Chương 109: Chapter 108: Teaming Up

The mine entrance was carved into the base of a rocky hillside, framed by rotting timber support bars buried under the vines. A wooden sign nearby had been scratched with a warning saying "Danger! Spiders inside!" I could hear them, hundreds of legs skittering around the caverns. The air coming out of the mine was cold and damp, and I suddenly had a feeling of deja vu. Dusk Peak's spider nest had a similar ambience to this one. I nocked an arrow and took a step closer, scanning the first few meters of the tunnel.

The walls were thick with webbing from the very beginning, suggesting that the invaders had been enjoying the place for quite a while.

"Going in alone is suicide," a voice came from behind me. I turned, arrow still nocked, and found a woman leaning against a tree at the edge of the clearing, with arms crossed, watching me with a calm expression. She wore heavy armor and had a high-level longsword on her hip. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a loose bun to keep it out of her face. She was tall, and her posture suggested strength and confidence beyond that of ordinary players.

Of course, she had every reason to be confident after almost dealing with ten ganking players solo.

"I wasn't planning to go in," I said, lowering the bow.

"Just scouting."

"With an arrow drawn?" She pushed off the tree and walked toward me. Her movement was fluid despite the weight of her armor.

"You were about to walk through the entrance."

"Maybe." She stopped a few meters away and looked me over from top to bottom. There was nothing hostile in it, but it wasn't casual either; she was sizing me up the same way I did with her.

"Orion," she said.

"The Black Ranger of Carpa." I wasn't surprised she knew.

"Is it the armor, or was my shot that obvious?"

"It was an easy tell." A faint smile crossed her face.

"A one-hit kill from such a distance on a target behind cover? Doesn't exactly blend in. And there's no player in this county capable of making that shot."

"You must be Alice," I deduced. She knew the scene, she was a high value target for other groups and I've read enough forum posts to know the strongest guild's leading members.

"King's Glade's Vice Guild Leader?" Her eyebrow rose slightly.

"You've done your homework."

"I read the forums." She looked past me at the mine entrance, and her expression shifted from curiosity to professionalism.

"I've had the Broodmother quest for two days now. I was planning to clear it with a few of my guildmates, but most of them haven't reached Gold rank yet. Been waiting for them to catch up."

"Someone had already cleared it," I said, recalling what the clerk had told me.

"Vanguard," she nodded.

"Gaul with his five strongest members. His party is solid, and the guild has deep roots in Serendine, but they barely made it through, from what I heard."

"You mean to tell me I should hold off, for now?

"No," she looked at me and smirked.

"If the six of them could clear it, the two of us should more than manage." It was a bold statement, but she said it with casual certainty. I considered it. I'd soloed the Whispercave Broodmother back then, but it was ten levels lower. Then again, so was I. And now I had no chance to run out of potions, either. Plus, I wouldn't be going in alone. I'd watched Alice fight on that ridge. She'd handled the players with the kind of precision I'd only seen from the very best so far.

Also, she was wearing full plate armor, despite clearly being a Swordsman class, and had quite a few lightning-based abilities that I'd never seen so far. We'd complement each other well. She's in the front, drawing aggro, tanking hits. I'm behind, dealing sustained damage from range, controlling the field with traps, and crowd control.

"Alright, I said.

"Let's do it." She extended her hand, and I shook it. The party invitation appeared in my interface a second later, and I accepted. Alice Swordsman If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Level 24 The first chamber opened up about fifty meters into the tunnel. It was a natural cavern, maybe twenty meters across, with a ceiling high enough that the webbing hanging from it looked like a complete curtain.

Stalactites all around were dripping steadily, the sound echoing off the walls. It wasn't long before the spiders came out rushing. Webspinner Spiderling Level 22 There were at least thirty of them, clustered into groups on either side of the chamber. Contrary to their dark-furred counterparts at Dusk Peak, these were pale, their bodies blending into the web-covered stone.

"I'll take left," Alice said, and before I could respond, she was already moving.

"Lightning Steps!" The skill carried her across the chamber in a blur of electricity. She hit the left cluster like a thunderbolt, her sword sweeping through the first Spiderling with a Horizontal Slash, bisecting it cleanly. The second one lunged at her, mandibles snapping, and she met it with a Piercing Stab that punched straight through its carapace. I handled the right side at range.

Piercing Shot dropped the first line of Spiderlings, and a follow-up Burning Arrow finished another bunch of them, the fire spreading across the webbing around the bodies, illuminating the chamber in orange light. The others ran toward me, and I Quick Stepped sideways, drawing them into a line, baiting them into my Web Trap. Ironic. The White silk erupted from the ground, tangling four of them at once. I switched to rapid basic attacks, pin-cushioning each of them.

They thrashed and hissed but couldn't break free before I finished them. On the other side, Alice was also done.

"Nice shots," she said.

"You're fast," I replied. The deeper we went, the more enemies we'd faced. We cleared Spiderlings by the hundreds by the time we reached the second chamber. Here, level 23 and level 24 Webspinner Crawlers were waiting for us; bigger than the Spiderlings with thicker armor, and they spat globs of acidic silk that stuck to surfaces and burned through them with uncanny speed. There were at least forty of them, maybe more, but we found our rhythm quickly.

Alice would engage the nearest group with Lightning steps, drawing aggro and keeping them in melee with her devastating sword work. While they focused on her, I kept dealing damage from the back, picking off stragglers, interrupting the ranged attacks with well-timed Piercing Shots and Burning Arrows, and keeping the field clear of flankers.

When a cluster got too dense, I'd fire a Fan of Arrows into the pack at close range, the shotgun burst working exceptionally well, staggering them long enough for Alice to unleash a skill called Steel Arc Strike that cleaved through multiple targets. The Crawlers tried to surround her, but her Blade Spin made short work of their plans. We'd never fought together before, but her instincts and mine seemed to operate on the same frequency.

She created openings that I could exploit, and I controlled the space she could fill with devastating attacks. After a while of wandering in the dark, I summoned Lune and used Foxfire for a bit more light than our torches could afford.

"Hey there, friend." Alice petted my companion.

"A fox pet? Gaul has a pug, but that's the only pet I've seen so far. The guild is currently researching how to reliably get Dog Tags, but drop rates seem abysmal." Now that she mentioned this, I realized that I barely saw any info on the forums about the pet system; it seemed like roughly one out of 2, 000 players had access to pets as it stood right now, meaning that the fact that my very first mob had dropped a Dog Tag for me was beyond lucky. All thanks to Sheila's cake.

I knew the +1 Luck likely wasn't the culprit, but I believed in it with all my heart. I should go back, see how she's doing. Maybe give her the recipe for the Blue Flower Cake, or the Dusk King Carp, and see what she could do with them. I constantly checked my inventory to remind myself that I still had these items on me. The Dusk King Carp in particular seemed like a rare drop as I hadn't found any info about it on the forums. We stopped at something interesting. A vein of crystal ran along the tunnel wall.

It was pale blue and looked like quartz at first glance.

"It's Paleshimmer Crystal," Alice noted.

"Rare crafting material, mostly for jewelry and staves."

"My mining's at 0," I admitted.

"I can mine it, give me a sec." She pulled a pickaxe from her inventory and started working on the vein with efficient hits while I stood guard with an arrow nocked, listening for movement in the darkness ahead. Lune sat beside me, ears rotating like small radar dishes. Alice extracted eight crystals before the node was depleted. She tossed four to me without a word.

"Split," she said simply.

"Thanks." I examined one of them in my inventory. The tooltip was promising; it said that Paleshimmer Crystals were used in enchanting, jewelcrafting, and various alchemy-based crafts. I pocketed them and made a mental note to check the Auction House later, to see how much they were going for. While she was mining, I'd processed spider carcasses. The Crawlers gave me Webspinner Chitin, which was probably good for light or medium armor, as well as venom sacs and silk glands. I harvested everything I could.

Between the hides from Tranquil Valley and the spider materials from the mine, my inventory was starting to look like a crafter's dream. We reached the third chamber a little while after. It was the biggest one yet, easily forty meters across, with a ceiling lost in webbing so thick it almost looked like a cloudy sky. Egg sacs lined the walls in clusters, some of them pulsing faintly while others were cracked and empty.

The floor was cluttered with the bones and remains of animals that had wandered too deep and fallen prey to the hive.

"This is where one of the parties wiped," Alice said quietly, scanning the chamber.

"According to my information, it is full of Webspinner Stalkers, level 25 beasts with a stealth ability. They come from the ceiling. You don't see them until they're on top of you." It was true; I could barely detect any of them with my eyes. Mark of the Eagle would help with one at a time, but there must have been dozens in here.

"Here they come," Alice warned.

"Nature's Howl!" I activated my trusty buff skill and let my intuition take over. I loosed an Arrow of Ash and Flames, followed by a Burning Arrow right into the top webbing. The ceiling exploded into fire. Burning strands rained down, and the Stalkers dropped with them, shrieking as they fell. Alice met the first one mid-air with a Vertical Strike that drove it into the ground.

Her sword punched through its chitin and pinned it to the stone, before ripping the blade free and using Lightning Blade that arced through two more, with the electrical discharge jumping to a third one and staggering it long enough for me to put a Piercing Shot through its head. The rest of the chamber came alive.