Human fingers clung to the core through some sort of magic that Velik didn’t understand, but he could see the mana coursing through the monster’s body and out to the stone. Whatever skill it was using, it was secure in its perch, unlike Velik.

It was definitely a flesh beast, the first unambiguous one he’d seen since they’d entered the dungeon. The champion elite he’d killed had some similarities, mostly in its malleable body structure and its incredible regeneration, but it had lacked the same cobbled-together-out-of-spare-parts look true flesh beasts had.

The spider flesh beast clung to the dungeon core. Its limbs spread out in every direction from a trio of torsos stuck together, one that thankfully lacked a head. Each arm was about four feet long, making the whole thing close to ten feet from tip to tip, with several dozen contact points for whatever skill was holding it stuck to the core in defiance of gravity.

This is going to be rough.

His first thought was to try to break its grip and throw it into the pit as a method of easy victory, but how exactly he was supposed to accomplish that escaped him. While he could hold his weight with a single finger, fighting without being able to move was an entirely different proposition. At best, he had a few seconds of leaping through the air before his cloak was completely drained of magic.

Retreat was an option—maybe his best option—but at that point, they might as well destroy the core from a distance. The monster wasn’t that strong, certainly not higher than level 30, and would probably be easy to kill in a single strike if he knew where exactly to hit it at. Unfortunately, flesh beasts didn’t really have weak points, and hitting it with a [Dread Lance] while clinging to the stone by his fingertips was just as likely to kill Velik as it was to take care of the monster.

All of that flashed through Velik’s mind in the fraction of a second it took the flesh beast to take a single step forward. Its limbs worked in concert to hold its position as it picked its way through the creeping vines that covered the backside of the dungeon core and it closed the distance in the matter of a few steps.

Velik’s spear uncurled from his arm and fell into his hands, its tip shaped in a wide half-moon blade perfect for severing limbs with a thrusting strike. Without the ability to set his stance or put his weight into a strike, he wasn’t able to effectively drive the flesh beast back, but he did take its leading hand just behind the wrist.

New flesh started to uncurl from the wound immediately, fast enough that it would regrow its entire hand in a minute at most. As was always the case with flesh beasts, it barely even seemed to notice the loss. The mana flowing down to the stump seemed to almost sputter as it lost the body it was tracing its way out of, which seemed to Velik to mean that it wouldn’t be able to cling to the wall with the stump.

One limb down, seven to go.

He had no idea how he was going to cut the hands in the back off, but the idea suddenly seemed a lot more viable than it had a few seconds ago. He might not even need to hit all seven remaining limbs, either. If it couldn’t hold its weight up with just three or four, it would fall off without him needing to do anything to get behind it.

Then the spider, not at all slowed by the loss of a single hand, barreled into him. Velik wasn’t sure how much it weighed, but he was in no position to wrestle with it. His wrist flexed as he tried to keep his grip, but the spider had to weigh three hundred pounds. Between that, its solid grip, and the momentum of its charge, his fingers scraped across the stone and slipped free, throwing him into open space.

Velik’s hand flashed out and clamped on the flesh beast’s arm. He swung in a wide arc, the monster forced to support his full weight in an abrupt turn of events. He gave it a wicked grin as his spear shortened in his grip to let him stab up into flesh.

“Watch the rope!” Torwin yelled.

It was getting tangled up and twisted, the slack shortening with each rotation of Velik’s body as it wrapped around him. Pretty soon, Torwin would either have to let go or Velik would come loose from his precarious perch. Best to kill this thing first.

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He stabbed viciously, ignoring the flesh beast’s trunk to target arms and hands in an attempt to pry it free. Black blood rained down on him freely, splattering against his face and chest, but that did nothing to slow him down. The monster tried to shake him loose and clawed at him with a free hand, but it didn’t have the strength to actually hurt him.

The rope ran out of excess length and pulled taut against his stomach. Undeterred, Velik bellowed, “Pull me in!” and dove his spear into the flesh beast’s center mass. The tip spread out into something wide, flat, and dull inside the monster’s chest. Velik was jerked backward, and the spear caught on a set of ribs.

For a split second, the spider flesh beast held its grip. Then it came free and dropped into a free fall. Flailing limbs slapped at him, trying to secure a grip, and mana surged up through fingers to cling to his arm despite not actually curling around the limb.

The spear looped around Velik’s wrist and his hand snaked to his belt to draw his dagger. A moment later, the blade flashed through the monster’s wrist and it fell free into the abyss. He thought the battle was over there, but the flesh beast had many hands, and it grabbed hold of a trailing coil of rope with one of them.

He was thirty feet below the dungeon core and being pulled in the wrong direction to get back to it. If he cut the rope, he could probably [Air Walk] back up there. The monster would fall when Torwin let his end go, and that would be the end of that.

No, that’s stupid.

They slammed into the side of the pit together, and Torwin let out an explosive grunt as the weight settled on him. The rope slipped a foot when he took a step forward, but then things settled as much as they could while man and monster desperately grappled at the end of it.

Velik’s dagger worked wildly, stabbing the monster over and over while its hand scrabbled against him. After a few seconds, whatever passed for a measure or rudimentary intelligence in its body finally realized that it couldn’t hurt him, and the flesh beast started trying to disentangle itself. It still had five hands left, and all of them grabbed hold of the stone wall to pull free of the rope.

“No, you don’t!”

Velik twisted to reach the monster. When that failed, he spent a charge of [Air Walk] to shove him after it, his spear already snaking back down his arm to line itself up. It went cleanly through the flesh beast, pinning it to the wall while Velik grimly hacked through the limbs that were still capable of holding it up. When it was down to the last one, it slipped free and disappeared into the darkness below.

He scrambled to put his weapons away and free his hands to help him scramble up the side of the pit while Torwin pulled. It only took a few seconds to reach the top, and a few more to unwrap himself from the rope. “That was an unpleasant surprise,” Velik said.

“Did you get the kill notification?” Torwin asked as he peered over the edge into the darkness.

“Nope. Either it’s still falling or the fall didn’t kill it. Neither would surprise me.”

[You have slain an arachnid flesh beast (level 31).]

[You have been awarded 1 decarma.]

“Never mind. It’s dead now.”

“That’s great, but we’ve got a different problem,” Torwin said. He held up the rope, revealing a stretch that had started to fray. “This isn’t safe—well, less safe than it already was—to use again.”

“As long as I don’t fall, it’ll be fine,” Velik said. “So, I just won’t fall.”

“Don’t be stupid. You gave it your best with the tools you had. There’s no shame in it not working. Sometimes, we don’t get what we want and have to settle for less.”

“True, but this isn’t one of those times.”

Before Torwin could argue, a chunk of stone that had to weigh half a ton fell off the dungeon core. They both watched in silence as it disappeared, followed swiftly by two more boulders. Cracks spread through the stalactite overhead, showing where new sections were about to break off.

“That’s not normal, is it?” Velik asked.

“Not at all. Was the flesh beast connected to it in some way?”

Neither had an answer to the core falling apart before their eyes.

* * *

The thing had underestimated the intruders, especially the one with the spear. Despite its best efforts, it couldn’t manipulate the core into doing what was needed to get rid of them. It had done its best to mitigate the damage it was doing to the core, but it was obviously a lost cause at this point.

Rather than carefully withdraw its influence, it ripped itself free. One tendril at a time, it pulled back from the core, which immediately responded by jettisoning the corrupted core segments. The fact that the core would kill itself cutting away the parasitic influence wasn’t going to stop it, either.

That was actually part of its plan. If the core died, the dungeon would collapse. With any luck, it would end up far, far away from the intruders. It would be helpless, but odds were good something far weaker and less dangerous would find it. Then it could take whatever that was over and start again.

Another tendril retracted. Another piece of the core fell away. The dungeon shook around it.