Chapter 187: From Encounter To Conquest (1/2)

First thing first, they needed to ensure visibility.

“>!”

Quartz shot a burst of magic at the ceiling. He seemed to have strengthened the spell – white light shining down from the ceiling was meager but strong enough to illuminate the whole hall and the spider inside it.

Next, the battle started with an arrow from Nim, who had the longest attack interval and the fastest attack speed. The arrow was released at the same time as Loren and Ritz, the vanguards, slammed into the spiders. The arrow tore through the air, crossed the vast hall and plunged into a crouching-like spider at the same time as Loren and Ritz, the vanguards, charged. Considering Nim’s skill, the distance and the size of the spider, of course, the arrow wouldn’t miss its target. But it only scratched at the spider’s exoskeleton and flipped with a solid sound.

“It’s hard…”

Nim muttered with a scowl. This spider was surely big. The adult Huge Spiders they had escaped from earlier were big, but this one was bigger by three or four times.

Noticing the attack, the spider began to turn towards them. Nim flinched. This sight looked just like a small hill moving. Next to her, Quartz and Gula, who were also capable of long-range attacks, shouted:

“Let’s attack simultaneously!”

“Ca~n’t be helped then. Match with me!”

As Gula turned her palms towards the spider, Quartz pointed his staff at it and chanted:

“Scarlet stones, shoot at my foes. >!”

Two balls of fire flew over Loren’s and Ritz’ head and slammed into the spider, spreading fire on impact, but the fire scattered and went out. Quartz watched this with widened eyes, while Gula pushed her hair back in annoyance.

“Doesn’t work at all.”

The spider’s carapace didn’t even show any burned marks. The spider also didn’t show any signs of being in pain – it slowly continued to turn towards them.

“Can we even kill this thing?!”

Jack exclaimed. Being a thief, he hadn’t charged forward together with Loren and Ritz, but was on standby to commence attacks from the side while the spider was busy dealing with the two vanguards. However, seeing the spider still unaffected after three attacks, had scared him a bit.

Lapis, who couldn’t join in the battle and was watching over from the side, answered him in a tone without much sense of urgency:

“We can’t, can we?”

“What do we do now?”

“We probably have no choice but to slash at it with all our might. Because of its size, its exoskeleton is too hard for weapons to cut through, but Loren…”

Lapis’ gaze was on Loren’s back. At that moment, he and Ritz were in the middle of attacking the spider, which was still turning around.

Ritz swung his long sword downwards with a cry. His blade dug a bit into the outer shell of the spider’s leg, but was stopped by the firmness and thickness of the carapace and couldn’t reach any vital organs.

But Loren’s greatsword easily cut through the exoskeleton without a single sound and made a deep gash into the spider’s leg. He didn’t even feel any impact transmitted to his hand. A sound like metal rubbing together reverberated in the hall, and the spider, that had been moving very slowly until now, retreated with an agility that didn’t match its gigantic body.

Loren didn’t even have time to recognize that metallic sound as the spider’s cry. The spider charged at him, and Loren slashed at another leg while dodging it.

“Just a shallow one…”

Loren muttered while watching the spider crash into a wall in the momentum of its charge. Loren’s sword could easily cut through stone, so spider’s exoskeleton was nothing to it. But he couldn’t get closer to the spider as he couldn’t afford to get caught up in its charge, and his slash only made a shallow scratch in result.

That, however, was only from Loren’s point of view only. Ritz, who was nearby, considered the wound he gave the spider a severe one that cut through almost half of the thick leg.

“You really can cut through such a hard shell…”

“It’s just that my weapon is good.”

Loren answered bluntly and leapt away the next moment. Ritz followed his example, and right after that, thick white fluid splashed violently at the spot he had just been.

The sticky fluid was shot out by the spider. Its head was stuck into the wall, but its bottom was turned towards Loren and Ritz. From that bottom a mass of fluid was ejected, yet instead of hardening into the usual thin threads, it turned into a bullet-like projectiles.

It was easy to imagine what would happen if someone was hit by such a thing. At the very least, their movement would be restricted. They might even be glued to the ground and couldn’t move just an inch of your body. In addition, the released fluid on the ground still retained its stickiness. Anyone stepped on it might trip.

Loren cluck his tongue at the dangerous attack. In front of him, the spider slowly moved away from the wall. But for some reason, it slammed its head hard into the wall once more. The resulting noise and impact shook their surroundings, and Loren wondered what the hell the spider was thinking. He immediately understood its intention, though.

As the whole space with its countless curtain-like spiderwebs shook, several cocoons dropped from the ceiling right at Loren’s group. Being casually dropped down from such a height, the content of a cocoon must had been damaged quite severely, yet it started moving. As the moving something started crawling out, it turned out to be a moving corpse. The corpses slowly stood up, let out groans like the whine of a cold draft, and walked towards the adventurers.

These were also spider victims that had been turned into undead, but they were mere shadows compared to the spider victims Loren’s group had encountered earlier: Despite still wearing their clothes and equipment, they were all skin and bones. Reacting to the life forces in front of them, the undead victims stretched their hands at Loren’s group.

“I hate these too! We’re not the ones that killed you!”

Ritz cursed and slashed at one undead who had staggered back after being bashed by his round shield. If undead could feel resentment and such, they would have rushed at the spiders that had killed them. But rather than the cold-blooded spiders, they preferred the warm flesh.

That said, these undead had been sucked dry by the spiders, and their bodies were very brittle. Ritz’ long swords and Jack’s daggers had no problem dealing with them.

“Hey, Loren, leave these to us!”

“Isn’t the difficulty level too distinct…”

Realizing that their attacks would be sufficient for the undead, Ritz left the spider to Loren, who had a weapon that could work against it.