They had left an hour or so after Owen and Peggy had finished talking about plans for the next several weeks. Peggy had gone and had helped set up the subsidiary guild with Myra, while Owen sort of just waited on the sidelines. He was in a special position with his friends as he didn't technically have an official role in the guild, at least according to the system. He just sort of helped them with their work as guild leader and vice leader.
The extra freedom it gave was both amazing, but also still limiting, since it was decided that at least until all of the soldiers had body tempers, Owen would be in charge of them while they were in the city.
However, in Owen's mind he still had a day to himself as everyone began marching back, Peggy leading a group of about fifty soldiers. Owen hadn't actually counted, but seeing that many people still surprised him a little. They had decided that at least for the first hour, Myra and Owen would walk with the group, but once the hour ended, they were free to go clear as many tier three and up gates as they wanted.
Owen felt himself getting antsy as the end of the hour approached. Myra moved next to him when there was still five minutes left, before they could head out. "How many credits do you have right now?" She asked and Owen confidently answered. "About 17, nope just checked, I have 3016 credits to my name right now." Owen said his eyes opening in surprise. He had forgotten that he had gotten credits when Quinn had died. Myra nodded and just as confidently shared her lack of any credits. "My credits immediately end up inside of the guild treasury. I guess that means you'll have to pay for dinner," She said and Owen nodded grinning back. "Yeah, tomorrow night, don't worry I'll cover it." She flashed him a grin in return.
Peggy waved them up to her section of the group and gave them the go ahead to leave and clear gates. Owen turned to Myra and smiled. "Whoever gets the most credits by nightfall wins?" "Oh hell yes, you're going down!" Myra said, as she blasted off towards where one of the nearby tier 3 gates was. "Be safe!" Peggy shouted after her, before scowling at Owen. "I hope you know you have to let her win." She followed up and Owen shook his head, "I think she be even more angry with me if I did that." He shot off towards a different direction then, leaving Peggy with the group of soldiers.
It didn't take him long with the boosted speed from Peggy's buff to bring him to a tier four gate they had found earlier. He gave himself ten whole seconds to stretch and limber up before his patience couldn't last any longer and he jumped into the gate. The world seemed to spin around him and his nausea hit its peak, before the world stopped moving and Owen found himself inside of a cave.
*You have entered a spider's lair.
Kill 100 spider's without being noticed
or
Kill every spider inside cave to clear.*
He scanned the surrounding area, but it looked like the room he had spawned in had been one that was thankfully empty. Owen immediately wanted to see if he could clear it both ways and moved through the room towards the series of paths that had been carved into the stone. The cave itself was a lot more humid than Owen was used too and he had already begun to sweat as he cautiously moved through the cave system.
There was moss everywhere and some small fungi and other items than Owen scooped up and threw into a box that he stored in his storage ring. He had read enough that he knew there was a lot of plant life that could be used to create miraculous remedies, so he collected every bit he came across. His keen eye didn't work on identifying any of it, so he was slightly worried, it was just normal moss and mushrooms, but he collected it anyways.
Almost an hour after entering the gate, he finally heard the first other life inside the cave system that he had started to think was barren. Peaking around a corner, he saw what looked like a spider, but its whole body was made out of different gemstones. Its legs were either a crystal or diamond material as each of its steps tore through the floor of the cave. Its main body looked like it was made of rubies and Owen used keen eye and ducked back around the corner.
*Hybrid Ruby Spider - Level 48
The durability of this monster is based off of the gemstone quality of its legs. They have weak senses, but their physical stats are far beyond what their level would normally indicate. Their main attack is a spray of molten metals that are imbued with an elemental effect determined by their main body.*
Owen grinned as he realized his farseeing skill had paired with his keen eye skill. He got a lot more information that usually, though it had always been better than the normal identify skill. Seeing as its level wasn't too far from his own, he decided he would try and accomplish the first challenge as well as the second. He waited for several seconds as it moved closer towards the side of the room he was hiding closest to. He took a moment to change his bracers into a large war pick and prepared to strike.
Almost a full minute passed as the spider continued milling about and finally Owen's patience hit its limit, it hadn't been very long, but he wanted to win the competition against Myra, so he swung his pick against the wall. The spider moved almost faster than Owen's perception could keep up and it took him his whole focus to swing the war pick in time with its second dash. It had just started to appear around the corner Owen hide behind and the war pick crashed down on its head, shattering it instantly.
Chunks of ruby were sent flying across the cave, however, just as Owen was starting to think the gate would be a cakewalk, the whole cave shuddered for several seconds as if an earthquake were trying to tear it down. Owen barely had time to start running before dozens of gemstone spiders came rushing through the tunnel on the opposite side of the cave opening. Owen continued running as fast as his legs would carry him. Several minutes passed as he made his way back through the tunnel system, before he realized he wasn't being chased.
He slowly made his way back, though he was on high alert this time, scanning with his perception stretched out as far as possible. He didn't see anything until he had reached the same tunnel opening into a small cavern where he had killed the spider. Tiny gemstone spiders scuttled around the ground, picking up pieces of ruby and diamond from the ground. He was amazed at first, thinking that they were collecting the pieces to bring back somewhere, but it took less than a second after the thought to realize they were eating the gemstones.
Each time one of the smaller spiders ate a piece of the ruby, it grew slightly larger in size and its body began looking more polished. He scanned the cavern and realized why the first spider was there to begin with, more jewels littered the wall and he watched several of the smaller spiders try pulling the jewels out, though none seemed strong enough. He continued watching for a while, before the spiders eventually started making their way out of the cavern, leaving a pile of entrails where the first spider had died.
He spent some time digging out some of the gemstones from the wall, using his pick as quietly as possible. He had already tried tearing them out by hand, but sadly his base strength wasn't high enough. It didn't take long to have cleaned out most of one wall and he glanced at the other walls of the cavern and decided he had gathered enough. He knew he was probably taking longer in this cave than he originally was planning to, but he hadn't been in a gate that had anywhere close to this amount of collectibles.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The next hour inside the cave flew by as he would bait out a group of spiders with a thrown gemstone, before crushing all of them with the flat side of the pick. The amount of experience he was getting was negligible as most of the spiders he had come across had been smaller and weaker leveled compared to the first one he had come across.
Overall, Owen had been underwhelmed so far, though he knew it was partially because he was already several times stronger than he had been a month ago. He also was well equipped to clear a gate like this, because he had extremely high versatility. He was only a couple dozen monsters away from clearing the first goal, so he focused up and finished it in less than a half hour.
*Congratulations, you have completed the tier four gate, Spider's Lair.
You have been awarded 15,000 credits.
You may now leave, or complete the second objective.*
Owen felt like choosing to leave after the first objective was finished was a waste, especially since he hadn't even made a dent towards his next level. It didn't help that there had only been about a dozen other Hybrid Spiders lurking about.
He chose to stay and clear out all of the spiders and a system window appeared.
*Descend to the second floor of the Spider's Lair? Y/N?*
He chose yes and felt the world shift around him again. When everything came back into focus, he was in a small cave similar to the first one, but this time he could see the next cavern from where he was standing and felt a grin form on his face. An enormous spider stood in the next room over, looking like a master sculpture of gemstone and glass. Each of its legs looked like it had been woven together out of several different kinds of jewels.
He wanted to try and clear this gate without using resonance, but he wasn't certain how durable the diamond was that made up the main part of the spider weaver's abdomen. Its head was a dark brown gemstone, with several other gemstones making up its eyes and mouth. He was well aware each gemstone supposedly had an elemental ability tied to it, but he hadn't fought enough variety to know which element was tied to each gemstone.
He threw a keen eye at it, while trying to come up with a battle plan that might work without using resonance. He was already well aware it would slow him down by a lot, but he still wanted to try winning without using resonance. Resonance for him had become a double sided blade. On one hand, it made fighting monsters tens of levels above him a cake walk, but on the other, the fight was over too quickly and he would feel less fulfilled. So, never mind, he knew it wasn't actually a double sided blade, but it felt like he was using his strongest attack against an ant. It was far too anticlimactic for his taste and he would rather try and save it as an last chance ace.
*Gemstone Spider Weaver: Queen - Level 60
This spider is cannibalistic in nature and uses the body of its young to empower itself and grow ever stronger. Only the spiders without much potential are allowed to stay alive and feed off of the jewels scattered throughout the Weaver's Lair. This Spider Queen can let out a piercing screech that calls all of its young to its defense.*
He spent the first minute, after his keen eye went off, checking his gear and chose the war pick form of his bracers. It took him a couple seconds to rush into the boss room and it took the boss a couple seconds after that to realize someone had broken into its domain. The entire cavern lit up with energy and earthen spikes tore their way from the ground. Owen was moving fast enough he hadn't really needed to dodge the oncoming attacks and had reached the side of the spider boss in the blink of an eye.
He was charging his body with the full power of his energetic embrace and had loaded chaos into his pick as it tore through the air and into one of the spider's legs. Owen had not had the chance to fight the creatures on earth in a while and didn't have a good frame of reference for how strong he was compared to the enemies his level on earth. So he was surprised when the entire leg of the spider weaver shattered, sending crystal shrapnel everywhere.
Owen hadn't even bothered dodging and dashed to the next leg. The spider wasn't doing nothing and it had begun screeching while pulling its body into the air from a webbing it had attached to the ceiling. However, despite its fast reaction, Owen was still faster and his weapon had completely shattered another leg before it could hide on the ceiling. Its remaining six legs were each imbued with a different colored energy and it thrust them all at Owen. He managed to dodge through each of the spiders attack and was already beginning to feel underwhelmed.
He heard skittering on the ground behind him and realized that when the spider had screeched, it had called all of its young to his location. Smiling, he began wreaking havoc all across the cavern as even when he stomped down, it had enough power to crush the smallest gemstone spiders. The spider on the ceiling still hadn't moved and he sighed, turned fully away from the still thousands of smaller spiders chasing him, anyone else watching from before the system would've seen a flash and the spider weaver's head explode. He spent a minute or so cleaning up the rest of the spiders, while trying out the fire scythe he had picked up after returning home.
It was only an okay weapon in his mind, but he was pretty sure it had seemed as powerful as it was, because Quinn, who had originally owned it, had gotten a secondary class. It ended up not being much and the firerot status effect wasn't even tied to the weapon either, which meant it had been a skill. He eventually stowed it away and retrieved his war pick. He had gotten a system notification after the last spider had died and he gave it a look before taking the exit to the gate.
*You have completed both objectives for this tier four gate.
You have been awarded 30,000 credits.*
Owen grinned as he read the notification and was teleported back into the small patch of forest they had found the gate in. He had gotten a little bit of experience for the whole gate and was a little more than a quarter of the way through his next level. He immediately started running to the next closest gate to his location and just had to hope that the challenge inside of a tier six gate would be better. Despite feeling like it had been a waste of time, he was still happy to see that each of the spiders had given a minimum of one credit, with the boss having rewarded about a 3000 credits.
That had brought his total number of credits to 35,856, which was an insane haul compared to clearing a tier three gate. He hoped it would grow exponentially and he ran even faster towards the tier 6 gate.
----------------------------------------
It was so boring that Myra had barely even been able to activate some of her skills. She had needed to hunt down and fight these lizards that kept blending in with the environment. She had managed to clear the first objective and the second was even worse. She was supposed to hunt down all of the monsters in this cursed rainforest.
She wiped the sweat from her brow and growled in frustration. She had been teleported to what felt like an actually rainforest. The air was humid and with all of the different kinds of plant life, both from earth and the hundreds of ones she didn't recognize had made it almost impossible to hunt down any of the lizards, as they could blend in with all of the unfamiliar environment.
Staring into the sky she cursed at Ivar, especially since she had asked about this specific problem when fighting. He had responded sounding almost annoyed at the time saying, "If your enemies can only run away or hide, then they aren't worth your time." What a load of help that was now. The worst part was the exit to the gate had disappeared as soon as she had chosen to continue on to the second objective.
For the second time ever, she channeled all of her focus into spawning an essence marble that was the size of her head. She had to spend almost a full hour, attempting to purify it and by the time she had succeeded, she knew she had spent almost an entire day inside of the gate. However that would all end now, she thought, as the essence marble activated, creating an enormous fire storm that tore through the forest. She sat down and immediately began creating another one and immediately launched it when she was finished purifying it.
Wave after wave of flames decimated the forest and finally after she had sent more than more, the majority of the forest had been burned down. She got a notification then and a gate appeared. She was a little surprised that was all that had been required, especially since she hadn't seen a boss, but she excitedly left the gate hoping to never see one of its kind again.