The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary

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.

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.