*Twang*

The fleshy sound of her string twanging is quickly accompanied by a squishing sound as the arrow embeds itself deeply inside the gargantuan black spider’s face, killing it.

Grinning happily at her shot, she knocks another newly acquired spider leg arrow and aims at another of the many spiders that are attached on the man trying to bite him to pieces.

They had entered the mines a few hours ago and in those few hours she’s discovered quite a few bizarre things.

The first and foremost; they could use the sharp leg bones of the spiders as arrows and they worked a lot better than the old arrows. She dealt on average about five hundred damage a shot.

That was quite the insane figure to see, for she only had five hundred hp at the moment. Though she only has a vitality of twenty which is majorly squishy but still, one arrow could kill quite a few of the squishy classes easily.

Apart from noticing her hugely booned damage output, what amazed and terrified her more was the fact that the man seemed to be quite insane. Not that she already knew that, but it became quite a bit more apparent when he aggroed multiple spiders and stood in the corridor, letting himself be bitten non-stop by the venomous things.

Just watching him stand there non-chalantly was one special thing to see, but to notice that he hasn’t been poisoned, even though he’s been bitten so many times, terrifies yet intrigues her. She already knows about his decent resistance to damage, but to find out he seemed quite immune to poison was something else.

Just what did that man do in this game? She kept thinking over and over again.

She had asked him a few questions, as well as sent him a party invite when they had arrived. He had ignored them all and denied the invite, saying there’s no point.

This led to the third curious and mysterious thing: He had told her he could not gain any experience from the kills.

Now, she is only level twenty four and these spiders are level twenty five. For him to not get any experience from the spiders, he’d have to be level thirty six at least.

The highest level she’s heard of so far is the level thirty two Gladiator Spartacus; who fought night and day with tough opponents to level up.

Whoever this man was, he was a most curious being, one that slowly but surely is attracting her attention.

Wrenching the thoughts from her mind, she focuses back on her task of killing off the spiders.

As a group, they seemed to work decently; he tanked them while she shot them, killing them before they could switch aggro.

While she shot the remaining spiders, he started collecting legs from the dead ones, skinning them while being bitten by the living ones.

It almost made her laugh.

Quickly finishing off the rest, they collect the legs and begin walking down the mine again.

“It’s weird isn’t it” He randomly says as they walk past unmoving carts and broken picks cast aside by the wall.

“Not really, they need to eat” She calmly replies back as she shoots a spider that skitters around the corner.

“True…but where are the bones?”

Taking a quick glance around, surely enough there are no bones in sight. That was slightly strange since there would be no reason for the spiders to move the bones of the dead miners away from where they killed and ate them, especially when she can see a few human shaped cocoons split open and empty.

Wondering what could have happened to the bones, they get into another large fight, him aggroing everything in sight with a loud roar, a taunt skill he unlocked recently after shouting madly at spiders for hours, making things slightly easier.

Offing the group of around a dozen, the collect more arrows to be and continue along their way.

Thanks to these spiders, she has a few thousand arrows right now, taking up about a quarter of her inventory.

Going down a set of web infested stairs, the webs increase drastically to the point where they were standing on webs, stickily slugging their way through.

After an hour of trekking slowly through the webs, killing a few groups along the way, they reach a gargantuan round chamber with a tall ceiling, a natural cave it seems.

Dangling from the ceiling are thousands of cocoons, unmoving.

Without missing a beat, the man saunters into the room and roars, letting hell descend on him.

Hundreds, literally hundreds of giant spiders rappel down towards him, appearing from nooks and crannies in the cave wall in constant droves.

He laughs maniacally at the sight as they reach the floor, covering it entirely, surrounding him in hordes.

“IF YOU MISS, YOU ARE NOT AN ARCHER” He laughs merrily, only barely overheard the angry skittering of the spiders.

Shaking her head in despair at the man, she begins to knock her arrows.

…

Barely three hours pass and the floor is littered with a mountain of corpses. So many that they’ve literally started to form small hills of corpses, all with a single arrow embedded in them.

Barely three hours and already the number of spiders that appear from the cave walls are decreasing to the point where some nooks and crannies seem to have run out of spiders.

All while she picked off the spiders, the man roared with laughter, almost as if he were being tickled as the multitudes of spiders engulfed him trying to rip him apart.

She suspected he had a tremendous vitality with the way he seemed to not care about the groups attacking him before, but now she suspects his large vitality isn’t the only thing he has; it’s almost certain he has some form of fast regeneration, hugely uncommon for a human, or at least that what she used to think he is.

Now, she isn’t quite so sure.

She couldn’t see him, but the loud laughter pointed to his continual living.

Sighing, she knocked another arrow.

…

Finally, no more spiders seemed to join in the fray, only a humongous black thing with a large skull on its back and venom dripping from its large jaws, rappelled down straight onto the man.

Immediately his laughing stops as the supposed matriarch’s fangs gnash towards him.

“TANDRA GOING TO NEED SOME HELP HEEERE” He screams out, causing her heart to race fearfully.

If he were to die, she would soon follow.

Though she does not rush, she remembers her training and reminds herself that rushing would result in missing.

Taking a calming breath, she continues to fire on the small horde of spiders, hoping the man can last long enough for her to get to the matriarch.

She didn’t shoot the matriarch first for it might aggro the rest of the mobs.

Clearing the mobs only took the better part of half an hour and she finally shot the last one, blood spattering the air from her profusely bleeding fingers.

Just from bleeding, she had already lost half her health, and she could not feel her shoulders any longer. Every time she pulled the bow, all the weight embedded in her fingers, digging deeper into the wound.

But she has no time to stop, especially when she sees the matriarch’s face in the sky and lower body stabbing towards the ground repeatedly as it has been doing for the past few minutes.

Fearing for her ally’s life, she clambers onto a large hill of dead spiders, gaining a good vantage point on the situation.

Quickly, she spots the man underneath the matriarch, getting repeatedly stung by her stinger, yet still wriggling around dodging maybe one out of three stabs.

A loud, pissed hissing noise escapes the matriarch as it embeds the stinger in the man once more, and it looks down to see the man smiling towards it.

Tandra can almost feel the utter frustration seeping from the matriarch, as the man not only isn’t affected by the poison, he doesn’t seem to mind being stabbed that much.

He looks towards Tandra, smiling and waving a severely punctured arm.

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“HEY, TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH. TAKE A BREAK TO HEAL YOURSELF UP” He points towards her bleeding fingers “I’M ACTUALLY DOING ALRIGHT”

“ALRIGHT? YOU’RE GETTING STABBED BY A STINGER OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR BODY IS MADE OF BUT SURELY IT’S GOT TO BE HURTING YOU” She screams back to which he chuckles.

“I THOUGHT IT WAS DANGEROUS WITH THE WHOLE SKULL ON THE BACK, BUT SEEMS LIKE ITS POISON ISN’T STRONG ENOUGH”

“WHAT THE HELL KIND OF POISON RESISTANCE DO YOU HAVE?”

From the look of the matriarch, it doesn’t seem to have weak poison, not in the slightest.

He swipes with his hand, supposedly opening up a menu.

“APPARENTLY I’VE GO-” A spray of web encases his head and then his body in quick succession, to which he wriggles annoyed breaking out of some before it’s replaced.

The matriarch, seemingly fed up with trying to sting him, finally encases him in web as he tries to escape.

Tandra, fearing for her safety and a little bit for his, starts knocking an arrow, aiming at the eyes.

Luckily, the new arrows seem to have good spinage, so her aiming isn’t as bad as it usually is; she only has to shoot slightly to the bottom right of where she wants to aim, a lot less than usual.

Letting it loose, an arrow embeds in an eye letting viscous juices spurt out along with a skittering scream as its eyes flash red and towards her.

It charges towards her and she jumps, landing on its eyes with a squishing thud, before jumping off and towards the tunnel entrance.

Thanks to the spider corpses, she easily retreats to the small entrance, which is summarily rammed by the matriarch, as it tries to squeeze its gigantic body through.

It quickly realizes it can’t get through and something rams it further in, sticking it before it can begin to back out.

Its front two legs wave around madly as it tries to back out, but it’s too late; she’s already knocked an arrow.

With the matriarch stuck, and having much difficulty moving back, or moving at all, it’s easy picking for her as she draws and releases multiple arrows one after the other.

Three minutes pass, and the matriarch, it’s face peppered with a dozen arrows, finally squeezes through, filling up the entire corridor and begins to slowly squeeze it’s way forward since it cannot go back.

Sadly for it, Tandra can move backwards faster and simply kites the matriarch for a few minutes filling it with a dozen more arrows before finally it slumps, or stops moving really.

Rewarded with a whole level, she celebrates by ripping some clothes and tying a bandage around her fingers.

“ARE YOU ALIVE OVER THERE” The man screams over the corpse.

“STILL KICKING” She screams back happily.

Slumping down by the wall, she hears ripping sounds and soon, through the mouth appears the man, covered in guts and ooze.

Chocking on the rising vomit, she looks away and covers her nose as he approaches.

“Ah, that was hell of a fight. Almost went to red there” He chuckles lightly

Almost red he said, that alone gave a small idea just how much vitality and regeneration this man must have, to have withstood a barrage of attacks from a constant dozens of spiders and then a matriarch for the better part of half an hour.

This man is surely insane, but at least his body is as insane as he and she’s actually quite glad for that.

Moving through the hole the man made, they return to the room and begin taking the legs off the spiders.

Literally filling her inventory to the full with arrows, she fully realizes just how many spiders she killed; close to two thousand of them.

That explains the level she gained from just the spiders. Now she was bouncing merrily on level twenty seven, slightly insane since she'd gained three levels in a single day.

Just counting that number gave a good impression of why this was a ten man quest, and even then, with the poison added in, no priestless party would be able to survive.

This would’ve been one of those quests no one could do for a few more months, since not even a single priest has come from the cathedrals yet. According to forums, they will be allowed to leave in the new years; in two months time.

Though just the two of them had done it, simply because that man could tank the entire horde, matriarch included without a single problem.

That was a scary enough thought. The fact that he didn’t attack a single one back was way more terrifying. If he were to ever start fighting back, she doubts much can stop him, let alone harm him.

While she looked wondrously upon the massacre that was the cave floor, the man had collected the matriarch’s venom sac, and traded it for some spider legs.

Taking the venom sac, she saw it could be used fifty times to add widow venom to her arrows. Looking at the stats, she saw it would add two hundred damage a second until cured.

That’s a powerful venom indeed, and to not affect him? That man’s body was surely insane.

“Hey, how was your stat gain?” His voice tickles her ear and she jumps in surprise.

Opening her stat window, she looked mildly impressed at the gains; four points to strength, two to vitality. Also she had gained the skill pain resistance, at zero point zero zero two percent.

Basically nothing, but then again it’s still something.

She looks at him pondering on whether to ask, but something tells her he won’t reply.

“Eh, couple of points on strength and vitality, as well as pain resistance” she shrugs her shoulders

“That isn’t too bad, pain resistance is pretty useful, trust me” He chuckles and points towards one of the cocoons high up “Anyways, think you could shoot that down?”

She looks at her fingers, finally regenerated after they spent a long time collecting legs.

Taking a shot, she misses entirely.

Readjusting her aim she shoots again, this time just barely clipping the cocoon.

Another shot and the arrow pierces it, flying out the other side.

That’s weird; it should’ve embedded in the corpse

Raising an eyebrow, she activates her low level eagle eye helping her sight somewhat. Sure enough, there’s a cut down the middle of the cocoon to show that it’s already been opened.

“That’s odd” She exclaims to herself

“What?”

“The cocoon seems to be empty” She takes a couple more shots at other cocoons “Quite a few are empty it seems”

“Still don’t find it weird that there are no miner corpses?” He asks wiggling his eyebrows

Looking confused towards him, he responds by beginning to climb the web on the walls.

“Well don’t you want to find out what happened to them?” His voice echoes in the empty cave.

Nodding her head, she begins the climb after him, stickily making her way up the wall.

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Author's Corner: Hey hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Please review/comment if you want toooo!

Also two things you should know:

1.I probably wont be posting much in the next week or two since exams (probably being the keyword there).

2. I really need to get a picture for my fiction, like seriously it's been thirty chapters and it's still blank T_T

Anyway hope you enjoyed and are awaiting the next chapter!

-TRUENORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD