V2Ch5-Through the Looking Glass

As James passed through the opening, the alerts kept coming.

[Dungeon entered! You have arrived in Dungeon: Anansi’s House!]

[First human of Earth-73 to enter Dungeon: Anansi’s House!]

So at least my System Pioneer bonuses will be active, James thought. For whatever a ten percent boost to everything is worth. I could be forced to fight something leagues beyond my abilities, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it except bemoan my fate, even with a ten percent boost .

“Um, could you put me down?” James asked quietly. “I can walk on my own.”

He’d gotten his first look at his surroundings. Somehow, despite this place being located at the bottom of a black void beside a cliff, the golden web had led into what looked like a vast African savanna. He had never visited the continent, and he was embarrassed to realize he only recognized what the general landscape looked like from some old cartoon movie he’d watched as a kid.

“We have a little ways to go, chicken-legs,” Afudohwedohwe said. “I doubt your scrawny human muscles could keep up! Be glad I have a fair number of hands and can spare one to carry you.”

“Fine then,” James said. “My name is James, by the way.” He didn’t like not being in control of the situation, even to the point of not doing his own walking, but he could see where they were probably going. There were some buildings in the distance. And rather than walking miles to reach those buildings, it probably was best for him to just recover his Health and Stamina as much as he could.

But that was assuming James actually planned to complete the brothers’ test as promised. That had not been his real plan. If Afudohwedohwe never put him down, he would never have a good opportunity to escape. Not until he was all the way in the middle of that apparent village.

The brothers made good progress, moving almost at a running pace across the savanna.

“Still wish you were walking, human?” Afudohwedohwe asked as he ran.

James gave a noncommittal grunt. My name is James, he wanted to remind the spider-headed brother. And he was also mildly surprised that a figure with a pot belly could move this quickly. But then again, Afudohwedohwe was the son of a god. Best not to comment on the ‘human’ remarks, and he probably shouldn’t be surprised by anything either of them could do.

The village quickly moved into view, earth and wattle-and-daub buildings painted in brown and white hues with thatched roofs. It was frankly similar to what James had always imagined a traditional West African village would look like, with the exception that the buildings were much larger, a hundred feet tall or more, and there were fewer of them. There was also some furniture outside, chairs and tables.

I shouldn’t be too surprised, I suppose. Big house for the big guy, but I suppose he doesn’t have too many guests over to the inner sanctum. I imagine I would enjoy my privacy, too, if I were a god. And he keeps some furniture outside because he can probably control the weather in here.

“Alright!” Afudohwedohwe said, dropping James to the ground. “Time for your tests.”

“Uh, don’t I get any recovery time?” James stalled. “My Mana and Stamina are both pretty low after the way I found this place.”

“Fine, human,” Ntikuma said condescendingly. “Look, we’ll even feed you. ‘Ey, Ma!” He called those last words out. There were no windows, only openings in the walls of the houses, and the sound seemed to carry. James saw movement within the largest of the structures.

“Our Ma is Pop’s favorite wife,” Afudohwedohwe murmured proudly to James.

He braced himself to see some kind of monster. Instead, a tall, beautiful woman with African features emerged from the house. She had long, thick, curly hair held in a yellow band, and she wore a red, green and yellow patterned dress.

“What do my sons need?” she asked.

Right, I guess I forgot a little of my mythology, James thought. Anansi liked human women, I guess.

“Some boiled yams for our guest, please, Ma,” Ntikuma asked with a smile. “He is weary, but we need to test him.”

“You don’t want to let him sleep a bit first?” the woman asked. “And he looks so scrawny, all skin and bones! Maybe we should fatten him up a bit before you test him.”

I only look skinny next to your pot-bellied son! James thought incredulously. But he said nothing. Stalling was good. Her taking the time to cook would mean he’d have a little more time to recover from his injuries, regain Stamina and Mana, and plot his escape.

It was a big savanna he’d have to cross to find the dungeon’s exit again, but he thought he could do it if given a little time. The brothers hadn’t been that much faster than he was when he made the effort. He just needed to find a way of distracting them.

“Please, Ma,” Ntikuma said. “We want to test him right away, so he can see Pop as soon as possible if he’s the right one.”

“As you prefer,” she said with a shrug.

She swept back into the house, and James couldn’t help but notice how gracefully she moved. Her walk was almost a dance, with a grace and rhythm that he’d never been able to match on an actual dance floor himself.

Now, what to do while she’s cooking, James thought. But a moment later, his jaw dropped.

“This was all I had in the kitchen,” Anansi’s wife said apologetically. She carried a massive bowl in one hand. It looked like a big salad bowl to James. The kind used to serve food to a whole table of people.

“That’s plenty, Ma,” Afudohwedohwe said. “We don’t want to spoil him.”

Ntikuma kissed their mother on the cheek and took the bowl from her hand.

“Thanks, Ma.” He set the bowl down on a table and gestured for James to pull up a chair. He saw that the bowl was full of boiled yams covered in a stew of some sort. The dish smelled extremely rich.

“Uh, thank you, ma’am.” James bowed his head at the spiders’ mother.

Then he sat down, and although he was very conscious of the eyes on him, he dug in.

The food was delicious, and as he ate, he found he was ravenously hungry.

The more of the stew he consumed, the more he wanted. And he noticed something strange happening. He checked his Health, Stamina, and Mana bars, and they were all refilling rapidly. He still hadn’t made a study of how quickly he regained those resources in any precise detail, but he knew this wasn’t normal. It had to be the food.

So he kept eating, and he pushed escape to the back of his mind for the moment.

Before he knew it, James had finished all of the food, despite how large the bowl had seemed at first glance. And all of his resources were completely full. The pain in his ribs and nose that he’d been successfully ignoring since he’d met the brothers had completely disappeared. He felt better than fully healed.

“I love a young man with a healthy appetite,” the woman said approvingly. She walked over to James and rested a hand on his head. “You boys don’t be too mean to the young man, now.”

Am I in an episode of Dragon Ball? James thought wryly. One where Son Goku gets to hang out with the gods, eat their food, and complete their tests? Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking of escaping. Maybe I’m going to get a big power-up out of this!

“Up and at ‘em, human!” Afudohwedohwe said. “Complete the test successfully, or we’ll eat you!” He sounded annoyed. Maybe Afudohwedohwe is jealous that I got to eat all of his Ma’s cooking? He could have asked for some.

“Alright,” James said, rising and brushing himself off. Without realizing it, he’d been a slightly messy eater, and there were bits of yam on his clothes. “My name is James, by the way. Now which one of you do I have to fight?”

He got into a fighting stance, fists raised like a boxer’s.

The two brothers gave each other a look. Ntikuma’s face showed bemused surprise.

“This isn’t that kind of dungeon,” Ntikuma said finally.

“You wouldn’t want to hurt us delicate spiders, would you?” Afudohwedohwe added.

No comment, James thought. He kind of would like to hurt them if he thought he could. They were imposing random requirements on his visit to Anansi that the Spider God hadn’t alluded to in their encounter.

How much experience would the son of a god give? Are they really fragile enough that a human could actually hurt them? He doubted it. They had seemed plenty strong when Afudohwedohwe had to carry James across the savanna. It was a feat James could accomplish well enough himself, now, in truth. But they were at least strong enough that it was strange to think of them as ‘delicate’ in any way.

“No, Anansi is a god of wisdom, tricks, and storytelling,” Ntikuma continued. “We will test your capacity in two of those three areas. First, you will follow us to the maze.”

James swiveled his head around, looking for where a maze might be.

“This way, human,” Afudohwedohwe said, shoving him from behind.

The two spider-people escorted him to a large, square hole in the ground that wasn’t noticeable until the three drew close. There was a stone stairway descending straight down.

So it’s going to be an underground maze, then, James thought. Fascinating. Makes me glad I’m not claustrophobic.

“Get ready,” Ntikuma said. “I’m going to blindfold you and take you to the center of the maze.”

“Just a moment,” James said. “I need to mentally prepare.”

“We don’t have all day, human,” Afudohwedohwe said.

“My name is James,” James repeated, slightly annoyed. “Don’t call me ‘human’ unless you want me to call you guys spider-monsters. I’m not just some random human.”

“Fine, whatever-your-name-is,” Ntikuma said. “Hurry up and finish your preparations.”

James resisted the urge to repeat his name to the brothers yet again, and instead closed his eyes.  He thought of how he would solve this problem. A maze should be simple enough. He was good at mazes on paper at least. But there’d probably be a time limit.

He opened his eyes again. “What’s the time limit for the maze?”

“If you find your way out at all, you can color me impressed,” Afudohwedohwe said.

“Half an hour,” Ntikuma answered, shooting an annoyed look at Afudohwedohwe.

Who knew how complex the maze would be? Maybe half an hour was an impossible time span to complete it in.

Time to cheat. The perfect method had occurred to him.

He used Skill Fusion, and he combined Natural Camouflage with Silk Production. He set the duration of the fusion to an hour and a half, just in case he ended up needing it for longer than he expected. The result was Camouflage Silk Production, which the System defined as follows:

[Camouflage Silk Production: Develops a set of organs that can be used to naturally and nearly invisibly produce silk of great tensile strength. Silk is extremely difficult to perceive unless produced in large quantities and layered. Silk can be manipulated via mana. Some forms of manipulation may compromise the silk’s quasi-invisibility. Silk quality can be improved by the infusion of mana or other energies. Consumes caloric energy and Stamina. Consumes additional forms of energy if the user attempts to produce silk beyond a certain threshold without a break.]

Perfect.

James bent down, pretending to adjust his shoes. In fact, he secured an invisible silk thread to the top of the stone steps that led down into the maze, and he began producing more silk, to trail behind him as he moved through the maze.

“Ready!” James declared.

“Finally!” Afudohwedohwe exclaimed. “Even for a human, you’re slow! Definitely not the clever one Pop was waiting for.”

James held his tongue and looked to the older brother.

Moving his legs more quickly than James could completely track, Ntikuma quickly spun a silken blindfold, which he then pulled over James’s eyes. Then he scooped James completely off the round and began walking, first down the stairs and then into the maze. James found that he quickly lost the ability to keep track of all the twists and turns that Ntikuma took.

The only thing he really noticed was how musty the maze smelled. Like a basement that had sat empty for a century. Or one that was infested with a massive population of spiders.

James never stopped producing thread and trailing it behind him as they went. The trail remained unbroken, he was almost certain.

And it would have to be enough. Ntikuma never slowed, and he seemed to walk for a long time.

Finally, James felt the spider-person’s grip change, and then Ntikuma lowered him to the ground.

“Count to ten aloud, and then you can remove your blindfold. Good luck, human! If you fail this test, my brother will probably want to eat you afterward. Try to at least make it near the entrance, though. Otherwise our cousins who live in the maze might get you!”

Oh shit, is this a mix of combat and Intelligence challenge? James questioned. I’m pretty sure I can get out of here following the thread. James still felt the tug of it on his wrist.

Aloud, he asked: “Am I expected to fight while finding my way out of the maze?”

“Only if you take a long time,” came the voice impatiently in reply.

“Fine,” James said. He would be quick, then. “One.”

He began counting to ten. There was a sound of scuttling that seemed to come from every direction at once, and James couldn’t detect which way the spider was moving as he left.

Pretty good ability he has, James thought grudgingly. My superhuman senses couldn’t tell where he went at all.

He finished the count, and he removed his blindfold.

[First Challenge: Escape Anansi’s maze before time runs out!]

[00:29:59]