The mother centipede charged at him. Thrown off by the sheer aggressiveness, Jack turned around and ran, leaving his pole on the ground. He hoped that she would just leave since he was gone, what he underestimated was how fast all those legs could take her.

Swiftly catching up to him, the centipede went in for an attack on his legs, his only warning was a panicked emotion from Lucy. Fearing the worst, he threw himself to the side slamming into the tunnel’s wall barely dodging those huge mandibles.

The centipede stopped on a dime, turning to lunge at Jack, who in turn activated his leap skill to jump backwards putting some distance between the two.

Jack was starting to feel his fatigue as his stamina rapidly dropped. Scrambling into a crouch he lept back towards where he left his pole.

Reaching it before the insect caught him, he grabbed the rod and turned, ready to fend her off, only to see she was mid lunge, its face only a foot away from his. He barely had enough time to put the rod in between them to block her bite.

Her large mandibles closed around the rod while the rest of her body tackled him to the floor. His head slammed into the hard ground as the centipede’s sharp spear-like legs stabbed into his legs and chest.

With only a few seconds to think before he was fully grappled and was as good as dead, he tried the only thing he could think of. He tried to activate Hydraulic Leap with his arms instead of his legs.

He brought his arms closer to his body and wrenched the pole horizontally, with the centipede’s mandibles still wrapped around it, then pushed out with all of his strength boosted by his skill. As soon as his arms were fully extended, he released the pole, forcing the entire centipede off of him and effectively launching it through the air.

The flying centipede slammed against the wall falling to the ground momentarily dazed. Jack clambered to his feet as fast as he could. Running over to the dazed centipede, he activated his skill to give it extra power as he stomped down on its head, killing it.

Jack fell to the ground breathing heavily, too exhausted to move any more. Lucy moved to his chest and sent a feeling of worry and fear. He did his best to try and send some comforting feeling back but before he was able too, the room spun and everything went dark.

Jack came too, feeling sore all over and with a massive headache.

Your party has slain a Cavernous Giant Centipede Level: 6

Your contribution 95%

You are awarded 18 Experience **Alert** You have a Minor Concussion Your party has slain 4 Cavernous Giant Centipede Level: 1

Your contribution 0%

You are awarded 0 Experience

Confused by the extra kill notifications, he sat up, giving him a rush of vertigo. Looking around he saw two dead foot-long centipedes near his head and two near his legs, one of which was currently being eaten by Lucy.

As some of the fog cleared from his head, he realized Lucy must have been protecting him while he was passed out. A large sense of pride for the little spider welled up within him, so much so that it seemed to take her attention away from her meal.

With her own sense of pride, she happily dragged her meal over closer to him to show off her kill. He let out a small chuckle “Yes you did very good, thank you.” Happy with his praise she went back to eating.

He inspected the holes in his shirt and jeans from where he was stabbed. The wounds below seemed to have closed up with only mild bruising. He was amazed at how quickly he was healing, was the system boosting him that much? Luckily he was not stabbed anywhere vital, who knows if he could heal from that. Checking his health, he was back down to twenty and all the minor concussion did was give him a negative one to his intelligence, he hoped that would also heal over time.

While Lucy ate, Jack looked over the bodies. He didn’t have tools to make protective armor or padding and he had very little room left in his inventory, so the shells were of very little use to him. When he cut open the biggest one, he almost lost his previous meal. It was filled with spongy flesh that just screamed ‘don’t eat me’. He took a few large chunks, so he could feed them to Lucy later since she already seemed to enjoy it.

With his inventory open, he remembered the toad body he tossed in there. The toad, having not decayed at all, it didn’t even smell funky, seemed to confirm that either there was no air when he sent the box away or it somehow put everything in a stasis. He’d test more when he could.

Once Lucy was full they continued, more aware of potential ambushes.

Finally, the tunnel began to open up to another chamber. Peeking out as much as he dared it looked to be a den of those centipedes going all the way up to level 10. It also appeared to be a dead-end. The duo decided to understand they were outmatched and decided to head back to the multiway chamber.

They went through two more tunnels without any dangerous incident, both ending with a dead-end chamber full of one type of monster; one filled with salamanders and the other full of giant snails.

The snail tunnel had a few level one snails, a little smaller than Lucy. Their description wasn’t very helpful, basically just saying they were giant snails and they were herbivores. Moving at about the same speed of the average snail, they didn’t seem threatening. When poked they retreated into their shell and came back out a minute later.

Scooping up some easy experience Jack stomped on three and had Lucy pounce on two. Lucy wasn’t able to kill it before it went into its shell but she would just retreat until it came back out.

When they reached the chamber full of larger ones, Jack was very cautious. He remembered the last time he thought some monsters would be free experience. There were around twenty snails levels one through six, the single level six was the size of a minivan. Any over level three, when they were about the size of a normal car tire, would try to fight back. They would try to bite with weird fleshy mouths full of tiny teeth. Even though they were still very slow and posed very little threat, Jack wouldn’t let Lucy get near those.

Killing them all went well, the only hiccup was with some of the bigger ones. They seemed to regenerate faster while in the shell. Jack’s solution was to tip over the snail and jab his pole into the soft underside where the shell couldn’t protect it.

Your party has slain 12 Colossal Snails Level: 1

3 Level: 2

2 Level: 3

3 Level: 4

3 Level: 5

1 Level: 6

Your contribution 65%

You are awarded 159 Experience **Skill Up** Hair Manipulation Level: 2

Arriving back in the multiway chamber, Jack looked over their experience gains and regretted not having Lucy try to kill one of the larger snails since she was almost level three and he could have been able to see if she would get a class or not. He was happy though that both of them leveled up skills. While walking Jack was focusing on manipulating his hair as much as he could without putting them at risk. It was slow going but with the skill level up, he could now move small bunches of hair manually.

Name Jackson Calder Experience 232/300 Name Lucifer Experience 189/200 Hydraulic Leap Lvl 5 Hair Manipulation Lvl 4 (14) Poison Fang Mastery Lvl 3

Stopping to eat and drink before setting out to the next tunnel, Jack was a little more hopeful after making some tangible progress.

The next tunnel was surprisingly short, opening up to an empty chamber. It was different from the other chambers in that it was a near-perfect square, fifty feet by fifty feet, with this tunnel entering at one of its corners. It also had similar tunnel entrances at each corner.

Every inch of the room was painted in an awe-inspiring image. Galaxies and nebulas floating through a deep almost black cosmic blue sky. Comets with trails of prismatic stardust made their voyage through the stars. Flashing streaks of light lit up the sky like synapses in the brain. A swirling vortex devoid of light consumed all that was around it. Pulling them into its center, the galaxies, the comets even the blue flashing light nothing could escape the void. Most of the universe had been taken but the black hole wouldn’t stop pulling to its center where-

Jack felt a sudden sharp pain in his shoulder looking to see Lucy’s fangs digging into his skin. He was shocked and confused. Suddenly hit with waves of fear from his little spider he finally noticed he was standing in the middle of the square room, the walls were not painted but coated in webbing flowing with colors. Panic gripped him as he realized that he’d been hypnotized by the mana infused webbing, quickly scanning his surroundings he saw it, a section of the floor lifting like a trapdoor.

Turning and sprinting back to the tunnel, Jack hoped he would make it. Lucy began to send more panicked feelings and he knew it was closing in fast.

He reached to his side and pulled out his pistol as he activated his leap skill. Flying through the air, he aimed at the mouth of the tunnel, pulling the trigger as soon as he passed it. He was so focused on making sure the barrier went up, he didn’t even try to break his fall. Slamming into the ground hard, he slid and rolled several feet.

His shirt was completely torn and he had a massive road rash on his arms and back. He felt the quaking of the floor as the manaweaver slammed repeatedly into the barrier. It began to screech and hiss so loud he felt like his eardrums may rupture. Looking up he first saw Lucy standing in front of him she must have bailed before he crashed, then he got a look at the monster.

Female ManaWeaver Level: 18 Current mood: Angry.

A fully mature manaweaver.

Quicker and less aggressive than their male counterparts, it will defend against any attack to it or its brood.

With a speed that can rival a jungle cat and a near peak animalian intelligence; the female manaweaver is a deadly opponent.

Known to burrow, swim, and sometimes fly; once mature she will strike out to form her own brood or challenge the current broodmother.

With the ability to infuse mana into its silk, it can produce webbing with a multitude of magical properties.

Age: 11 years

Highest attribute: Dexterity.

Highest skill: Fascinating Display.

She was the size of a truck and was putting all her weight into tackling the barrier. Knowing he only had five minutes, Jack quickly got to his feet, grabbed his dropped items, and started running as soon as Lucy jumped on him.

Reaching the multiway chamber Jack thanked his luck that the tunnel was so short. He didn’t know how long the barrier would hold up to the attacks of the manaweaver and he didn’t want to stick around to find out. With a plan he had been thinking about for a while, Jack pulled out four ball bearings. Testing one on a tunnel he had already been through he got more evidence for his plan.

Dropping a ball bearing two feet into each unexplored tunnel, he watched the way they rolled. For two of the tunnels, the ball rolled deeper into the tunnel, and for the third, it rolled back into the chamber. Jack noticed that each path was slanted downhill and theoretically deeper into the dungeon. So since only one rolled back into the chamber that should be the one going uphill and out.

Going as fast as he could, while still trying to prevent an ambush, he made his way through the tunnel. He picked up the pace when he saw daylight in the distance. Reaching the mouth of the cave Jack felt the warmth of sunlight.

He always enjoyed the dark and cold, but after spending what felt like an eternity without the sun he was looking forward to it. He chuckled “Of course it felt like an eternity I’ve been in there for five thousand years. Lucy, I hope you’re ok with the sun though.”

As he walked out of the dungeon, he came upon the edge of a cliff. Contrary to his hopes, instead of seeing any sign of civilization, all the way to the horizon was an endless overgrown forest.