In addition to a gargantuan spinneret, The spider-lady had a neighborhood map, which was a fascinating thing. It revealed the locations of every mob on a huge swathe of my map. It was daylight, and this place wasn't too densely-populated.

  I spent a minute looking at that, then got to looting the spiders. They had an enormous amount of demonic sclera, nightmare retina, and spider legs which apparently were alchemical ingredients, and a few gold coins.

  Finally, I stood over Dawa and Norbu. I didn't like the idea of robbing the dead. On the other hand, what gear they had would potentially help me in the rest of the dungeon.

  After a few minutes of staring at those corpses, I decided on some exercise to help myself think. I was sore, but not truly hurting, which usually meant it was a good time to push through the pain.

  Being as I had a ton of dots on the map, I tried aiming off of that. These pitches gave significantly more power based on the quality of my wind-up, so I did the total overkill of bringing my ankle within an inch of my nose, then sent a curveball up and out of the depression I was in, arcing into the city.

  I couldn't really tell if they hit, but it felt good to just do some clean throws, not desperately trying to hurl a knife in some particular spin while leaping under one spider-leg and pushing off of another.

  After about thirty long pitches, the red dot I'd aimed at froze and then began running another direction. Either I'd finally scored a hit, or someone else had arrived. Realizing that I might not be able to see the blue dots of crawlers on my map, I returned to the bodies of the people I'd failed to save.

  "Sorry, guys. I'll say a Christian prayer for you, as it's the only one I know. If I knew what sort of, um, funerary... stuff you wanted, I'd do that.

  After a prayer for each, I finally looted them. Their inventories had way more than mine did, but the other stuff I had to actually take off their bodies. The axe was fine, but it took me a few minutes to work up the nerve to remove Dawa's Resilient Breastplate of Redundant Resilience or Norbu's Robe of Seven Shades of Green and Girdle of Excellent Back Support.

  The breastplate would reduce the chance of almost every debuff from affecting the wearer by 25%, and then grant another 1% chance of those debuffs disappearing every second that they remained. That seemed really good.

  The instant I put it on, I felt sluggish. It took a bit of looking through my interface to find the Encumbered debuff. I put the brestplate in my inventory.

  The robe enhanced a bunch of spells I didn't have, so that went away. The girdle, a broad leather belt with silver studs was simple but obviously useful.

  Girdle of Excellent Back Support

  Laces in the back and makes you look like you're trying too hard.

  +5 Constitution

  I put it on under my Mesh Top of the Midnight Ballroom and holy cow did it give me a snatched waist. I looked like I should have trouble breathing, but I was fine. I scowled, thinking of all the snide, sexual remarks in the AI's descriptions of things. I didn't like that I had this, but absolutely loved how much solider I felt with 5 more constitution.

  As I stepped back from looting them, my foot slipped deeper into the mass of webbing and hit what felt like solid metal. I thought about just leaving, just pretending I hadn't felt anything, but I resisted the urge.

  I pulled up thick hunks of web, hacking them loose with my knife. After tossing a few aside, I realized I could just pull the masses of webbing into my inventory, once I'd cut them loose. Soon enough, I had unearthed Corpse of Crawler Eddie J, Level 13, Killed by Venus Guy Trap.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I stared for a moment, wondering if I was up to digging everyone out, wondering if it was right to. Loot them all, say prayers for them, leave them behind?

  I crouched over Eddie J's corpse. "I'd want someone to have my knife if it helped keep them alive, and I'm gonna hope you'd feel the same. I got back to hacking away webs, getting quicker as I fell into a rhythm of throwing a breaking-ball up to slice one higher, then catch the whole thing into my inventory. All told, I unearthed another two crawlers beneath Eddie J.

  None of them had anything useful for me.

  Prayers said and looting done, fully ready to head out, I thought back on the fight. Towards the end there, I'd really been feeling confident about my surroundings. I snapped the hitai-ate closed again, finding I had a feel for things out to around forty feet. Still not as good as my eyes, but it was far from nothing.

  I opened my notifications and scrolled through until I saw blindsight. I'd level it all the way to 5, and that level had also given me a notification of a special ability. Alert. You can detect the sounds of movement with particular ease, knowing the location of moving creatures far beyond your base blindsight range. Well, that explained why I'd known where all the spiders were.

  Considering how good my high dodge and light on your feet were at high level, I was fairly certain I wanted blindsight to be high as well. More important, though, were the throwing skills.

  For that, I had a plan.

  First, I picked a direction and ran until I found signs of a town, fleeing every mob I saw along the way. Priority number one was still asking others about Lacie. I asked everyone I saw, and I found out nothing.

  I didn't really think I should do anything else while I was there and headed back to where I'd just left. As it was still early, I stopped to fight every mob that could bleed, at one point tagging a crowd of seven fungus-corrupted skyfowl with bleeds before running off to let them die in the distance.

  Just leaving a bleed and running away was far from certain to kill someone. Maybe one in three actually died when I left it. But it was nearing nightfall by then, and I needed to be back in the spider-lady's lair for my plan.

  Sure enough, come nightfall, I had dots picking out almost a hundred snot-rocketeers. From just outside of the trees, cloaked in the oily sink-into-shadow effect, I sent curveballs and fastballs into the sky. I did very little damage, but not quite no damage.

  Eventually, they figured out where I was. Nineteen were already dead by then, and some indeterminate amount were bleeding—I couldn't always see the health-bars of ones I tagged. I ran into the thickest cluster of trees and kept slinging knives.

  As before, the dense foliage overhead largely caught the snot rockets. In time, the snot got so thick it was dripping down, a glob falling on my shoulder. That was the first time one actually hit me, and I discovered that, impact aside, the snot was acidic and burned horribly.

  As I leapt away, drinking a potion, I snatched up leaves to desperately swipe at the acid on my shoulder. My skin was fine. My clothing, less so.

  Looking down at my cinched girdle and mesh top, I had serious concerns. The dungeon had shredded my leggings—what remained barely reached mid-thigh—destroyed my shorts and top, and had now dissolved one of my bra's two traps. Considering all the lewd comments in the descriptions, I suspected there was some impetus towards sexuality, like I was in a dumb chainmail-bikini movie.

  Although Lacie did love anime with chainmail bikinis. Screw this place. I could fix the top later. I had gotten some thread from the stitch-divers, and Mom insisted that women should know how to sew.

  For now, I had a massive swarm of snot-rocketeers to kill. I moved occasionally, not letting their acidic snot eat too far through the branches overhead, but continued to send that Extremely Sharp Knife spinning into the mass of them.

  I tried to cycle through the ones I hit, hoping to spread out the bleed effects, but it was still slow going. As more fell away, the other beasts of the neighborhood approached. Chicken-walkers only, though. The eye-spiders had vanished with the spider-lady's death.

  I sprinted past those, easily dodging through a gap in the tentacles, and practiced a spinning throw I thought would come in handy. If I timed it right, I could pivot on a foot, get enough of a wind-up for the game to give me a fastball, and come down on the next stride without slowing.

  I managed a fastball maybe one in five tries at first, and I slipped once and had to potion as I bounced down the street, but I was getting better.

  In the end, it was an hour to sunrise before I finished wiping the neighborhood out.

  Level 12, and I could feel how much better my pitching skills were getting.