Cornelius and Damien opened fire while Ris powered his sword. Mic grabbed the spider by the head and began to try to crush it. As far as Ris cold tell, the blaster shots only angered it and he couldn’t get close enough to use his sword on it with the limited space between him and Mic. Killing the huge beast proved almost impossible with the resources available to them, in fact, each time they fought the spider with their pitiful blasters, it took almost no damage. The timer would expire and it would rampage and stomp them all into dust. The re-spawn point was just outside of the ruins and they had to run back to the underground chamber and they had to make their way back to the spider and the cycle would begin all over again.

“This is stupid,” Damien said. “We need to kill it to get gear, but we need better gear to kill it.”

“I have been harvesting crafting nodes along the way.” Reyes said. “These nodes glow a pale blue when we pass them and only require the wrist device to harvest.”

“Crafting?” Ris asked.

“Yeah, that’s why I started harvesting. Maybe I can craft us something better.”

“Yeah, screw this!” Ris said. “We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over. We need a new plan. Crafting may be the answer.”

“Agreed, we need more powerful weapons,” Damien said.

“Here I think I have everything I need according to my wrist device to upgrade my blaster.” He took out his blaster and placed in on a rock in front of him. He took the material from the nodes and placed them next to it. He pushed some buttons on his wrist console and waved his wrist over the blaster several times. With each pass, there was a gnashing noise followed by the materials disappearing. The wristband made a final ding sound.

Ris scanned the blaster. It’s a mark VII blaster now, up from a Mark II. Can you do mine?”

“I only had enough material for one upgrade. It took me all day to harvest.”

“Well, we can try to get by with one new blaster or we can try to harvest our own materials,” Ris said.

“I think I will harvest my own materials, we’re never going to kill that spider,” Damien said.

“I got quite a bit of experience harvesting and then making the upgrade. We might be able to level to 5th or 6th.”

“It’s settled then. Screw banging our heads against the wall. We will harvest materials and upgrade our weapons.” Ris said.

They backtracked their way through the cavern picking and scraping the materials off the floor and walls where the nodes appeared. Finally, they exited the cavern and began moving around the ruins looking for the nodes. They let Reyes upgrade their blasters since his crafting skill was the highest and increasing, however, after a time, Reyes noticed his experience dwindle. At that point, Ris began to work on crafting and increasing his experience.

It was well into the night cycle of the planet before they had enough of the material to work on all the weapons.

“Why don’t we find a spot and make camp there,” Ris suggested. “We can get started on this quest again in the morning.”

“You want to camp out here in these ruins?” Cornelius asked.

“Sure, why not. We can take watch if it will make you feel better.”

“I will see about gathering some firewood,” Reyes said and he wandered off with his light.

“I will see what food we have available,” Amelia said. She began rummaging through the food stores they picked up at the visitor’s center.

It wasn’t long before they had a fire going and food in their bellies. Ris and Reyes began to do the maintenance work of going over their experience gain of the day. Soon, the other joined them.

“It just isn’t fun,” Damien was saying. “Even when we roleplay back home with pen and paper it isn’t fun if the odds are always stacked against you.”

“Yeah, like the time I was trying to figure out what was going on with the villagers and no matter what I asked or suggested, Gary would say things like, you find nothing or you don’t see anything. Man, dude, give me a freakin’ clue! I guess I was supposed to ask or see the one thing that would lead me on or he was just going to let me just stand there endlessly,” Cornelius said.

“Well, what I mean is dying over and over again or going through a dungeon where you have to step two steps to the right on Tuesday and four steps forward or fry in the dragon’s breath. It just gets too hard, frustrating, and is not fun. Just like the instance today. We were underpowered, under geared, under skilled in crafting, but in order to gain anything we needed to kill the almost impossible, venom spitting monster!” Damien said. “Are you supposed to have the gear and equipment first? Do we need a higher-level guy with us to get stuff?”

“I think we are supposed to work together and just let the healer heal the tank,” Amelia said. “There isn’t enough to go around all the time and I only have so much I can give out or I will run out of supplies too quick. I can’t be healing you all at once if you draw the attention of the monster on yourselves. That spider was all over the place and the first thing the tank starts yelling at me is healing, heals!”

“No doubt, we need better communication,” Ris said.

“Or a better meat shield.” Cornelius interjected.

“I am no meat shield. I have feelings!”

“It’s okay, big guy, it’s tough to keep that spider’s attention when Ris and Damien are doing so much damage to it with their new upgrades. Maybe they should slow down and do the damage in increments ping ponging the beast back and forth.” Reyes said.

“Hey, what was that?” Amelia said. “Something just bit my leg.”

“Ouch, mine too,” Cornelius said. He flicked on his flashlight and all over the ruins floor were black bugs about the size of grasshoppers scurrying about.