“You’re too expensive to let die until I get my money’s worth,” Lucas joked, poking at her insistence that everything had a price.

“Speaking of . . .” Nick began, stepping away from the butchered arachnid. “You’re not going to, you know . . . be expecting any of our loot from these monsters, are you? ‘Cause that wasn’t part of the deal if you are.”

“Find something good then, I take it?” Lucas asked. He didn’t know how Nick could tell what he got since he himself hadn’t pulled the new item out of his backpack, but the name alone, Web of Deceit, sounded great.

“I don’t know, but if it’s called Spinner’s Fang, it’s gotta be good, right?” Nick asked, reaching around to check his bag. A moment later, he produced a large dagger with a six-inch blade protruding from the handle and a silk-wrapped grip that was shaped like one of the spider’s fangs. The silk wrapping on the handle went through a tiny hole at the bottom of the jet-black fang and then hung out the bottom of the dagger.

“Is that . . .” Lucas pointed to the hanging cord of silk. “Is that capable of growing? Can you manipulate it?”

“Umm . . .” Nick gripped the dagger, and Lucas saw a light glow from his arm as he channeled magic into it. Sure enough, the silk extended out toward the ground between him and Bonnie.

“Don’t you even think about it! I will murder you in your sleep,” Bonnie threatened, glaring at Nick.

“Hey, I didn’t do anything, so don’t give me that garbage. I just was testing it out,” Nick said defensively. But Lucas noticed the smile plastered across his face as he backed up a step. “Anyway, what’d you get?”

“Gold,” she pouted. “Ugh. I want a knife. What about you, boss?”

Lucas dug into his bag and pulled out the Web of Deceit, a magical cloak that apparently didn’t have a set color. Instead, like a chameleon, it was constantly shifting to appear like a blurrier version of what was behind it.”

“What the heck?!” Bonnie protested, looking back and forth between Nick’s and Lucas’s loot. “That’s broken! That’s stupid broken. How come I didn’t get anything cool? Boss, let me have that cloak and dagger. You two are Mages, so you don’t need them. Let me use them!”

“Well, if you really want them . . . we can always re-do the dungeon for you later,” Lucas offered, watching as Bonnie’s face paled at the prospect.

“I could use another dagger to match this one,” Nick agreed. “And it’s not like the monster was particularly hard after we figured out the trick. Should be easy to repeat. Kinda surprised that more people haven’t done this dungeon with these drops.”

“Yeah, I am as well,” Lucas said, throwing the cloak on and pulling its hood up. “How do I look?”