Chapter 500 Mini-Boss on Floor 20
Elsewhere in Eathen Keep, Jack found himself in a small passageway but it wasn’t natural. On earlier floors, Jack had noticed that some creatures had created new burrows and passages to the floors above and below the usual level they were found on. He learned that first hand, nearly walking headfirst into a nest of Earthen Centipedes between the ninth and tenth floors.
Albeit narrowly, Jack had avoided alerting those centipedes but took that knowledge along with him. It led Jack to wonder if he could do the same thing. And now that he was about to enter the twentieth floor, Jack felt better in attempting such an experiment.
Jack combined Phoro’s and Dragov’s bloodlines as he tunneled through the ground with unrivaled speed.
His experiment proved successful as he broke through to the twentieth floor without any issue. However, the rubble would easily attract the mini-boss on the twentieth floor.
His invisibility was never lost, not even while he tunneled. Though the sounds of falling rubble warned the occupants of the twentieth floor, Jack crept along the ceiling instead of following the rubble to the ground below.
Silky strands of spider webs filled most of the twentieth floor. Some of the rubble got entangled in the webs, alerting all spiders of the entire floor.
Careful with each step, the hero calmly avoided the spider webs. He didn’t mind if he took longer than usual as Jack had already saved time by tunneling through the eighteenth and nineteenth floors entirely.
If anything followed his tunnel down, Jack didn’t care. His digging speed was ridiculous and he would be long gone before anything could reach him. And if something found the tunnel in the future, it would only let any curious creature get attacked by whatever was on the next level.
He kept the same mentality going into the twentieth floor, only he was more cautious due to the spiders’ ability to sense him via a single misstep on a strand of web. Also, Jack wanted to see the mini-boss up close and personal.
The Skulker Tarantula was known for loving complete darkness and its use of smaller spiders to swarm its prey. Of course, anything under five meters tall counted as smaller compared to the ten-meter Skulker Tarantula. It was also known for having a terrifying, slow-acting venom, which Jack was determined to get no matter what.
Since he entered irregularly, it took Jack almost half an hour to creep through the labyrinth of spider webs. After that, he finally found the mini-boss’s burrow.
A twenty-meter wide crater was dug out of the ground with webbing lining the entirety of the crater and even making a somewhat of a shade over the top of the crater. Jack never would’ve found it or recognized anything in the dark floor if not for Dragov’s bloodline. It was the combination of Dragov’s eyes and Phoro’s that Jack could peer deeper into the darkness and see the silhouette of the Skulker Tarantula, only it wasn’t ten meters tall... it was almost fifteen meters tall!
Keeping his breathing under control, Jack pondered the situation.
His travels of the twentieth floor revealed the overwhelming amount of spiders, as well as the many carcasses of spiders. This led Jack to assume that the spiders had turned cannibalistic long ago. That would also explain why the lead Skulker Tarantula had grown so large while the next largest of the younger Skulker Tarantulas weren’t even five meters in width, let alone in height.
Also, there were far more webs than he had ever seen in-game, especially around the mini-boss. But that also gave Jack an idea. After another moment of thought and planning, Jack acted on his impromptu plan.
While overlooking the giant nest that the mini-boss had made itself, Jack exchanged Dragov’s bloodline for Bowzer’s, creating a flying flame body. Before the Skulker Tarantula could do anything, Jack hurled his black-white flames into the nest of the tarantula, grateful for the level boost he had gained for no effort on his part.
A low, droning hiss sounded from deep within the crater. That giant silhouette finally moved and rushed to the surface of its nest. However, it found traveling across the webs to be nearly impossible.
Unlike most videogames, the spider webs didn’t burn well, rather, they caught fire aggressively for a few moments before beginning to melt. That was exactly what Jack was wanting.
The melting web was entirely unusable and the countless threads of web were fusing together as a makeshift cage around the giant Skulker Tarantula. Also, the intense heat of those flames let them keep burning, albeit small in height. This trapped the mini-boss within its own nest and kept it from escaping anywhere. Should it attempt to force its way past the melting, burning webs, the black-white flame was even burning the ground around the crater.
Jack rushed into the nest of the hissing tarantula. His wind blades and flame body allowed him to carve past the melting web with ease. In seconds, Jack found himself at the side of the tarantula’s giant head. While it was hissing and attempting to break free, Jack carved into the tarantula’s face, just below it’s lower eyes.
Hisses filled the vast space while Jack mutilated the tarantula’s face over and over again. At lv. 87, the Skulker Tarantula was quite a foe. But Jack didn’t care for killing it. All he wanted was the venom gland above the base of the tarantula’s fangs.
The moment Jack carved through the face and felt some numbing fluid touch him, Jack momentarily dropped his flame body and retrieved a large, empty bottle. In a couple of seconds, Jack had filled the bottle with the oozing venom. He hastily sealed the bottle and resumed his flame body while retreating.
A minute later, the Skulker Tarantula broke free from the trap made of its own burning web. However, it couldn’t find anything apart from burning webs and charred spider bits.
Jack had already fled for the next floor and the giant tarantula would never have any hope of entering the human-sized hole that Jack created amidst a see of burning, melting webs.
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