[table] [row][cell][h2]L O R A L I E & S H A R O D[/h2][/cell] [cell][right] 7 days and counting to floor collapse Floor 1 Viewers: 0 | Followers: 0 | Favorites: 0 [/right][/cell][/row] [/table] [hr] Loralie stays bent over the corpse of her friend for several minutes. Sharod didn’t know Jack or Diane well. Sure, they’d been at a party or two together, but he had always just kind of orbited Loralie, and they always did their own thing. Between the static in her ears, she hears the mysterious dungeon voice providing instructions on a ‘tutorial guild’. The gory lower half of Diane’s body nearly curdles Sharods stomach, so he takes a few steps away from Loralie and moves down the hall. Just far enough to peek into the next room. He finds that the hallway comes to an end and splits into a left and right path. It’s with this knowledge that he returns to his friend. “Lor- I get the feeling we need to get moving.” He grits his teeth, and moves to help her up by her elbow. She tears her arm away from him and nearly snarls at him. “We can’t just leave her here!” Sharod closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I know- I know- but I’m most concerned with keeping [b]us[/b] alive at the moment. If we get to safety, we can try to come back for her.” He knew he was lying, but they had to keep moving. Loralie finally lifts herself from the ground.The knees of her pants are stained a deep burgundy, and her eyes aren’t far behind. He turns and without another word, they walk side-by-side into the dungeon. Each turn leads to another hallway, and each time, they choose the left path. All right turns lead to Diane. She repeats that over and over, trying to sear it into her brain. It starts to get musty as they continue. The air is a lot like the dampness of a leaking basement. She thinks she can taste mold in the air. A skittering sound echoes off the walls from up ahead and Sharod’s arm shoots out to block her from walking further. “Sharod if you don’t knock this off-” the skittering gets louder, and that’s when the black forms of three golden retriever sized spiders come out of the darkness. They’re heading right for them. One of them rears back, and jumps at Sharod. Without thinking he forms a fist and punches the incoming spider in an uppercut fashion. The beast flies upwards, hitting the ceiling with a crack. The other two slip past his guard, low and fast- attacking Loralie. She kicks hard, following through until the spider crunches against the wall to her left. Both injured spiders make a sort of squealing sound, and the last one takes the opening to latch its fangs around Loralie’s wrist. The pointed ends pierce into her wrist, and spray of blood pumps out onto her shirt. “Oh- fuck- you!” She swings the beast against the opposing wall, dislodging it. She makes a sort of screech as she stomps down on top of it. Its exoskeleton crunches. Sharod made a discovery in the meantime, his spider has 4 red boots glued to the ends of 4 of its feet. Grabbing hold of one, he uses his foot to hold down another. In one swift motion he tears the thing in half. Blue-green ichor slips out of its carcass. Both halves fall to the floor. The last spider moves to pounce on his back, but Loralie catches the shoe of this one before it hits its target. She hauls it over her shoulder smashing it onto the ground. Three carcasses with red boots glued to their legs lay at the crawlers feet. Sharod’s silent. Loralie bursts into laughter- sharp and a little too loud “can you believe this?” Both of her hands extend to point, palms open at the boots. [table] [row][cell] [hr]New ACHIEVEMENT! Hello my baby- hello my honey- hello my ragtime gal- You’ve killed the red shoed tap dancing spider team. Did you kill them before or after they started singing? Was it their shoes that put you off? Rewards: The entry fee to the tap dancing recital, this team was unranked. I wonder what you’ll think of the other teams. [hr] [/cell][cell] [hr]New ACHIEVEMENT! Yabba Dabba Doo! Be one of the first 1000 duos in the dungeon to kill 3 mobs with your bare hands. Rewards: Silver Killstreak Box [hr] [/cell][/row] [row][cell] [/cell][/row] [/table] “Do they understand our pop culture? This stuff is dated- but Yabba Dabba Doo?” Sharod says while sounding exasperated. Loralie’s wrist is mildly damaged, two puncture holes in her wrist flow freely with her blood. 85%... 84%... the slow bleed is causing her to lose health, but not at a particularly alarming rate. “This feels like quite the cosmic practical joke.” She grits her teeth as she rips the bottom seam off her shirt, wrapping it around her wrist. Once it’s in place, she flips her arm over to show Sharod. “All fixed up.” A glance to her health bar and it’s frozen at 83% and is no longer going down. Proceeding further into the dungeon, still following Diane’s principle as she began to call it, they take every left. Several lefts later, and they hear the rolling of several sets of wheels. They dip into an opposing hall, as they grow louder, and louder. Part singing, part squealing voices filter down the hallway from them. “The Way You Move” by Outkast in acapella fashion slowly getting louder in the distance “Boom, boom, boom” one of the voices is doing the percussion high hat in the background. That’s when a synchronized group of four spiders, each on eight rollerskates, nearly overblows the turn, and then corrects to come straight for them. All four coordinate their skating, down to the lean of their bodies, and which skates they have down at a given time “Rollerskates??” Loralie is hysterical, her eyes wide and bulging out of her head. Sharod sneaks out a toe from their position pressed against the wall. He catches the edges of the wheels on the left two spiders as the spiders overshoot them. Both spiders hit the ground and their performance stops abruptly. The other two screech as Loralie and Sharod each take a spider, dismantling them with the same tearing motion that worked on the first set. The other two are on them then. Sharod takes a hold of one of their legs and uses the skates momentum to slam it into the wall. Its leg comes off and it crumples to the ground in front of him. Blue-green slime sprays him all over his front. Loralie dodges the spider, anticipating the lack of precision in their skating. It hits the wall and she starts kicking at it furiously. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he turns around, and is greeted by the welcome warm glow of a sign in the distance. It’s message reading- "Crawlers Welcome! The tutorial guild". Upon hitting the floor change fell out of their skates- quickly they stuff their pockets with the small amount of money.They are opening and shutting themselves into guild without any caution at all. “Oh great, now there are three of you.” Both of HUDs pop up with information on the characters in the room, Igva- level 85, and another crawler! Hannah. She looked a bit pale, and like she’d been roughed up a bit. Not that they looked any better. “And what flavor of green goo is that you’re covered in?” “Spider blood?” Sharod’s left eyebrow rises and his right eye shuts. If they’re the tutorial guild master, shouldn’t she know everything about the dungeon. “Not a real question there pal.” It’s at this moment that the voice controlling the dungeon pops in again. [hr]SPECIALLLL ANNOUNCEMENT!! [hr] Alright crawlers! Hold on to your seats because this one is a doozy. Some of you may have been wondering about this as some of your companions have seemingly dropped dead out of nowhere! That’s because the Squim Conglomerate are trying something new this season! They’ve pivoted to what they’re calling a ‘Soulbound Crawl’. What does this mean you ask? [sub]Well, let me tell you.[/sub] [hr]