“You have handcuffs?” Lucas asked, a little surprised. He remembered the rope from the last time she had slid down into the cavern, but he hadn’t expected her to have made handcuffs. “Are they for . . .”

“They’re for whomever a paying customer needs me to apprehend,” Bonnie interrupted. “Don’t give me that look, and don’t look too far into it!”

A moment later, Nick had fetched the rope out of Bonnie’s bag, and the two were putting the finishing touches on Jason, properly hog-tying the Dwarf, while Lucas used another length of rope to tie up Gunter.

“So, what now?” Nick asked. “Do we take them to town? Have them tried for their crimes?”

“I got a knife right here that could try that filthy animal better than any jury,” Bonnie said, giving Jason a swift kick in the ribs.

“Hey! She was Imperium! Why are you still— Ahh!”

Jason tried to defend himself verbally, but Bonnie wasn’t allowing it. The moment he opened his mouth, she started kicking him again.

“The only reason you’re alive is because I’m having a good day for once, so shut up!” she shouted.

The noise from the little skirmish combined with Jason’s cries as he was kicked triggered the event Lucas had been hoping for: The obese spider started talking again. Truthfully, he had only been banking on luck and guesswork in determining whether or not she would appear. He had no way of knowing what her respawn timer was, and even now that she was approaching, he had no way of knowing how she would react. This was his second time going through the encounter, and that meant that one of two things was going to happen: she was going to remember their previous engagement and react accordingly, or she wouldn’t remember a single thing. It was generally a toss-up as to which way it would go, based on what he had heard, and there didn’t seem to be any standard rule of thumb determining which it would be.

He could have had Nick check the forums for any sort of detail again, but he highly doubted that his accompanying Mage would find anything. The fact that he had come up with anything all the first time was amazing. Most players were already well-acquainted with the dungeon system by the end of the first day, so there weren’t a lot of people searching out explanations and guides. Further, while this particular dungeon had certainly been explored, Lucas was tackling it in the role of an Imperium agent, something that had never been done.

“Who goes there?” the beast demanded.

“The pizza delivery man,” Lucas called back flippantly.