The defeat of the warriors left me feeling extremely satisfied. The larger ones each dropped a bit of hard carapace that would make some excellent armor if I ever got out of here, and the lesser warriors also dropped plenty of gold to leave me happy. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get any weapons or a replacement sword, but the 14 large silver seemed like a good enough reward for now.

I left the arena, the door closing behind me. I looked around at the hall, intrigued by the design. This one was even nicer than the last, and the floor was almost perfectly level and polished smooth. The walls were carved into precise 90-degree angles, and the engraved braziers were set in depressions in the walls, giving the place a very regal feel. At the end of the hall lied yet another door, this one ringed in white marble. If this wasn’t a boss room, I didn’t know what was.

Before entering, I once again sat down to meditate. I didn’t want to enter without filled mana and stamina. I had lost a bunch of health, so as I waited for my mana to regenerate, I practiced healing. It would take about two hours to get max health and mana, so I sat down and waited. In the meantime, I went over my skills, refreshed my knowledge of my arts, and re-identified different skills to check their derivations, if they had any available for viewing. Most had stayed the same, but strangely enough, the derivation for Acrobatics had disappeared. I wonder why? When I got to the fifth floor, I would have to ask Luna about it.

While I healed myself, I once again focused on how the spell functioned. Unfortunately, the means still eluded me, but I did manage to get a better understanding of the way the mana flowed. From what I could tell, what the mana did was interact directly with my aether in some way, causing rapid regeneration of tissue. It was an incredibly strange subject considering my unique biology, and because of my lack of understanding of my own body it was difficult information to comprehend. I had a heading for future progress though, which should allow me to experiment and focus on certain aspects of the spell over others. I was hoping it might just lead me to perform healing independently of the system, which would let me form better healing or regeneration spells than what I currently possessed.

Before long, I was back to the max for my health, mana, and stamina, which meant there was no reason for me not to enter the next room. I honestly had no idea what this one would hold, but it most likely had something to do with the spitters. The only way that it wasn’t a spitter room was that this was the final room and was therefore the boss fight. If the fifth floor was a break floor as I had been led to believe, that would make this the final fight of the dungeon’s tutorial, and I was in equal measures excited and anxious.

With trepidation, I walked into the next arena. The door at the exit was large and familiar, denoting the end of the floor, making this the final boss room. While the door behind me slowly closed, I took a better look around.

12 white marble columns were ringing the edge of the arena, which had a floor made of soft sand. They stood 50 feet tall and 10 feet around, and the top of the columns were adorned with bronze engraved braziers like the ones in the hallway, and they provided bright light throughout the whole arena. The walls themselves were also adorned with carvings and engravings of spiders with inlaid ruby eyes. The ceiling itself was plain, though in the very center was a large circular plug that looked split in half. That was probably where the final enemy of the floor would come from.

Behind me, the massive stone doors slammed shut, their almost two-foot thick panels making an impassable barrier. There would be no retreat. Gulping down my worry, I looked up, awaiting the boss. Sure enough, the stone doors that made up the roof began to open, sliding left and right into the ceiling, leaving a pitch-black hole from which shone red light.

I waited, but strangely enough, nothing happened. Perhaps the boss would come from somewhere else? The red light remained still, shining down on me, as I slowly moved back to the center of the arena to get a better view. I identified the light, just to make sure it was safe.

Torrogh, Knight of the Queen (Rank 2) – lvl 25

Oh shit. Not safe, definitely not safe. The fact that the name of the monster was a different color probably meant that it was unique. As I watched, a massive set of forelegs stretched into the hole, followed by a disgusting arachnid head. The gross mouth of the beast was large enough to eat me whole.

The spider slowly crept into the arena. It had 16 glowing red eyes, each with a darker pupil constantly moving, darting about the room. It had a single mouth stretching the entire length of its head, filled with jagged, serrated fangs. Out of the mouth hung two purple tongues, stretching and undulating within the maw, cleaning the teeth. The great spider continued to creep into the arena, standing on the ceiling. The eyes all focused down on me, and my heart began to rapidly palpitate. The arachnid was roughly three times the size of one of the warriors and was deeply intimidating.

Now that it was fully in the arena, the doorway from which it came through began to close behind it. Unlike normal spiders, this one had ten legs, the front four blades like those of the warriors. Horns and spikes jutted out of the many legs, similar to the hind legs of a grasshopper.

Suddenly, it released the ceiling. I used a gust of wind to throw myself backward, landing on the edge of the arena. The knight pirouetted mid-air in an acrobatic act that such a large monster shouldn’t be able to accomplish. It landed on the ground, ten legs supporting it, as it started to creep towards me. It moved precisely, but it did seem to be just a bit slower than the warriors. I quickly identified only it’s shell to see if my sword would penetrate it.

Skullback Knight Carapace: This is the carapace of the skullback knight, a high caste of warrior spider. While it isn’t particularly hard, it is very thick, and is difficult to penetrate because of this.

Hardness: 3

Mana Conductivity: 2

Alright. It seemed like my sword could injure it, but because of the thickness of the carapace, I would probably have a hard time. I would need to strike at its weak spots and focus on those over everything else.

It was getting closer. Each of the blades on its limbs was as long as one of the large warriors, and I knew that a single attack could leave me terminally injured. It moved with an irregular gait, and I waited until it was about to attack before attempting my first assault. I waited on bated breath as it finished its steady approach and started its attack. As it raised its massive right forelimbs into the air, I could hear and sense it’s massive muscles expand and contract, and I could sense the electricity running through its body as its brain sent signals to its limbs. I knew exactly what it was going to do next.

I used a maximum distance dash to move underneath the spider just as soon as its attack met the earth. My back was peppered with shrapnel, damaging me almost as much as an attack from the lesser warriors. The arena shook, and dust fell from the ceiling as the structure shifted. I was under the beast, and it started to rear back, attempting to once again position itself in a place to end my life, but I wouldn’t let it.

I set my target; the joint of its back-right leg. I took to the air, packing a massive amount of air under my wings, and sent myself rocketing into one of the few lightly armored parts of the arachnid. My sword, charged with lightning, wind, and water, still did not manage to slice all the way through on the first attack. The leg at the joint was more than a foot in diameter, and the stopped just after the half way point. Shrieking in pain, the ten-legged knight reared up on its hind four legs, attempting to throw me off, but that was a mistake. The weight of the spider was too much, and the chitin on the top that kept the appendage from falling off cracked and broke, leaving the great ten-foot-long limb broken and erratically twitching.

If this were one of the warriors, this fight would have been over, but because of the extra legs, this spider could compensate for the injury. It re-stabilized itself, then dashed forwards. I tried to attack yet again as it fled, but I quickly learned that it was too fast for my acceleration to match. It was now on the other side of the field, and it was regrouping. That burst movement was insanely fast, and it made me realize that the spider had been holding back when it first attacked. Why go all out when you didn’t need to, I guess? I decided that I would attempt the rest of this encounter from the air, as the boss seemed to be getting serious, and I wanted the advantage that the increased mobility would give me.

All of the boss's eyes were focused on me, and it slowly crept to the left, attempting to reposition itself. With a surprise burst of speed, the boss rushed forwards, attempting to swat me out of the air. I jerked myself upwards, avoiding the charging arachnid by a hair’s breadth, and watched as it crashed into one of the columns below. The spider froze, apparently dazed by the crash, and I watched as the column broke off in the middle at the place of impact. It fell downward in a mighty rush of stone, scattering over the carapace of the large bug.

I watched as the spider collapsed to the ground in pain. Seeing my chance, I dove downwards preparing to mount another attack on the right-side legs. It had four left, and two were the massive blades that seemed unsuitable to walking. While it was down, I once again launched myself at the leg joint, this time choosing the second leg from the back. My blade bit in again, and the spider howled in pain, but it was trapped under stones, and could not move to attack me once more. I slashed down a second time, severing the leg completely, and rendering the spider much less mobile.

Before I could continue my assault, the arachnid suddenly rose, brushing off the bits of stone, standing unsteadily. All of the eyes with the horrible beady pupils were still trained on me, and I decided to retreat again, but before I could, I felt intense pain strike my left side. Looking down, I saw one of the disgusting purple tounges, somehow barbed and extended, pierced into my side. The thing must be 50 feet long! My wound leaked blood, and I could feel something pumping into me through the fleshy appendage. I used the sword to hack at the tongue, eventually severing it a few feet out of my skin, but when I did, my blood flowed freely through the tube. Using my right hand, I tore the barbed tip from my flesh and tried to staunch the blood flow. That one attack had dealt close to 200 damage, and I was inflicted with a severe bleed. My guess is the tongue was laced with a powerful anti-coagulant, and it reminded me of the effect that my claws had when I attacked.

I retreated, and as I did, I grabbed one of the health potions and quickly downed it. I cringed at the filthy taste and unpleasant sensation of flesh squirming beneath my skin that the healing caused, but it still brought almost instant relief. I bared my teeth in rage at the spider. I wanted to take this big bastard down! Its eyes looked almost mirthful at my actions, and it was obvious it found pleasure in hurting me. Though it was severely injured, it licked its disgusting lips, savoring my taste.

Alright, it was planning time. I flew a bit higher than it could reach to give myself some space and began to formulate a plan of attack. This spider was dangerous. Very dangerous. Already, the wounds on its severed limbs had started to heal, so it had some extremely potent generation. What could I do to give myself the advantage? I needed to go after its weaknesses, but what should I target?

Here’s what I knew. Spiders didn’t get big in the wild because they could not breathe through lungs, meaning that if they ever grew too large, they would suffocate. Unfortunately, this guy had a mouth, which probably meant that it had lungs to breathe through. Spiders also had powerful senses, including both smell and vision. Its vision was probably the much stronger sense considering the size of its eyes, so limiting its ability to see should give me some leeway to attack. Lastly, spiders were hyper-reliant on symmetry. My attacks that limited motion of a single side were effective in the past and would probably continue to work into the future. Already a plan was coming to mind, and I was preparing to act it out.

First up was limiting its vision. I needed to be careful when I did this, but I should have enough space to keep me safe. The boss was trying to swat me out of the air using its forelimbs, but because it couldn’t get up onto its hind legs to do so, it could only feebly wave its blades in the air while I kept my distance. I got into position and used my first major combination attack.

My electricity tended to be inaccurate over long ranges, but I figured out early on that it could be conducted through streams of water. I began to spray a gentle stream of water from my hand all over its eyes, consuming as little mana as possible. It didn’t seem to annoy the spider at all, and the boss continued to try and attack me. Finding the right moment when its attacks lulled, I sent a powerful blast of lightning down the stream of water, right into the soaking wet eyes of the spider. It hissed in rage and shrunk back, using its two massive blades to try and scratch its eyes. It seemed that the monster wasn’t all that smart though, as when the blades scraped over the damaged eyes, it only damaged them more, enraging the beast further. Looking down, I could see only a single eye remaining, right in the front, but it too was damaged.

The spider roared in rage, its bellows shaking the whole chamber, and its attacks became even more violent and sporadic, picking up pace. It didn’t seem to be able to pinpoint me without its vision, just as I planned. The spider rotated its body, attempting to keep me in the vision of its one good eye, but I was having none of it. It was time to start the next phase of my plan.

I retreated once again to the edge of the arena, as far away from the spider as I could get and pressed my body up against another pillar. Then, I started screaming.

“HEY, YOU BIG FAT ASSHOLE, I’M OVER HERE! COME AND GET ME!”

The boss was angry, blinded, and in agony, and now it was being taunted. The spider then did the only thing that it understood; it charged me at full speed with reckless abandon, relying on its hard shell to protect it. Meanwhile, I had flown once again into the air and was hovering around 30 feet up, near the top of the pillar. The arachnid could not be stopped, and it rammed into the stone pillar at full speed, blasting right through the rock pillar, and getting lodged into the wall behind it. When the pillar collapsed on top of it, this time the spider shrieked in agony, and I watched as it’s carapace cracked in several places. Most notably, it cracked right at the base of the head, where the head met the thorax. That was my best bet to end this.

I dove towards the breach in the shell of the spider and began to hack away at it with my right while channeling the remaining dregs of my magic into the innards of the beast with my left. The great arachnid knight was shrieking all the while, but it was stuck in the wall and pinned by the collapsed column. Its remaining legs moved spastically as the lightning spread through its system, but the thing just would not die!

I was running low on mana and only had around 60 more. Even more so, I was starting to feel that pressure on my mind that I got when channeling too much magic, but it was now or never. This spider needed to go down here, and if I gave up my assault, I feared that I wouldn’t get another chance.

With a shiver, the spider began to pull itself out of the wall and shake off the rubble. NO! I plunged the sword into the head of the arachnid even deeper, bending it back with all of my might, while simultaneously dumping all of the lighting I could into the wound. My hands were aching, and I watched as the metallic fur and flesh of my left arm began to burn and char away. I grit my teeth through the pain and kept up my assault.

Bellowing a roar of determination and anger, screamed, “JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY!!!”

As my mana finally tapped out, I looked into the charred colossus that was the spider. I had blasted a hole straight through its head, and I watched as curls of smoke drifted out of the eye sockets, its one remaining eye having been obliterated in the lightning maelstrom. The beast remained standing, its body trapped in seizure, even as the blue particles began to drift off of its smoldering corpse.

I jumped off the back, landing hard on my feet. My left hand hung limply at my side, and my right clutched the hasty spider longsword, dented and chipped beyond all usability. I desperately wanted to collapse onto the ground, but before I could pass out in pain, there was something I needed to do. Collect my loot, and head down to the fifth floor, where I would find the exit to this hellhole, and where Luna waited.

Once the particles had dissipated, and I was left looking at the loot, I gathered it all into one place and cast identify.

Whispering under my breath, I said, “Well, fuck me.”