Chapter 26: Whoever Designed This Dungeon Deserves to Be Arrested

Entering the dungeon again, the group made their way to the combination trap with practiced ease.

"Getting past this takes a bit of skill," Eagle explained at length. "First, you can't jump too high, or you'll trigger the crossbow trap. Second, you can't jump too far — there's a wild rabbit hiding in that groove. Unless you can leap clean over the groove itself..."

Heart and Soul pursed his lips. "Then I'll just jump over it. Step back and give me some room." With that, he took a few steps back, broke into a run, and then launched himself in a mighty leap — and actually cleared the groove where the rabbit was hiding, casually killing the rabbit on the way past.

"Come on through," Heart and Soul called out with a smug wave.

"So all along, the problem was just that our Assassin kept dying too early?" Ye Weinuan stared in disbelief.

Of course, this wasn't the method Liu Kongkong had anticipated. He wasn't an Assassin and had no idea how far one could jump — but two meters was already his absolute limit. His way through wasn't a flying leap either, but more of a flying tackle...

The first half of the dungeon wasn't particularly difficult in itself. The traps were mostly just there to strip players of their gear. The real challenge was the boss.

The boss he had chosen was the Ten-Eyed Spider — a massive creature of average difficulty.

It had only three skills in total. The first was Venom Splash: the boss spun in place and sprayed poison in all directions. The second was Deadly Pull: it yanked the second-highest aggro target to its side. The third was Poison Rain: it fired venom into the air, dealing area-of-effect damage to everything more than five meters away. In plain terms, it was a boss that required players to dodge mechanics. But combined with the terrain, even simple things became anything but simple.

And he had also added a little creative touch of his own inside the dungeon...

After enduring yet another series of traps that made everyone want to be sick.

By the fourth run, Night's Gentle Chill and his group were confident they had memorized every single trap.

"We should be hitting the boss soon. Get your gear on." Night's Gentle Chill couldn't hide the excitement in his eyes. The last time they'd died, he had at least caught a glimpse of the boss room door.

"Finally, the boss fight. The system still hasn't announced a first clear — let's push hard." Heart and Soul quickly swapped into his equipment. He'd died twice before and had terrible luck, dropping both his Blood Fang and Skull Mask. On the third run, he'd simply stripped off all his gear to be safe.

The group navigated every trap with practiced precision and found themselves standing before an enormous stone door.

"We made it!" Night's Gentle Chill suddenly felt the urge to cry, but the thought that others might be clearing this dungeon at the same time spurred him forward. He reached out and pushed the door open!

Boom!

The massive stone door groaned open slowly, scattering dust, and all five of them rushed inside.

"Wait — something's off! Where's the boss?" Night's Gentle Chill, the first one through, raised his hand to signal everyone to stop. After spending hours wrestling with this dungeon, his guard was at its peak. Behind the door was not the boss they'd been hoping for, but another long corridor — and from the layout of the surroundings, it looked almost identical to the passage right at the dungeon's entrance.

"Are we back at the start?" Eagle felt his heart sink. This was no way to run a dungeon...

"No — this isn't the dungeon entrance." Night's Gentle Chill looked up. There were no spiders on the ceiling, but it wasn't empty either.

"Run! There's a boulder!!" The moment he recognized what was falling, Night's Gentle Chill grabbed Ye Weinuan without a word and sprinted forward! The other three followed instantly. The corridor sloped downward, and the moment the boulder dropped, it came rolling straight at them!

"The person who made this stupid dungeon deserves to be arrested the moment I log off!" Eagle shouted as he ran, sparing a glance behind him — the massive rolling stone was almost on top of him!

"I'll scout ahead!" Heart and Soul, faster than the rest, shoved Eagle aside and bolted forward with everything he had. Eagle, who had already been barely outrunning the boulder, stumbled from the impact. "Taozi, you son of a—"

The next second, he turned into a beam of white light. Dead.

"Don't blame me — I just wanted to contribute to the team!" Heart and Soul called out in explanation, then suddenly spotted a glimmer of light ahead.

"Keep going! There's a way out up front — the opening looks small enough to stop the boulder!"

At the sound of salvation, the three who had nearly given up found a second wind!

"We're saved!" Heart and Soul, the first to reach the opening, leaped through it. Night's Gentle Chill and the others followed right behind!

The next second, four figures came flying out from the spot where the rabbit had been hiding in the groove earlier, diving headlong into the abyss in perfect unison. The scene before them shifted in an instant...

"You're back." Eagle looked at his four friends with a calm expression, no longer bothering to wonder why a hole had suddenly appeared in that groove. He glanced at Heart and Soul and was about to say something — but the latter logged off without a word.

"What happened to him? Did he snap?"

"Pretty much. He said he was going to call the police." Night's Gentle Chill wore a pained expression. He, too, felt that whoever designed this dungeon deserved to be locked up.

Five minutes later, Heart and Soul was back.

"What did they say?"

"Nothing much. They told me to have a better attitude." Heart and Soul wiped his tears and walked straight to the blacksmith shop. He'd put all his gear on thinking they were about to fight the boss, and dying again had cost him another piece of equipment.

Night's Gentle Chill let out a sigh. This kid was usually such an upbeat person — and here he was, crying over a game. He felt like crying too. Right before dying, he had clearly seen the whole group standing right back at the combination trap. After all that effort, ending up at square one was enough to break anyone.

"Actually, I think I saw a small door behind us," Ye Weinuan said suddenly. When the boulder had come crashing down, she'd happened to be scanning the surroundings. Because the corridor looked so much like the first passage after entering the dungeon, she'd instinctively taken a closer look.

"Really?" Night's Gentle Chill, who had all but given up hope, felt a spark of joy. A door meant they hadn't gone the wrong way!

Ye Weinuan nodded.

"Gear up — we're heading back in!"

* * *

Meanwhile, Lonely as a Song and Player No. 7's group had already made it into the boss room.

"You're something else, Brother Lonely — if it weren't for your sharp eyes, we'd have run right past it." No. 7 had tremendous respect for Lonely as a Song; the man had kept his cool even with a massive boulder bearing down on them.

"Oh, it was nothing — just experience from playing a lot of games." Lonely as a Song laughed it off, though the truth was that he'd panicked and run in the wrong direction, accidentally crashing through the door.

"Alright, let's not waste time — let's get to the boss. I know this monster: the Ten-Eyed Spider. We've all been briefed on its skills." Big Dumb Duck had already taken people to study the Ten-Eyed Spider in the wild, and the monster's information had been shared with every member of the group.

No. 7 took a couple of steps forward, then suddenly frowned.

The Ten-Eyed Spider's skills were sweeping and dramatic — positioning during the fight required constant switching between close range and far range. But this arena...

Ahead of him stood six stone pillars. On the single thick central pillar perched the enormous Ten-Eyed Spider. The five surrounding pillars were each just barely large enough for one person to stand on.

If they needed to reposition during the fight, wouldn't that mean jumping back and forth between pillars? No. 7 instantly grasped where the real difficulty lay. The distance between the large and small pillars wasn't too great on its own — but factor in the Ten-Eyed Spider's skill attacks and the bottomless abyss below...

"This boss is going to be a nightmare."

Lonely as a Song voiced what everyone was thinking, and the rest of the group nodded in agreement.