Soulforged Dungeoneer

It didn't escape my notice that while I certainly hadn't gained fifty levels since my last fight with an Administrator's avatar, the difficulty on this fight had indeed gone up by that much, which--considering that I'd waved off getting a reward for this fight, though who knows if Arachne was going to actually honor that--kind of felt a little like a bum rap. But it was Merry who provided the key context to this fight, as soon as both she and I started using the fairy-like eye skill she'd made, which the Dungeon system still hadn't recognized and given a name--the one which, I realized, showed me the Dungeon system energy as threads, or to put it differently, webs. I grimaced quietly to myself, thinking that naming both of my new skills after Administrators seemed gauche, but if I was going to do that, I'd probably want to rebuild it again anyway, to make the skill more spider-like, somehow.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, Arachne, Queen of All Monsters, wasn't a single monster, even though it looked like she was.

When the Administrator had done her megaboss transition, all the monsters present had vanished: four end-of-biome bosses, the Lord of All Chairs, the Caesar, and the two Harpy challenge bosses, the Synth and the Harpsichord. That was eight boss monsters, and suddenly, eight spears had appeared, all of them different, and those had become the spider's legs. With the Fairy/Spider eye, whatever, it was clear that each of those spears was an insanely dense bundle of abilities and other Dungeon stuff. Like the Cannibal Hag, she had turned monsters into equipment, but then grafted that equipment back into a monster.

Given the little differences in decoration and style in the spears, I quickly guessed that the front two spear-legs were the Caesar and the Trapdoor Boar. And, once I had my armor on and took a deep breath, Arachne charged at me, her naked human torso suddenly seeming to mostly be decoration as the spider kind of reared up enough that those front two legs could become arms and lance at me, which I was mostly sure was not how spiders worked in general.

As you'd expect for something that was almost as many levels above me as the Slenderman had levels at all, when she stabbed at me with those spears, there was essentially no chance of me actually dodging--she was missing on purpose, carving enormous gashes in the Slenderman suit without me losing so much as a hitpoint. I flailed around, mostly helpless, and the Administrator's voice, now somewhat more resonant and evil-sounding, cackled madly.

I pushed away from it, and Arachne let me get a moment of peace as I collected my thoughts.

I think I got this, Merry said. There's a weak point on each of the legs. If you can break one off, I think we can steal it.

"Do you know the original Arachne myth?" The Administrator's voice coming out of the monster was disturbing, but I did my best to let it roll off of me. "A mortal woman thought herself an equal to the gods and was cursed. But the silly thing is that she was right! In fact, it's the point of the whole story!" The spider gave a kind of excited giggle, and then came at me again, each leg digging into the starry nothingness that only looked like we were suspended in deep space--as far as I could tell, it was something like stone, but probably indestructible, or at least probably a lot tougher than the dungeon the Slenderman had destroyed.

Compared to how fast the giant, twisted, psychotic monster moved, it felt like gathering the weight of the Vampiric Cloak and striking at the leg was so damned slow, and I missed, mostly. I still hit the spider leg near where it transitioned into a spear, but not at the weak point, and as a consequence, nothing much happened.

"Ah, you see it already? Good, good." Arachne threw me back casually with the Caesar leg, then leaped into the air and spun like a buzzsaw, gaining a strange momentum as she came right at my fucking face with that shit. I ducked and dodged, but that mostly meant that I wasn't looking at the moment when something came from behind me and clipped me lightly in the left shoulder.

It hurt, predictably, like fucking hell, and my joint popped out of its socket, and I screamed. I wasn't usually on the receiving end of critical hits, after all.

It's just dislocated. Take a potion and jam it back in there, Merry told me, trying to help me focus, and I immediately flexed my skill to force the shoulder back into position, then again to throw myself further from the spider, pulling a healing potion from my inventory as I did.

The spider was looking at me, grinning madly, but also looking disappointed.

"Arachne was greater than the gods," she said, suddenly. "And the gods, in their jealousy, abused her and cursed her. All because they didn't care enough to become better themselves!" Arachne looked down at her hands, and suddenly, they warped to become big ugly black claws, which was kind of what I had expected to happen when she was threatening me, before we had sex. "They're entitled assholes," she said, quietly, and then raised her head and looked down on me. "If a god's skill can be outshined with as little practice as a young mortal gets, then they were never so great to begin with. And yet, to have such pride!"

Instead of listening to her speech, I was sending the Vampiric Cloak out as a field effect, hoping to ensnare Arachne, but when it got closer to her, I could feel some kind of very similar field coming from Arachne herself--a domain that felt entirely too much like the invasive ghost-memory she had sent at me. That field noticed me, and Arachne paused in her speech and gave me a side-eye, but she didn't let it entirely interrupt her.

"It's going through hell that makes us strong," the monster queen said, and she suddenly charged at me again, and I noticed something odd. Because while it was difficult for me to invade her territory with my skill, when she charged into the territory I'd already kind-of manipulated with the Cloak, it suddenly felt like my domain was stronger--like a part of me slipped inside of her control. Granted, I couldn't exactly pay all that much attention to the sensation of it, because she immediately aimed to spear my head, but when I threw more weight behind another attack, trying to hit that joint again, suddenly things sort-of lined up, more than they had before.

My blade struck the joint, but it wasn't enough to sever the limb. It was, however, enough that just a shred of the vampiric cloak's power soaked into it, and I dodged away, my limited connection to the monstrous spider sending me a bunch of confused signals, far more complicated than when I'd used it on lesser monsters before.

"It's evolution," she said. "It's the fact that we are going to die. Evolution gives death meaning, and death gives struggle meaning, and struggle gives evolution meaning. Evolution makes the struggle less, and the struggle defers death, and the longer we live, the more we can evolve. The more we evolve, the greater the task must be before we struggle." The spider, instead of charging, suddenly lowered itself, and then leaped at me, and I forced more weight and power into a strike, aiming as carefully as I could at the joint that I'd hit previously.

It was tricky as hell, but I hit it, and suddenly, Arachne vanished.

Suddenly, in the space between the stars, there was only a single spear hanging point-upwards, wood and gold with a sharpened, flattened oval on the end, a little laurel wreath hovering, unattached, just below the head. I stared at it, my eyes momentarily confused by the wreath and how it didn't connect--when suddenly, in between blinks, the spear was held by a Victorian Barbarian Caesarian, the man also looking up at the blade, then looking to me, as I suddenly and fearfully glanced at him. He took the spear in two hands, his bulging muscles ripping through his formal outfit and straining even the bronze plate mail that wrapped his chest, and he brought it down into a thrusting stance.

Fortunately for me, he was only level 100, which was kind of high, but it was the kind of level I was well prepared to fight, and his moves--despite the new equipment--were no more complicated than they'd been when he was merely chasing me through the gravity-flip maze. I frowned, and dueled him as I was clearly supposed to, realizing as I did that the "Queen of All Monsters" was putting me through a boss rush. Caesar, fortunately enough for me, was exceedingly straightforward, and I'd practiced enough against Julius that none of his moves were a surprise, but I did worry about the rest of the fights coming up.

The last blow I landed on Caesar was right across his stupid stoic face, and Merry suddenly yelled at me to grab the spear, but she needn't have bothered--the Caesar vanished, but the spear remained, hanging in midair until I reached out and touched it.

And then, suddenly, I was back in front of Arachne, with a Soulforged sword in one hand and a Caesarian spear in the other. The arachnid queen paused her fight but continued grinning at me, completely unphased by having lost a limb, and with a sickening sound, the legs on her torso slid out of position, the piece of black flesh and carapace that had held the lost spear in place falling off as another took its place.

She lost levels, Merry pointed out, and I glanced up at her nameplate, suddenly hopeful... but she had gone from level 300 to 275, still above the Slenderman and still very clearly so far above me that she could only possibly be toying with me. Seven more fights like that would leave her at level 100, though... and what will she be standing on them? I forced myself not to think about that.

"Do you know why people hate spiders?" Arachne suddenly seemed to change discussions, or maybe I'd lost track of what we were talking about--I mean, looking back on it, I'm pretty certain she changed topics, but at the time, I was a little baffled as to whether or not I should have been listening more closely. "It's because they're competition. People and spiders are both builders, and builders hate other builders. A builder that doesn't respect your territory, and which lives only to destroy..." She laughed, and the leg that had belonged to the boar glowed.

And suddenly, she vanished, like she was pulled into a black hole. And immediately, I knew that I was screwed.

Left! Merry warned me only a moment before I sensed it, and I dodged as the spider leaped out of nowhere, seven legs poised to stab. The blades on the side of the torso closest to me seemed to track me, and each only just barely missed, except for one that scored a minor hit on my lower leg--no doubt, a deliberately light one, but it still nearly crippled me, taking my limb almost out of action. I teleported myself a tiny bit using Blink, only because it was more mana-efficient than using the Cloak to do the same, and pulled out another healing potion, throwing it back.

"People can't stand competition," Arachne said, and I gave up trying to understand if she was being coherent. "Neither can the gods. Once people have decided what they are, woe unto anyone that challenges the illusions that make them what they are." And she vanished again.

I readied my skills. Merry, tell me about the spear. Can we use it?

Yeah, but this one doesn't have specials, it's just got a lot of power--look out!

I had actually caught the movement before she did this time, since I'd distracted my fairy, but she'd told me what I needed to know. I blinked again and tried to throw weight behind my new spear as I thrust in the general direction of another spider limb, but I missed, and two legs speared into me, each going through one of my arms. I dropped the spear, and teleported back, glad that I could still use my Cloak as telekinesis, because there was no way I'd be able to grab a healing potion given how my arms suddenly didn't want to work.

"And you, Jerry," said Arachne, "you know, it pisses me off that you treat my monsters like people. The male harpy, the marionette... you even wanted to have a conversation with the Hurricane Harpy as though she was supposed to be reasonable, or even halfway intelligent. They're not real." The spider slammed one of her feet into the starry non-ground, as though expecting a resonant impact, but it made no sound. There was a pause, and Arachne suddenly got a strange look on her face, and then suddenly she did it again, only this time, a loud, echoing slam filled the space, and she clapped her hands gleefully.

"They're not real, and I am," Arachne said, as though she hadn't just tweaked physics to make her tantrum a little more dramatic. "Only they're allowed to be out, and I'm not. Because they can't know that I'm real."

This time, when Arachne disappeared, she reappeared behind me almost instantly. I'd gotten another potion in my mouth and my arms, though they hurt like hell, were working again, but I still had to mostly use my skill to turn and stab with the spear. This, at least, Merry could help with, and I felt a suddenly intense feeling of concentration that helped me angle the blade just right to strike at another spear joint. It wasn't for one of the forward legs, though--the spider queen was rearing up, and I just picked one at random among the joints I could reach, the spear managing to catch the limb in just the right spot. Even then, it wouldn't have been enough, except that Arachne's weight suddenly fell on my spearpoint, and that finished the job.

The second spear fight was one I had not actually faced before--the Beautiful Businesswoman Harpsichord Harpy. It was a partisan, I think--a spear with wide wings intended to catch swords, and the wings had piano keys on them. I struggled to think back to the fight I'd seen Mel and her group have with the Harpsichord Harpy, remembering that one of the key difficulties of the fight was a mind control ability of some kind. So, as the sport-coated, piano-winged creature appeared, taking the spear in one of her feet as she lifted herself into the sky with a burst of musical wind, I wrapped myself in the cloak, defensively, though I wasn't honestly sure whether that would help against a random status effect I couldn't even identify.

As it turned out... kind of.

The cloak almost seemed to have its own will, and so even though the piano music did kind of affect me, it only felt like it affected around a third of me, or maybe less. Merry wasn't under its effects, but neither was the skill. It was... a weird thing to discover about a skill that I myself had made, and also weird because I, myself, suddenly didn't want to fight the bird, but when my own skill told me to take the spear and jam it into her hip, it was an instinct developed over many battles that had me trusting that thought more than my own.

There was more to the fight, but honestly, the Harpsichord Harpy was only intended as a kind of sub-boss, not a real challenge; even at level 100, she gave away her attacks too easily. Merry, eventually, pulled me out of being charmed, and prior to that I did get hit by a few minor attacks from her weird paper/sonic attacks, but it was not death, not like fighting Arachne had been. So, almost too quickly, I landed a spear thrust right into the center of the harpy's throat, and suddenly there was another spear hanging there and waiting for me.

Are we supposed to somehow handle all eight spears ourselves? I bet if we let any go, they'll be lost. Merry examined the spear as I drank another healing potion--it felt like a waste, since I was getting less than a full bottle's effect, but I was very concerned that any attack from Arachne that actually meant to kill me, would succeed. Or, more importantly, that an attack that I could have survived would kill me if I wasn't entirely topped off.

"With the cloak, we can handle it." I felt a weird grin splitting my face, a grin that felt too much like the Administrator's. Because the vampiric cloak was built on who I was back then, when nothing felt real, and... I shook my head. It felt insane to even talk about, now. "I've done weirder things."

Merry considered me without actually saying anything, but gave me a supportive nod.

When I reappeared with the second spear, I had a plan to try to immediately thrust at the spider queen, but even though I managed to land hits on two joints, neither was strong enough to do enough damage. Almost immediately, Arachne jumped, and a foreleg knocked me away as she got clear.

"Ah, haha, not bad. A second one already." Arachne's legs shifted, and I noticed her balancing out her body--with both missing legs coming from the same side, one from the other side had moved over just to keep her on an even footing so to speak. "I'll go ahead and warn you--my phase transition will come when you remove four spears. I wonder, how much of me can you handle?" She reared back again, then vanished, and there was a long moment of terrifying nothingness, waiting.

The B... the harpy spear, I mean, definitely has a power mind affect power, but I really doubt it will work on her for more than--

I blinked forward on instinct, but nothing happened. I frowned, thinking that my instincts were screaming, and tried paying attention to the Cloak. It had been able to detect Arachne's domain, or whatever, but even as I stretched out my own, it wasn't clear where she was coming from until the moment when she finally breached the dimensions again, above me.

I dodged, noting that it was definitely getting easier as her levels went down, even though she could only possibly have been playing with me even now. Although it was extremely awkward to try to swing two spears as though they were swords, I did try, each blade maybe-scratching Arachne's torso but coming nowhere near the legs. Merry, I interrupted, studying Arachne for the brief moment I had, She's only using the power of one leg at a time, right?

Left front, the fairy agreed.

We need to consider if there is anything we need to stop her from using, but I don't have the focus.

The spider queen pounced at me again, and I used the spears to try to block a blow, but that tends to work better with swings, not stabs. Granted, the Boar spear was a two-pointed monstrosity designed to look like a pair of open jaws, but that was still the kind of blow you typically try to deflect, not block. As a result, one of the fangs clipped my shoulder, again--the same shoulder that had been dislocated earlier, and it popped out, and I screamed, blinking back and snagging another healing potion.

"You asked me what it's like," said Arachne, suddenly, and I found myself immediately distracted, even as I tried to juggle several things--healing, using the Cloak to snap up my other spear, popping my shoulder back in. "Administrators aren't heros. It isn't even the fact that they're villains--even villains get to stand in the twilight and scream at the setting sun. We're forgettable. Ignorable. Tools. And that more than anything is why you are here, Jerry Applebee."

In a moment, the spider blinked up to me, and the human torso's hands grabbed my face, and the twisted mockery of the woman I'd been banging looked me right in the face.

"You're a solo diver," she said. "Nobody knows your story, and you're used to it. When someday you die, you'll be forgotten, and nobody will even know that you were ever a hero." The madness in her eyes was there again, overpoweringly so, like it was taking on a life of its own. "But being an Administrator is the same. Nobody will care. Even if you're real, and you will try to be real, to everyone else you're furniture. A toy. You exist to be stepped on so that other people can climb and be hailed as heroes."

"You might have changed the world," she hissed, bringing her face too close to me, and instinctively, I wrapped my fingers tighter around the Harpsichord Harpy spear. "And you might when you become an Administrator, but nobody will care."

I flexed my power through the spear, and somehow, for a moment, I felt it snagging Arachne's mind--not the Administrator's, since she no doubt had some kind of meta-awareness, but the creature itself was distracted, and I slipped out, throwing as much power into the cloak as I possibly could, and aiming for the legs.

The Synth and the Marionette, suggested Merry, pointing me towards the right pair.

In a single motion, and with overpowering force, I severed two legs, and once more, Arachne vanished.