We replenished our dark sight potions before we ran into more spider people. We took them before entering the cave, because, like most dungeons, it was dark. The Culling Party opted to use torches.

  I gave Valda a bunch of rare stamina potions, so she could use her abilities without having to be conservative with them. I, on the other hand, made sure to keep mana potions at the ready.

  We ran into more spider people as we continued forward. These gradually became more and more elite. It started where one room added archers, then the next room added armored enemies, then the next room added mages who shot a few different spells. They were the slow spell, the firebolt spell, and the gust of wind spell.

  They engaged me with their ranged attacks, and Valda with melee fighters, which was terrible strategy. You're supposed to aggressively target ranged with melee and melee with ranged. That puts the enemy at a disadvantage, because they aren't well equipped to deal with the attacks.

  The way they did it just put us on equal footing, which gave us an advantage because we were far more prepared. We weren't as high level as them. They were level 8, and Valda was 6 and I was 7. We were just better prepared thanks to my crafting skills.

  All our armor and weapons were uncommon quality, and the best they had were some common quality armor. Combined with our prodigious use of potions and their lack of strategy, we stomped all over them.

  If they had attacked me with melee fighters, I would've been toast. I had no hand to hand skills to the point that I didn't even carry a melee weapon. That would have to change soon, though.

  Even the pirates whose battle prowess and preparedness I idolized only used firearms as supplementary weapons. Their main weapons were cutlasses.

  That aside, I held my own. Like the arbalest, reloading my flintlocks took several seconds, but I could reload one while using the other one. Every shot was a one hit kill. With my weaponry being so advanced, each shot did so much damage it overwhelmed the hp totals of these level 8 enemies.

  That said, they were no pushovers. I got burned by firebolts, slowed, and pushed every which way by wind. I got hit in the legs and arms with arrows several times. One even pierced my gut. But I took a rare health potion and recovered instantly. The arrows would get pushed out of my body when I took the potion, like my body itself was rejecting the foreign object.

  It was a similar, but less severe, situation with Valda. She got slashed and stabbed every so often, but they were never life threatening, because she had far better dodging skills than I did. Her dexterity was 7 and mine was 4, which explained the difference in our dodging abilities.

  She also did incredibly well at taking down enemies that were two levels above her. While she didn't have an overpowered weapon like my flintlocks, she had abilities she could use to make her more effective in a fight that I simply didn't have access to because I wasn't a combat class.

  She used her Impact Strike constantly, smashing skulls, spines, and legs. She used Evasive Maneuvers as soon as the cooldown period was over, to instantly dodge deadly attacks.

  When Evasive Maneuvers was on cooldown, she could still use Rush to get out of the way of an attack, but she more often used it to close distance. And then her disarming strike knocked so many weapons out of enemy hands that I would have laughed if we weren't in so much danger.

  As you'd expect, she used up her stamina like crazy. I wasn't kidding about making her a pack of stamina potion that she could just constantly sip out of. I just didn't have the technology yet to do that.

  Every couple rooms we cleared, we had to stop so I could synthesize more stamina potions for her. And more mana potions for me. And more health potions for both of us. We also made sure to stay stocked on dark sight potions. We only needed one every half hour, so we didn't have to worry about that as much.

  She finally leveled up to seven. Her dexterity went up to 8. Her stats were now strength (8), dexterity (8), constitution (7), wisdom (3), intelligence (2), charisma (3).

  Then she gained a new ability called Shield Ally. I activated Analyze and it opened a window that said:

  Shield Ally: Allows the user to block attacks that target a companion and redirect all damage to themselves if the block fails.

  "Nice! Yay!" Valda said. She turned around and gave me a thumbs up. "I got you, partner."

  Apparently, she was aware of the abilities she gained from leveling up, but she never mentioned a system view and she never acted like she was looking at something invisible, like I did. I'd have to ask her how that worked later. I still didn't think she had access to the system like I did, but the system fed her the need to know information.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Thanks!" I said.

  She dodged a spear thrust that went past her face and slammed her mace into her attacker's chest with an Impact Strike, caving it in and killing them. She never stopped smiling. We finished up the enemies in that room and took a break.

  I got out some jerky and bread for both of us and we ate. I started a fire in the room, because it would make it significantly harder for the Culling Party to find the exit. The exit wasn't just straight ahead of the other tunnel like you'd expect it to be. It was off to the side.

  And the room was large enough where the smoke would gather at the ceiling and Valda and I would be gone before the smoke got down to where we were sitting.

  I wanted to cook something in advance of heading into our next dungeon and see if keeping it in an infinity bag would keep it preserved, hot, and ready to eat when I pulled it out.

  I was even going to put it on a plate with utensils and everything. Two plates, I mean. One for me and one for Valda. I didn't need to accidentally end up on the other end of a spaghetti noodle from her. Not that I was against kissing her. The noodle thing just seemed awkward.

  "So, what do you look for in a romantic partner?" I asked.

  "I don't know. I've never had one," she said.

  "Ok," I said. "Then why do you want me to be your romantic partner?"

  "Do I have to have a reason?" she asked.

  "Uh, not necessarily, but usually people have reasons for doing things," I said.

  "Maybe I don't know what my reason is then," she said.

  "That's fair," I said. This conversation was going nowhere. "Ok, uh, then, what do you want out of this relationship? Maybe that's a better question."

  "Oh!" she said. "Yeah, I understand that question more. I want hand holding and kissing and someone to show to my parents to get them off my back about the arranged marriage they keep trying to set me up for."

  "I also want you in my life for the foreseeable future. You're reliable, helpful, kind, fun when you want to be, and super smart. What more could I possibly want or need?"

  "I guess that's a fair point," I said. "So that's why your parents disowned you? You didn't want an arranged marriage?"

  "Pretty much," she said. "The thing that hurts the most about it is they thought—especially my mom—that they were helping me. I never had much luck getting a relationship before, and they thought it would be a perfect opportunity for me to meet someone who wanted to be with me."

  "But he was just so gross. He wanted things from me—physical things—with no time to get to know each other or even see if we liked each other. He didn't push it when I said no, but just knowing that he felt entitled to those things disgusted me. I wanted nothing to do with him."

  "I couldn't tell my parents why. I didn't want to create a scandal between our families that had been friends for so long. So I just told them I didn't like him, and that wasn't good enough for them."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  I put my hand over hers, hoping it wouldn't be taken as being too forward or presumptuous. She turned her hand over and grabbed mine, squeezing it. I squeezed hers back. We smiled at each other and I just noticed she had the most beautiful gray-blue eyes.

  "Thank you," she said. "You're so gentle, Gwen. I like that about you."

  "Thank you," I said. "You're very strong, emotionally. I like that about you."

  She didn't respond. We just stared into each other's eyes until she started to lean in and I followed her lead. We kissed briefly and pressed our foreheads together. She had soft lips. We laughed. It was so relieving. I almost forgot we were in a dungeon running for our lives from people who wanted to kill us. Almost.

  "I like you, Gwen," Valda said.

  "I like you too, Valda," I said.

  We stayed in that moment until I finally had to break it.

  "We should probably get going," I said. "We don't want the Culling Party to catch up with us."

  "Right," she said.

  I threw another log on the fire for good measure. We got up and headed out of the room just as the smoke from the fire was starting to reach us.

  Finally, the tunnel opened into a massive room with a large spider queen at one end of the room. It was the boss room. There were two other tunnels leading to this room. They must have been from the other tunnels from before. They all led to the boss room.

  "Why, hello, my next meal," the spider queen said.

  She quickly scurried up to us on massive legs. She was many times larger than us. She was black with glowing green bioluminescent markings on her body. She had multiple sets of eyes on her head, and her upper body had the same colors as her spider body.

  "How did you get here without being carried, cocooned by my warriors?"

  "Yeah, sorry about that," I said. "We couldn't find the bathroom, and then these guys attacked us. We defended ourselves and, well, we're here."

  "You killed all my warriors?" she asked.

  "Well, no," I said. "We just killed all the ones that were down that tunnel. The other tunnels should have some still left in them."

  "You filthy humans!" she said. "You'll die for this!"

  She reared up on her hind legs, preparing to attack.

  "Wait!" I said.

  She stopped.

  "What?" she said.

  "Really? That's how you're going to play this?" I said "We're the bad guys? Nobody forced you to kidnap people from their homes!"

  "We didn't kidnap anyone!" she said. "You delivered people to us as 'sacrifices'. We thought they were criminals sentenced to death. We thought everything was fair and equal. We don't want a feud with humans anymore than you want a feud with us."

  "Oh," I said. I connected the dots. "What did these humans look like?"

  "I don't know," she said. "You humans all look the same to me."

  "Ouch. That's a little offensive, but I'll let it slide," I said. "How many were there? Were there five of them?"

  "Oh, yes," she said. "There were five. Always five. And always the same ones. I could tell by their clothes. They always wore the same clothes. Disgusting."

  "Yeah, I guess you could say that's a little gross," I said.

  It was as I suspected. It was the Culling Party who had delivered the people as "sacrifices." There were five members in their party. They were probably planning to do the same to us.

  "Ok," I said. "I figured out the issue. Those people have been murdering humans by giving them to you as 'sacrifices'. Those people are bad. I'm sorry we killed your people. I didn't realize not all monsters are evil, and that's on me."

  "I appreciate your apology," she said, "but I must still seek to avenge my fallen children, or I'm a bad mother. And I am not a bad mother!"

  "I didn't say you were!" I said.

  "Now die!" she said.

  She reared back up on her hind legs to attack and Valda and I reached for our weapons.