The group left the little area we teleported into and began walking forward ever so slowly.

  We figured this Dungeon would contain a whole bunch of snakes just based on the name alone, but we actually haven’t seen a single thing, so we were prepared for anything.

  Well as prepared as we could possibly be.

  Turns out all we had to was start walking and we’d find out exactly what was in this Dungeon.

  And not so shockingly, it was snakes.

  It only took about 15 feet of walking before snakes started slithering out from the two branching hallways.

  Roughly 5 snakes came out of each hallway, and they were of varying colors and patterns…but their sizes…these snakes were flipping massive. Not necessarily in length but in…width? But they were wide. Real wide.

  They hissed loudly as their large bodies moved towards us with real haste.

  Alright, Freddy let’s lock in.

  “Start shooting Aunty!!”

  I guess actually seeing the snakes coming at us surprised her a bit but that shout seemed to jar her out of her stupor and she immediately drew an arrow and fired.

  That shot and my shout to Aunt Renee seemed to also help my uncles lock in as well. I guess the snakes caught all three of them off guard.

  “Aunty, focus on the snakes coming from the left side! You two, protect Aunt Renee!”

  As I said that I dashed off towards the right side with a spear gripped at the ready. Perhaps I should’ve stuck with the sword, but that’s not what I wanted to use. Grandpa’s spear addiction has spread too deeply within me over the years, and I wouldn’t be able to get it out of my mind.

  So, spear it is.

  But…same as the sword, I didn’t actually know any techniques or have any real practice with the weapon. I have enough common sense to know that the pointy part goes into the enemy, but that’s about it.

  Hopefully some real world experience, and that Basic Weapon Handling book should help in that department.

  Neither of which I have right now…another thing I didn’t have was the ability to sense arrows flying at me from behind, at least not while actively fighting.

  Which is why I wanted Aunt Renee to aim to the left side only.

  I’d start fighting on the right, and they could pick up on the left. Simple stuff really.

  But reality is not always as simple as things were on paper.

  At first, I managed against the snakes just fine. They were big, but honestly they weren’t all that fast…and once they rose up from the ground to try and bite at me, it was somewhat easy to stab them at least once before pulling back.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Even if I didn’t kill them with that one stab, it was good enough to at least hamper them significantly.

  And after a couple of minutes…I almost allowed myself to think that this would be an easy Dungeon. Just take our time stabbing all these snakes one by one.

  Plus, when I looked over at my family, they seemed fine too. Uncle Robert and Uncle Terrance were doing a fine job of killing any snakes that Aunt Renee missed or wasn’t able to get to in time.

  Things were fine.

  Until around 30 minutes passed and it finally hit me.

  The snakes.

  They hadn’t stopped coming.

  While they weren’t hard to kill, it was only now that I realized we hadn’t moved up from our location since we started. Then I thought back to the clear condition. We needed to defeat the floor boss, which I’m willing to bet wasn’t going to come out these halls.

  Yet we wasted 30 minutes here.

  Aunt Renee didn’t have a lot of arrows left, my uncles were probably feeling fatigued from all the swinging and stabbing they were doing, and we likely haven’t made any real progress to clearing the floor.

  So what to do?

  Do we make a push into the rooms and destroy whatever is spawning the snakes? Or perhaps we should push them completely and try to get to the boss, wherever it is they were.

  But then what if we were supposed to wait out here until the snakes finished coming and pushing ahead would just get us killed?

  Surprisingly I was still fighting the snakes in front of me just fine, but my mind was slowly spiraling as I thought about our next move from here. It was easy to come up with initial tactics before any fighting began, but in the thick of it? With people’s lives on the line?

  This wasn’t something I was used to.

  And it’s not like I was the official leader of this group, Uncle Terrance or something probably should’ve been the one to set us up…

  …So maybe I should just wa..

  “FREDDY! We can’t stay like this forever! What’s next nephew?!”

  Hearing Uncle Terrance’s shout made me snap my head in his direction and I could see him looking straight at me with nothing but trust.

  C’mon Freddy.

  Stop acting like an idiot.

  Think about it, make a decision, and then commit. We’ll deal with whatever happens after that.

  And I’ve already thought enough about this.

  “Hold it down a bit longer! I’m going to rush ahead and scout the rooms! If I see something spawning the snakes than our next steps will be to destroy whatever it is!”

  “Hurry up! “

  “Be careful!!”

  “We got it!”

  Uncle Terrance, Aunt Renee and Uncle Robert all gave me their respective responses and that was all the acknowledgement I needed.

  It was nice to have family that believed in you.

  Really nice.

  Couldn’t really afford to let them down.

  I cleared the snakes that were the closest to me and then used two surging steps back to back to get past the rest, which wasn’t all that difficult and I probably could’ve done the same thing without the skill active.

  But I needed to be fast…they were going to face some increased pressure for a bit so wasting time wasn’t on the list at the moment.

  Anyway it didn’t take me long to reach the middle of the hallway where it opened up to two separate rooms.

  Snakes were still coming up and I had to kill a few as I stood there, but I couldn’t see much from the hallway so I picked a room at random and dashed inside.

  Honestly it wasn’t all that big and no matter how much I scanned, there wasn’t a single thing indicating that the snakes were even coming from here.

  Then all of a sudden…

  I felt that energy again. The one I figured was mana. It gathered together in the center of the room rapidly and before I knew it a snake simply appeared from nothing and immediately began moving towards me.

  Fuck.

  That probably means we can’t stop them from spawning.

  Then we need to push forward to the boss as quickly as possible and kill it before they pile up behind us.

  Alright.

  We can do this.

  No…we have to do this.

  I rushed back out of the room and activated my skills twice more to reach the position of my family again.

  “How is it?!”

  “Bad news! We can’t stop them from spawning but we have to kill the boss one way or another, so we gotta push up!”

  All three of them let out displeased groans.

  Then Uncle Robert yelled over at me.

  “We’ll follow your lead Freddy, slow and steady or should we try to blitz past them?”

  I thought about it for a moment as I drove my spear through the head of a snake.

  “Slow and steady! Hug the left wall so Aunt Renee can pick up some of her arrows as we walk by!”

  And just like that we began pushing forward in a tight formation while both streams of snakes rushed towards us.

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