“Come back here, you damn spider,” Nari shouted.

  “Nooo, please, have mercy!” Lily exclaimed as she frantically ran away from her friend, who looked more like a demon than a human at that moment; the spider could have sworn that flames engulfed her from head to toe for a moment, but that turned out to be just the sheer anger of the moment emanating from her pores.

  They ran in circles around the room for a good ten minutes before the girl finally gave up on catching up with Lily, and once she did, she fell to her knees and almost started sobbing. “It’s over, we’re sooo never gonna leave this place alive!”

  Deep inside, Lily felt the same, but she wasn’t ready—or willing—to give up without a fight. In fact, the next thing she did was rush over to her friend, help her stand, and nudge her toward the next room.

  “We have to try,” she said as she pushed Nari forward. “Who knows, we might even pull it off. If someone else managed, why shouldn’t we?”

  “We can’t even be sure if anyone got out of this room alive after that whole strange blood fiasco that the statue did,” Nari retorted, rubbing her eyes. “For all we know, they sucked up all their blood like leeches so hard that they turned to dust!!!”

  And I really thought she was going to say vampires, Lily mused, unable to stop herself from giggling, catching an intense side-eye from the golden-haired girl because of it. “Sorry…” she mumbled under her breath, using her best puppy eyes to look cute.

  But before leaving, a weird idea popped into the spider’s mind, and she swiftly grabbed a piece of the statue she had broken into pieces and lifted it to her mouth, piquing the girl’s attention, which also worked as a distraction from her sorrows.

  “Devour,” she chanted, and right as her fangs glowed purple, she bit into the marble-like material with ease.

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” Nari stared at her in shock, but the more the spider munched on the unlikely snack, the closer she got to a laugh. “I’ll never stop saying that you’re the weirdest monster I’ve ever met,” she said, finally giggling again.

  “You know, it’s not as bad as I expected it to be,” Lily spoke with a mouthful, causing dust to escape her mouth, making her friend burst into a full-on laugh. “Whattt? What’s so funny?” Her white cheeks suddenly turned pinkish.

  “Nothing, I’ve just never seen someone eat stone, or marble, or whatever it is,” the human explained, wiping her tears away. “Why did you do that any—wait!” She suddenly remembered what Lily had told her about the Devour skill.

  “Yup, I wanted to give it a try,” she said.

  Nari’s eyes instantly sparkled up. “Aaand? Anything?”

  The spider sighed and shook her head. “Nope,” she sighed. “I didn’t gain experience from destroying the statue, not even a little treasure, nothing....” she quietly mumbled, huffing and puffing as she threw the remaining piece of the statue she had picked up. “Anyway, we should go now.”

  “About that, are you sure that thing’s not gonna activate again now?” Nari asked, worried to take a step through the doorway, and only stared at her as the little spider advanced nonchalantly. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Simple, unlike earlier, I didn’t feel weaker at all,” she reminded the girl. “Oh, and by the way, we should definitely keep an eye out for anything weird like that in the next room, maybe there will be more riddles or hidden things.”

  Both moved carefully and stopped just short of the majestic statue at the center of the room, whose ceiling was much higher, most likely to accommodate its tallest inhabitant.

  They knew that fighting something that big was almost impossible, since its foot was bigger than they were, and they hoped it wasn’t going to turn into a second round. At the same time, the statue looked different; it had no weapon, instead brandishing a scale.

  Even more strangely, its face was far more detailed than that of the other marble-like statues, as if it were in pain, making the girls wonder whether the massive snake coiled around her arms held some hidden significance.

  “Kinda creepy if you ask me,” Nari whispered, faking a shiver.

  “Agreed,” Lily hastily replied, frowning upon closer inspection of the snake. “It’s like its eyes follow you even though they’re not alive,” she added.

  “Huh? To be honest, I don’t really see it,” the girl sighed, moving around to see if she could catch a glimpse of the illusion, giving up after a bit. “Nope, it’s just you…”

  “Maybe it’s better like that,” the spider giggled, signaling her friend to follow her. “It doesn’t seem like it’s gonna do anything, so we should decide where to go next,” she suggested, pointing at the many possible choices they had.

  The room was not only spacious but also seemed to open in many directions, with at least one door on each side, not to mention the stairs that led to a huge wraparound balcony, which also had as many entryways as the ground floor.

  “We should split and—” Before Nari could get one more word out of her mouth, the little spider cut her off.

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  “Hell no!” she exclaimed, shaking her head as she spoke. “That’s how people die in movies.”

  “Did you say movies?” Nari wondered. “I’ve never heard that word in my life…”

  “I’ll explain to you some other day; let’s focus on leaving this dungeon now.” She offered her hand, nudging Nari to grab it and follow her.

  Though it took them a while, since they proceeded quite carefully, they peeked into all six doorways to no avail; each led to what seemed a dark hallway and toward a bright, almost golden light, as if it were the light at the end of a tunnel.

  Unluckily, there was no clear choice for them; in that moment, it felt like it was up to luck to lead them, yet they didn’t feel lucky at all.

  As they walked around, the human girl banged her fist on the wall a couple of times, in different places, searching for a hollow sound, hoping that maybe the solution to that room was a secret passage of some kind. Needless to say, she always got the same solid, resonant sound in return, until a weird noise broke her concentration.

  “W-what was that?” Nari wondered, trying to knock again in the same spot, yet nothing happened. “Did you hear—”

  Lily cut her off. “I’m sorry…” she said, rubbing her own stomach.

  “You’re already hungry?!” the girl exclaimed, summoning a small sandwich from her inventory and offering it to the spider, which Lily immediately refused. “I’ve got loads with me still, you can eat up,” she added, nudging her to grab the snack.

  “I can’t…” Lily replied, closing her eyes, refusing to even look at it. “We don’t know for how long we’re gonna be in here, so even if you have many, you should keep them for yourself, at least for now.”

  “N-no! What about you?” Nari promptly shoved the sandwich in Lily’s face again, only a couple of centimeters away from her already salivating mouth.

  “I can eat almost anything, so I’ll just devour the first monster we find,” she stated. “There have to be actual living creatures in this whole dungeon other than these statues, I hope…” Though only smelling the delicious panini, filled with meat, salad, tomatoes, and onions, was enough to make her stomach growl louder, Lily had no intention of accepting the food.

  “Okay, have it your way.” The girl finally gave up, but not without reminding the spider that she could ask for food any time she wanted. “So, any clue as to which way might be the correct one?”

  Lily shook her head. Even for her enhanced spider senses, all the entryways looked the same, and even weirder, there was no scent differentiating them, almost as if there was nothing at the end of the hallways.

  “What if we just try a random one?” Nari suggested, to which Lily hesitated for a moment before nodding, since at this point, there wasn’t much else they could do. “What about that one?” She pointed toward the leftmost doorway on the upper floor. “We’re already up here, and since you beat the left statue, maybe it’s our lucky direction…”

  “Uhhh, okay, but I’ll go first just in case,” Lily stated.

  And just as Nari suggested, they approached the leftmost doorway, intending to walk through it, mindful of how the previous riddle had worked, but nothing strange happened.

  There they were, standing in front of the eerily dark hallway, holding hands—well, Nari held Lily’s pointy forelimb—and after a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down their racing hearts, the spider finally stepped inside, followed by her shaking friend.

  They advanced slowly and carefully, watching for sudden surprises, thinking that with each step anything could happen, yet the place remained silent and calm all the way through, with only their footsteps breaking the silence.

  "Almost there,” Lily mumbled under her breath.

  “I can already feel the light’s warmth,” Nari said.

  The moment they finally reached the next room, they hugged it out and fell to their knees, thinking they had made it, but reality was quite different. Lily gasped the moment she looked around. “It’s a dead end…” she sighed, but just as gloom was about to take over both of them, all eight of the spider’s eyes shot wide open. “TREASUREEE!!!”

  “Kyaaa! We’re gonna be so rich!” Nari cheered, clapping excitedly.

  Both launched themselves over the chest as if it were the last thing on the planet.

  “I wonder what’s inside!” Lily couldn’t wait any longer, and the moment she reached for it, the chest opened, sending a massive wave of intense light pouring out, almost as if it were liquid gold yet had no actual substance.

  “It’s so pretty…” the girl mumbled under her breath, watching in awe.

  While the show only lasted for a couple of seconds, the real surprise was right behind it. The moment the lights dimmed, three items appeared from the box, floating right in front of the girls: a scroll, a ring, and something akin to a slim staff.

  “Items?” Lily wondered, but before they could reach for any of them, the shiny objects vanished into nothingness, just as the dungeon’s key had when she first received it as a reward for completing the Hidden Quest. But this time, it seemed they were simply gone in a flash. “W-what happened?”

  “Nooo, it can’t be,” Nari cried out, falling again to her knees. “Why is life always so unfairrr?!?”

  “What if it’s part of a riddle again?” the spider suggested, trying to look at the brighter side. “Maybe the dungeon’s testing us again,” Lily added.

  “Ugh… I hadn’t thought of that.” The human pursed her lips, then smacked the now-empty chest. “We should just go back and try another room then.” She promptly stood up and headed right for the dark hallway alone, stomping her feet.

  If only I could access my inventory. Maybe we haven’t lost anything, Lily thought, trying to force open her inventory just as she did before the dungeon, to no avail, as nothing happened. “Damn it!!!” she exclaimed. “Why are you not—”

  “Kyaaa!!!” Nari shouted all of a sudden, sending shivers down the spider’s spine.

  Without wasting one second, Lily rushed toward the hallway, shooting a web at the end of it to push herself forward, only to crash headfirst into a column the moment she went through the bright light.

  “Kyaaa!” Nari shouted again, this time toward the little spider, frantically waving her hands around. “Are you okay?”

  “W-what the…” Lily slowly stood up, her head spinning around from the impact. “Where the hell did that come—” Instead of arriving on the balcony that connected the doorways, they were now in a completely different room, one they had yet to explore, “from…”