Chương 160: Chapter 158: Thinking and spider slaying

I'm going to win this fight. I don't have any real concerns about that. If we keep going at the rate we're going, I'm going to kill him before he lowers my Shell far enough that I have to recast it. I probably will have to recast it before we finish with the other four, but this one isn't going to survive the life of my Shell. I don't feel like Shell is cheating, per se, but it does feel unfair. I understand why the tutorial gods usually break the spell up into multiple components.

I kind of wonder if they do the same with Healing Touch. Neither spell is all that costly, and they both have massive effects for keeping up with damage in battle. Of course, they're only useful if you have a lot of hit points to begin with, so I know that clouds things a little bit. By all rights, I should have around four or five thousand hit points, not almost seventeen. These spiders should be a much bigger threat than they are. But we've been through the death cycle, which means we sort of hacked the game.

We're playing by the rules, but we found a loophole that made us much more powerful. It's like counting cards in black jack. It's not against the rules; in fact it's just playing the game by the rules. But casinos don't like it because it flips the odds, and they start losing money. And casinos don't like losing money. In this world, the death cycle flips the odds on monsters being able to kill us. Now they're less likely to be successful, which makes us more likely to survive.

The world may not like it, but it's still playing by the rules. A world with rules like this is such a drastic change from the world that I came from. There were some rules on Earth, sure. What goes up must come down, a triangle has three sides, there is no evil demon trying to persuade me that I'm imagining everything, whatever. But those rules were mostly rules of physics, or of semantics. They mattered, but they didn't really interfere with everything. Most of life just wasn't fair.

That was something that I've been told most of my life. Life isn't fair, so get used to it. It doesn't matter that life should be fair. It doesn't even matter that it could be fair if people worked to make it so. The fact was that it was not fair. This world is much more fair. That's one of the reasons I like it so much. But just being fair doesn't seem to take as much complication out of life as I originally thought it would. I always assumed that the world being unfair was just the way things had to be.

It was the best of all possible worlds, as depressing as that sounds, and so it was unfair out of necessity. It couldn't be fair to everyone, so it was instead universally unfair. That wasn't great, but it was just the way things were. Here, things follow rules. Those rules can be tweaked, loopholes can be found, but they can't be broken. The world is still fair. The spider in front of me isn't going to suddenly gain more hit points, but it could heal if it had a spell that would do such a thing.

It isn't going to suddenly split into two equal versions of itself, I don't think, but it is possible that we could run into something that had that ability. There are exceptions for most rules, but the framework exists to keep things fair. We have really high stats. I'm at almost three hundred agility, and that means that I am just faster than this spider. It attacks with its claws, and I use Vital Slash to do damage. It's the same amount of damage every time; I don't randomly do less.

There is some randomness to the damage I do, but my sword by itself does between 280 and 292. But that twelve points of difference is as much randomness as I get. There are rules, and the sword follows them. It makes everything easier, less stressful. I don't have to wonder about as much. I used to wonder, pretty constantly, if I was any good at anything. I didn't know if I was good at my chosen job, or if I was good at my hobbies. Even the things I was proud about, I wasn't sure I was good at them.

But in this world, I know. I know that I have 41 points in the sword skill. 42, now, according to a notification that I just got. Similarly, according to other notifications, I know that my dagger skill is a 17 and my shield skill is now 21. I know exactly how good I am at all of my skills. There's a weird kind of relief from that. On the one hand, I also know that other people are just flat out better than I am.

I know that Gigi has a higher sword rating than I do, and I know that she and Ash both have higher shield ratings that I do. But that's okay. I don't mind not being the best. I don't have to be the best at anything. I just like that I'm not bad at what I do. I like that I have skills that tell me how good I am at things. I jump to the side and avoid a nasty looking bite from those huge fangs, jabbing my dagger into one of the fangs as I move. It only does 322 damage, but it makes the spider pull back.

It also starts to leak venom. I don't know if that's good or not. I know that I'm good at what I do, and I know that my friends are good at what they do. I know that I can trust them, too. How do I know that? Well, trust is something that you build over time. We've had a lot of time together. I'm not sure I trust Vincent as much as I trust El, but I do trust all four of them an awful lot. We've saved each other's lives, we've fought side by side, we've lived in close proximity for months.

I'm weirdly closer to them than I feel like I have been to anyone else in my life, with the possible exception of my parents. We've just been through so much. I hope that they feel the same way I do. I can't really be certain. That hasn't changed from the old world. There aren't friendship ratings or relationship scores in this world, so I guess there are still some mysteries of the human heart. Or the part-human heart, I suppose.

But I feel deep down that I can trust them all with my life, and I know that they can trust me with theirs. I also know that they're going to kill these spiders before I do. Ash may not be able to kill one, but she's fighting two at a time, so I guess she gets a pass. But I know that El is going to kill hers before I kill mine, and it's at least an even bet if Gigi will do the same. I know that sooner rather than later, we're going to wipe out these five spiders.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. I also know that the spiders are not the end boss of this dungeon. They don't smell of sulfur; they smell like spiders. That means that the boss, which I can only assume is a demon, is still deeper in the depths of this dungeon. This dungeon that is taking a lot longer to clear than I expected. I don't know why I thought this would be a quick excursion, but this one is so much bigger than any other dungeons we've been in.

Most of the other dungeons are really just one enemy spawn point somewhere deep in the structure. Once we find that, and destroy it, the dungeon is clear. But this one is set up more like a traditional dungeon. There are so many traps, so many different kinds of monsters, and so far no spawn points. I don't know if that means we're going to find one deeper in, or if it just means that there are monsters here that needed to be cleared out.

I know that once we're done, this place will be available again as a mine and, potentially, as a fortress. A secret lair, if you will. I check my Shell, and see that I'm down to about two thousand hit points with it. But the spider in front me is staggering around, in its death throws. I know that I just stabbed it in the brain, and it's basically just making automated movements now as the body realizes that it's dead.

I move over to help Ash, and immediately start doing double the damage I was doing before, thanks to flanking. El is on the other side already, fighting the other spider. It seems I beat Gigi to the punch, though not by very much. She comes up a few seconds after I do, and together we slaughter the last two spiders. The whole fight took maybe eight minutes. Not bad for not being able to use Mab's Rage. I look around the room, hoping to find some kind of treasure.

Maybe there are bodies wrapped up in spider silk that have some loot on them. I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for, but I know that mostly I'm just trying to kill time. Mab's Rage has 48 minutes left on its cooldown, and I'd like to get through that before we get to the main boss. If the boss has minions, I want to be able to take them out. You have defeated dire spider x5. You gain (250, 000/4) 62, 500 experience. Gigi levels up again. She's going to catch up pretty soon, and her leveling will slow.

There's a big difference in costs per level once you hit forty. She distributes her points, and I see that her health goes up to 14, 060. That's getting closer and closer to my health, but isn't there quite yet. I remember when five digits was incredible. Now it's the standard. Vincent isn't anywhere close to it, but he has other defenses, what with all his magic. Those of us who ever fight on the front lines need the hit points, and the Shell that goes with it, to make us as viable as we are.

There is only one sack dangling from the ceiling, and I manage to get it down with another Fire Bolt. My mana is still pretty strong, and I do regenerate one point a minute, so I'm not all that worried about it. I don't need to take the time to meditate and refill, though maybe I should suggest it so that we can get through these last forty six minutes. The sack of silk falls with a sound of crumpling bones, and we tear it open to find a skeleton. This one does have wing bones.

I notice that most of the bones are at least partially hollow, which makes sense for the whole flying things. You have to get rid of whatever weight you can. I guess that means that the people of this area have really brittle bones. That might make fighting skeletons on this continent a lot easier to manage. There are more than just bones in the sack, thankfully.

There's also a ring on each hand, a necklace, and a circlet that was probably around the head before the flesh all sloughed off, but is now around the neck. I take a look a the items. Circlet of protection. Very rare. +20 defense. Ring of resistance. Rare. +5% magic resistance. Ring of protection from poison. Very rare. Take half damage from all poisons, and cut their duration in half. Necklace of the wanderer. Rare. +20% travel speed, +10% attack speed. Those are all pretty good.

I let out a soft whistle as I read what they all do. I could use all of them, but that's not the way we operate.

"I think anyone could use any of these," I say.

"How do we want to distribute them?"

"I want either the circlet or the necklace," El says.

"I already have protection from poison." So do I, actually. So that ring should definitely go to someone else. The magic resistance will help anyone.

"Do we make you even more of a defensive bulwark?" I ask Ash, pointing to the circlet.

"Or would you rather have something else?"

"I think I want the protection from poison, if that's okay," Gigi says. No one argues, so she puts on the ring. I realize as she does so that I can't take the other ring, either, unless I get rid of one of the rings I already have. While I do have ten fingers, I can only benefit from one ring at a time per hand. I guess that's a balance issue. I can understand that. There should be a limit to how many magical items you can have at any given time.

If you could just pile on necklaces for days, it would be really unbalancing. It wouldn't be fair, which wouldn't fit in with this world. It would mean that money can buy success, and thankfully, this world doesn't work like that. Unfortunately, that applies to the necklace as well. And I think we all have the horn necklace of might. I like the bonus to my strength more than I like the bonus to speed.

"I can't use the ring or the necklace," I say.

"Does anyone mind if I take the circlet?" El ends up taking the necklace. It does mean that her strength drops from not having the necklace of might, but it also means that she's going to attack faster, and that really fits with her fighting style.

"Okay," Ash says.

"I'll take the ring of resistance. Everyone okay with what they have?"

"Yeah, and we can sell my old necklace when we get back to town," El says. I check the cooldown timer for Mab's Rage. It's at 41 minutes. That's still a really long time. The circlet doesn't seem big enough to fit on my head when I pick it up, but as I bring it closer and closer to my forehead, it seems to expand a little bit.

It rests easily on my head, giving me a little bit of a tiara with a slight dip at the center of the forehead that I suppose might make it look like my eyebrows are pointing downward in an angry way. I don't know if it looks dumb or not.

"Does this look dumb?" I ask. Everyone insists that it doesn't. I suppose it's better than a full face helm. Maybe I'm just thinking it looks dumb because it looks like a tiara. It looks feminine. But there's nothing wrong with looking a little feminine. That isn't dumb. Femininity is good. It's powerful, it's wonderful. And this particular touch of femininity brings my defense up to 392, which is awesome.

There are a lot of monsters back on the other continent that probably can't do any damage to me at all anymore.