Valda and I dodged in opposite directions, narrowly avoiding being squashed by the spider queen's massive body. Her name was actually Elise, the spider queen. That's what it said above her head. Well, Valda used Rush to get out of the way. I jumped away and slid on the ground on my stomach.

  I scrambled to my feet and ran as fast as I could to get away and around her. I looked up at her to make sure I could see what she was going to do next. If I got flattened by her, there would be no health potioning myself back to health. I'd be dead.

  She turned her way towards me instead of Valda. That was bad. I kept running until I saw my stamina bar drop below a quarter of maximum and then I took a stamina potion. I went back to running and fired off a couple shots into her side, puncturing her body.

  They took her health down by two slivers. Not nothing, but not much either. I reloaded and took shots at her smaller, but still large, upper body. Her human half was much larger than human size. The bullets went wide. One hit her lower body, and the other went into the ceiling.

  My flintlocks weren't accurate at long range. I expected this, but I still had to test it. Smoothbore gun barrels didn't have a reputation for accuracy.

  I kept running, but she turned towards me and reared back to smash me. Her giant spider legs were too fast. I probably couldn't get out of the way in time, but I'd try. I ran directly away from her as fast as I could without looking back anymore.

  My lungs burned as I struggled to get out of the way. I could feel a slight rush of air going by me as her massive frame came closer and closer to landing on top of me. And then a loud bang echoed through the cave. I heard Elise's body thud thunderously against the ground, but I was still alive, still conscious, and without pain.

  She didn't land on top of me. I rolled over to see Valda standing in front of me, her mace stuck in a massive dent she had created in Elise's side, when she smacked her away from me.

  How did she get to me so quickly? She had been on the other side of the massive beast. Had she used Rush underneath the behemoth to get to me? Not only that, she must have used the Shield Ally ability.

  Otherwise, there was no way she could have actually knocked back such a huge monster. I looked down and realized that Valda hadn't come out unscathed. Her foot was stuck under the massive spider lady's body. Valda used an Impact Strike to smash her mace into Elise's body just above her foot.

  This caved in that section, so Valda could remove her crushed foot. Valda popped a cork on a health potion and drank it. I heard the cracks and pops of her bones resetting and knitting back together. She winced from the discomfort and pain.

  "How dare you mar my flesh!" Elise said.

  Valda grabbed me and picked me up. Elise began to scuttle towards us, trying to slam into us, but Valda used Rush a few times and we were far out of reach. Valda slammed a stamina potion.

  "Gwen!" Valda said. "Snap out of it! Don't gawk! Fight!"

  Oh yeah. I forgot I could still fight in this position. I reloaded my pistols and fired them into Elise's side. Another two slivers of health down. Looking at Elise's health bar, Valda and I had reduced her health down by a quarter.

  I noticed we were headed straight for a wall. We weren't strafing to keep ourselves from getting cornered. At first, I thought we were screwed until I came up with an idea.

  "Run up the wall!" I said. I handed her a metal stake. "And then jam this into the wall!"

  "You have a plan," she said.

  "I do," I said.

  "Good," she said.

  We reached the wall, and she ran up it and jammed the stake into the wall. She held onto the stake with one hand while holding onto me with the other. I quickly handed her another stake.

  "Jam it in a couple feet away from the first, but at the same height!"

  She lifted me and put my hand on the first stake so we were both holding onto it. This freed up her hand to jam in the other stake. As soon as she did that, I pulled out sheet metal and screws. I Manufactured a ledge that attached to the stakes.

  We both pulled ourselves up onto the ledge. I pulled out more metal and stakes and made the ledge wider and longer. I looked back to see Elise trying to grab us with one of her spindly legs.

  "Duck!" I said.

  We both ducked as Elise raked one of her legs against the wall, trying to knock us off the ledge.

  "Now smash as long and as deep of a hole in the wall as you can!" I said. "Don't stop until we can climb inside it!"

  The caves on the way here were a combination of carved out dirt and stone wall. The wall we were on right now was dirt, which would allow us to dig easier. I pulled out a shovel and handed it to her.

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  Quickly putting away her mace, she grabbed the shovel and immediately performed a downward Impact Strike that carved out a huge chunk of wall. Then she did it again and again and again until we could barely climb inside the wall.

  Elise tried to reach into the hole and grab us, but when she did, I blasted her leg twice, making her recoil back. She tried with a different leg and I shot her two more times. She wasn't giving up, though.

  Instead of reaching this time, she pulled a leg back and slammed it into the wall. She was aiming to smash us with her leg, but she missed. Dirt rained down past our hole.

  Valda continued to dig the whole time. She brushed the dirt past her as she dug deeper and deeper. She was surprisingly efficient. As she did that, I pulled out more metal and screws and nails and built a reinforced metal shelter around us. I left a relatively small opening at the bottom to push dirt out of and a hole about shoulder height to shoot out of.

  Elise tried to smash the shelter, but it held up and I just kept reinforcing it with more and more steel bars and plating as Valda got deeper and deeper into the wall. With the help of stamina potions, in almost no time at all, we had a five foot wide, five foot deep alcove in the wall.

  I set up support structures with wood beams along the walls and across the ceiling. Elise started slamming her entire body against the wall, shaking the earth and causing some dirt to fall down on us, but for the most part, we were fine.

  Then I began the real work. I shot through the hole at Elise. The hole was too small for her to reach her giant leg inside. I got off about ten rounds before she realized that I was just trying to slowly whittle her down.

  She ran away from the wall at that point and just waited on the other side of the room. She knew we'd have to come out at some point. She was going to wait us out.

  While that extended the fight, it wasn't the worst thing that could happen. Like the necromancer, she was also level 10. Unlike the necromancer, she didn't regenerate her health. She had a much larger health pool, but she didn't regenerate, which meant we weren't on a time crunch.

  I had time to craft my way to victory. I need more space to work though. A lot more. So I joined in with another shovel and helped Valda continue to widen and deepen the space without collapsing or destabilizing the shelter or support sections.

  We just dug deeper and deeper and then went wide until we had a ten-foot diameter circular room that was attached to the initial five feet by five feet tunnel. I supported the new room with more beams until I was sure it was secure.

  Then I pulled out some blankets and crafted a huge sleeping bag and pulled out a couple pillows for us to rest our heads on. We were just plain tired, regardless of how many stamina potions we had left. It had taken hours to dig the room.

  It was unfortunate that Manufacture didn't seem to have an excavating feature. I could build small structures like support beams and arches and shelter walls, but I couldn't dig with it.

  Valda snuggled up to me and wrapped her arms around me. I was surprised at first, but it felt natural and I didn't dislike it, so I didn't say anything and we went to sleep.

  When I woke up, I took a dark sight potion and checked outside through the peephole. Elise, the spider queen, was nowhere in sight. She must have been in a part of the cave off to the side of where we were. It was a large cave and I couldn't see the entire thing from our little hidey hole.

  I looked around to see if I could see the Culling Party anywhere. Maybe a pile of broken bodies from where they tried to fight Elise, but there was nothing from my viewpoint.

  It had been several hours since we went to sleep. There was no way they were delayed that long by the pile of junk I dumped in the tunnel. Was there? No, they were probably just hiding and waiting. They probably knew we were still in here and were just waiting for us to die.

  Although how long would they really wait? I felt well rested, which meant it had to have been at least six hours, if not more. I guessed I wouldn't know until we defeated Elise.

  After some brainstorming, I figured out what I wanted to create to beat her. A cannon. Yes, I'm stealing ideas from pirates again, but don't get mad at me. Pirates didn't invent cannons. They don't have a monopoly on the concept. And before you tell me that cannons are too advanced for me to be able to invent, you might consider that cannons were invented before guns.

  It would have to be a relatively small cannon. It looked like in order to get a shot on Elise, we'd have to take the cannon out onto the ledge to get an angle on her. If the cannon was too heavy, it would break the ledge and crash to the floor.

  Valda woke up when I was getting out the iron bricks, wood and steel to make the cannon. The chunks of iron would be shaped to create the body of the cannon, and the wood and steel would be used to make the carriage, which was the wheeled apparatus that allowed the cannon to be moved and aimed.

  Valda took a dark sight potion and came over to me. "Hey. What you working on?"

  "A thing called a cannon," I said. "It's basically a big gun that fires a ball of iron at a target. We're going to be making a relatively small one. One shot should be enough to take out Elise."

  "I'm not going to ask how you know this stuff," she said, "but know that I know you're keeping something secret from me."

  I put my hand on my forehead and massaged it. Should I tell her? Should I not? It would be pretty messed up if I kept it a secret. Besides, I trusted her not to tell anyone else.

  "Ok," I said. "I'll level with you, but you have to promise not to tell anyone else. Not even Brent or Delia."

  "I promise," she said. She nodded her head.

  "Ok," I said. "How do I say this? I remember my past life. I was reincarnated in this world with all my memories intact. I used to live in a different world that had more advanced technology from this one, but no magic."

  "I've been drawing from my memory of that world to make these inventions. Eventually, I'll run out of stuff to draw on, but for now I'm going to use every advantage I can to survive and protect the people that I care about."

  "Oh," she said. She seemed to think for a moment. "That makes sense. You do seem to know a lot more than most people about a lot of things. Especially for someone your age. And you're not normal by any means. Sometimes it seems like you're in another world."

  "Yeah," I said. "I think about my past life sometimes."

  I would tell her about my reincarnation, but I didn't need to tell her I had full access to the system, unlike her, who had partial access. It didn't seem necessary.

  "I think I get it," she said. "Do you miss them? Your old family? Your wife and kids?"

  "I do miss my family sometimes," I said, "but I didn't have a wife and kids. Nothing ever worked out that way."

  "Oh," she said. "Well, maybe it can work out for you in this life."

  She smiled. She didn't seem to be talking about herself in this instance. She was just saying in general, whether that be with her or not. I didn't know if I wanted kids, but a spouse would be nice.

  "Thanks," I said.

  I pushed those thoughts away for now so I could focus on the task at hand, creating a cannon.