The group materialized on a bare platform overlooking an octagonal cylinder. It had a diameter around sixty feet from wall to wall. The wind blew up from the depths and it smelled like death. The walls were all intricately carved with reliefs depicting a grand tower with small hamlets surrounding it. Unfortunately all these pictures were upside down. Above their heads they could see furniture in various states of decay. Some wooden chairs pitted with holes and ripped up stuffing from couches. To their left was a set of stairs leading down with no railings. Behind them was a free floating image of a slate.

“What’s with the furniture on the ceiling?” Deacon asked eyes peeled upwards.

“That’s the floor. We’re on the ceiling. Seems like we’ll have to go down the underside of the staircases,” explained Tantus.

“I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that one. I’ll scout the next floor,” replied Ralph as he took a tentative step onto the first stair.

Tantus followed suit, then Hani skipped down the stairs after them. As Deacon leaned over the edge peering into the depths. Below them were several moving platforms and some held in place with black webbing. The webbing was mostly crisscrossed between floors. Like a spider only superhighway. The floors below seemed to follow a circular pattern where the landings of each staircase cut around to the other side of the tower before you could find another set of stairs.

With all of that taken into consideration, the air still smelled stale. Any window that could be seen was blown out and there was nothing but clouds under the tower. Deacon didn’t know what he expected to see out there, but it became more and more apparent that their gravity was flipped opposite of the world they inhabited.

“I just got a notification that I’m on the ninth floor. That means we started on ten. That doesn’t make any sense,” Ralph relayed from the next floor down.

“The slate image must be the exit. Good to know,” explained Tantus as he joined Ralph on the next floor.

“So Virges, how do you know Typhus?” Hani asked, looking back up the stairs.

Deacon felt something moving fast in his aura. He was surprised upon realizing it was coming from behind him. He started pushing energy into his legs to trigger a Spectral leap, but it was too late. Virges, glowing with an eerie green energy, slammed into his back sending Deacon careening over the edge and past Ralph, Tantus, and Hani. Deacon didn’t have anything to push off of to help him utilize his movement abilities. As luck would have it, he slammed face first into a webbed up platform somewhere around level seven. The inertia of his hit coupled with his weight snapped the webbing around the platform sending him further into the tower the hard way. He finally came to a rest somewhere around floor five. His face was bruised, and he was down to one hundred and fifteen percent of his total one fifty health bar.

Whatever that glow around Virges was, gave him a tremendous physical boost he never displayed in any of the battles they had thus far. Deacon kept gasping for air and could vaguely hear his party members calling for him. But he didn’t have time to worry about that. He just fell through half of this tower and most of the floors down here were covered in black webs. Getting to his feet was the priority since he could hear shuffling and chittering.

“Are you alright?” asked Ignis.

Deacon had completely forgotten that Ignis nestled itself in his hair before they entered. This gave Deacon an idea. The Black Weaver spiders didn’t show up in his soul sight during the battle at the camp. With Ignis here he might be able to see them better. The light coming in from outside was almost all obscured by webbing down here and Deacon didn’t bring any torches with him. If he used infernal energy, it might burn out of control in this enclosed environment. Time to see if Ignis could double for a miners helmet. He was about to ask when he received a few strange messages from his slate.

Party member Virges has left the dungeon.

Party member Virges has left the party.

Welcome to the fifth floor.

Inverted Tower: Challenge level has increased to- Hard.

New message from the Fates- You’ll never survive this alone.

The fates were at it again. Not only did he not understand why Virges did this, the fates were always scheming. Time was up and Deacon needed to do something about his vision. First thing first.

“Ignis we’re in trouble. Can you glow even brighter than you normally do? I mean like really bright,” Deacon asked taking one of the stances Sun Wu taught him. Ignis didn’t answer, it just bloomed light out from the top of Deacon’s head. That earned them a round of hissing as the slowly encroaching horde of spiders stopped dead in there tracks. They all used their front claws to cover their heads. Even so, some of them still inched forward swatting at the air in front of them with one long and hairy leg.

“Holy shit! This is straight out of my nightmares,” Deacon exclaimed as he extended all of his claws. Without back up he was going to have to improvise. His health was steadily ticking up thanks to his Triage perk. Deacon was more worried about that lingering smell of death and the complete absence of soul energy in the area. Then he remembered one of the first things Alfred ever asked him. He asked for a soul collector. Dungeons run on soul energy too. That meant he wasn’t going to enjoy his standard soul energy regeneration granted to him by Zagerack’s breathing technique.

Deacon focused on what was in front of him. The bravest of the spiders was almost upon him, using his foreleg like a blind man’s white cane. It was no bigger than small dog, but Deacon wondered how much it weighed. He soon found out as he tossed back at the others using Polterheist. That gave him more breathing room as his head swung wildly in all directions. There was a wall to his left with almost no webbing on it relatively close to the stairs down. There was just one chest of drawers placed against it. As he began moving toward it he slipped on some loose gravel on the ground sending him to his back just in time for another spider to take a blind dive at him. That spider slammed into the wall above the dresser and tumbled down to the ground in front of it.

Deacon had just enough time to sit up as the dresser split down the middle and snapped a huge set of spiky teeth around the fumbling spider and began to chew.

“That’s why there are no webs there. Also it’s not on the ceiling. That should have been my first clue,” Deacon said taking a kneeling position. He wasn’t going to be able to go that way. Looking back, the wave of spiders had overtaken the center of the floor Deacon had crashed down into.

They looked like writhing pile of dark chitinous horror to Deacon. Then a bolt of lighting slammed into the center of the pile from above. Tantus was attempting to run interference for Deacon from several flights up. The blast lighting did a number of the spiders as a large gap was revealed. That made Deacon realize another thing. These spiders had no souls. It didn’t even occur to him during the fight back at camp. He was using Toxic Waste that just converted poison into disintegrating balls of energy. He didn’t need to spend soul energy to use that ability. Couple that with his inability to see them with Soul Sight made dungeon diving quite hazardous for Deacon. Then he remembered an advantage he did have.

Deacon switched his title to Dungeon Bound. Several areas on the floor lit up in his vision and he just knew the fastest way to get back up to the tenth floor. The dresser against the wall was outlined in red. Deacon turned his head back to the spiders, but they weren’t outlined in red. He guessed the dresser was more of a trap and less of a monster. Deacon needed to put that in the parking lot for now since the monsters were imminent.

“I’m running out of mana,” cried Ignis.

“Hang on a little longer. All the racket we just made has to have the monsters coming to us and away from the others. That means help should get here quickly. I’ll see what I can do about these pests,” Deacon counseled as he waded into the monsters.

Deacon punted the first one he came across while slashing out at another. Each strike was meant to send them crashing down toward where the traps were highlighted. He wanted to use the dungeons own defenses against them. Spikes erupted from the floor and gouts of flame came from holes in the wall crisping whatever spiders were in range. Apparently, all the webbing that was around aided them in avoiding the traps. Now that they were actually on the ground, it was a new ball game. Deacon managed to fight is way over to the opening in the center where his broken platform resided.

“Deacon! Are you ok? We’re having some trouble with the seventh floor. There is a variant with thick shield like front arms blocking our path. Can you hold out longer?” Tantus yelled down cursing himself for not making some communication devices.

“I’m Deacon, Champion of Chimera. I am nobody’s bitch!” Deacon yelled back up as he kicked away one spider before grabbing another and tearing its legs off.

“Is that a, yes?” Tantus hollered back as he visibly saw the light Deacon was using start to dim.

“I’ll push the shield spider to the side, you get behind it,” Ralph said as he rushed the spider slamming into its thick and bulbous arms from an angle hoping to turn it.

Using the opening Hani stepped off of Ralphs back flipping through the air and swinging his hat through the connective carapace holding the barrier arms. The tough slabs of chiton fell to either side with a screech from spider as it tried to stop the fountaining ichor from escaping. Ralph had enough and jammed his continuously sharpening sword through its head stepping over the now motionless body. Tantus snatched up a few of the greyish black crystals growing from its back on his way past. They then raced around to the next staircase as Ralph took a needle to the thigh from one of the traps. He yanked it out and Tantus threw him a quick healing spell to supplement the regen from Triage.

Deacon managed to use monkey style stances to keep the spiders guessing. It was still useful without actually having the skill. Whenever another spider came in range, he ripped it apart with his claws. These spiders couldn’t hold a candle to his fifty five Strength attribute one-on-one, but there were so many. He actually felt like he’d killed more than were originally in the space as piles of bodies started to appear near the traps he’d set off. That’s when a new type of spider was seen climbing along the wall. It was transparent. His aura gave away the ambush variant. Deacon felt something moving closer but when he saw no target, he continued his scan over the area. Then he felt it again. Deacon stopped dead in his circular motion facing he direction of the spider. He still couldn’t see it but it wasn’t getting any closer. The light from Ignis was fading so Deacon needed to do something drastic. He couldn’t decided between using Nether ice to create a barrier around him or Infernal flames to turn up the heat. Sure it wouldn’t be ideal to burn all these corpses, but it would add some light and take the pressure off of Ignis.

“Why not both?” came mental voice of Sun Wu.

“I was specifically warned to only tap one hell at a time by my god,” Deacon thought internally.

“I wonder why that is? Your skill is at level three and halfway to level four. Oh, look out or something,” calmly commented Sun Wu before Deacon felt a pressure land on his back followed by two sharp pricks in his skin. Of course that was the perfect time for Ignis’s light to go out.