While I was blocking Anansi’s autos and Gang Jaegyung was tossing in the occasional heal…[Hahaha! You realized?]Anansi laughed heartily, then stopped throwing autos and stopped casting gimmicks altogether. Not long after, he began making a sound — somewhere between an insect’s chirring and a broken radio’s static — and displayed a new message.[You wretches cannot put the slightest scratch on Anansi…]With a voice that seemed to come straight out of tinnitus, Anansi raised two legs. Riding the momentum of the grand background music, he shouted brightly.[So if you want to live, you’ll have to pass the trials Anansi gives you!][For Anansi has no intention of killing ‘sapient beings’!]That meant… the real mechanics were about to begin.In other words, Phase 1 start![Now, the first trial!]The moment Anansi cried that out, several thick, long strands of web shot out from a wall that towered higher than the monster itself. The webs tangled together, forming some kind of strange figure.What was that? It looked like a flower bud, or maybe a witch’s hat, or — in a cruder imagination — something shaped like a cock with dangling balls. An angular, grotesque shape.[If you pay a price to Anansi, I’ll cut one strand for each problem.][But the only cuts Anansi makes are straight lines with just a start and end point.]…If you pay a price, he’ll cut a strand?By “strand,” he obviously meant the webs. But what did he mean by “price”? And which strand, out of all those, would he cut?The very first mechanic was already a wall. They did say the Jeojajok were a clever, wise race — and fittingly, this wasn’t about raw reflexes, but about using your head. Stuff like this was tedious and annoying…Of course, I wasn’t worried. After all, I had none other than Gang Jaegyung with me.Our genius husky. I’d met plenty of people in my life, but no one’s brain turned faster than his. Sure, his personality was stiff and inflexible, and the kind of “social intelligence” needed in everyday life seemed to grind and creak inside him — but when it came to puzzles like this, no one could match him.As soon as I thought that, Jaegyung proved me right.— “That looks like… a one-stroke drawing.”Oh, a one-stroke drawing? I had no idea what made him think of that, but I tilted my camera up while blocking Anansi’s autos and traced the webs with my eyes. Following each line one by one… it really did seem like a one-stroke puzzle.…But one line was left over.“Ah.”So that’s why Anansi said he’d cut a strand if we paid a price.— “If that really is a one-stroke puzzle, then the line cutting across the center has to go.”[Party] Honeybread: oh.. [Party] Honeybread: but how?The problem was, we still didn’t know what “price” Anansi wanted. And there was definitely a time limit on this mechanic…[Good. Then I’ll take that.]…Take what?— “Wait… Honeybread, what did you do this time?”What do you mean this time? He knew damn well I hadn’t done anything, yet he was already treating me like the troublemaker.I angrily pounded the keyboard to type a reply — only to realize my message wasn’t showing up in the chat window.Maybe I’d double-tapped enter by mistake? I hit enter again to check properly… but nothing happened. Enter wasn’t working at all.What the hell? I stopped blocking Anansi’s autos and mashed enter several times, but the chat window stayed dead silent. I wondered if it was lag, so I opened the combat log — but the log was running fine. Hitting enter still did nothing.— “Honeybread stopped moving… lagged out?”Jaegyung noticed me just standing there without blocking and came looking for me. But with chat disabled, I had no way to explain the situation.I couldn’t type. Was this some kind of bug? Whether I tapped enter repeatedly or pressed and held it, it was the same. Even the numpad enter didn’t work. So it wasn’t my keyboard.Frustrated, and desperate to communicate, I ran up to Jaegyung’s character and started spamming jumps.— “So it’s not lag…? What’s going ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) on?”He looked utterly bewildered at my weird behavior. How was I supposed to let him know I couldn’t type? 0*0? No, that wouldn’t work — if the chat itself was disabled, I couldn’t send symbols either. Shit.— “Why are you just jumping instead of typing…”He trailed off mid-sentence.— “Ah. So… you can’t chat, huh.”Quick on the uptake, as always. Relief washed through me.— “Then, when Anansi said he’d take something… maybe he took your ability to chat?”Anansi took away… my chat? No way.I hit enter again. Still nothing.“…”…No way.[Which strand shall I cut?]— “Honeybread, you typed right before Anansi said he’d ‘take that.’ And since then you haven’t been able to chat. So it makes sense: the price for cutting a strand was your ability to type.”In the end, I turned on my mic.“This game is fucking insane, isn’t it?”— “Ah! You startled me…”“What about parties that don’t use voice chat? What the hell are they supposed to do?”— “Maybe you can offer some other price. I don’t know what else yet… but for now, we still have a task to do, Honeybread.”He spoke in a coaxing tone, like I was a child throwing a tantrum.— “We need to tell Anansi which strand to cut. But how do we do that?”The method for telling him what strand we wanted? Wasn’t that obvious?I stopped my fingers from reaching for chat again and asked out loud:“Which one should he cut?”— “The line crossing through the long triangle.”The one cutting across the long triangle… I herded Anansi toward that strand, though he kept pausing to throw autos, making it annoying. Still, with all my tanking experience, I positioned him under the target strand in no time.— “Oh… if you park him like that, it really might work.”“Almost certainly.”As someone who’d played Dusk a full year longer than Jaegyung (two years, counting closed beta), I could say that with confidence. In the closed beta, there had been plenty of mechanics that required tanks to move bosses. They’d mostly been scrapped after complaints about tank responsibility, but still.Sure enough, Anansi let out a booming laugh, leapt into the air, and landed right on the strand we’d chosen. He lifted a glittering leg and sliced it clean through.With a heavy crash that shook the ground, he landed and leaned in close, his shadowy face looming as he sneered at us.[Correct.]The severed strand dissolved and vanished.I tapped enter, hoping maybe I’d get chat back after solving the puzzle. But nope — still blocked.[Now, the next problem!]Oh, there’s more? Goddammit. That meant we’d have to pay another price. Chatting, or something else?Was the mechanic that we’d keep accumulating penalties like “no chat,” and we’d be forced to carry them all the way through? In a party dungeon, losing chat was already a crippling handicap. No communication meant you couldn’t share mechanics, couldn’t coordinate.…Or maybe, there was a way to cut the webs without Anansi’s help?As I was thinking that, Anansi spat out more webs to form another one-stroke puzzle. This time, an even more convoluted figure.Whatever. Not my problem.“What do we cut this time?”— “The line sticking out on its own. Since it only has a start and end point.”“Hm.”How to cut webs suspended way above our character’s height… In any normal dungeon, we’d have no choice but to pay a price and let Anansi cut it. But this wasn’t just any dungeon — this was the unique Hidden Spider dungeon. Meaning, way more things were possible here than we might expect.I figured this had to be the real answer. So I hit the Flight button.If Anansi could go up there, so could I. With wings, cutting those webs myself would be—[Excellent! I’ll take that!]…Take what this time?Before I could figure it out, Anansi swung his front legs at terrifying speed. His razor-sharp limb pierced straight through my character’s wings.And the moment I saw that —The screen froze. An odd notification window popped up.[Error: Disconnected from server. (0x00012)]

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.