The passageway widened, but not into a cavern. Instead, it became a twisting maze of open spaces that wove through a jumble of meandering walls, huge piles of stone, and a ceiling that dripped with a constant pattering of water.

  I checked the water first, but it wasn’t acid. Just plain water. Faint clicking sounds, like clawed feet scuttling over stone, confirmed something was in there with me. Carefully, I explored deeper, following the meandering path that wound around, over, and through the stony obstructions. No red dots populated on my mini map.

  Senses alert, I crept forward until I reached a flat, open spot where the space started opening into a wider cavern. A final giant pillar of rough stone blocked the way, splitting the space into three passages. To the right and left, wide open space circled the central pillar, while a narrower, winding passage wormed through its center to the far side.

  “Yeah, I’ll totally crawl into that,” I grunted. Something about that central passage prickled the hairs on the back of my arms. Better to circle around and inspect it from all sides. Maybe I could lure out whatever was hiding in there.

  Without warning, and before I could take a step to go around, the air filled with a cacophony of chittering, and a wave of dog-sized bugs flowed around both sides of that central pillar. There had to be hundreds of them, from beetles to scorpions to huge centipedes. Behind me, more sounds filled the mazelike passage I’d just cleared.

  Where did they all come from? Whatever misgivings I’d had about that central path evaporated in the face of that charging horde. I sprinted forward into the narrow opening and rushed along its winding path that wove through stone walls polished as if they’d endured centuries of moving water.

  Hordes of wildly chittering bugs poured in behind like a massive living wave. Bugs raced along the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling, their scrabbling feet and clicking mandibles loud.

  But not echoing.

  I skidded to a halt just before emerging into a wider cave, every sense on high alert. The sudden danger had sparked an instinctive reaction to run, but why hadn’t I just triggered Immolation and killed all those bugs?

  I spun to look at the onrushing tide, mere seconds behind me. The sight again filled me with an urge to flee, but this time I was paying attention and I sensed that urge originated from outside of me.

  “You son of Amadeus,” I breathed as I triggered Spellseer’s Gaze.

  The area lit up with rainbow lights, centered on the horde of onrushing killer bugs. As soon as I focused on the feel of the mana with Mana Sense, it confirmed my suspicion.

  Illusion, and some kind of subtle compulsion, barely a hint so soft even with my heightened resistances, I’d missed it. Now that I was paying attention, the compulsion was easy to ignore. The illusion had been almost perfect, complete with terrifying images and sounds, except those sounds weren’t real, so they didn’t echo in the cramped passageway like they should.

  Ignoring the tide of bugs that would wash over me in a couple seconds, I spun back to face the small cave, and gulped. Bare inches from my face, a web of softly glowing strands as thick as my finger blocked the entire cave opening. Another illusion had concealed the web, designed to make it look like the path was clear.

  Whatever this monster was, it was clever. What a perfect trap. Spook your victims into running headlong into your invisible web, and while they were momentarily caught, they’d be vulnerable.

  Which meant the monster was lurking just inside the cave, probably clinging to the wall just above the entrance. I grinned. Clever monsters usually gave more experience.

  Pulling a big pack of elephant steaks from my inventory, I retreated a few steps, then tossed the meat forward. It struck the web and the illusion snapped off, revealing the true strands, gunmetal gray and probably very tough.

  Instantly, a hideous black, bulbous body dropped from above and pounced on the meat still vibrating in the web. The disgusting thing was almost as big as me, with 8 long, hairy legs, capped with three-clawed pincers that seized the meat and spun it into the webs, wrapping it up.

  “Gloom Spider. Level 37. Rare. Wrapping itself and its victims in top-quality illusions, the Gloom Spider pounces with surprise before paralyzing its prey with poison so it can feed at its leisure and slowly eat its still-living victims. The excruciating death can last for weeks, as it allows its victims to regenerate between feeding.”

  The spider froze after grabbing the meat, realizing too late that it’s trap had been reversed. It rotated toward me, still standing in the passageway, locking on with all of its black, many-faceted eyes.

  “Hi. How are ya?” I called, waving with one hand while I extracted my new Tidal Nexus cube from my inventory and activated it.

  I’d been hoping for a good chance to test the hydraulic power of the device. The description had been a bit vague, and the only clone cube I’d managed to drop so far was in still water. That water had been filled to bursting with ropes of condensed mana, though, so hopefully I’d get the cube to do something.

  The Gloom Spider twisted its fat, hairy body around, pointing its rear spinners at me, but it moved half a second too late. The face of the cube closest to me extended up at an angle like a narrow pipe, while the side facing the spider expanded into a much wider nozzle.

  Water gushed down into the narrow pipe on my side, just appearing above the pipe and pouring in. It rushed through the cube, then exploded out the far side like a super-pressurized hose. The stream of water blasted into the bulbous backside of the Gloom Spider and catapulted it away. It lost its grip on the anchor line it had been suspending from as the water jet flung it across the small cave to impact the unyielding stone wall with tremendous force.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The Gloom Spider shrieked, a high-pitched whistle of agony as its 8 legs scrabbled uselessly at the air. Its back was pressed against the stone and I held the jet of water aimed right at its midsection. The pressure pinned it and the focused jet of water sliced through its body with shocking ease.

  I adjusted the angle of the box in my hand and the beam of pressurized water cut up along the Gloom Spider’s body like a band saw. In seconds, the monster fell away in 2 pieces, its legs still twitching. I deactivated the Tidal Nexus and it returned to its basic cube shape.

  “Wow. Was that just from the pressure of the water in the lake?”

  “Indeed,” Cyrus said. “Clever thinking to use the lake. That tool is most often used with pressure from fast-moving rivers, but the lake is serving as a massive mana conduit, so the pressure built in the clone quickly.”

  Eva interjected. “Congratulations, Lucas! You have defeated Gloom Spider level 37. For unlocking the secrets of hydraulics, you receive a gold DaVinci loot box.”

  “Da Vinci? I thought he was a painter.”

  “He was so much more than that,” Cyrus laughed. “He was an engineer, scientist, sculptor, and more. He studied hydraulics extensively and invented numerous machines and devices that utilized early hydraulic principles.”

  “Oh, yeah, he was also one of the historical figures in Assassin’s Creed 2.”

  “Great game. I spent 45 entire nanoseconds totally addicted to it,” Cyrus said.

  “Black Flag was my favorite, though.”

  “Sailing an old-fashioned ship is less exciting when you can teleport.”

  “Give me another teleport spell and I’ll test the theory.”

  “Nice try.”

  I thought so. I decided to forego Harvest for now, since I still had plenty of uses left in Immolation, and I hadn’t gotten to use Sapper’s Charge yet. That one sounded really fun.

  I strode into the cave to loot the spider, but spun at a series of clicks and scrapes. I expected to see another spider, but boy was I wrong. High up on the cave wall above the entrance, a tiny figure was webbed to the stone.

  It wasn’t a spider, but a woman with long, curly golden hair, wearing a silver jumpsuit that glowed with light. She couldn’t be more than 6 inches tall, and even had gossamer, rainbow-colored wings flattened against the wall by the sticky web.

  “Fulvia. Level 58 fairy. Class: Flux Weaver. This is a member of the game-world support staff who is not supposed to ever visit the surface. The fact that you’re seeing her means someone’s career is about to end.”

  “Congratulations, Lucas! For finding a member of the inner world support staff, you receive a platinum Lucky Stiff loot box.”

  The glowing box appeared in the air in front of me, but I barely noticed as I studied the little fairy. The box flashed and disappeared, leaving 2 items floating in the air.

  “Upgrade scroll. Linguasight enhanced to include all languages used by the game world support staff.”

  “That’s handy, but I thought it was supposed to translate most of the multiverse known languages already.”

  Cyrus said, “Most of them, yes. We excluded these other languages so if anyone accidentally overhears nearby workers, they sound like crickets or birds.”

  The second item was a heavy gold coin stamped with a strange, complex symbol.

  “Fairy Friend token. Anyone carrying this token is welcomed among all fairy folk and will not immediately have their mind wiped.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, dumping the token into my inventory. This dungeon dive was definitely taking a strange turn.

  “Are you going to just stand there gawking, or are you going to help me down?” the fairy asked, and for a second, gawking was indeed all I could do.

  The tiny, beautiful woman didn’t have the high-pitched baby voice I had expected, but spoke with a sultry timbre that reminded me of Gal Gadot. It was so incongruent with her appearance that it took me a second to respond.

  “Oh yeah, sorry. I didn’t expect to meet a Flux Weaver in this cave.”

  She sighed and spoke in a tone of resigned defeat. “Of course he’s got advanced Identify. Can this day get any worse?”

  “How did you get trapped up there?” I asked as I considered the problem of how to get her down. She was over a dozen feet above the floor, stuck to the wall. I could jump that high, but there was nothing to hold onto.

  “That’s a very long story, one I will not speak here. I got careless once. I will not do it again. Please hurry. I’m already in so much trouble, your baby human mind can’t even imagine.”

  I jumped straight up, easily reaching her trapped form. Pulling one of the silk ribbons I’d picked up in Abbie’s parlor of depravity, I slapped one end against the outer edges of the spiderweb. It stuck fast and I gripped the ribbon, bracing my feet against the wall just below the web to hold myself up.

  “I’m not a baby human.” Up close, her glowing form and perfect little face were dazzling. With my free hand, I extracted my Hot-hand spear and tested the fiery edge of the blade against one of the spider strands. With a whiff of smoke, it parted.

  Nice. In seconds, I cut Fulvia free. As soon as the last strand was cut, she shot off the wall, her rainbow wings a blur of multicolored light. The bits of web still clinging to her jumpsuit melted away.

  “You couldn’t melt the web while you were stuck?” I asked as I dropped back to the floor.

  “I’m not allowed to interfere with actions of any living being, but once you freed me, my suit’s automatic cleanse function removed the webs.”

  “Huh. What is a Flux Weaver anyway?”

  She buzzed closer, her expression hard, her sultry voice dropping even lower. “Don’t ask me about anything. Better yet, forget you ever met me. It’s not safe for you to delve into this.”

  “You work in those maintenance areas hidden behind the fabric of this world, don’t you?”

  She gasped, flitting back, before zipping closer again, her tiny brows furrowed. “How do you know about that?”

  “I’ve been through a couple different cracks in our reality and explored them.”

  She recoiled, looking around as if expecting something to leap out and eat me. Then she flitted closer again, scrutinizing me, and a chill passed over me, similar to what I’d felt from Noctarus while he scanned me, except this one completed in the blink of an eye.

  Her eyes widened and she spoke fast, her tone both worried and thoughtful. “You’re a tier-1 human? Golden eyes too. That many titles so soon? You’ve seen the inner world, and you’ve touched Nexus energy!”

  “Yeah, it’s been interesting.”

  “We can’t talk here,” she said, and she looked scared. Cyrus had warned me stepping through those rips in the world was dangerous. It looked like he’d downplayed how serious a breach that was.

  Fulvia flitted up to me and leaned forward to kiss my cheek. A shock like a jolt of electricity raced through me, and something deep inside resonated with it. I blinked to clear my gaze as the cave winked to darkness and back several times.

  When it cleared, Fulvia hovered next to a tear in the fabric of the air. Unlike the other rifts I’d stumbled across, this one expanded into a metallic door. Fulvia pushed it open and flitted through. On the far side, a room with softly glowing walls beckoned.

  “Come on,” she hissed, beckoning me forward.

  This was getting really interesting. I paused just long enough to trigger loot on the spider’s corpse, then jumped through the door. Instead of the violent punch in the back from an invisible hand like other times I’d stepped through rifts, I felt only a slight whooshing feeling, like air was sucking through with me.

  Fulvia slammed the door closed behind me and visibly relaxed before turning to me and placing fists on her tiny hips. “Don’t talk about the inner world outside. Ever. Understand?”

  “I hope you’ll help me understand a bit more. I’ve stumbled into a couple, glimpsed a few of those screens on the walls, but they usually disappear.”

  “You’ve seen the monitors?” she looked thunderstruck.

  Cyrus suddenly interjected. “Fulvia, who’s been a naughty fairy?”