I was quick to attack it with a high-velocity ice lance as the creature closed in on me. Unfortunately for me, the beast’s scales turned out to be tougher than I’d expected, and the ice lance bounced off harmlessly.

I then opted to use an attack that I’d taken exactly for a moment like these. I summoned an earthen spike under the creature’s belly, which should be vulnerable, or so I thought.

It appeared my thoughts were correct, as a spike erupted from the dirt beneath the creature, and impaled it with great force. I could see the spike penetrate all the way through and create a bump on the beast’s back, where it touched the inside of its scales.

The creature roared in obvious pain, but its roars soon died down, along with it.

You have killed a Large Mire Crocolisk: EXP+456

Level Up!

Kealyna has reached level 6!

You have been awarded 75 EP.

So far, so good. Nothing I’d run into yet had proven to be an issue. I would have to stay careful, though. My biggest enemy here might be the terrain. I had no idea what lurked in the dark, muddy waters… well, besides these crocolisks, obviously.

My thermal vision couldn’t see anything, but I knew there were likely to be more of these creatures underwater. I hadn’t seen the first either, so it would be a safe assumption.

If I followed this path, wherever it led, there was no doubt in my mind that more of these creatures would show up. I could, of course, use water walk to walk across the water instead, but that sounded like a plain stupid idea.

Then again, this creature hadn’t been too hard to kill. Could I simply walk the path and be fine? I could try running across too. However, I was here for experience and achievements.

I quickly checked the achievements I needed and looked around this area. I would need to find a treasure while down in this dungeon, and this area didn’t seem like it held any. There were probably more creatures to kill which would net me experience, but there was no point in doing so if I lacked the necessary achievements at the end.

I decided I may as well go wherever this path led. There was no treasure to be found here.

I took a good look around before I set off to get through this swamp as quickly as my legs could carry me. As I ran, I noticed several crocolisks emerge from the waters that I’d just passed. They were far too slow to get me. I kept running until I was at the end of the path, where the massive toad was seemingly waiting for me.

Its eyes darted over to me and I saw its mouth open. I instinctively put up an earthen wall between us and heard something impacting it. I allowed the wall to fall to the ground where it remained and skittered around it.

The toad was still in the process of retracting its tongue when I summoned threads and wrapped them around its maw when its tongue was back inside. I then summoned two high-velocity ice lances and watched them penetrate the toad’s slimy, weak skin.

You have killed a Noxious Titan Swamp Toad: EXP+333

Noxious? I guessed that meant it was poisonous… not that I intended to eat it anyway…

I turned around and observed the swamp one last time. Several crocolisks were walking about on the dirt path, but they soon returned to the waters as their apparent prey was long gone. A swarm of mosquitos buzzed from one side of the swamp to the other but ignored me.

For all I knew, I was their natural enemy.

Well, I was a spider, after all…

The path led forward and the swamp to both sides had stopped. It then led down again as the ground turned into black dirt on both sides. A large wall came into view, much like on the other end of the swamp, with an arch that was an exact copy. I exited the swamp area and found myself in a much smaller, but still large, square stone room.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Torches lit the place. There were many of them on each of the four walls. In the center of the room was a circle-shaped pit filled with light brown sand. I didn’t quite know what that was doing here, but I assumed it was in some way important as the rest of the floor was made of solid stone. There simply had to be a reason for that being here.

I approached it warily, ready to jump back at the smallest sign of life, all while observing the four walls. There were no doors or anything, the dungeon appeared to end here, which was odd.

I had heard that dungeons were supposed to have a core room, where the core of the dungeon, usually a giant crystal ball that swirled with magic, resided. They were always placed at the end of the dungeon, and I saw no such room here.

It made me even warier of the sand.

The circle was about ten feet in diameter, and was by no means small. The only thing that I could imagine was that there was some kind of tunnel beneath the sand that may lead to the next area.

It would be foolish to just start digging, though. Who knew what could be in that sand?

I noticed something move in the sand and instantly jumped back and landed gracefully on all eight legs.

I watched the sand and saw it shift as something seemed to stir beneath it. I was ready to unleash all kinds of spells if whatever was down inside would emerge. The sand was pushed up and up, as a bump grew. I was expecting something to appear, but it was just a giant blob of sand that kept growing. Eventually, some kind of creature covered in sand exited the sandpit and moved onto the stone floor.

What was this thing?

All I could tell was that it was something amorphous that was covered by sand. As I was wondering what it was, I saw some sand being sucked inward before a bolt of sand was fired at me.

The bolt impacted my barrier and exploded into grains that got into my eyes. I didn’t recall ever being so happy that my eyes seemed to be protected by some kind of film.

Okay, so whatever this was, was hostile.

Another bolt was fired at me, but I’d already seen the same pattern occur where it seemed to “inhale” some sand, and put up my air wall, which redirected the sand bolt upward and away from me. I replied by firing a high-velocity ice lance. Hopefully, it would penetrate the sandy shell and damage whatever was inside.

That wasn’t the case. The sand seemed to form a hard shell, and the ice lance shattered. It did, however, scrape off a bit of sand.

So that wasn’t going to work.

Another bolt of sand was fired at me, but was once again deflected by my air wall, which was still active. I started my lightning arc channel and saw it hit the sand creature. However, something was off. I did not feel the mana cast and the power behind the spell increase. I could feel it hadn’t connected to whatever was inside the sand shell. I canceled the spell as I knew it wasn’t doing anything to my covered target.

A long appendage grew from the sand creature and reached above my head. I quickly jumped to the side as the “sand fist” was brought down.

I was left thinking about how to fight this thing. The only option that I saw before me was removing the sand bit by bit, but I didn’t know how thick the layer of sand was. For all I knew, this creature was nothing but sand.

If that was the case, I’d be long out of mana before I made any progress, if the result of the ice lance from before was anything to go by. This creature’s defense was immaculate.

Its offense, on the other hand, seemed to be quite mediocre. These sand bolts and physical attacks seemed to be easily negated. For a moment, I considered using my flame beam in an attempt to “cook” whatever was inside, so to say, but my other spells had not shown any result. Maybe this creature was completely immune to magic?

If my lightning arc didn’t have any effect, I doubted a spell derived from lightning arc would have any.

If magic did not work, and the creature’s attacks were this weak, there was the option of using physical attacks.

If scraping off sand was the way to go, I could accomplish that with my far too many legs.

And there was one additional thing that could help out with that.