Fenrir

"How are so many of them in the dungeon at once! Isn't there a limit on the number of intruders my dungeon can have at one time!?" I shout as I watch the dozens of Arachnids fight my monsters.

"Yes, there is a limit, but for some reason it doesn't apply to Spawn. No one is really sure why it's like this, but it just is," Dawn explains as she anxiously watches my monsters tear apart the wave of Arachnids.

At least these things don't seem too powerf-

Another wave of them enters my dungeon and joins with the previous wave.

Shit! There are more of them?!

"Seriously! Just how many of these things are there!" I ask Dawn in a hurry.

They don't seem to be all that high in levels at least, so they aren't doing very much-

Several of my goblins suddenly drop to the ground as their skin turns even paler than normal.

Wait... don't tell me...

Poison?!

I turn my attention towards Dawn for a second and find her glowing green as she says, "Arachnids usually live in underground hives consisting of hundreds of them, along with several Arachnae, and one Arachnus. The Arachnus is their queen, while the Arachnae tend to be her bodyguards. We got lucky this time because of how weak all of these Arachnids are. Judging by their strengths, the Arachnae are likely only around level 7 or 8, while the Arachnus should be around level 9 or 10."

"Level 10?!" I shout in surprise before turning back to the Arachnids.

Level 10 is lucky?!

I send an order out to all of the monsters on the fifth floor – aside from the tower and the boss room – to go join my monsters currently fighting the Arachnids.

I then spawn in a few dozen more monsters to help deal with them.

This should be able to deal with all of these Arachnids...

Before I can feel better about the situation, a large creature – twice the size of the Arachnids – suddenly enters through the hole in the wall.

"Shit," Dawn whispers, "That's an Arachnae."

The creature spans about a meter in length and about half of a meter in height. It has sharp claws on the ends of each of its eight legs, and a strange – and obviously acidic – yellow liquid dripping out of the incisors next to its mouth. Finally, it has eight eyes on its face, with two of them being slightly larger than the rest.

So, this is an Arachnae?

'Identify.'

Name: ???

Race: Arachnae

EXP Level: 8

Cultivation Level: 7

Mana: ?/85

Oh, shit.

That could be a problem.

I glance through my floor and find that most of my monsters have almost arrived, so I just need to figure out how to stall the thing until then.

'Fire a void breath at the Arachnae,' I order the void direwolf in the hopes that it will work.

As it charges itself up for the attack, I send in several normal wolves and a few goblins to rush the thing as a distraction.

It immediately slices up one goblin and wolf with its sharp claws before one of my wolves latches onto one of its three inch thick legs and tries to rip it off, only to be bit on the neck by the spider.

Dawn and I watch in fear as the wolf's neck starts to boil before melting all the way to its front shoulders and snout.

That's some strong as hell acid...

Several other wolves begin trying to latch onto the spider as well, managing to rip out several small portions of its legs, but not enough to seriously harm it before the spider either stabs straight through them with one of its legs or bites them.

Meanwhile, as the Arachnae is still distracted, a wave of black flames blasts out of the void direwolf's mouth in its direction.

Unfortunately, the Arachnae notices the attack in the last second and manages to move slightly out of the way, making it so that the wave of black flames only hits three of its eight legs.

Damn it!

Why won't this stupid pest just die already?!

When the breath attack finally fades away, the spider can be seen with the three legs laying limp on the ground, having been charred black from the attack.

Even a breath attack wasn't enough to annihilate the spiders legs?

I watch the Arachnae struggle and fail to lift itself up on the three burnt legs as the black flame continues devouring the remaining parts of its legs and some of its body where the legs are connected.

Hmm, maybe that was enough?

The Arachnae suddenly lets out a terrible screech that hurts the ears of all of my monsters in the area, distracting them from their own fights with the Arachnids and causing several more injuries among them.

I send several of my hobgoblins and direwolves to attack the Arachnae before it can recover from the loss of its legs.

It stabs one of its relatively unharmed legs straight through the gut of one of my hobgoblins before another hobgoblin manages to stab a sword half a foot deep into the strange part sticking out of the creature in the place where its legs connect to the rest of its body.

I take a moment to look at the pattern for these things and find out that it's called an abdomen before focusing on the fight again.

The Arachnae lets out another screech of pain – albeit slightly quieter this time – before it raises another leg to stab into the hobgoblin, only for one of my direwolves to clamp down on the aforementioned leg in an attempt to rip it out of its socket.

Unfortunately, my direwolf doesn't appear strong enough to do so, but does at least manage to stop the spider from killing the hobgoblin as more and more of my monsters begin to gang up on the Arachnae until it finally gives one last screech and falls dead to the ground.

Oddly enough, the moment the Arachnae dies, all of the other Arachnids suddenly begin to retreat back into the hole.

Absolute silence reigns for several seconds in the fifth floor before the corpses of both the spiders and my monsters alike all begin to vanish.

Surprisingly, all of the spiders turn into golden orbs and are absorbed into both my core and the monsters that slew them, giving me a very welcome notification amongst all of this chaos.

System Notification:

Congratulations!

You have reached EXP Level 6!

At least they still give EXP.

I watch the hole for a few minutes before turning my attention back to Dawn with a mental sigh of relief.

"Don't let your guard down just yet, Fenrir," Dawn tells me, crashing my moment of relief.

"Yeah, I know," I mutter to her in exhaustion.

If just one of the Arachnus' bodyguards is that strong, then how am I going to manage to kill the Arachnus? Not to mention the rest of the Arachnae!

I turn my attention back to the hole as I mutter, "I am a little bit impressed with how coordinated they are though."

They retreated the moment the Arachnae fell, which is more than I would have expected from Spawn.

"Do you think we should close off the dungeon for now? Or maybe just the fifth floor?" Dawn asks me with obvious worry in her voice.

That might be for the best...

Wait a second...

Intruders, Arachnids, dungeon...

I turn to Dawn and suggest a stupid but possible plan to her, "How about we let the intruders get down here?"

Dawn turns bright yellow in surprise before she calms down and asks, "Why? What do you have in mind?"

If I had facial expressions, then I would be grinning like a madman right now.

"Let's let the intruders take care of our little pest problem for us!"