268 Chapter 214: Canyon Dungeon Part 16

While Joshua glanced towards the direction of where the killing intent was coming from he realized that there were no weird protrusions along the wall or any sort of signs that a trap door could be there. Because of the smoothness of the walls in the hallway it was hard to tell when an area was smoothed out by one of the spiders to make a trap door. In the canyon it may have been hard to tell, but wherever there was a spider trapdoor there wasn't any handholds in the area or protruding rocks that would make the place look exactly like the rest of the canyon wall. In the dungeon however all the walls looked the same so it was impossible to tell where the trap door was based off of just visual signs.

The only other way Joshua could think of to tell the trapdoor apart from the rest of the wall would be to walk up and tap on it to see if the other side is a hollowed out space. If it ever got to that point though it wouldn't be much better than offering yourself up as spider food. Luckily for the group Joshua was able to sense the small amount of killing intent through his aura sense and was able to spot out the spider's location. He remembered the feeling of the killing intent from the spider in the canyon and how it was so powerful that the rest of the group was able to feel it, but the spider ahead of them was trying to remain stealthy even if it was going for a kill. It seemed to have honed in on a way to hide its presence to a dangerous degree. It was similar to Cinder in a way from back when they originally found her, although now Cinder could sneak up on any enemy without them being the wiser.

'Alright guys a spider trap is up ahead. I'm guessing you can sense it to right Tank?' Joshua asked through the mental link so the conversation wouldn't alert the spider.

'I can sense it even though it does hide itself well. They seem to be a little stronger than the one we faced in the canyon.' Tank explained with Joshua agreeing with him. Joshua knew that all of the monsters in the dungeon would be stronger than their counterparts in the canyon, but he didn't know how that would be the case when it came to the spiders and snakes. The spiders and snakes from the canyon were already level seventy-nine with four stars so he had a hard time seeing anything but the bosses being higher level than that. In his mind this meant that the ones in the dungeon probably had something else about them that made them stronger while being at the same level.

'Well I'm not sure how strong the creature is exactly so I'll be blocking it's assault with Light's shield before taking action. Once I get out in the open we need to close off its trap door so it can't go back inside. I'll leave that to you Amber.' Joshua explained his strategy. None of them knew what to expect so they decided to keep things rather simple for now.

'Alright I'll create a stone wall behind it once you drag it out of the trapdoor. That should be more than enough to keep it from going back.' Amber replied.

'I guess once it's out we'll stick to our basic strategy since this will basically be a test drive in the end anyways?' Adrian said getting a nod from Joshua in return.

'Alright I'm going ahead, follow behind but not too closely.' Joshua said before continuing his casual walk forward. He made sure that while he was conversing with the rest of the group through the mental link that he would seem somewhat natural in his movements to the spider that could most likely sense the groups approach. He made it seem as if he was looking around the room for any traps before moving ahead once more. This seemed to do the trick since the spider's killing intent seemed to focus in on Joshua as he approached its trap door slowly. He still had his scale blade strapped to his back so that he seemed less prepared for a conflict while the rest of the group was a distance away to make it seem like he was easy prey.

It didn't take long for Joshua to find out if his plan worked in the end. In fact the moment he stepped in front of the trap door two large spider legs shot out and tried to snatch him away. The second Joshua felt the spider take action he released his aura for protection and had a large shield created from Light appear around his body. One of the legs tried to knock Joshua over while the other was going to drag him away, but the shield blocked the first while Joshua side stepped the second.

Before the spider could realize the mistake it made Joshua stabbed his scale blade through one of the large legs that towered over him and pulled with all his strength. With the added power of both Jade and Light along with the boost from Joshua's own aura he was able to drag the surprised spider out of the trap door before it was able to react. The enormous body of the creature was actually a bit bigger than the ones in the canyon. It also had thicker legs and fur around its body in comparison to the canyon spiders. It was still a similar type of spider, but it seemed to be an elite version of the same breed.

Joshua slammed the enormous spider into the wall across from its trapdoor before glaring at the creature that quickly got up and into a threatening position. It glanced towards its trap door, but Amber was already creating a large wall of stone that blocked the area off. Now the spider was out in the open and one of its biggest advantages was taken away from it. The spider seemed angered by this as its killing intent flooded the entire hallway, it turned to look back at Joshua in anger. At the same time Joshua was observing the creature to see what the difference between it and its counter parts in the canyon was.

From what Joshua could tell this creature surprisingly had five stars by its name. It was still level seventy-nine which meant it was in the same tier as a lot of the higher level members of the group so it wouldn't have that extra level of suppression that the bosses in this dungeon tended to have. It explained why this spider was stronger though so Joshua would have to be careful around these creatures. He noticed that Light's shield had actually cracked from the force of the spiders strike alone and that gave him worries for when the group had to take on the boss of this path. If the minions could already crack the shield from Light then the boss could probably break through just about every shield that anyone in the group had.

Before Joshua could think anymore the spider let out a loud shriek and shot both of its front legs towards Joshua trying to pin him down or squash him. Either situation wouldn't be good for him so he instantly had light create a couple of shields in the path of the attacks to slow them down and give him a chance to block or dodge them in the end. The shields were cleanly pierced through, but Joshua was able to dodge one leg while blocking the other with his scale blade. Even so he strained to block the second blow as it pushed him back a few steps even though it was only one leg.

Joshua whistled a bit in wonder at the explosive strength of the creature, but he also noticed a glaring weakness that it had at the same time. There was still blood dripping from the leg he was blocking from when he stabbed it with his scale blade, which proved that these creatures' defenses were rather low along with not having to high of a regeneration factor. Joshua quickly knocked the leg aside while using Heroic shout to keep the creatures attention on him while several spells soared over his head and slammed into the giant spider. He could tell the spells left a powerful impact as the creature roared in pain from the bombardment of spells. Unlike in the canyon there wasn't all that much space for the spider to dash around and avoid the group's attacks. This meant the greatest strength the spider had in open combat was restricted by the environment. In the end the spider was already at a great disadvantage the moment it was dragged out of the trapdoor.

The rest of the close range fighters had made their way over and started to go on the offensive as well. Joshua blocked off any of the spiders frontal attacks with the help of Light since Jade had leapt out of Joshua's shadow and into Amy's shadow. The close range fighters went under the large spider and started attacking its legs or underbelly while the mages and ranged attackers launched attacks that bombarded the giant spider from above. Since the creature didn't have any great healing capabilities it became clear that the fight wasn't going to last all that long. After a couple of minutes of bombardment the giant spider gave out and crumbled to the ground.

They could all feel a surge of experience and smiled when a couple of people in the group that were close to leveling had just gotten enough to pass the threshold. Although the dungeon was rather difficult it was a great place for them to train with the amount of experience they were getting. The fact that there were so many boss level creatures in one place as well was another reason they were leveling so fast. They would need it in the end considering the fact that all of the creatures in the large town would be as strong as if not stronger than the ones they were taking on right now. The biggest difference between the two places however was the fact that the dungeon was a somewhat paced experience while the town would have enemies coming from all directions all the time. They'd need to be even better than they were at the moment if they wanted to get far.

'Well that's one spider down, no doubt there will be many more to come.' Joshua said as he put the body away into his inventory to sell later. For this fight Tank and Cinder were held back just in case any other spiders tried to surprise the group and attack from behind, but whenever it got to the point where they'd be facing more than one spider at a time Joshua would have no problem letting Tank and Cinder take care of one of them on their own.

'These creatures are definitely stronger than the ones that we faced back in the canyon, but they have a huge disadvantage within the confined space.' Isabella said as she thought over the fight. The hall in the end was just a little bit bigger than Tank's full size when it came to height. It was much wider which was why Tank had no problem moving through the area, but that was not nearly enough space for the spiders to be able to jump around or climb the walls. Even Cinder who was smaller than these spiders didn't have enough room in the hall to do everything she liked to do while fighting. This made things much easier on the group.

'Well then we'll just have to use that to our advantage.' Adrian said with a smile as he cleaned off his blades before sheathing them.

'Alright will stick to the same strategy going forward. If we run into more than one I'll make sure to let you guys know before hand and we'll get prepared for them.' Joshua explained as everyone quickly agreed before the group once again got on the move. After the first fight it took them a while before they ran into another spider, but when they did the fight went fairly similar to the first run in with a spider and they quickly got adjusted to facing the creatures. After an hour of exploring the path they had run into four different spiders that all quickly fell to their assault. Things were going a bit too smoothly though so Joshua knew things were about to change.