My body charged into the dining room, a long staff in hand.
The spiders gathered in front of the exit…
Just like I thought they would.
Several spiders skittered toward us high up on the ceiling.
Not high enough! We swung once, twice, three times… and they were out of here!
The swarm was almost upon us.
We swung, legs and gore going everywhere.
Undeterred by their losses, the swarm surrounded us.
I planned for this, too.
My body pole vaulted over them like a gold medalist and tagged the corner.
I let out a cheer.
The spiders pulled back toward the exit, regrouping.
More wall crawlers came.
I grinned.
My body swung. Once, twice, and strike? The last had left the smell of wood in the air.
I looked at the staff… or the half of one left. We discarded it.
"Plan B," I called out, knowing the words didn't matter.
My body charged toward the other corner, slid under a table, and lifted.
The table flipped, and we had a new flyswatter.
As the spiders finished gathering in front of the exit…
The table came down… Again and again.
One of the legs broke off, the table cracked, then broke down the middle.
Still, there were spiders scattered about everywhere.
For a moment, the way to the exit was clear. We could have escaped.
My body didn't want to escape; it wanted to exterminate these pests.
Individual spiders started to scurry at us.
We stomped them flat.
More and more individual spiders came, not quite swarming us.
We stomped a retreat, touching the other corner.
The wall climbers were back at it.
"Plan C!"
My body reached back… and only then did it realize we still had the broken table legs in our hands. Wasting precious moments, it threw the legs to the side and reached back again to grab the hunks of wood we had prepared.
"You could have just thrown the legs!"
My body didn't care; throwing legs wasn't what we planned.
Pitching wooden fastballs was. We obliterated the spiders from the ceilings and walls.
The number of spiders had been greatly reduced, yet they seemed unaffected by their losses. Did they even care so many of them had been slaughtered? More than half lay squished about the room. If a human army had suffered such losses, their morale would have been destroyed, and most survivors would have fled. Why weren't these spiders?
We retreated to one of the corners opposite the exit as I studied the spider's retreat back to the door. Why did they do that?
I got my body to wait until they regrouped and started skittering toward us as a group.
I walked us to the other corner.
They retreated again. A few individual spiders ignored this and had to be knocked from the ceiling and crushed, but never an overwhelming number.
Why were they doing that?
I had seen this behavior before, but now, with most of them dead, I had been expecting a change in the behavior… and they weren't.
In video games, monsters or mobs of monsters were given strict orders to adhere to. 'Use physical attacks until reduced to half health, then teleport to platform X, laugh, and throw lightning bolts at enemy spell casters. At a fourth of your health, teleport to the highest agro DPS and attack with lightning weapon attacks.' Knowing these patterns, at the appropriate times, spellcasters can stop DPS and switch to magical shields while everyone else continues to attack, and the tank will watch for the second teleport so he can grab the aggro back.
These spiders were doing some of that predetermined behavior, but not the rest.
Squish, squish, squish. My body continued the parade of slaughter, stomping from corner to corner, constantly resetting them.
And before, when we were poisoned… they just let us retreat. Why didn't they follow and finish us? If they were hungry, why didn't they? As far as I could tell, they hadn't even left this room.
Squish, squish. My body stepped to the other corner, and I watched them reset again.
It didn't make sense. They stopped us from going in that one specific direction even when hardly any were left. Why, if not for food?
Squish.
What was I missing?
We looked around the room. The floor couldn't even be seen through all the ichor and spider parts. Nothing moved.
Where had they all come from? We had to have killed twice as many as we'd ever seen.
We walked out of the exit and checked each of the store rooms. They were the same, and there were no spiders there either.
I was missing something.
Would they respawn? They hadn't. We had left the room and returned to a damaged, gore filled room.
Ready to run, we went back in—no new spiders. The ichor and spider parts were still there, and the room was in complete disarray… No.
A section of the room was still untouched right by the exit…
My body picked up a stool and flipped the table closest to the exit.
A spider, as massive as a dog, crouched low, its glossy, hairy carapace shimmering in the light.
It lunged, flying at our face.
My body jumped back; then the spider just stopped and fell out of the air.
A short chain ran from it to a metal band around its abdomen. It hissed - a sharp, unnatural sound that sent shivers down our spine. Its hair shimmered, shifting colors to match its surroundings.
My body didn't wait. We slammed the stool on it with a roar before it could vanish entirely.
The first blow cracked its carapace; the second caused it to stop moving. We hit it several more times, leaving no doubt it was dead.
The spiders hadn't been protecting the exit; they had been protecting their queen. Since when did spiders have queens?
Worried there might be more, we flipped the next table. Under it were several small webbed bundles. We squished them, too, then cut them open. Each contained a dead rat drained of fluids.
Under the last table, there was nothing. No more spiders, no more webbed bundles. Just some bits of metal and colorful stones… It was…
It was money—various denominations of coins, along with gemstones. Was this supposed to be a reward for killing all those spiders?
In a game, I would expect such a thing. This didn't feel like a game.
Still, it was something.
We could have used a weapon, some armor, or even food. Coins were almost worthless because we had nowhere to spend the money and didn't even know what any of it was worth. I knew the treasure would be valuable somewhere, so I tossed it all into my backpack.
Speaking of rewards…
"Status screen!"
Name: Toll. Origin: Otherworld Gamer. Class: Rogue level 2. Race: Troll Cursed Halfbreed - Stage 2. Medium humanoid. AC: 12. Health: 17 of 17. Strength 15, Dexterity 11, Constitution 15, Intelligence 11, Wisdom 10, Charisma 11. Saves: Dexterity +2, Intelligence +2. Feats: Skilled. Proficiency Bonus: +2. Skills: Athletics +7, Acrobatics +2, Insight +2, Investigation +2, Perception +2, Persuasion +2, Stealth +2, Thieves Tools +2, Video Games +4. Class features: Expertise in Athletics and Video Games. Sneak Attack +1d6, Thieves Cant, Weapon Mastery, Cunning Action. Racial traits: Darkvision 60 ft., Keen Smell, Regeneration of Proficiency Bonus + Constitution Bonus per 6 seconds, Multiattack, Natural Attacks - Bite, Claws. Natural Armor of 10 + Constitution modifier. Languages: Common, Thieves Cant.
Nothing had changed. Not even our health.
That didn't make sense. We had killed way, way more spiders this time.
We had only taken a few steps before my body returned to the kitchen to drink our fill of water again.
A wonderful surprise lay in the sink: a tiny fish, a little larger than a minnow.
My body swallowed the fish, scales, and all before I mentally processed its appearance.
It tasted oily and, well, fishy. It was delicious, but then so was the rat, at least the parts that weren't hair and bones. The fish did almost nothing to sate his hunger. Was there a lake or river full of them?
We drank our fill of water and then washed the spider's ichor and guts from his skin and hair. I didn't know what the poisonous parts of them had been, but he didn't want to find out.
Once my body was as clean as it could be without soap and rags to scrub with, we left.