It took about half an hour for the fighting on the ramp to finish. In that time, in order to distract himself from how useless he was, he thought of how best to try and get out of the dungeon as quickly as possible. The next area was the spawn point for the manteae, who were only marginally weaker than the arachnae. In fact, in most instances he'd almost consider them equally as dangerous and in his mind they were both tied as the strongest monsters of the dungeon.

Trying to link with some of the half-mantis women was a good idea and would help bolster his small escape force but there were also no guarantees that it would work. Making sure they wouldn't get attacked from behind as they moved up was the best overall strategy he could think of for the moment. Trying to add as many to his forces as he could when he could would increase all of their survival rates, but otherwise he needed to be prepared for all of them, himself included, to fight their way all the way through.

Of course that also brought the thought about injured monsters, both ones that he would likely find as well as those that were linked with him. Although he was fairly certain that his emotions were much dimmer than what they likely should be, he didn't want to be completely emotionless. He already knew he was going to lose monsters he linked with as he'd already lost one already. He was a monster, too, though. If he was going to continue living in this world, especially being as weak as he was, he would need to have at least some compassion even if he knew he would likely order some to die before they made it out. It was a good chance to set some simple rules for himself while he could.

Obviously he would try and focus on the health and wellbeing of those he as linked with over others. At least for now their health was directly linked to his own chances of survival, compassion notwithstanding. Whatever compassion or other good feelings he could bring himself to bear would and should go to them first, even over himself. Should he have a chance and the detriments be few or nonexistent then he would try to help those not yet linked by first trying to link with them. Should any of them both deny the link and still prove hostile then he would immediately abandon them and consider them an enemy. This should be enough of a simple ruleset until he made it out of here and to somewhere safe.

It was with those thoughts that he turned to see his four arachnae coming up around the corner from their fights. He noticed a variety of injuries on all of them, with only one of them bearing nothing heavier than some scratches.

Along with the message he tried to push some feelings of kindness, calm, and sympathy with it. They seemed to understand both the message and the feelings, at least somewhat, as they all gave slight smiles and moved next to him before resting. The most injured who was even missing a leg almost seemed to collapse as she started to let herself down. He immediately started looking over her and after glancing at the other three and how they were resting he noticed that they were doing little else.

He thought it through for a moment before realizing what seemed wrong about what he was seeing. They were only resting instead of dealing with their bleeding injuries. Maybe as monsters that was how they dealt with injuries normally or maybe they were too young to know another way. However, with his knowledge from the before he could think of several ways to help deal with their wounds better than just resting and bleeding out while waiting for natural healing.

He tried his hardest to send some images depicting the general idea of what he was talking about. It didn't feel like he could get the whole thing across, though.

Maybe some extra explanation could help?

The most injured arachne seemed to at least sort of understand and began creating some threads.

That did indeed seem to help them understand and they all began to try and cocoon themselves in weird ways that began to make more of a mess than progress.

As weak as he was right now he could still help direct some of their silk webbing with his hands and help wrap limbs and such. He showed them as best he could how to cover the wounds and wrap all the areas. Unfortunately he wasn't much of an expert either, so it still looked very shoddy and didn't bandage as much as she wished. They did all seem to at least get the idea, though. Another half an hour later and the three more injured arachnae looked like a toddler had tried to dress them up as mummies without having near enough materials to do so.

For some reason the whole spectacle just seemed too hilarious and he couldn't help letting out a silent laughter that made itself well known through the link. They all looked at him in curiosity and he could finally feel some feedback in the link. There were questions coming back to him. Nothing fully formed as words but enough for him to understand that they were curious about what he found funny.

He waited for a while and tried to think more about the next floor. He was definitely too weak to fight but one of the biggest problems in all of the test fights he had had was that his instincts were too split and his thoughts too varied to ever actually anything. So right now he tried to simulate in his mind any kind of situation he might run into in the next area so that he wouldn't just freeze up and be an easy target or burden. He pulled himself out of his thoughts looked around to try and check on how his four arachnae were doing and noticed that they had all somehow ended up resting against him with the three injured ones actually sleeping on him while the scratched one leaned against his side and watched over the other three.

Normally if one came around to see themselves surrounded by four giant spider-women monsters using their body as a resting cushion they would probably be terrified, or if they were insane like the madman they might be horny. For some reason he found it to be more...endearing. They seemed to be mostly content and in some ways he thought it was kind of cute. Even if they still looked like they were wearing the worst mummy costumes ever imagined.

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He and the one he had mentally dubbed Scratches for now began to help the three injured ones remove all their bandages. He didn't really want to give them appropriate names right now since there was something that told him that it was a special thing but he did want to at least have something to identify them with. He looked over the remaining three as he worked and decided some quick nicknames to mentally keep track of each of them. One had a particularly nasty cut across her human stomach area and another large cut on her spider abdomen so he decided to call her Gash. The one missing a leg he just decided to call Legs. The last one had a bad cut on her face that seemed to have even damaged an eye. The wound itself seemed to have already stopped bleeding and he was sure if she had been human it would have left a large scar so he dubbed her Scar.

It might have been nicer to think about such terrible nicknames better, and he admitted to himself that they were definitely terrible, but he wasn't sure if they would all even survive the next few days. He wished they would, of course, but wishes alone didn't determine the future. He didn't even know what would happen after they made it out. He intended them to just be temporary names anyways.

They all tilted their heads together at the same time as they thought through what he had explained. Cute. Finally they nodded and he stood up with Legs. He kept an arm around her waist to stead himself and they began walking up the ramp into the mantea area.

It didn't take long to get to where they could see what was going on. The constant rumblings were still going on throughout the dungeon so it made it difficult to determine other sounds clearly. Sight, however, was not as obstructed. Across the entire area he could see manteae pieces as the effects of the fighting that had started over an hour ago. Mantis claws, wings, legs, and so one were strewn across the floor in blood along with what could be mistakes as chopped women and girls. A few more intact bodies relays the truth of the matter, though, showing how the manteae were just just like the arachnae with the bodies of female humans on top and the bodies of mantids for the lower half.

A better look showed that the usual odd warped space area that would indicate a spawning area was now gone. Apparently with the end of the dungeon came the end of the monster spawns. He thought about it for a moment as he continued to look around and realized that it was probably for the best. It would be much more difficult to make it out if new monsters kept spawning as they tried to go up.

That led his gaze to where the ramp up at the other side was. There were still quite a few fights going on closer to where the area opened into the real floors so he had ignored those but there was another free-for-all fight between five manteae at the foot of the ramp up. There was no conceivable way to sneak around them so the two remaining options he could think of would be to wait or try and push through. If they waited then there was a chance that the manteae could swap targets to his group now that they were visible and the more obvious trespassers which would take any kind of initiative they would have against the manteae away. If they pushed forward, they at least had a chance to take the initiative and right now with all the injuries they needed whatever advantage they could get.

He started passing his thoughts along to the arachnae as they moved forward at the quickest pace they could achieve with some semblance of stealth. Once they were about three quarters of the way to the bottom of the ramp, he let himself separate from Legs so she could help. Taking out four of them as quickly as possible was much more important than taking out three and supporting him. He started wobbling closer to the wall so he could lean against it while watching the fight to provide mental coordination if needed.

Just as he touched the wall, he noticed one of the mantea bodies he thought was a corpse was still breathing. He used the wall to steady himself better as he got a closer look. She was definitely one of the youngest, possibly spawned just before the spawners quit working, and didn't seem to have too many injuries. He couldn't be too sure but it looked like she had been thrown against the wall early on and gotten knocked unconscious. Remembering his rules he decided to try and link with her.

It took a few tries since he had to remember how he had done it with the initial five arachnae but he eventually felt the link attach. Satisfied that even if she woke up while he wasn't looking now that she wouldn't attack him, he turned his attention to watch the fight at the ramp as the arachnae had just started their own assault on the free-for-all.

The circumstances turned out to be perfect and the execution of the the plan almost equally so. The five manteae were so busy fighting that they hadn't noticed the new contenders until too late, except Scratches. The other three arachnae tore into their targets with such quickness and brutality that their targets were in pieces before any of the manteae had any idea what was happening. Scratches' target was bashed across the arm and she managed to rip off a leg, human arm, and claw arm before throwing the mantea off to the side.

The last mantea screeched and started thrashing wildly as she saw her doom approach in the form of four arachnae. He felt certain that they would be able to handle the four on one fight and put his attention on the heavily injured mantea Scratches had thrown. She seemed like she had almost given up and although she was still alive, she was obviously injured enough that she knew she wouldn't be able to fight back right now if she could even survive. Maybe with some doctoring and rest she might be able to survive and that was enough for hime to try and push a link out to her.

Even as she watched the arachnae rip the last mantea apart, she struggled against the link. As the mantea in her eyes finally died and the arachnae turned towards her, she finally gave up and let the link form. He tried to push assuring thoughts of comfort and safety through the link to get her to calm down.

He saw her sigh for a moment before giving in to her wounds and passing out. She still seemed to be breathing, though, so satisfied that they were at least free to get on the ramp he decided to call out the move to safety.

The arachnae all nodded and started moving. It took a bit of work but after only another couple minutes they were all at least on the ramp and mostly out of sight of everything hostile. Before they could move far enough around the bend to see up the remaining part of the ramp he decided they should rest. He didn't want anyone from the next area to accidentally look down and decide to attack them while they were recuperating.

Unlike him, the rest of his group actually needed sleep. With most if not all of them injured it would probably be a good idea to actually rest for a few hours before moving on. The next area had faeries and although they might not be much of challenge to a group of mantae and arachnae normally, right now the injuries and exhaustion could make even a small group of weak faeries too strong of an opponent. The madness that seemed to be coming from the dungeon's condition would only make it all worse.

Sighing as he leaned against the wall, he beckoned the arachnae over so they could begin treating the badly injured mantea and redoing all the bandages. He wanted to actually take his time for now so he tried to be more meticulous and careful this time. Hopefully things would get easier as they went higher. All the monsters should be trying to get, after all. Something told him that his luck wasn't going to be quite that good, though.