Chapter 230: Arachnid Queen Axanamat

  If there was one point that Eilea had gone to great lengths to impress upon him—back when Zach was still allowed to speak with her—it had been that every boss from the “gate guardian” onwards supposedly had the potential to be very different from the ones he’d become accustomed to on Galterra: at least in terms of difficulty and complexity. Although Eilea hadn’t really stated how or in what specific way, the “Great Goddess” had absolutely made her views clear.

  And not just through words, either, but through actions as well.

  Clearly worried about the competency of modern adventurers, Eilea had actually pulled on the strings of time—or something like that—in order to bring Jimmy to Galterra. Then, despite apparently taking a huge risk to get him here, she’d nevertheless sabotaged the path to Albion-4 out of fear that not even Jimmy would be able to survive the perils that awaited, something that had nearly invited Adamus’s wrath down upon the entire island of Elendroth. That was the extent to how much more difficult she seemed to believe bosses would become.

  Jimmy clearly had no problem, though, Zach thought. The gate guardian is decaying outside, and if they’d died on the way up the tower, there’d be signs of it.

  …or would there be? Maybe the weekly dungeon reset would clean the place out like it did the blood Zach had spilled on the first floor before this week’s reset. The idea sent a sudden chill down his back as he realized it was possible that, if his friends had died here in this dungeon, he might never be able to find out after all, as all evidence of their passing might end up being erased.

  Don’t think about that, he warned himself. It’s not helpful!

  What he needed to focus on was the fact that this was a big moment—and there was no understating that. Zach would be foolish to let his guard down just because the boss was only T3: he would be foolish to think it would automatically mean he could take it easy or breeze his way through this.

  Using the formula Rian had taught him during his first dungeon outing, Zach calculated that the boss’s true strength was likely closer to level 100. It also didn’t have all that much more HP than one of his recently acquired cards, though that was probably because all the non-boss mobs in this dungeon were elite—or at least the three types he’d come across so far. This meant he had quite the powerful collection of cards, and Gods, he sure had a lot of them now, too.

  Fanned out before him were 12 dual-wielding Orcish elites known as “Legion Portal Guardians,” along with eight red-headed, rapier-wielding Vixen Portal Commanders, and lastly, there were five bald-headed, staff-wielding, and robe-wearing human healers. With his Kralzek’s Beast included, that was a combined total of 26—or 27 if he included himself—up against one T3 boss.

  So, yeah, he would be cautious, but he would also be optimistic, as he was pretty sure he could handle a single T3 boss with this much power in his corner.

  “Landy, are you ready?” he asked.

  “I’m ready. Yes, yes, so very ready! Let’s fight the boss!”

  At the moment, Zach’s cards were in a more or less reverse-wedge formation, with the front line made up of his 12 Orcs, whose dual-wielded axes dripped a seemingly infinite supply of fake blood on the floor that left an illusory stain. Behind them were seven of the eight Vixen Portal Commanders, their icy, crystal-like rapiers already drawn, and behind those were the five healers, staves at the ready. But one of the Vixen Portal Commanders was out of the formation: the one that Landy had possessed. That one, on the other hand, was hanging back with Zach. The two of them were standing shoulder-to-shoulder right near the entrance to this floor, along with the Kralzek’s Beast, his saber-toothed war-mount.

  “We can’t underestimate this boss, Landy,” he said in warning. “Bosses get much harder starting with the gate guardian, right?”

  His card’s shoulders raised indecisively. “Huh? Why, why, why ask me? I don’t know. Never seen a boss. Never seen anyone or anything. Why would I know?”

  Zach wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so instead, he kept quiet and regarded the boss he was about to fight. He felt his shoulder muscles tensing at the sight of it.

  Sheesh, he thought to himself. That’s a huge spider.

  The boss was hanging halfway down from a circular opening in the stone ceiling above, and it was dangling midair by a visible piece of string-like web, swaying gently and slowly back and forth. It was a massive creature, perhaps the size of a hot-air balloon if not larger, and it was hairy, too. It had coarse black hair running all over its body and its eight legs, each of which ended in a sharp, needle-like tip. The boss also had two large red eyes positioned directly above four smaller ones, for six in total, and a mouth that visibly leaked green, viscous drool.

  While the boss’s upper half was lean and sturdy, its bottom was rounded and plump, almost to the point of being fat. And as Zach watched it continue to sway back and forth, he once again reminded himself not to get too overconfident just because of the sheer size of his attacking force.

  “You know what?” he asked, thinking aloud.

  “What?” Landy replied.

  “Just to be safe, I’m grabbing a rope out of storage.”

  “Ohh! Oh! Smart. So, if we lose, you will hang yourself to end the suffering quicker, yes?”

  Zach was so taken aback by Landy’s words that he had to think about them for several seconds before he barked out a laugh. “Oh, wow, so you can actually be funny after all? Haha. I didn’t expect that. Good one!”

  The card Landy was controlling glared at him, its eyes twitching with rage. “Why…why do you laugh at me?” it screamed. “Tell me!”

  Zach took a step away while holding up his palm, gesturing for peace. “Oh, shit, I thought you were making a joke, sorry.”

  “What would be funny about that?” the card exclaimed, its feminine voice channeling Landy’s fury. “Tell me now!”

  “I…it’s too hard to explain right now. Just…just please trust me that almost anybody who heard that would think you were making a joke. If I was mistaken, that’s on me. Sorry.”

  Landy growled at him via the card, the sound of it animal in nature, but the growl softened into grumbles before tapering off entirely. “No more jokes,” Landy said. “No more.”

  “Okay, got it, no more jokes.”

  I’d better not revert to my old facetious ways around him, Zach thought. I could easily get myself killed.

  Raising his hand above his head, he called upon Bank and Storage and took out one of the dungeon escape ropes he had obtained while gathering supplies for Albion-4. It appeared in his hand, and with that, he dismissed the ability. Then he temporarily placed the three emergency stones—one of each color—he was holding onto the stone floor so that he could tie the rope around his waist. Afterwards, he picked up the stones, slightly loosened the strap of his new dark brown leather headguard, and placed all three on top of his scalp before tightening it once more, securing them in place. With that, he was free to draw both his blades and extend his arms out in front of him, readying himself to begin.

  Plenty of room to fight in here, he thought. We just need to avoid getting too close to the middle.

  This particular boss floor was odd in that it was only the 5th floor sequentially from the entrance, and usually, bosses were found every ten floors, not five. That might be about to change going forward. Zach also found it interesting that the distance between the 4th and 5th floor was greater than the total distance between the 1st and 3rd, perhaps by several times as much. Although it was difficult to be certain without any windows around, Zach estimated he was now halfway up the tower based on how many stone steps he’d had to climb to reach this level.

  Maybe this will be the only boss I have to beat on my way to the top, he thought hopefully. He certainly wasn’t counting on it. That was for sure.

  Zach was glad to see that the floor was at least spacious and ran along the entire circumference of the tower except for a circular gap at the very center that, like the previous floor, dropped all the way down to the first floor, only now, it was more like a twenty-five-story plummet straight down. That was a good thing, though, because if this thing somehow turned out to be more than he could handle, the round hole in the middle of the floor could potentially serve as an option for escape if he was close enough. In such an event, he wouldn’t have to waste the rope: it would also be faster, too.

  Zach gave a nod to Landy, and Landy sent one back his way. Then the two of them prepared themselves for the start of this battle. “I know I’ve already said this,” Zach began, “but seriously, this thing might be way more powerful than a normal T3, so be ready.”

  Landy growled at him again via the card. “I don’t know T3, T4, T-any! I don’t know normal! This is all I’ve seen.”

  “Sorry,” Zach said again. He opened his mouth to remark that it was going to take some time to get used to the idea that Landy had never seen or done anything in his entire life, but he decided that saying it out loud might be enough to send him into another spiral, so he let the words die in his throat and instead faced forward.

  And now came the obvious question: how was he supposed to do this?

  Should he just send everything in? He had all these cards and only one target. Should he…should he just bombard the boss? Or should he position them around the room in a certain way? Honestly, he didn’t know. He wasn’t Jimmy. He didn’t understand bosses or how to fight them the way Jimmy did.

  “Landy,” he whispered.

  “What now?” his card screamed at him, its voice so loud it echoed around the room.

  “Should I send everything in at once?” Zach asked, twisting his body to look at the face of the Vixen Portal Commander.

  The card’s cheeks puffed up as though it experienced such a burst of rage it could hardly contain it. “I don’t know!” it yelled even louder. “I don’t know, don’t know, don’t know! Never did! Never knew! Stop asking me! I don’t know!”

  I’m really pissing him off, Zach thought. Better not ask him for any more advice. He’s not sociable at all.

  Zach again faced forward and looked at the giant hairy spider that dangled halfway up to the ceiling. As he took in the sight of it, he realized he couldn’t think up any grand strategy or tactic to use other than just plain sending everything he had at it. And so, that was what he did.

  “Okay, here we go. I’m pulling the boss. Let’s burn this thing down!”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes! Finally, finally. No more waiting!”

  All at once, Zach ordered everything he had to attack, including his war-mount. And in the exact moment he did so, twelve deep war cries were howled out in unison by his axe-wielding Legion Portal Guardians, all of which charged as they shouted.

  “Krest zencht harganar!”

  Following this, his rapier-wielding Vixens made a series of grunts, and then two of the seven charged right in after the twelve Orcish elites, whereas the other five only moved forward about thirty feet and then began to swing around their rapiers as though to cast ice magic of some kind. This, as his five healers, devoid of anything to heal, lifted up their staves, the tips of which began to glow an orange hue.

  Of all his cards, it was the healers that struck first. With the end of their staves aglow, Zach observed as various golden orbs materialized out of thin air and rained down over the boss, each dealing a surprisingly decent range between 5000-8000 damage, but this was nothing compared to the damage put out by his Vixen Portal Commanders—at least those who opened with an actual damage-based attack. Two of them tried to use their ice-encasing CC, which failed against the boss, being resisted outright. The other three bombarded it with the icicle attacks, each one hitting for over 15k and piercing the boss.

  And then his axe-wielding Orcs finally reached their prey. Two of the twelve stopped short and launched that giant fireball attack that had almost killed Zach a few days earlier, and this thing seemed exceptionally susceptible to fire, as each one slammed into it for over 100k damage and caused it to make a hissing sound as the web it was dangling by burned up and disintegrated. This caused the massive spider to fall straight down and plop onto the stone floor, making it easy for the other ten Orcs to melee it. Now, Zach watched as a slew of damage numbers popped up, blackish blood flinging everywhere as his Orcs swarmed the “Arachnid Queen Axanamat.”

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  “Good start,” Zach said, hanging back for the moment.

  He watched, pleased, as more icicles came in and so did more of the golden, glowing dots while the Orcs—and a couple of the Vixen Portal Commanders—slashed away at it over and over, creating puddles of inky black blood all around the boss, which was now surrounded on every side. Throughout this assault, the boss continued to hiss as though in pain. It was taking damage so incredibly fast that Landy hadn’t even been able to get there yet, and it was already badly wounded. Right now, the card he had taken over was charging in as if to avoid missing out on the fun.

  “Kill, kill, kill!” the Vixen Portal Commander screamed, slashing at one of its eyes and causing an even louder hiss while striking the boss for 92,406.

  The boss had not even attacked them yet, and already, it was hemorrhaging HP. Just seconds into the fight, and Zach had the sense that this was not going to take very long at all. In fact, he was pretty sure that this would end in less than a minute, if even that.

  And he turned out to be right.

  There was movement detected by his eyes: blazingly fast movement. So fast that he almost didn’t see it. It was a black blotch—a shadow. Something that soon revealed itself to be the arachnid boss, which had somehow flung itself forward and across the room, and in a direction that was heading straight towards Zach.

  “Oh, shit!” Zach cried out, leaping to the side as the gigantic spider blasted right past where he was standing and then stuck to the stone wall just above the entrance to this boss floor. At once, every card, his war-mount, and Landy all turned around—and all began to charge it yet again.

  But before even a single card could fully turn around, Zach realized that there were tens—no, hundreds of little white, fist-sized rocks falling down to the floor from the air spanning across the distance where the spider had jumped and where it had ended up. Zach glanced at them, confused, then gasped as he soon realized these were no rocks: they were eggs.

  Hundreds of them.

  Every one of them began to shake and crack, and like a cycle of nature sped up many times over, hundreds of miniature spiders emerged from these eggs, each of them growing to be nearly two feet in width with matching red eyes and needle-like legs that resembled those of the boss. And all this took place in under five seconds. From the moment the eggs appeared, to the moment they hatched and the spiders within grew to full size: it all somehow happened in less than just five Gods-be-damned seconds.

  Oh, shit!

  There were so many of them: so, so many of them. And two of them turned Zach’s way and immediately released a very high-pitched shriek before leaping directly at him. Acting off instinct alone, Zach took a sharp step back, then made a crisscrossing gesture with his swords, slicing the first cleanly in half for 41,335 damage with his newly acquired, icy rapier, and tearing the second into a less evenly split half with his Blade of the Primordial Void for 52,211.

  +3000xp

  +3000xp

  All four pieces fell to the floor before smoking, sizzling, and fading away. This, as about twenty more of them began crawling towards him, and one even shot a web at his feet, requiring him to jump off to the side.

  What do I do? he wondered, trying not to panic.

  His cards, having done an about-face, charged across the room and over to the boss, who was now right behind and up above Zach, its form pressed against the stone wall. And it was attacking, too! The boss made a loud, screeching hiss, and a green spray of a viscous-like substance exited its jaw and covered the area where Zach had been standing. He barely had time to dash backwards and away. Looking down, he saw smoke rising from the stone, which was being burned away and turned into a black, coal-like substance.

  “Morgar bark kur!” his twelve Orcs shouted, running ahead of the pursuing Vixen Portal Commanders. Dozens of spiders pursued, and one of his Vixen Portal Commanders had already come under full attack. It looked to have been in mid-cast, but it was now suffering numerous bites, its entire body being ripped apart as these spiders, despite only having 40k HP, bit into the card with the power of an elite. One tore into the red-headed card’s throat for a confusingly high 921,444 damage, whereas another rooted it to the floor, preventing it from moving.

  The healer cards tried their best to mend the card’s wounds, but they were unable to keep up with the damage output despite all five of them casting their heal and causing a green light to repeatedly flicker on and off as it surrounded the red-haired, rapier-wielding card. For a few seconds, the card’s HP would rise and fall so fast it was hard to keep track, but ultimately, the damage won out, and it died a few seconds later.

  “Landy! We have to kill this thing. Quick!” he cried. He noticed that Landy was charging across the boss encounter room with the rest of the Orcs. He, along with the Orcs, all reached the boss at the exact same time.

  But unlike earlier, they did not put out a single point of damage. Before a single axe or rapier could unleash a single slash, the boss began to shake and vibrate, and then it released a loud, wailing hiss that caused strange, purple, ring-shaped streaks of light to radiate off its entire body and fill the air around the room.

  Upon seeing this, Zach became afraid. Very afraid. He needed to flee. It was something he realized just now. Just now, in this moment, he realized he needed to flee. Like right now! It didn’t matter where he went. Any direction was fine. He just needed to run!

  I need to get away!

  He was so afraid. He’d never been so afraid of anything before. Run, run, run! Run, Zach! Run now! He had to run. Gods, he was so scared. The world was ending. He needed to outrun it!

  Zach, along with every single card, including even the healers, all turned tail and ran away, moving beyond the halfway point where the mob spawned and then slamming face-first into the stone wall on the opposite side of the floor. Hundreds of the spiders pursued them, many nipping away at the fleeing Orcs as his entire assembled force ran from the boss. Zach cried out in terror.

  There was nowhere left to go!

  But then, suddenly, he was no longer afraid. And it was in this moment that he realized he’d just been hit with the single-most-powerful fear ability that he’d ever encountered. It had been so strong he hadn’t even come close to realizing what was happening to him until after the spell’s effect was over and its effects subsided on himself as well as all of his cards. Now, with the fear’s duration having run out, all of his cards robotically turned around and, for the second time, began rushing their way across the room at the boss.

  But Zach could quickly see that many weren’t going to make it.

  Right off the bat, about ten of them were rooted in place by the smaller spiders, their legs practically glued to the stone floor while they were viciously devoured. And to make matters worse, this “Arachnid Queen Axanamat” was now bouncing around the room once again, moving so fast that it was difficult to follow its motion.

  From the wall near the entrance, it zipped across—and over—Zach’s head, then landed with a smacking sound onto the wall behind Zach. Then it flew forward again, and right afterwards, it jumped up to the ceiling, attaching itself to it, but only for a split second. An instant later, it pushed itself off the ceiling and came crashing down with a sudden acceleration of speed, landing directly on top of three Legion Portal Guardians. Its entire body slammed straight down on top of them, crushing and flattening their bodies and dealing more than four million damage to each, killing all three in just one attack; this, as hundreds upon hundreds of more eggs fell out of the air from all the places the boss had just bounced around.

  They landed, hatched, and grew, and yet still, no additional damage had gone into the boss.

  Zach, extending his rapier in the boss’s direction, tried his best to correct this. Shouting out the spell’s enchantment, he cast Flame Arrow II, and to his satisfaction, the two fiery arrows that emerged from the quickly vanishing ring of fire both found their mark, striking the boss and causing it to hiss out in pain, as the first pierced its fat bottom area for 92,211 damage and then the second went into one of its smaller, bottom eyes for 91,455. But before Zach could cast the spell a second time, he realized he was being surrounded by about thirty of the little spiders, with about a hundred more heading just to him.

  While this was happening, the boss was again slamming down on top of more of his cards, killing two healers, two more Legion Portal Guardians, and a Vixen Portal Commander in two bounce-like slams as it then promptly resumed whipping itself across the room. Incredibly, there was a Vixen Portal Commander that actually survived the crushing attack with about 20,000HP, but it was quickly ended with a subsequent bite from one of the many, many smaller spiders.

  I’m losing this fight, Zach realized as he watched in horror as his cards were killed left and right. This is unwinnable.

  There were now only about seven left; worse, even more eggs were falling down to the floor while hundreds of existing spiders were converging on him. And the boss had now aggroed onto him specifically. With so many other cards already dead, his Flame Arrow II had done enough damage to ensure he held the boss’s aggro; Zach could see it crawling along the ceiling in his direction as if to position itself over him, and from there, it would probably try to drop straight down on him.

  Yet even as he observed this, he could see in his peripheral vision that another four of his cards had died, and now there were only three. They were just being absolutely swarmed. It was unbelievable. This was only a T3 boss! What was this shit? Did Jimmy and Donovan make it past this part? Could they have? Could anyone? This was beyond impossible. Even Jimmy surely couldn’t have known what to do.

  No, I can’t assume that, Zach thought. This is Jimmy we’re talking about.

  Zach, recognizing he’d lost, quickly sheathed his rapier in his hip holster and his Primordial Void Blade in the scabbard on his back. His hands freed, he hurriedly undid the rope around his waist—but not before a spider jumped out of nowhere and bit his entire fucking left hand off. He screamed out in agony as blood spurted out of his wrist, and then he screamed again as a giant chunk of his left thigh was ripped off as well as his entire right ass cheek.

  “Fucking spider bastards,” he growled. “I’m coming back right away!”

  With just one hand, he spun the rope around three times and then threw it straight above him, where it rose unnaturally up into the air before reaching the ceiling. And now, as a giant black form descended upon him as though to crush and consume him, the entire world faded into a white light—but not before he felt something take a nasty bite out of his ankle.

  And then there was nothing.

  But only for a moment.

  The white light faded, and he reappeared just outside the tower’s entrance on top of the twenty stone steps. He was gushing blood from so many wounds. His hand was missing. But what was really twisted was the way in which he merely sighed, having been hurt so badly so many times in his life, he’d learned to cope with this kind of agony.

  Calmly, he undid the strap of his helmet, and then he felt around the top of his head for his three rejuvenation stones. Rather than take them out and slap them down, he merely pressed them into the top of his head, feeling them crack, shatter, and fade away.

  The red and yellow were accepted, but not the purple. This meant his internal organs had somehow miraculously been unharmed. But the yellow had been taken, likely due to blood loss, and the red was fixing the massive damage his body had just been dealt.

  Slowly, the pain came to a halt, and his wounds began to heal, with his hand and ass cheek starting to regrow along with all the other missing bits of flesh. But then it sort of just…stopped. Glancing down at his hand, Zach realized he was still missing his thumb and his middle finger, and the other three were malformed.

  He grumbled. “I’m running out of stones!”

  As he made his way down the twenty stone steps, he failed to realize that the ankle that was bitten had also not fully healed, which put him off balance and caused him to stumble forward, where he then fell forward and rolled down all twenty of the steps, swearing angrily and using the worst profanity he could think of each time his body hit another step.

  Stumbling his way to where he’d set up camp, he fished into one of his bags and found the remainder of his stones. Including the purple still on his head, he now had three red stones, no yellows, and two purple. And he clearly needed another red, which he took, bringing him down to just two red stones. Still, what could he do? Walk around with his fingers deformed and his thumb missing?

  Pressing the stone into his bare chest, the healing resumed, and this one finished the job. Zach, angry and defiant, turned around and looked back at the tower.

  So, twenty-five cards wasn’t enough?

  Okay. Fine. No, really, fine.

  He would come back with two-hundred. Yes, two hundred! For real! And if that wasn’t enough? A thousand. And if that still wasn’t enough? Ten thousand! This wasn’t his first setback, and it wouldn’t be his last.

  Yes, the boss had kicked his ass. And yes, there was probably a better way of fighting it. But he wasn’t Jimmy, and he didn’t know how. So he would just have to return with such staggering, overwhelming force that it didn’t matter how the boss was “supposed” to be beaten.

  The Gods only know how Jimmy led the adventurers through that fucking thing, he thought. And then he actually chuckled. He probably thought it was easy. He probably complained that it wasn’t hard enough. Gods, I miss him and all the others. I wonder how much that must’ve scared Tyson. I bet Tyson must’ve been squealing like a—

  “Zach!” shouted a voice, distracting him. “Zach!”

  “Landy? Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Look up!”

  Zach looked up—and then screamed, completely taken by surprise. “Wh-wh-wh-what the fuck, Landy?” he shouted both angrily and accusatorily. “Landy, stop! That’s…you said you wouldn’t do that anymore. I thought we agreed no more scary shit.”

  “What is so scary about this? Why scary? Why?” Landy shouted—or no, the sun shouted.

  For some reason, Landy had given the Gods-be-dammed sun a crude, rudimentary face, one with a mouth, a nose, and little doodled ears. And all that was fine…maybe? But what wasn’t fine, and what there was no excuse for, was the fact that the sun’s eyes were bleeding and that there was a sword through its head. It scared the hell out of Zach—at least at first. But he got over it pretty quickly and even ended up apologizing just to calm Landy down.

  “Summon the Kralzek’s Beast so I can rejoin you,” the sun told him.

  I should tell this to Jascaila if I ever see her again, but without context, Zach thought. That I’ve started speaking to the sun.

  Zach made a waving motion at the sky, then did what Landy asked of him. The ability was off cooldown in another five seconds, so he waited them out and then summoned. A moment later, his saber-toothed cat was reborn into the world, only unlike every other time he’d ever used the ability, it was not under his control. It could also speak now, like Fluffles. Except, not even Fluffles had as bad a temperament as Landy. Actually, that might be going too far. Zach couldn’t even be sure that was a true statement.

  “We lost,” his saber-toothed cat said, its face expressionless. Its lips weren’t even moving. The voice was sort of just coming from “around” the cat’s general area. “What do we do now?”

  Zach folded his arms across his chest and again looked at the tower. “We just need overwhelming force. I’m not going to be able to figure out whatever ‘secret’ tactic it is that my friend Jimmy would’ve known to do. Heck, I bet he knew what that boss was going to do before he even aggroed it. But since I—and I guess we—don’t, we’re just going to have to use a level of power so ridiculous we can’t even possibly lose.”

  Landy seemed to appreciate this choice, as the cat literally roared with agreement. “Yes, yes, yes! We will build an army.”

  “Yeah, an army,” Zach said, nodding with approval. “I like that word. Army. Let’s build a whole damn army. That thing has hundreds of little spiders. We’ll get hundreds of Orcs and hot magic ladies with red hair. Fuck that spider. We’re going to kick its ass.”

  The saber-toothed cat released a roar so loud it caused birds all across the sky island to fly off treetops and scamper away. “Yes! Yes, we will capture them all day long. We will rebuild and kill.”

  “That’s right,” Zach said, laughing. “And then, when you’re gone tonight, I’m going to stay up all night and grind XP. I need to level up.”

  “Let’s go right back and start now.”

  His saber-toothed cat began running off towards the tower, not even bothering to wait for him.

  Zach hurried after it.