the next dungeon run. He made sure everyone stuck together this time around. After the craziness of the last day, he gave the party a chance to settle into a slower but more thorough groove.
This was a temporary state, because there was a maddening degree of new things to play with. There were Hannah’s new runic abilities and Bianca’s flashy new powers. Naomi had become a psionic kickboxer, which was interesting to incorporate into their party battle rotation and budding tactics.
Zarian was also being patient because of Gilbert. The big man kept looking over his shoulder nervously, catching Zarian’s wide-open gaze.
“Tank, tank, tank, tank,” Zarian moaned like a zombie.
Gilbert shuddered before looking forward in search of more dungeon monsters to devastate. Zarian’s party was having an easier time compared to yesterday when they first walked these alien and magical hallways filled with violent spiders.
This wasn’t because of Zarian, his seven remaining skeletons, or Naomi.
This was because Gilbert, Bianca, and Hannah were simply way better than the people they were prior. The new classes were an immense help, yes, but their mentalities were worth even more.
They struck at spiders with more aggression and teamwork. Seeing that warmed Zarian’s evil aligned heart.
Things got a little boring as he walked at the back, not doing much.
During the biggest lull periods, Zarian studied the special fire spell pages. He even checked out a new available spell section. It was more complex than the special fire section.
It had something to do with … gravity … but a weird and destructive version of it. It almost made Zarian want to shudder, so he went back to studying the fire spell.
Thankfully, Zarian could maintain his skeleton spell and study diligently at the same time. His self-inflicted lobotomy might’ve had a positive effect for working with spells, after all.
He wouldn’t do it again.
Not without some way to keep Naomi off his back.
“Whoa, hey, I did it! I’m Level 10!” Gilbert shouted in the middle of a fight. “But damn, did it take a long time!”
“Naomi, skeletons, please take over,” Zarian ordered.
The psion and skeletal goblins rushed ahead into a skirmish against stalkers, soldiers, and shooters. They easily dominated the spiders, especially with how the skeletons benefited from Hannah’s newest enchantment: Reinforcement +1.
The skeletons could take a beating and keep trucking through better than before.
Gilbert, Bianca, and Hannah ran back with beaming smiles. Gilbert looked more like a big kid, excited for a gift he’d wanted for a while.
Zarian didn’t blame him.
They had a penalty for rerunning the dungeon crawl so soon. They gained less experience, fewer rewards, and no minimap.
They’d been wandering around for a while, going up and down the corridors while leaving marks to avoid backtracking. Eventually, they would find the boss door again.
Gilbert had to go through hell to get to Level 10, which happened at the perfect time. So perfect, Zarian burst into mad laughter, the type an evil villain would make.
“Hehehahahahahahahaha!”
Gilbert lost some of his cheer.
“Evil,” Bianca hissed under her breath.
Hannah sighed. “I knew it. He’s been too quiet and inactive all day. Prepare for the worst.”
“It’s going to be okay, everyone. It’s all going to be okay. Now, Gilbert, what’s your best choice?” Zarian rubbed his hands together.
“Thank God, it’s neutral,” Gilbert said. “It’s also epic.”
“Another one, huh?” Zarian hummed. He could finally bring up an idea he had after seeing not one, not two, but three epic classes in his party other than him. “Foodie really tipped things in our favor.”
“What do you mean?” Hannah asked sharply.
Zarian looked past them as Naomi flipped through the air and struck a spider with a killer kick to its head. Her Mind Spike, tactics, and grace was much deadlier now. She eradicated spiders faster than an entire squad of skeletons.
It was unfortunate she didn’t pick her class after they’d met Foodie.
Zarian explained his reasoning: “Foodie’s entire presence was a huge game changer for us. Maybe it was her cooking and the stats she gave us. Maybe it was the lore. Maybe it was getting us involved in a main quest. Whatever it was, meeting her while you guys were sub Level 10 was a sign for the System to give you bigger and better classes. That’s my theory.”
“I see,” Hannah murmured.
“No amount of evil can stop me from loving our new friend, Foodie,” Bianca declared.
“Well, whether or not it’s thanks to her, you guys are getting what’s called a War Healer Trainee from me.” Gilbert chuckled, shaking his head. “It’s funny. I wanted to be a doctor a while ago. But I doubted I was smart enough for it and did what my old man wanted, joining up with the boys in blue. I don’t know if the System is throwing my choices back at my face or if it’s giving me another chance.”
Zarian nodded along, seeing how this was an important moment for Gilbert. Once the big man selected the class and picked up his new abilities, Zarian unleashed the sleeping demon inside.
He walked over onto the spider side, Para batting the monsters away from him. Then he turned around and faced the other four.
“Heroes!” Zarian shouted grandly. “You have the misfortune of facing me and my monsters while you all are so weak! Prepare to suffer!”
“EVIL!” Bianca screamed with a little too much enthusiasm.
The others sighed as Zarian threw a giant, dark wrench into their dungeon crawl rerun. It might’ve seemed intimidating, even.
Then Zarian suffered a Mind Spike from a distance. He stumbled back, wincing from the pain, blood leaking down one nostril.
“So that’s what it feels like,” Zarian muttered.
“I hit you with a mild one,” Naomi said, juking around lunging spiders. “Should I turn it up?”
“Sure,” Zarian said. “You’re going to have to work the hardest from now on, Naomi. Harder than me and everyone else with epic classes.”
Naomi didn’t respond as she rushed straight at Zarian. Para swung out her tendrils in Naomi’s way, forcing her to divert and try to flank around.
Meanwhile, Zarian ducked behind an enormous spider before Bianca hit him with her Searing Flash Array. She could conjure multiple orbs of light and shoot them out with more accuracy and less waste.
She was trigger-happy with that new skill of hers, especially when aiming at Zarian.
Hannah wasn’t a big upfront threat, but he had to prepare to face whatever she engineered for an advantage with her runic abilities. Gilbert was a wildcard because Zarian hadn’t waited to hear about his new powers.
Maybe they might impress him.
Naomi kept trying to get in his face. A combination of parasitic tendrils and darkness pillars kept Naomi back.
There was a delay between Mind Spikes on the same target. It became a game of keep-away so that Zarian could avoid the stronger versions of her psychic power.
“I’ll work my butt off, sir,” Naomi said, while chasing him down. “I’m not unfamiliar with having to climb my way up at a disadvantage. And that builds character, I reckon. I’m going to need that if I want to be strong.”
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“Good,” Zarian said, before taking another distant Mind Spike to the head.
He handled it better this time. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the self-inflicted lobotomy or if Naomi was holding back.
Either way, his party got into the game of fighting him and the spiders in one big mosh pit of a magic battle. Zarian played the long game to see them use their abilities.
The biggest issue was their coordination with so many moving elements. Gilbert, Hannah, and Bianca knew how to work well together. Naomi, however, didn’t know how to work with them. She got in their way, and they got in her way, while Zarian kept leveraging the pressure on them.
The skeletons stayed out of it mostly except for corralling the spiders. Once Zarian saw enough, he moved in for the proverbial kill.
He knocked out Hannah and Bianca first. Gilbert went down next after getting thrashed into a wall by a blunt beam of darkness.
Then it became a one-on-one between him and Naomi, which pushed him further to the extremes with each periodic Mind Spike.
He realized her power disrupted his focus because it could happen at random. That was worse than consistent brain pain.
He could adapt and overcome if it was consistent, but when Naomi used feints or waited longer than usual, the difficulty grew for Zarian.
She landed a good kick to the side of his ribs, then she added a Mind Spike that could’ve neutralized him if she was going all out. For a one-trick pony, that trick was devastating when pushed to its extremes.
Unfortunately for her, she sacrificed her own safety and suffered a grab and slam from his cloak. Para didn’t like the Mind Spikes and made it known by softening Naomi until she went unconscious.
Zarian stood in the middle of the hallway, filled with unconscious humans and dead spider monsters. His skeletons rattled and clapped while on the sidelines, having watched the whole thing.
Zarian chuckled hoarsely while holding his side. Yeah, Naomi had broken a few ribs. “Perfect. This is my party. Once I get them to my level, maybe we’ll be overpowered together.”
He would be the most overpowered, of course. But having a party who could back him, elevate him, and keep up with him was well worth the time to develop them.
“Let’s wake them up, heal up, and throw them at Reiki next.”
A few hours later, Zarian and his party were in the grand boss atrium. He was sitting on a makeshift leather chair with a high back, all formed from Para’s shapeshifting flesh. Next to him, his skeletons sat, legs crossed, bodies rattling with excitement.
They were watching a gentle but painful beat down of the party via the boss monster.
Zarian hadn’t known if Reiki would listen to his request when he reentered her room with the others. It all came down to how much Reiki liked Zarian.
Apparently, she liked him well enough. She handled his party members gently, even if it meant suffering Naomi’s brutal punches, kicks, and Mind Spikes.
Reiki handled them so well Zarian could look away and commit some time to studying or practicing dual-casting. The pain and difficulty were still there, but he was doing better than yesterday.
He stopped when he hit the threshold on his pain tolerance that would’ve led to self-lobotomy again. Instead of risking Naomi’s anger, he switched his focus to the quirky problem of alpha skills and beta skills.
His newest skill, Summon Spectral Spiders, was in the alpha skill section now. After some earlier testing, Zarian now knew beta skills were much harder to use.
Either the System gave beta skills a debuff, or the System gave alpha skills a major buff. It was more likely the latter than the former, where the System gave assistance on alpha skills.
Here was the kicker: alpha skills and beta skills could swap around.
Zarian tried it earlier by exchanging his Straight Darkness +1 with Summon Spectral Spiders. Just like that, he had an easier time using the new spider skill, producing dozens of ghostly, translucent spiders, each the size of his palm.
When he tried to use the beta version of Straight Darkness +1, the difficulty was impressive. His darkness was nowhere near potent as it would be in the alpha skill section.
I can still use it, Zarian thought, conjuring a blade of darkness into his hand. It’s harder, yes, but it’s not impossible.
It was more draining and more focus-intensive using beta skills.
Zarian imagined most adventurers wouldn’t even dare to use their beta skills during combat. Maybe they would swap them in and out with alpha skills during lull periods, or maybe they reserved beta skills for secondary uses.
Can I switch skills around during combat?
Zarian stood up. He ran into the middle of the fight and told everyone to ignore him. He tried to switch his darkness and spider skills again. It wouldn’t work.
He ran out of the fight and returned to sitting next to the audience of skeletons, Para back to her role as a grand leathery chair. Zarian tried switching his skills around again and again.
It worked, which meant this involved a proximity limit instead of a general situational limit. As long as he could get to a relatively safe spot, he could swap around alpha and beta skills.
With a chuckle, Zarian propped his ankle onto his knee and leaned back. He returned Straight Darkness +1 to its alpha position. He concentrated on summoning some spiders and maintaining them while keeping his skeletons upright.
The exercise burned his brain up, but it was a good burn.
“Enough,” Reiki hissed.
She knocked down Gilbert, Bianca, and Hannah in rapid succession. She struck Naomi with a small torrent of web and bound her to the floor. Then the boss turned her monstrous human-like face to Zarian and grinned widely. “Final Dance! Final Dance!”
“Okay, but can you teach us some of your moves and give us pointers the next time around? You’re a savvy fighter for a big spider boss monster, y’know?” Zarian stood from his parasite chair and smiled shamelessly.
He liked Reiki, and he was going to use her for everything she could offer. Reiki didn’t seem to mind.
“Yes!”
“Then I’ll give you my best.”
Zarian ordered the skeletons to break Naomi free and take everyone to his side. Then he dismissed the skeletons and returned his grimoire to his soul. He dismissed the spectral spiders hanging about. He drew in all the nearby darkness and prepared himself.
Reiki began her dance. It matched the boss battle music, or the music matched her. Her movements were graceful, joyful, and mesmerizing despite her monstrous body.
Then she sprung into the air, whirling round and round before stopping at a hover. Glowing bands of magic spread from her body and reshaped themselves into balls of mystical web. Then the web balls grew and grew, becoming as big as her body.
“Dance of the Final Web Entombment!” Reiki sang.
Zarian smirked. “Straight Darkness: Blade Artillery.”
Reiki made it rain a meteor shower of webbed entombment. None of it reached Zarian or his party.
He sent up a torrent of large, highly dense, dark blades. He cut down her Dance of the Final Web Entombment. He cut down Reiki far faster than their first battle.
Afterward, Zarian and his party returned to the rest area. They ate, drank, cleaned up, and committed to some deeper self-maintenance. Bianca and Hannah arranged their hair into braids. Naomi twisted her hair into locks in a short time because of her many points in Agility, then she worked on Zarian.
Everyone else stopped to stare when they saw Zarian all cleaned up after Naomi’s help.
“You look like a frat boy without the beard,” Zarian said to Gilbert after the big man finished shaving with a sharpened dark knife.
“You look like you’re still in high school, chief,” Gilbert retorted.
“Don’t ruin this, Gilbert!” Bianca shouted. “He’s perfectly handsome and mature.”
Zarian tried not to let Bianca’s compliments get to him. She was a do-gooder, after all. But the smile on his face refused to go away. He thanked Naomi again for her help.
They took turns cleaning their ragged clothing and using a flame-coated weapon enchanted by Hannah for drying. Then they went to bed in the bunk room. The next morning, they had breakfast and discussed the nuances of their abilities and how to better make them all work together.
The food and drinks were always stocked. The dungeon didn’t run out. Once they were ready, they reran the dungeon again.
They reran it again on the next day.
On the following days, they reran it again and again.
The experience was low. They earned no new rewards.
But the practice was worth it, especially when Reiki mentored them. She would barely speak, but she got her point across anyway.
Somehow, Reiki had knowledge from some distant past, which probably had something to do with Carrowmore, and used that to teach Zarian’s party how to move and swing weapons. Naomi took to Reiki’s lessons the best when it came down to footwork and magic kickboxing. Bianca enjoyed the sword play a lot.
Zarian, Gilbert, and Hannah saw some overall improvements in their techniques – Zarian learned how edge alignment mattered when swinging a sword made of metal or darkness. His cuts came out cleaner and easier under Reiki’s tutelage, leveraging the 30 points he had in Agility.
Then Reiki ordered Zarian and Naomi to dance together. Why? She wouldn’t say. It was a little awkward at first, but after all the help Reiki had given them, they couldn’t say no.
Thankfully, Naomi was a superb dancer. She made Zarian look good even when he barely knew what he was doing. If it wasn’t for the points in Agility, he would look like a total buffoon. Naomi didn’t seem to care and enjoyed the dance with him.
When Bianca yanked Hannah and Gilbert into the impromptu dance session, things became more relaxed and humorous from there. The teasing was endless, especially from Bianca.
Of course, Zarian returned the favor by summoning a spectral spider to dance on the back of her head. He had to run away afterward when Bianca turned to chasing and flashing him a bunch.
On their last day in the White Spider Dungeon, there were two unique changes.
Zarian and his party members received an update from the System:
Zarian had gained the most with 5 new points. Everyone else had 4 new points.
They celebrated that morning even though they would’ve gotten more if Foodie had been cooking for them.
Naomi tried to hide it, but it was clear she was the most upset. She needed more stat points to keep up with the epic classes of the others. She needed double the amount, even.
The next curious change was with Reiki. She was acting strangely when they entered her boss room.
There was no boss battle music playing this time.
The ruler of the dungeon was gazing over the edge of her platform. When Zarian and his party joined Reiki’s side, she pointed a spider leg down into the darkness and looked intently at Zarian.
Without question, Zarian jumped down, shocking his party and making Reiki smile broadly. After a minute of descending, with Para acting as a simple parachute, Zarian hit the next floor below.
A pearl-shaped sphere waited on a pedestal in the middle of the subterranean space, pushing away the darkness with a soft white glow. The sphere emitted a pulsating beat like a heart.
Zarian drew closer until he was in front of the sphere. It was the size of his head and gave off an inviting heat.
A gold notification appeared in front of him with a soft ‘ding.’