Cass was back on her feet and tapping her way down the corridor a short while later. It was slow but effective. She found another two spike traps and another blade trap in this hallway alone. Her path crossed four more chambers, most much smaller than the room she’d first encountered the living shadows in, all packed to the gills with the things.

“Am I still going through this section backwards?” Cass asked as she cut down another wave of Shadows.

More or less, yes.

“How was anyone supposed to fight these things without the reward for getting to that orb thing?” The shadows disintegrated before her, leaving nothing behind of their corpses.

Well, that’s really just it. You weren’t. This is a bonus area. For the really impressive warriors. There are two strategies that the designers expected the rewards room would be reachable by.

Either one should have the power to fight them and the skill to avoid succumbing to them or one should have stealth skills and the sensitivity to shadows to avoid them. The rewards offered should have reflected which method was used to arrive. I assume you were given the reward for sneaking through since the Temple would have registered that all the Living Shadows were still alive.

“So it gave me an offensive skill as a reward for sneaking in?”

If you can sneak through shadows as densely packed as this, you don’t need any more stealth or perception skills. On the other hand, if you had fought your way through you would have been offered skills to aid in sneaking. I assume.

Cass supposed that made sense. Sort of. It still seemed highly unlikely to her that anything could sneak their way past all these things. She could barely sense them before they announced themselves, usually behind her. She was just lucky she was quick on her feet.

Either way, we’re almost out of this section. They’ll be much rarer outside of this region, not that they are a problem for you anymore.

“Maybe, but they’re freaky. And using Soul Guard and Mana and Wind Blade all the time is tiring.” Each individual activation had been easy enough at first, and resting between encounters had helped a lot, but the strain on her mind and body from the constant danger was grating on her.

“How much of the proper temple am I going to have to fight through, given I’ve entered through this bonus section?” She hoped not much. There was still the Lord to consider after all.

Depends on the exact arrangement, but I would expect we are very near the entrance to the Shadow Hall and then, I expect only a few rooms of the standard temple to get us oriented and to find the back door.

Cass nodded. Almost through. She’d be seeing open skies again in no time. No living shadows. No giant rats. No more big bugs.

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Just, deadly boar and bobcats instead? Was that actually better?

The passage widened into another room. She stopped in the doorway. Atmospheric Sense said the room was still. Mana Sense said there were two bright mana sources.

More shadows? No, she hadn’t spotted the shadows with Mana Sense before. Was that because they tended to ambush her from behind or because they didn’t register?

She poked her head around the corner carefully. Like the past rooms, it was filled with pillars. However, this one featured a wide pool of water in the center, a shallow channel stretching from it to the far archway.

I think this is the end of the Shadow Hall for us, Salos said. If we follow the water, we should reach the Lord’s room soon.

“So I should just walk right on through?” Cass whispered.

Carefully, but yes.

Cass rolled her eyes. He made it sound so easy.

Still, she took a step forward. To her relief, the passage didn’t seal behind her.

She crept deeper into the room, Stealth active, Dodge ready.

She peered around the pillars, looking for the mana sources. They were in the middle of the room, by or in the pool. She should just hug the outer wall and she’d be fine. Unless there were also Living Shadows. They could be anywhere.

Then again, it wasn’t like they could hurt her much at this point.

She was a quarter of the way around the room when she saw the first mana source with her natural eyes. It sat at the edge of the pool, its front two legs spread over the surface of the water. Its dark, two-segmented body rested on the stone rim, its many remaining legs spread wide around it. All of it was covered in fine black hairs, except its eight glistening eyes, the pointed tips of its legs, and its sharp jaws.

Grotto Spider

Lvl 17

[A hunting spider adept at navigating both the dark crags and the flooded crevasses of semi-aquatic cave systems. Exceptionally sensitive to vibration. Exceptionally venomous. ]

Cass froze. That was the largest spider she had ever seen. Its legs were easily as long as she was tall. Its body bulkier than her own torso. Each eye the size of a ping-pong ball.

Cass liked to think she had a very reasonable response to spiders. As a rule, if they weren’t touching her she was fine. Wary, but fine. At home, she was designated spider wrangler. She even thought some of those jumping spiders were kind of cute with their big eyes and little bodies.

Man-sized spiders were well past where she drew the line.

Did she dare move? It was “sensitive to vibration”. Could it hear her footsteps? It hadn’t moved yet. Maybe she was too far away. Maybe it was uninterested in her.

She took a hesitant step forward, her eyes on the giant spider. It didn’t react. She took another. And another. It didn’t move.

It was fine. This was fine.

She took another step. Then another. She was an idle draft in an otherwise empty room. Nothing to see here. No reason for the monstrous arachnid to notice her.

It didn’t.

She crept around the edge of the room. If it was a clock face, and she’d started at 6 o’clock moving clockwise, she’d spotted the spider at 8 and had made it all the way around to 11 without any fuss. Just the panicked beating of her heart in her chest.

But that was when she spotted the second mana source.

A figure was tied to a pillar by the pool, beside the spider. A very humanoid figure.

A struggling, humanoid figure.