Chapter 187: From Encounter To Conquest (2/2)
Loren wasn’t very keen on this idea. But the fact was that Ritz’ and Jack’s weapons didn’t work against the spider, and letting the one who possessed a weapon that could deal damage to do the damage – was the correct choice in some sense. Still, from the person’s, entrusted with said task, point of view, it wasn’t a very welcoming idea. The difficulty level of fighting some dried up undead was very different from the difficulty level fighting a spider so huge that one would need to look up to see it in entirety. So different so that Loren just had to complain.
Still, he had no choice but to do it. The spider was still shooting sticky fluid from its spinnerets, so Loren slashed down at its abdomen. But the spider, in a surprisingly shrewd move, rolled over with its head turning towards Loren and jumped away from the sword’s span. As a result, Loren could only make another shallow slash at its leg.
“This thing!”
Loren was about to chase after it, but was forced to dodge once again as the spider suddenly charged. Considering the sharpness of his sword, it would be possible to cut through the charging spider. But cutting through the spider didn’t necessarily mean stopping it, and if the spider wasn’t stopped, he would be knocked down by its huge body and seriously injured. If unlucky, he might even be ran-over and killed. Loren had no choice but to dodge, but that meant the spider slammed hard into the wall again.
“More are dropping down!”
“Damn! They just won’t stop!”
Ritz and the others continued to deal with the newly-dropped undead. Their number was so big that Loren had to wonder how many were stored on the ceiling, but Ritz’ group still seemed capable of dealing with them. Even so, if this continued, it could only end when either the undead ‘stock’ or Ritz’ group stamina ran out. The only way to break the deadlock was to finish off the spider somehow, so Loren took a step forward.
“>!”
Before Loren launched his attack, Lapis, who had been watching over the situation, threw a spell at the sticky-fluid spitting spider. The pure force of energy smashed into the spider’s belly so hard that it almost made a dent, and the spider’s movement stopped for a moment.
Taking advantage of that, Loren got close and put all his strength into slashing at the spider’s belly, which was comparatively softer than the rest of its body. The blade of his greatsword smoothly cut into the spider and carved a rather deep wound this time. Green and white fluid spurted out of the wound, and the spider writhed as if it felt the pain while trying to turn back to face Loren. Taking care to not get caught in the spider’s movements, Loren cut off one of its legs and deterred its of mobility.
“>!”
At that crucial moment, Gula shot a ball of fire at the spider. It hit the squirming spider’s body and caused a violent explosion that rocked the tunnel’s walls. Even though > itself didn’t cause the spider any damages, the heat surely did, and the creature writhed in agony.
“Just now, when the spell hit, the exoskeleton was gnawed at, wasn’t it?”
“No, Grandpa, it couldn’t be, right?”
Quartz seemed to have noticed something the moment Gula’s magic exploded, but was dismissed by Lapis’ rather monotone answer.
As the spider began to stagger due to the heat and shock, Loren readied his sword and charged into the creature again. He didn’t know where a spider’s vital points were, but he roughly knew that crushing the head would probably kill it. He cut off another leg to stop it from charging, changed his hold on the sword to a backhand grip, and thrust the blade into the spider’s head where its eyes were. To push the blade deeper inside, he let go of the hilt and stomped on the pommel, then leapt back.
With a sword buried to the hilt in its head, the spider raged in pain, and the group rushed outside the hall to avoid getting caught in the rampage. They watched the spider writhed about and crushed the undead beneath from the passage, where the creature couldn’t get through to.
“Amazing. You’ve really defeated it.”
Having a vitality fit for its size, the spider struggled for a while with a sword in its head before its energy ran out. It grew weaker and weaker until finally turning to lie on its back and, with a final twitch, stopped moving.
They waited a bit more after that before entering the hall again and examined the spider’s corpse.
“The surrounding area was also trashed.”
The spider threads that had been all over the hall earlier were torn off and now stuck around the corpse, making it look like a mountain of garbage. The spider’s rampage had also made more undead drop down from the ceiling. Yet this time around they were all either crushed beneath the writhing spider and turned into chunks, which were scattered around the hall, or got stuck to the spider’s corpses together with the threads. Just like Jack said, it was a scene of a disaster.
“What do we do now?”
Loren came towards the head and pulled his sword out. Having pierced a spider’s body, the blade was covered in oozing greenish fluid. But then it flew off with just one casual shake, and Loren cleaned off the rest with an old rag.
“We just have to walk out next… It won’t be easy outside, either. Probably something like this.”
“Let’s rest a bit. Fighting continuously is tough.”
“I agree. It’s better so for my old bones.”
Quartz immediately agreed with Jack’s proposal, and no one else had a different suggestion. As Ritz decided that they would head out after a short break, Gula pointed at the spider corpse:
“Do we take this spider to pieces? There’ll be a lot to harvest at this size.”
“Let’s pass on it. It’ll add to our luggage.”
“Is that so? What a waste.”
Gula looked a bit disappointed. But they still had to gather intel from the demons after this; any harvested fresh materials would be ruined, and the exoskeleton was too bulky. And to be honest, no one wanted to disassemble a spider corpse that was covered in threads, dirt, bones and body parts. Even Nim didn’t have any objections.
Each of them chose a spot to sit down. As Loren was looking for a place to lean on and rest his body, Lapis thanked him:
“You’ve worked hard, Loren. It seems like you’re not injured.”
She also gave him a water flask and a clean cloth. He accepted them with a thanks, then wiped his face with the cloth and took a sip from the flask.
“We’ll reach the demons’ territory after this.”
“That’s right. Before that, we’ll have to pass another dwarven village.”
“That’s troublesome.”
“It is. We’ll make it somehow though, definitely will.”
Demons – it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that they were hated by the whole world. They would enter the domain of such beings soon, yet Lapis talked about it as if it was something trivial. But considering that was where she had originally come from, it would be like homecoming, and there was no reason for her to get worked up at all. For Gula too, as one of the beings called Evil God, keeping company with some demons was no big deal at all.
Only Loren, with his human body, had a lot to worry about this, and he was feeling a bit gloomy. Lapis smiled at him as if to tell him to not worry and presented him both of her hands. He placed the cloth he had used and the water flask in them, then silently deeply exhaled.