Chapter 186: An Encounter Near the Exit (2/2)

Jack cut in. He stopped in front of a passage a bit ahead and signaled everyone to halt. Noticing the sign of something happening, they all stopped. With a serious face, Jack pointed at the passage ahead with his thumb and said:

“Something’s no good there.”

“And quite big, too.”

Nim, who was listening attentively next to Jack, added. Recalling something, Dig suddenly lifted his face:

“Ahead should be our work hall.”

According to Dig, there was a hall near the entrance on the demons’ side, where the dwarves performed simple tasks and stored goods. In short, once they passed the hall, it would be a short distance to the exit.

But now, Jack and Nim sensed something at that place.

Loren moved the lantern further away to prevent its light reaching the vast hall ahead and asked in a small voice:

“What’s no good?”

“Don’t know, but quite big.”

“The footstep is heavy. It’s something huge.”

Since they had encountered mainly spiders so far, it might be a spider boss. This was the more favorable scenario. Regarding their opponents and the chance of winning, there were too many possibilities to narrow down.

“Can something that big even get in there?”

No matter how big the hall was, the creature still needed to go through the tunnel to get in. Something as big as a huge spider could easily move in this tunnel, but it was difficult to think of something big enough for Jack and Nim to be wary of could.

“It probably grew big inside the hall.”

“Something that grew in there… What a sad story.”

They didn’t know what that thing fed on, but if it couldn’t get out, then it couldn’t catch preys. As fewer and fewer people travelled through this tunnel, dying from starvation was its only future. While Loren was feeling pity for the creature, Gula disagreed:

“If it eats other spiders, it won’t have to worry about preys, right?”

The other spiders could go in and out of the tunnel and catch preys outside. If that creature was feeding on spiders that had grown to some extent, it wouldn’t need to go out.

“What a troublesome story.”

If the tunnel was completely dominated by spiders, the surrounding area would become spiders’ feeding ground. The area on the demon side probably had already been devastated, and with time spiders would start flooding the area on the other end of the tunnel. The timing was truly dangerous.

“If you don’t think of a way to exterminate them, you’ll become their food.”

“Ngh… Should I place a request with the Adventurer Guild?”

Lapis explained to Loren in secret that dwarves did set up villages, but they weren’t very organized. There were no organized armed troops to fend off attacks. If they truly needed fighting power, they would commission it from outside.

“They don’t have a proper country. They move away once a mine is exhausted, after all.”

“This mine doesn’t seem to be exhausted yet.”

“The mountains above are still safe, so it probably hasn’t.”

Loren turned to Lapis with a surprised face. He didn’t understand what she had just said at all.

“Once dwarves have mined all the ore veins in the area, the mine will be exhausted and cave in, and the mountain above it will collapse.”

“What a troublesome race…”

“In the worst case, there will be a pit after the mountain collapses.”

“They don’t even care about the underground…”

Lapis said that it was in the dwarves’ nature to mine as much ore as possible. In the worst case, they might mine enough to turn part of the mountain range separating demons and the outsider world into level ground. Only then would they decide that the mine was exhausted.

“Isn’t that too foolish?”

“Well, rather than the dwarves’ nature, the huge thing waiting ahead should be our first priority.”

Lapis said as if to calm Loren down and looked towards Jack and Nim, who was peering into the path in front of them. They were going a bit ahead of the group to check out the situation in the hall. Slowly returning, they told the group, who was looking at them.

“As expected, it’s a stupidly big spider. It’s grayish, and it covered all the hall in hanging webs like curtains.”

“It’s a species superior to huge spiders, I think. It’ll be difficult to pass without being noticed.”

After hearing their report, Ritz grimaced and looked at their group.

“It can’t be helped then. We’ll have to kill it to go forward. Any objections?”

If anyone objected, they would have to come up with a way to pass by a spider superior to huge spiders without being noticed. No one had such a brilliant idea in mind.

And so, everyone exchanged glances with each other and decided that there was no other option but to kill the superior spider like Ritz proposed.