The first floor of the Academy Dungeon, the lord's lair.
The cavern ceiling was high and broad, the light dim. Only scattered patches of glowing fungi on the rock walls offered faint illumination, casting distorted shadows of jagged rocks and tattered webs across the debris-strewn ground.
Thick spiderwebs with a silvery-gray sheen hung like torn curtains, layer upon layer, between the cavern walls, stalagmites, and collapsed stone pillars, dividing the enormous cavern into separate spaces.
The bones of all manner of creatures lay scattered across the ground, piled into chilling little mounds that silently told of the former occupant's cruelty and greed.
In one corner of the cavern, far from the conspicuous remains of the nest's foundation at its center, a figure was quietly at work.
Greg crouched before a relatively intact rock wall, a sharp knife in his hand as he carefully cut away strands of some material he had peeled from cracks in the stone and remnants of webbing.
It was no ordinary spider silk, but a special thread that reflected a faint, warm golden glow even in the dim light.
It was finer than a strand of hair yet extraordinarily tough, cool to the touch and strangely smooth.
Greg worked patiently, winding each strand of golden silk around a smooth piece of wood to collect it.
What he had said when parting with Sylvia earlier had not been entirely an excuse.
He really did have something else to do.
Collecting this golden radiance spider silk was the purpose of his trip.
It was not so urgent that he had to finish immediately. Ordinary monsters in the Dungeon respawned over time, but once an area boss like the Eight-Legged Lady was defeated, it usually never appeared again.
Greg had chosen to collect it now purely out of practicality: