I awoke far more refreshed than I had in the abomination’s nest. My whole body buzzed with a new feeling and I found a new status effect.

Beneficial State – Well Rested

Description – You’ve slept in a safe room for eight hours. This conveys bonuses to your character.

20% resistance to negative status effects.

All stats increased by 1.

Duration – 2 hours

That was a welcome surprise. The time I’d wasted wasn’t.

“Eight hours? I’ve got too much to do!”

Even though there was no ticking timebomb or limit that I could make out, I still felt rotten for snoozing while Mrs Atkins babysat Honey. I snaffled down a quick breakfast of grapefruit and eggs and headed for the door.

The dank passage was waiting. I checked the minimap for any clue as to the direction I should go. The branches themselves were in a similar pattern to the rat’s lair. If I could make any assumptions, they might well be a carbon copy of one another. That meant two mazes and the final boss room. Swallowing my fear, I equipped my flail and torch, and moved off.

I was fortunate that the unmissable webs gave away the location of the enemies. Spying the first, I set light to the shimmering weave and waited. Its creator skittered around the corner and I prepared my summons. My thought hovered on the periphery of activating the spell.

“You need to do this,” I whispered, trying to psych myself up.

I couldn’t hide behind the spell indefinitely, so I left it untouched, pulled up my big boy pants, and shifted into a fighting stance. The Webspinner charged at me, it’s front legs raised. I thrust the torch at its head and it reared up, swatting at the flame. I won’t say I wasn’t terrified as I got another full view of fangs and the oozing mouth beneath its head, but it gave me a burst of fight-or-flight adrenaline once again. Pushing forward, I kept using the torch to force the spider back. Being level three, the damage it suffered from my flame was far lower than the ratlings. It turned and scuttled away. I thought I’d got the spider on the ropes, charging after it with a war cry. Its abdomen pulsed and a hundred fine threads sprayed from the spinnerets, wrapping around my entire upper body. It jerked its abdomen, using the weight to pull me off my feet. As I fell, I rolled, wrapping myself like a burrito. A part of my mind dived beneath the bed, but another, braver portion activated my spell. The webspinner scuttled in and bit down on my upper thigh. The pain of the puncture was bad enough. What followed was far worse. It felt like someone had cut me open and was pouring acid into my wound. All I could do was kick feebly with my unbitten leg.

My ratling horde poured from their holes and swarmed the arachnid. It tore free of my thigh as it tried to fight them off. Their teeth worked at the joints of the legs, the eyes, the soft underbelly. In the space of five seconds, the creature’s health bar dropped like a stone as it tried in vain to shuck off the tenacious attackers. It fell dead to the ground in twenty or more pieces. With a final shrill cry, the rats evaporated into crackling blue smoke, leaving the passage eerily empty after the chaos.

In my increasingly woozy state, I noticed the wound wasn’t gushing. The blood was more like a dark soup as it bubbled from the twin holes. Groggily pulling up my avatar, I noticed a pair of debuffs.

Affliction – Poisoned (Spider)

Description – The Webspinner venom courses through your veins, causing dangerous clots that if left untreated will lead to death.

Duration – 30 minutes

Affliction – Paralysis (Spider)

Description – The Webspinner’s venom carries a powerful neurotoxin that renders the afflicted immobile. All the better to eat you with.

Duration – 4 hours (2 Minute activation)

This was far worse than the effects from the small sample I’d ingested. Even now I could feel the strength leaving my trapped body. I directed the rats to gnaw at my bonds, but their mouths just caught on the strands. Second by second, my vision was beginning to swim dangerously close to uselessness. I thought of the burning web and generated a torch that appeared in mid-air. It bounced off my chest and landed among the rodents, but not before igniting my partial cocoon. The fire caused more damage to my already depleting health bar. I popped a potion and it healed me fully, banishing the blisters and the bite. The status effects kept ticking away, however.

I had two choices: Collapse in the tunnel and hope enemies were limited in their movement while using the entirety of my potion stock to counteract the poison, or get back to the safe room. The bottles were far too valuable to waste. I staggered to my feet and held onto the wall, reeling like I’d been drinking for days. Everything was coming in and out of focus. Instead of looking at my surroundings which were quickly becoming liquescent, I stared at my dot on the minimap and urged it to move. The first few steps were the hardest. Using the wall as my guide, I pushed on, counting the seconds down in my head. My health was already back to less than half and I quaffed another potion to break up the syrup which was forming in my veins. Falling around the corner, I was less than thirty feet from salvation.

One step at a time, that’s all it takes.

I was reduced to thinking as my tongue and throat had lost all sensation. The chill of the flail was nothing compared to the venom which was attacking my brain, steadily killing the electrical signals stone dead.

Fifteen feet.

My arms no longer worked and I dropped the flail. I was reduced to staring at my feet as my head flopped on a useless neck.

Ten feet.

I could no longer feel anything. Not the stone scrubbing against my shoulder or the ground beneath my feet. My vision failed. I was blind.

Five feet.

I willed the door open, unsure if it had responded to my failing mind.

Three feet.

My insensate legs finally gave up and I slithered down the damp walls, unable to even break my fall. My last cogent thought was that I didn’t need any more bloody sleep, no matter if it was venom induced, involuntary sleep. Gravity pulled me down, my shirtsleeve tearing at the shoulder.

As I neared the unforgiving flagstones, my sideways slump pushed me through the open door. My head bounced painfully on the ground with a crack like a coconut.

I could see!

I could feel!

I found myself slumped fully inside the lavish bedroom, even though it could have only been my head and upper body that made it through. Maybe it was just the mind that needed to pass through to trigger the change. I shook my ringing head and sat up. The status effects were gone and I downed another potion to negate the worst of the lingering damage. At this rate I’d need to sign up to Potions Anonymous by the end of the dungeon. I was necking them faster than shots at a frat party. Granted, I’d never been to a frat party to really be able to make that assertion. I was British. All I knew about America was what I’d gleaned from Hollywood. I’m sure it was all factually accurate when they portrayed the Alpha Gamma Scamma Blamma houses.

My luck had held once again. I couldn’t keep relying on it to save me. It was starting to feel like I was playing Dark Souls. Encounter a new mob, get my arse kicked, rinse and repeat.

“Bart?”

“How can I help?”

“I hope it’s not annoying to have me call you up like that?”

“Not at all. What is it you need?”

“I just got leg humped by the pointy parts of a Webspinner,” I explained.

“That sounds dreadful.”

“It ranks in my bottom five sexual encounters. I was thinking about how blind I am through all of this. The enemy info doesn’t give much away in terms of attack patterns and stuff like that.”

He stared at me and raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“And I wondered if there was anything I could use to help me uncover some of the mystery?”

“No.”

“You’re not very helpful for a guide.”

“Thank you.”

“Can you pass my displeasure back up the chain of command. If I make it through this, you’re all getting a one star rating.”

Bart held up his hands nervously. “Let’s not be too hasty.”

“If I could make it zero stars, I would. But they always make you select at least one.”

“When I said no, I meant in here. When you reach the real worlds, there will be all manner of people and creatures to interact with. Who’s to say what you might discover over a cup of warm ale?”

“Ok, Frodo, that’s a bit better. But in the meantime, I’ve got to bumble my way through here getting stabbed and jabbed and blabbed and all manner of abbeds?”

“You’re doing a magnificent job so far.”

“My burgeoning addiction to bottled narcotics says otherwise.”

“Healing potions aren’t narcotics. If you were smoking crack between encounters I might be a little more worried.”

If I’d had a drink in my mouth I’d have spat it all over the floor.

“But you’re not,” Bart continued, “so self-medicate to your heart’s content. Anything else?”

“I think we’re done.”

“Good luck!”

He vanished from his favourite chair, leaving me to curse the year of my birth and ask why I couldn’t have been born a few centuries earlier. Plague, famine, and drastically reduced lifespans were a small price to pay for not facing any more poison injecting bastards.

The niggling dread in the pit of my gut changed to a simmering anger. The ember ignited into a full blown rage. I had all the tools at my disposal, so why was I cowering all the bloody time? I slammed the door open and marched back out into danger.