Dungeons Online

'It's hard to believe it,' Tom thought, slowly approaching the spider's carcass. While he still felt a bit nauseous, this unpleasant feeling was just an annoyance now, rather than a serious limitation to Tom's abilities. 

Yet, he didn't dare to get closer carelessly. 

"Shouldn't it mostly disappear by now?" Tom asked out loud, not taking his eyes off the spider. He already had his moment of joy. Now it was time to be vigilant again. 'Who knows what kind of surprises this monster has in store,' Tom thought, tightening his fingers over the handle of his spear.

'Damn, at moments like that, the weight of the weapon really adds up to one's confidence,' Tom scorned in his thoughts, leering at his own lack of courage. 'That was a tough fight, but to think I'm still shaken by it,' Tom thought, looking deeper into his inner state. 

Then, he shook his head. It wasn't the time to immerse himself in his thoughts. For now, they had to inspect that spider. 

"There is something flashing in the middle of it," Cleo said, noticing the same peculiarity that caught Tom's attention a moment earlier. 

"Just remember to be careful," Tom warned the girls as the three of them approached the carcass. Or rather, approached what through all the logic and reasoning should be a carcass. 

Roughly ten steps away, Tom couldn't even see the corpse as the spoils of war, but only as a potential threat. 

"It's really dead," Cleo said after shortly inspecting the body. "We didn't see it from the door side, but it doesn't have a belly, to begin with," she added, pointing her hand at the ceiling-facing part of the monster. 

Maybe due to the explosion, the spider's carcass ultimately rolled over to its back, with its massive yet sharp legs all pointing upwards. Given how massive it was, Tom was unable to peer into its guts earlier. Only by getting a big higher by basically climbing the monster's side, he managed to look at the wound created by the explosion. 

'Now that I look at it, it's more of a spider around the wound rather than the wound in the spider,' Tom thought. He noticed how the entire underbelly of the monster was nowhere to be seen. Instead, its empty shell was filled with a highly repulsive mass of molten flesh and guts. 

Yet, it was in the middle of that mess that the golden glint came from. 

'Doesn't it looks like a...' Tom thought before shaking his head. 'No, that would be too much of a coincidence,' he thought. Tom's expression turned grim as the potential meanings behind such coincidence flashed in his mind. 

"Aren't you going to pull it out?" Claudia asked, quite naturally using the words that even slightly misheard could be taken for quite a provocation. "I mean, that shiny thing," she added with a grin, proving that she was aware of what she almost said. 

"Yeah, yeah, it just seemed a bit strange to me," Tom replied, using one of his hands to shield his mouth and nose while reaching with the other forward. 

His body was the best choice for how to pull that shiny thing out. Whatever it was, the mess inside the spider was filled to the brim with magic. While not as intense as during the explosion earlier, just like with nuclear reactors, the fact that using water serving as coolant wasn't great just because it was way less lethal than entering the core directly. 

And Tom's flesh was currently the one most capable of withstanding huge amounts of mana, given how he was reborn from it over and over again just a few moments ago. 

"Huh?" Tom's hand stopped just above the surface of the mess. 'I did die, alright?' Tom thought, shaken by the sudden realization. 'Why am I not going crazy right now, then?' he asked.

Tom's head exploded as if someone had hit it with a mallet. It wasn't physical pain, one that pills could kill. It was a massive, mental scare. 

'Am I even a human if I do not fear death?' Tom asked himself, looking down at his extended hand.

"Tom? Are you all right?" Cleo asked, quick to notice the change on Tom's face. 

"Ah, sorry, got distracted again," Tom replied, shaking off this sudden, devastating thought. He bit his teeth together before pushing his hand forward. 

The instant his skin touched the magical mess, it felt as his hand would burn down. For some reason, Tom was able to see the state of his hand despite the fact of this mass not being see-through at all. 

'It's not burning,' Tom thought, watching how his head reached further and further ahead. 'It's melting,' he added in his thoughts, holding back the scream of the torturous pain he was going through right now. 

'Wait, does everyone go through this kind of thing when they get item drops?' Tom thought as his fingers finally grabbed the shiny thing from the spider's insides.  'Or am I just an idiot?' Tom asked himself, pulling his hand back as he looked towards Cleo's avatar. 

The item drops were insanely rare, but they still existed. With the insane number of Dungeons Online players, one could buy them easily from literally any Online Hub. Not because it was easy to encounter a loot-dropping monster, but solely because of how many players would constantly enter the game and grind. 

That's why Tom not only never encountered such a monster in his long career in the game, but he also has yet to meet anyone who did. As such, it was no wonder he had no idea how to react in this situation.

'Now that I think about it,' Tom rubbed his chin. 'Isn't the Online Hub simply controlling all the loot?' Tom thought, analyzing this new idea. 'If they could track one's progress inside the dungeons and filter out the item drops out of one's vision, then proceeded to just walk in and collect them...'

For a moment, this thought froze Tom's mind and body alike. But then, his eyes finally wandered on the item that he pulled out of the spider's insides. 

And just like Tom thought, it was an item. But what was suspiciously convenient, it wasn't a sword or a bow, but a damned, golden spear!

"Isn't this lucky?" Claudia asked, noticing what was in Tom's hand. Then, her face twisted in an ugly grimace. "Tom, your hand," she said, pointing her hand up. 

"Huh?" Tom looked away from the spear towards Claudia's face. "What's wrong with it?" he asked. But as he looked at his hand again, he realized what the problem was. 

Thanks to his earlier experience of death and rebirth, his perception of pain also shifted. And while he was constantly aware of the insane pain tearing his melted-down hand apart, he simply accepted it as a part of his new self. Rather than crying in pain and despairing for it to end, he simply acknowledged it... and moved on. 

"Ah, I don't think there is any reason to worry about it," Tom added after a short while when he noticed a small movement of his flesh. As the two of them spoke, his hand continued to slowly repair itself. The parts that were gone would simply use Tom's mana to regenerate before mending back into a perfect shape. 

It was a slow process, but a constant one. 

"Still, isn't it quite surprising?" Cleo asked, proving that her mind was on the same track as Tom's. 

"Yeah," Tom replied, looking at his spear once again. 

Its golden tingle disappeared in mere moments after pulling it out of the mess of the spider's former insides. Without magic flowing through it, the spear itself appeared to be quite ordinary. 

It was a roughly two-meter-long piece of artwork. It was made from dark, slightly reddish materials. Its entire shaft had a strange, circular pattern all over it as if someone wrapped it all with some kind of rope instead of drilling the patter into the material the spear was actually made from. 

Its tip didn't look extraordinary either. Made out of a grey type of metal, it had small rifts along every blade's cutting edge. 

'I wonder if I can conduct magic through it,' Tom thought, unwilling to just assume something he believed to be a pretty basic kind of quality. 

As he thought, so he did. But as Tom channeled his mana into the weapon, it quickly started to change. 

The golden light that Tom observed previously didn't appear this time. Rather than that, the shaft of the spear darkened to a full black while the rifts of its blade suddenly started overflowing with a greenish, almost toxic-looking aura. If not for a bit of the blue hue in color, Tom would be too scared to actually touch the product of his own magic!

"It is too great for it to be a mere coincidence," Tom said, looking down at the magnificent weapon in his hand. "Unless someone made sure we would encounter that spider," he added, looking towards the dungeon's corridor, which could potentially lead them to the person Tom suspected to be responsible. 

'Still, if it was that giant's work,' Tom thought, shaking his head. It was almost depressing to be in the middle of the dungeon, doing exactly what some kind of other party wanted him to do. 'Then I will have to beat it up once we return,' Tom thought, recalling how dangerous that spider was. 

And while he couldn't be angry at the fact that the dungeon could potentially cause some injuries or even death, there was one thing that he couldn't forgive. 

'By setting this fight up, you endangered Cleo and Claudia,' Tom thought, tightening his hand over the spear. As if responding to his emotions, its aura intensified a bit.. 'If you set it up, I will be sure to make you pay for it,' Tom thought as his face darkened.