Return to Jorgaldur Volume III: blood warrior

Dungeon, fourth floor

"It's a pity that it's made of mana. If not, I could get a lot of material," the vampire regretted, after observing the spider web.

"Perhaps it's a bit exaggerated, but I haven't been able to test it yet..." she murmured shortly after.

She then summoned a Darkness Pillar, which disintegrated the spider web. Its owner wanted to react and attack the newcomer, but the corrosive power of the darkness attacked the very structure of its existence, the one that made the mana take shape. Soon, it disappeared.

"Very effective, but spends too much mana for only one," she considered, satisfied with the experiment.

The Bats were able to detect any of the traps simply by falling into them, which made her job very easy. Once the power of ambush was discovered and disabled, these spiders weren't fast or resourceful enough to be a problem. Their main strength was in the traps and surprise factor.

The biggest drawback was that there were some which didn't use webs. They were hidden in holes in the ground, or sometimes in the wall or ceiling. Some of them were exposed when attacking a Bat, but others let it pass and attacked the vampiress.

One of them dropped onto its target, but the rate of fall wasn't fast enough. Gjaki dodged back and summoned two Mirror Clones, but the spider ignored them and attacked her.

She dodged easily, by using Decoy to leave a momentary illusion and hide in Darkness. Her enemy moved to where she had disappeared, thus again ignoring the illusion.

"In the game, illusions worked, no matter how much it was said that they were attracted by the aura," she complained.

Since that experiment had failed, she wanted to try Tentacles instead of finishing it off with daggers and Backstab, like she had done with others.

She appeared on the other side and, as expected, the spider immediately went towards her and fell squarely into the trap. The Tentacles coiled between the eight legs and the body, and the being of mana seemed unable to break free anytime soon.

Therefore, she decided to use that tactic from then on, so she could use the spiders to train in martial arts. The vampiress felt that she was improving, but also that she lacked something to go beyond her current skill. It felt like there was some kind of limit, that she didn't quite understand some of what she had brought from her original world. They were mainly those that she had barely practiced in the past, or had only seen as a spectator.

Although it is also true that she had only learned Basic Martial Arts, and there were more advanced ones yet to be unlocked. She wouldn't know until she got them.

Needless to say, despite being relatively weak if they didn't have the help of ambushing their opponents, that didn't mean the spiders couldn't fight back. More so if their opponent provoked them, got dangerously close to them, and avoided them by barely a few centimeters.

Sometimes, they managed to graze her with their legs, but it was little more than a scratch. Although Gjaki's pride was hurt every time it happened, every time she made a small mistake. She had always been a perfectionist in the game. She wasn't satisfied until killing ten without suffering a single hit.

However, she couldn't kill enough of them to rise to level 24. It reinforced her suspicion that, like in the game, many were next to the final boss.

"Here they're..."

She didn't need a lamp to confirm the situation, as she could see in the dark. While a spider web was thin enough to escape her vision, the dense layer of them that covered the place was impossible to ignore.

She decided to start with a Darkness Pillar, which was in charge of cleaning the entrance of those cobwebs, and killing four or five of their owners. Half a dozen more had been alerted, and advanced towards the vampiress.

The first two were immobilized by some Tentacles, but the others hardly suffered any inconvenience when passing over the retained ones. The easiest way would have been to set more of those traps, but not only did she not want to spend more mana, but she thought it was unnecessary and boring.

She didn't even use Darkness to get close to them. Instead, she directly faced them, and ran towards the first one. The vampiress jumped to the side when her opponent wanted to reach her with its legs and web.

She stabbed a dagger into the top of one of its legs. The new foothold was used to lift herself over the spider, thus dodging two more legs, and spinning in the air to land with her feet on its back. Using Surprise Dagger, she had stabbed another two daggers that were at her feet.

Those two daggers were level 15, and she left them stuck there while jumping and dodging a second spider's attack. She had recovered the first dagger, since it was one of the two of level 20 ones that she had.

The legs of this new enemy dug into its kin instead of its target, thus dooming the already wounded spider. With no time to disengage, it received a hard kick to the head, which was empowered with Harden. Two daggers hit it into its eyes. The damage was both due to the wound and the Dark Touches.

A third spider tried to throw its web at her, but Gjaki had already found that Dancing Whip was very effective against it. She just needed to store it again to get rid of the sticky web that had been caught by the whip.

Said spider didn't stop there, but tried to pierce her with its sharp leg. It was stopped with Manual Block, in a scene that was quite striking, perhaps impossible. Taking advantage of the situation, Gjaki stabbed a sword into the second spider's back as she stepped between it and the third. Another sword pierced the abdomen of the latter.

She hadn't driven them in very deep, but as she expected, the one over her tried to crush her with its body.

As the vampiress had planned, she propelled herself out of there, with the momentary help of Blood Overload. Thus, the third spider not only failed to catch her, but both swords dug deep under its weight.

The vampire broke away and went for the fourth, thus leaving the first three to bleed to death. Well, something like that, since they didn't really have blood.