"Luna! Are you okay?" Lucian was immediately transported to a different location, and his first thought was to check on Luna.
"I'm okay, I managed to stay on my feet when I landed."
"That's good, but what are we going to do? This is a C-Rank dungeon."
"Is that strong?" Luna asked.
"It isn't exactly the highest, but for us as we are now, I'm not sure that we'll be able to survive."
"I'm sorry... I should've tried harder to escape."
"Don't worry about it, for now we need to figure out a way to survive, and what monsters are in this dungeon. Make sure to stay quiet."
"Okay, I can be sneaky." She whispered.
Lucian looked around the area they were in, it was a dark and slightly damp cavern. There were openings leading to unknown locations which were adorned with giant spider webs which could only mean one thing.
"I think we're in a Giant Spider lair. This isn't good, there's no way we can escape from the dungeon alive as we are. The Giant Spider Queen is a B-rank Boss, we're going to have to be insanely lucky to survive this. Follow me."
Lucian led the way, Luna following behind him. The two of them walked as quietly as possible, avoiding the strange pools of translucent goo that covered the floor.
They reached one of the holes in the wall and Lucian proceeded to climb into it. There was no way of knowing where the hole would lead, but that went for all of them.
Without going through a hole, they would never be able to escape from the original room and a spider would eventually return and eat them alive. They would have to hope that there weren't any spiders in the tunnel they had gone through.
The further into the tunnel they got, the thicker the spider webs became, and Lucian had to make sure Luna knew not to touch them, as it could alert a spider to their location.
Wider and wider, the tunnel seemed to be leading somewhere that would allow for larger spiders to enter. This wasn't a good sign, but there was no way they could go back now, with the time they would waste inside of the tunnel walking back and forth they could be escaping.
Eventually, they reached the end of the tunnel.
"Stay quiet, and stay low. I can see something up ahead." Lucian whispered.
"Okay, I'll keep an eye out as well."
Lucian peered into the darkness, unsure of what was happening. He could vaguely make out the outline of a huge spider pinning a smaller one down on the ground, a leg going through its body.
Thanks to a bioluminescent moss that was growing on the floor, Lucian could make out the markings on the two creatures.
The huge spider had a colour palette of red and purple, with a pattern resembling that of a royal family's emblem on its back. Surrounding this was an also bioluminescent pattern resembling the moss on the ground. Lucian recognised the markings on the spider, it was the queen.
He rushed to get a glance at the appearance of the smaller spider, and his hunch was correct. It was well known within the hunter community that the best time to attack the spider queen was during the rare time period when it was killing its mate, as the spider would not only be pregnant but also distracted with the spider king it was devouring. The spider on the ground was golden in colour, with black markings adorning its body.
'If only we were stronger, we might be able to use this opportunity to kill the boss.'
"Stay still Luna, just watch and wait for the big one to leave." He whispered.
She nodded in return, not replying in hopes of making as little noise as possible.
The king spider on the ground hissed up at the queen and lunged forward. The king managed to get a grasp of the queen's front leg, pulling its head back and ripping it off entirely, before spitting it out and throwing it away.
The queen screeched out in pain and anger, and spewed a substance out of its mouth, coating the king and dissolving its body incredibly quickly.
The spider queen was enraged, and it began thrashing around. Lucian was confused as he had never heard of something like this, but then something even more shocking occurred. The spider queen's leg began to regrow, the wound started to ooze, and a hairy leg burst from within its body.
"Oh shit, Luna, this isn't the dungeon I thought it was. It's a C+ rank raid dungeon where the main goal is to kill the queen spider. There aren't many other enemies, but the queen is stronger and can regenerate. We'll have to seek out the smaller spiders before we can even think about killing the queen."
Once the queen's leg had regenerated, it looked around and jumped up into a tunnel. Once the spider was definitely gone, Lucian motioned for Luna to get up, and he started to walk into the large cavern where the spider king had been killed.
The monsters had made the area seem like a normal size, but to Lucian and Luna, it was huge. It took around ten minutes while walking as quietly as possible, for them to reach Lucian's destination.
"Luna, can we copy the DNA of a monster even if there's only part of it?"
"I think so, I haven't tested it so we'll have to find out and see. Why do you want to know?"
"Well, I just had an idea."
Lucian reached his hand out into the darkness, and he felt the hairy leg of the spider queen, "DNA Replication." Lucian whispered under his breath, not sure if it would work the way he envisioned it.
The leg began to shrivel up, before turning into dust and disappearing completely, and Lucian felt something change within him.
"Do you feel that Luna?"
"I do, it feels like I can change something. I'm going to try it."
Lucian looked at Luna and, without her even saying a word, she began to change. It didn't even seem like she noticed or felt anything, and the transformation wasn't that extreme.
"How do you feel?" Lucian asked.
"I don't feel any different, do I look different?"
"Sort of, not massively though. I think your teeth look a little sharper, your wrists look as though they have a bump in each of them. Do you feel any different? You might have some powers that I can't see."
"I'm going to try and feel for anything." Luna scrunched her face, clearly racking her brains, "I feel something, acid spit, web shooting, enhanced senses, and wall climbing. I think that's it, I want to know if you've got the same."
"Okay, I'll try it." Lucian thought about activating the borrowed power from Luna, and unlike what Luna's face had suggested he could feel it, "Fuck, it hurts."
He felt as though his back was ripping open, and there was good reason for that. Eight long, hairy legs burst out of his back, four on each side. His teeth became larger, and began to drip venom without him even wanting it to happen. The same web-shooters as Luna appeared on his wrists, and his arms became coated in what seemed to be an exoskeleton.
"I think it's done, god that felt terrible. Why was yours so painless?"
"Probably because you've transformed way more than I did. Can you feel what powers you have?"
"I can, obviously I have these legs on my back, I have a venomous bite, I can shoot webs, I've got enhanced senses and toxin resistance."
"Why don't you have the wall-crawling like me, and why don't you have acid spit?"
"I don't know, obviously I have a more complete transformation than you which gives me different abilities, the wall-crawling isn't needed because of the legs on my back, and instead of acidic spit, I have to bite things myself. I don't know why this is different for each of us, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing, it means we can have a wider range of abilities to use between us."
"That's true, you look pretty cool so it can't be a bad thing. Do you have a plan for what to do next then?"
"I do, we need to find the weaker spiders, there won't be many but we must kill them all before attacking the queen. And even then, we'll need to find a way to weaken the queen before we can properly fight her, so make sure to stay hidden and be wary of your surroundings."
"Okay! I know we can do this. What way should we go?"
"The queen will be going to lay her eggs, it's likely that she will be gone for a while, so let's get as far away from her as possible. The smaller spiders are probably down the other end as well, so we have to go that way."