Dungeons Online

"This will be the first boss we will conquer together," Cleo said in a silent voice as if the monster behind the gate could do anything even if it heard them. 

"To be honest, you can just leave it to us," Claudia replied, looking down at the massive spider inside the boss room. "It doesn't look to be anywhere strong enough to be a challenge for me alone, not to speak, all three of us together," she added after a quick look at their next opponent. 

"While that might be true," Cleo responded by taxing both Claudia and Tom with her eyes, "I don't want either of you to end up injured because of random arrogance," she said before shaking her head. "As you saw yourself, you can get injured in this dungeon. And it's not like all you are in your avatar not to be worried about the potential loss in a fight," she added, looking deeply into Claudia's eyes. 

"Tom got injured, and so what?" Claudia rolled her eyes instead. Clearly, she was done just sitting down and listening to this pair of friends. "People get injured all the time. By falling from the bike, by scrapping your knee," she listed out, pointing with her finger at the palm of her other hand on which she raised fingers for every element listed out. "The only difference is that here, we can heal pretty easily," she added before shaking her shoulders. 

"What do you want to say?" Cleo asked, slightly leaning her head over her shoulder. 

'Fuck,' Tom shrugged. While Cleo wasn't here in person and her avatar failed to relay any form of facial expression, the tone of her voice alone was enough to make his shudder. Even without seeing the girl's face, Tom could imagine just what kind of expression she was making. 

And this imaginary picture was more than enough to convince him to step in. 

"Cleo, let's not push the matter," Tom asked, nodding his chin towards the boss. "Right now, we need to fight that guy, not each other," he said, even going as far as to point his spear at the boss. 

But then, something unexpected happened. The boss turned around. On its own, it was nothing to worry about. But with its face now directed straight towards the gate that separated its room from the floor's corridor... 

The boss smiled. 

'Huh?' Tom felt shudder travel down his spine. 'How could a spider smile?' he asked himself, unsure where this feeling that the spider actually smiled came from. 

"That doesn't mean..." Cleo attempted to argue with Tom. As she spoke out, she looked at her childhood friend's face, only to turn silent in the very next moment. "What's wrong?" she asked, instantly turning her head towards the only source of Tom's fright. 

"I just had this weirdest feeling," Tom said before cutting his sentence short. He raised his eyes at the spider, only to shake his head a moment later. 'No matter how much I look at it, there is just no way for it to smile!' he groaned in his thoughts.

It wasn't against the nature of other beings than humans to smile. For example, dogs were known for showing their agitation by wagging their tail. Cats would show their affection, or rather, possessiveness, by rubbing themselves against someone or something. 

But this spider? While Tom wasn't discriminatory enough to forbid spiders from smiling, there was simply no physical way for it to happen. 

Because the spider didn't have a normal mouth, to begin with, making a smile something outside of the scope of its physical abilities!

"Guys, this doesn't seem to be a normal boss," Tom said. Even though this entire thing was nothing but a slight feeling, he had no qualms about reporting it. 

"Are you sure?" Cleo asked, watching how the spider continued to slowly turn around. In a few more moments, it would face away from the gate, making for a new window of opportunity to enter the boss room unnoticed. 

"Do I look sure?" Tom asked instead of replying before shaking his head. "I'm not sure at all. It was just a feeling, but it gives me bad vibes," he explained, gripping his spear a little harder. 

"Well, this is the first floor with those to loot, right?" Claudia suddenly said, pointing her finger seemingly at the boss. But once Tom looked closer, he realized that she was actually pointing at something behind the boss. 

"Right, I completely forgot about it," Tom admitted, rubbing his chin. "Right in time, wouldn't you say?" he asked, looking at Claudia with small sparks appearing in his eyes. 

"Yeah, I'm already excited to see how great they will be," she grinned as she replied.

"How about you guys fill me in?" Cleo asked, unable to follow their conversation. Given how she was at the very front of the group, she couldn't see what exactly her female companion was pointing at. 

"This is the first floor with grade four stones," Tom announced, instantly making a big deal out of it. "For us, it's a ray of hope. Ever since a while ago, the third-grade stones stopped raising our strenght. It's as if... their purity wasn't great enough?" Tom said in a hesitant voice, not sure if this random guess of his was correct at all. 

"There are only a few grade-four stones out there," Cleo said after a short glance towards the back wall of the room. "What's the point of making a big deal about them?" she asked, fully confused. 

'Right,' Tom suddenly realized. 'She doesn't know about it!' he thought, putting his hand at the girl's shoulder. 

"Cleo, listen. It's not about their monetary value," Tom said. While one hundred and seventy thousand per piece of grade four stone sounded like a good deal, it wasn't anything much for people of Tom's family. 

A substantial amount of cash, surely, but not a thing to go to war for. 

Not even ten times that amount would make any change to the family finances, explaining why Cleo couldn't understand their drive towards those stones. After all, even if the Online Hub only shared a tenth of those stones' real value, they still wouldn't amount to much at all!

"You see, it seems that every human can absorb the stones just by holding them in his hand," Tom said before biting his lips a little. "And it just so happens that I have a way to suck even more energy from those stones than one could obtain just by absorbing them," Tom revealed the secret to his rapid surge of strenght without even the slightest hint of hesitation.