Keith and Evala shot upright, waking with a start, to the sound of a bird squawking and shrieking. When they looked over to the source, they found Nathan nonchalantly strangling Ichtvar. Keith could see the irritation in Nathan's eyes, and assumed he'd found out about Ichtvar knowing the demigod could prevent pregnancies through his magic as an innate trait.

Which meant that all Nathan needed to do was learn how to do so, and it would be easy to do it, no practice required.

"Can you please strangle the phoenix while we're in extended Survival Challenges?" Keith asked.

"Okay," Nathan stopped strangling Ichtvar. "He's surprisingly difficult to kill."

"You were actually trying to kill him?" Evala asked in shock. "But his egg-and growth-and-"

"Ichtvar's gone well beyond the normal time between deaths," Keith told her. "He'd probably hatch within minutes, and he'd have all the power he has now. We wouldn't really be hindered unless he died again anytime soon."

"I don't see Breezy ruffling your clothes," Evala frowned. "Did you send him off to do something?"

A moment later, the island's light enchantments reactivated. Not far out of the range of their vision on the beach were pedestals with light enchantments, as with on the previous islands. The platforms for the statues also each had a ring of light on the top of the sides.

In addition to that, each of the mausoleums the trio could see on the island had light pedestals surrounding them, giving a clear view of them.

Isles of Darkness has been completed! Your reward upon leaving the Isles of Darkness went up from 150% to 200%. There are four remaining Secondary Dungeons on this island.

"Uh…"

"The talisman was in only three pieces," Nathan finished stuffing Ichtvar back into his pack and pulled it on. "So I had him put it back in its spot after I repaired it."

It had taken him nearly an hour of arguing to convince his familiar to set off on its own, too. The wind elemental didn't want to go around the island alone, and Nathan didn't blame it. The aura of death and tragedy was immense.

"Let's go," Nathan began walking.

"How are we going to find," Evala asked. "Phantoms and shades if the light destroys them? Wouldn't it have killed pretty much all of them? It's everywhere. Wait – how does the light destroy the phantoms? I know shades are killed simply by coming into contact with holy light, but phantoms have to have the light pushed through them."

"The light of this place is special," Keith explained as he and the catkin began following Nathan. "It can kill phantoms without being forced through. I've been trying to figure out the magic with my magic sight when we're surrounded by it, but so far, I'm at a loss. If we could figure that out, we could enchant the lanterns for it as well. Unfortunately, the pedestals are enchanted too heavily for me to read, and the runes are really for show, as a 'source' of the light. They aren't the enchantment themselves."

"Not all of the pedestals," Nathan said. "Are intact. In addition, if something is surrounding it, the light obviously can't escape. If you use those catlike eyes of yours, you'd notice a dark spot."

While Nathan was appreciative of Evala saving his life, he was starting to believe she wouldn't have been the Overseers' first pick if she hadn't had her brother's journal. He believed that she may have only barely been making it through by acting as a supporter for others, using extended Survival Challenges and team kills to acquire her Levels. Despite the fact that he understood their cultures had major differences and that he should have said something, he was still upset by her 'requirement'. Then there was the fact that instead of facing her fear, she left Keith and him to deal with the statue.

She wasn't observant, either. Truthfully, that alone made him wonder how she'd survived for several years of real-world time with the game.

It was a bunch of "little" things, but Nathan was confident in his conclusion about her.

That meant he needed to be even more observant with his surroundings, because her own mistakes, even if minor, could be problematic for them. The mausoleums were spaced forty feet apart with the pedestals lined up halfway between them, as if separating the walking paths.

The mausoleums themselves were large buildings, thirty feet in height and twenty in width, with columns at the front and gargoyles on the top. There was a gargoyle on each corner, facing out from them, and then four between each pair of corners, facing the path on that side of the building. The paths themselves were cobblestone, slightly uneven, but easy to walk on.

A few times, they passed by some of the statues they had to return to their stands, all of which were identical to the one they had already moved. One had its wings broken off, while another had its right horn broken in half. Two were sitting facing each other, as if in an eternal staring contest. They put returning the statues to their places on hold for the time being, as they wanted to examine the island first and deal with the dark spots.

It went unsaid that Nathan and Keith also wanted to get rid of Evala before dealing with the statues, as they knew they would find themselves constantly frustrated with her while moving them back.

After an hour of walking, the players reached the dark zone Nathan and Keith had spotted, a space surrounded by a wall of webbing. It stretched between the mausoleums, and the front of the blocked-off space spanned twenty mausoleums, creating a large home for the spiders.

They could make out in small gaps that the pedestals of light had been covered up as well, all with webbing.

"The darkness isn't in there," Nathan told Keith.

"How can you tell?" Evala squinted as she looked in. "It's dark."

"So it probably needs at least some path to get in," Keith nodded, looking up. "The light from the surrounding areas is enough to affect the sky above this zone. Do you think the spider or spiders did this before the talisman was removed, then? Otherwise, why intentionally wrap up the pedestals and the runes on the buildings?"

"Most likely," Nathan nodded. "There might be darkness in the middle of this zone."

"There's darkness filling it," Evala butted in.

"We're talking about the world's darkness, not natural darkness," Nathan told her.

"Do you think it's another Dungeon?" Keith asked.

"Probably," Nathan answered. "The Overseers likely want this cleaned up."

"Why do you think there's no darkness in there?" Evala squinted into the zone, trying to figure out the difference between the darkness she saw and the suppressing darkness of the Dungeon.

"Sword or flame?" Keith asked.

Nathan swiftly drew his sword and cut open a doorway into the dark zone. He knew that if the spiders and their webs were like the ones Keith had fought on their first island, the webbing would start to repair itself quickly.

Waiting a moment, he nodded, watching as the webbing quickly repaired itself.

"…you were checking to see if that happened, weren't you?" Keith asked.

"Yes," Nathan answered. "Burn this up."

Keith nodded, then took a deep breath, pulling on his power. He found it surprisingly easy to use fire magics without fear, he realized. Overcoming that one obstacle of never using it out of fear seemed to work for him, and he knew Nathan had figured that out already.

The warrior wouldn't have made such a simple comment if he thought Keith was still scared to use fire magics.

Weaving together his spell, Keith held out his hands and unleashed his fires, letting them burn through the webbing as Nathan watched. The mage was confident the warrior would look out for any danger as he focused on incinerating the webbing to create a large hole.

Keith could feel the webbing draining his spell's mana as it tried to repair itself, so he poured more mana into the flames to make that work slower. Once he'd burned up half of the wall of webbing, he canceled his spell, then looked at Nathan, who was standing in front of a spider that had been sliced in half.

"Why did it jump at me instead of attacking with its webbing?" The warrior asked in confusion. "Didn't you say the one you fought used intelligence?"

"Well, yeah," Keith responded. "But the one I fought had also probably fought players before. These ones might have never done that, only dealt with each other and whatever ended up in their home."

Nathan grunted in annoyance, then led the way in, Keith quickly moving to the next pedestal to burn away the webbing around it while ignoring the Dungeon notification. As he did, Nathan and Evala fought a duo of spiders that attacked them, likely drawn by the destruction of the webs and the appearance of intruders.

Those spiders kept their distance, and any time Nathan or Evala drew close, they backed up. Frustrated by that, Nathan pulled out a gun and shot them. He'd already killed the first one with ease, so it was unlikely he would earn Experience, anyway.

"So that is what a normal gun does?" Evala asked, and Nathan glanced at her. "I only saw you use the enchanted gun."

"Yes," he said. "This is a normal gun."

He turned his gaze away from her and to the message in his vision as Keith finished clearing the webbing off of the pedestal, whose light began to fill the area even as the light from outside began to dim, the wall repairing itself now that it was no longer actively being burned.

Dungeon Entered: Spider's Nest Challenge Type: Scavenger Hunt Difficulty: Advanced Kill the spider matriarch. You may take as long as needed.

"We have to kill the matriarch, but not the rest?" Evala asked. "What kind of Dungeon is that?"

"The kind where the matriarch will probably seek us out," Keith answered. "We'll probably be instructed to kill the rest once she's dead, then to clear away the webbing. Until the spider that made it is dead, the webbing will continue to repair itself."

"The webbing on the light pedestal didn't," she gestured to it.

"That," Keith indicated the base. "Is because the webbing there was only on it. There's none connecting to it. So as soon as I burned it all away, there was none left to start the magical repair from. Nathan! Are you seriously eating chocolate right now?"

"Ichtvar's making me hungry."

Keith sighed, shaking his head in disbelief as he looked around. The light from the pedestal extended forty feet out by itself, which told him and Nathan that they were spaced closer together intentionally for overlap.

In case one went out, so that the space would continue to have the light.

"Let's just clean up the pillars," Nathan told Keith. "We'll be attacked by spiders until the matriarch comes."

Keith nodded, then got to work on the next one, with Nathan shooting down the spider that came to investigate.

"That's really unfair," Evala commented. "You're taking all the Points for this."

"If all you care about are Points," Nathan told her. "Then feel free to do an extended Survival Challenge, Evala. That's how you build up your Points. Not while in a fucking Dungeon. In a Dungeon, you do what it takes to complete it. If that means sacrificing Points and Experience, then so be it."

Nathan aimed his gun and fired, killing another spider.

"Understood?"

"That's easy for you to say," she said. "You earn Points easily. I'm sure you have plenty of them to do with what you want."

"Oh, I do," he told her. "Trust me on that. Because I used extended Survival Challenges to build them up. But even if I hadn't, I wouldn't be here, going 'I need more Points, let me kill everything so the bitch can't get any'. I'd make sure Keith got some, too. But we aren't here for Experience, we aren't here for Points. Those are only bonuses, and only when we know we'll manage it without too much hassle.

"We're here for the Dungeon and its mission," he continued. "We'll get a reward when we complete it, and that's all we need to focus on obtaining unless the Dungeon tells us to obtain something. Keith and I go for Experience in here, yes, but we'll switch from that when necessary. Which is why I pulled out my fucking gun."

He shot another spider.

"A Dungeon is challenging, yes," he said. "And it's even a good place to get Experience and Points. But it's not intended on being the main source of them, or we wouldn't be able to create custom Challenges and do extended Survival Challenges so freely. The Dungeons are here to get shit done.

"So get off the horse of yours," he told her. "Be a good little catkin, and just shut the hell up and let the actual players do the work. I don't have a doubt in my mind you'd have died against one of the two demibosses we've fought so far."

"Excuse me?" She asked as Nathan shot another spider, moving forward with Keith, who was moving on to the next pedestal of light. "What makes you-"

"Your fighting skills are subpar," he interrupted her. "You're focused on healing magics, not combat. I've seen you fight multiple times already, and I have nearly died against both of those demibosses I've fought, myself.

"The first was a wolf that slipped in and out of any shadow with a hide so tough, I might as well have been hugging a stuffed bear every time I hit it. I broke two of the System-generated weapons against it. I had to draw on Ichtvar's flames to kill it, and still nearly died.

"The second," he continued. "Was the reason that you came into here, don't forget. I nearly died against it because it was simply that powerful. Its attacks punched through my Health like it was nothing. It tricked Keith into thinking it was me and I was it, convincing him to attack me instead. I blew it up, and the thing dared to heal from that in seconds. That was an attack that took out pretty much all of its Health and burned away most of its body, if you don't know what it means to blow something up. Imagine Keith's flames, but bigger, stronger, compressed, and then being released, its containment no longer there. A mixture of force and heat so strong, it can destroy buildings. Had I used that attack on Keith or myself, without a barrier up, we would have died, even from full Health.

"So yeah," Nathan growled. "You're useless against the actual demibosses of this place. What you care about is getting more Points, even in a Dungeon, a place not meant for that. The only things you're good for here are healing and a nice fuck, Evala. Keith and I figured out how it is you got so far in the game. You played off of others. The only reason I didn't abandon you was because Keith talked me out of that.

"Now," he glared. "If you don't mind, there's a giant fucking spider we need to kill."

Evala looked at the end of the path, where a spider twenty feet in height was standing.

"And it's resisting my fucking bullets!" Nathan emptied the rest of his magazine at the spider.

Keith sighed as Nathan drew his sword, and the enchanter pulled a gun from Nathan's hip, aiming it at the spider matriarch and firing off three shots. The magic bullet gun drew on his mana, powered by his magical strength, and the trio of bullets pierced through the beast's hide, killing it.

Spider matriarch slain. Kill all remaining spiders in the nest.

"We are definitely going to work on improving this gun as soon as we can," Keith told Nathan, who snatched it back and returned it to its holster. "I think that counted as a situation requiring it, Nathan. Or would you rather deal with its webbing and possible venom?"

"Fine," Nathan grumbled. "Let's go kill the rest of these fuckers."