by Okina Baba
If we’d been on land, Fei might have even been able to beat the water dragon that attacked us before.
“What’s the difference in time between the shortest route and the safer, longer one?”
“Let’s see… At our current pace, I’d say about four days.”
That’s more than I expected.
It must be a pretty big detour.
“And what’s the last route you mentioned?”
“Right. About that…”
For some reason, Basgath hesitates.
As I wait expectantly, he scratches his head and looks uncomfortable.
“To be honest, I’d rather not go that way.”
“That’s certainly very honest. Is there a reason?”
“The Nightmare.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That area used to be the Nightmare’s territory. Most guides don’t like to go near the place. It’s bad luck. Especially since I’ve seen the thing with me own eyes… I don’t like to be near there if I can help it.”
The Nightmare.
That’s the legendary-class monster he mentioned before, right?
But isn’t that thing supposed to be dead already?
“Incidentally, is that route fast, or…?”
“It’s only a little longer than the shortest route. Least, I think the shortest one should be faster. Prolly only a difference of a day or so, if that.”
There’s the dangerous short route, the safe but lengthy roundabout route, and the somewhat ambiguous route.
“But the Nightmare is gone already, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, the Nightmare itself is.”
“What do you mean?”
I tilt my head.
That makes it sound like there’s something else there.
“We call it a Nightmare’s Vestige.”
“A Nightmare’s Vestige?”
“Yeah. A monster that looks a lot like the Nightmare. It’s been seen all over the Upper Stratum but most often in the route I mentioned before.”
“Is it a particularly strong monster?”
“Oh, it’s strong. And troublesome, too.”
If Basgath says so, it must be pretty serious.
I’d definitely prefer not to run into anything like that.
“However, it has the same strange quirks as the Nightmare. If yeh don’t attack it, it won’t do yeh any harm. If yeh do encounter a Nightmare’s Vestige, it’s best to do nothing and just wait for it to pass.”
“What in the world…?”
I can’t hide my amazement.
Can you really call it a monster if it has such unusual habits?
If you ask me, a monster is supposed to be something that blindly attacks whatever it sees.
“There’s one more thing. It strings up invisible thread all over the place. If yeh cut it or whatnot, it’ll attack yeh.”
“Thread?”
“Yup. I guess I didn’t mention that, huh? The Nightmare is a spider monster. Same for the Nightmare’s Vestiges.”
Spiders, huh…?
“The thread is almost impossible to see, not to mention sticky and tough, which makes it hard to get free if yer caught in it. On top of that, the monster itself is too strong by half. In the old days, when yeh saw a spiderweb, yeh just burned it. But since this Nightmare’s Vestige appeared, if yeh see a spiderweb, yeh just run away. It’s the worst monster in the whole Upper Stratum.”
What a dangerous monster.
It’s that strong and uses such nasty thread, too?
It almost sounds like a monster with the cleverness of a human.
“We’d better not go that route, I’d say.”
Hyrince, who’d been listening to our exchange in silence, speaks up now.
“I went with Julius and the rest of the party to take down a Nightmare’s Vestige once. We managed to scrape out a victory somehow, but it was pretty damn close. Better to avoid it if we can.”
Even Julius and his party had a hard time with this thing?
Yeah, I guess I’d rather not encounter that.
That eliminates that route, then.
Now it’s down to the shortest route and the roundabout route.
“All right, everyone. We have to choose between a fast but dangerous route or a safe but lengthy route. Can I get your opinions?”
I address the other members of the party as they rest up.
My heart wants to choose the shortest route.
Even if we do have a little time to spare, the sooner we get to the elf village, the better.
But it would be even tougher on Anna, who’s already having a hard time, making it difficult for me to decide.
“I think we should pick the shortest route.”
Ms. Oka speaks first.
I’ve already seen how powerful our teacher is.
To be honest, I never expected her to be able to knock Hugo out completely like that.
In terms of magic ability alone, she’s probably even stronger than I am.
Katia seems like she wants to agree.
“Won’t it be dangerous, though? If more than one A-class monster shows up at once, even we might have trouble dealing with them.”
“Ah, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Basgath informs her. “A-class monsters almost never run with others. If we do happen to encounter one, it’ll be alone.”
“Well then, I’m sure we can handle it.”
Katia nods confidently.
Since we grew up together, I understand Katia very well.
I know she has the ability to back up those words.
“Hmm. I guess I vote for the shortest route, too. Monsters are no big deal for us.”
Fei votes for the shortest route, too.
She seems almost too optimistic, but I guess she can get away with it, given how powerful she is.
Fei is the strongest of our group, after all.
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s wise to take unnecessary risks.”
Hyrince votes for the safer route.
He probably values our safety even more than the continued existence of the elf village.
Now it’s three to one.
Since Basgath is remaining neutral, that leaves Anna and me.
Half the group is already pushing for the shortest route, but I want to hear Anna’s opinion, too.
“What do you think we should do, Anna?”
“Please, there’s no need to concern yourself with my opinion.”
“No, I want to. You’re a member of the group, too. Go on—tell us what you think.”
I press her a little insistently.
Anna hesitates at first, thinks for a moment, then appears to reach some kind of conclusion.
“Let us take the shortest route, then.”
“Are you sure?”
What I actually mean is Will you be all right? Will you be able to keep up?
“Absolutely.”
Her response is firm.
Then there’s nothing else I need to say.
“The short route it is, then.”
Knowing the danger, we’ve decided to push forward nonetheless.
A BRUSH WITH DEATH
I thought I’d teleported to safety, only to find an ambush waiting for me.
This must be Mother’s work.
An army of spiders just coincidentally hanging around in the exact place where my home used to be is about as likely as a meteor hitting me square in the face.
It can’t be a chance happening, right?
What’s really scary is that considering how bad my luck has been so far, it wouldn’t surprise me that much if it were.
Still, I think it’s much more likely that Mother predicted I would teleport here and sent her forces to wait for me in advance.
I guess I might’ve underestimated her a little.
In terms of brains, not brawn.
With Mother’s huge body, there’s no way she could have chased me down while I was running around in the narrow passage
s of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
All she had to do was wait for me to come out.
She must have predicted everything I was going to do.
Otherwise, she could never have arranged things to such perfection.
When I left the labyrinth, she came out to chase me down personally.
If she’d finished me off there, that would have been that.
Her sheer speed is higher than mine, meaning the only way I can outrun her is with Long-Distance Teleport.
And where else would I go but back to the Great Elroe Labyrinth?
Specifically, the most likely place I’d flee to first is the spot where my home used to be.
Sending an army there would be an easy way to catch me defenseless as soon as I arrived.
In short, that’s the current situation.
I went from using Teleport to kill those arch taratects to having it used against me.
I’m screwed.
I can’t even react in time to dodge the arch taratect fangs flying at my face.
Here are the facts: I let my guard down as soon as Teleport activated, then I totally froze up for a second the instant I realized that I was surrounded by a spider army, and the wounds Mother inflicted on me delayed my reaction speed.
All those factors combined prevent me from dodging.
The arch’s huge fangs bite into my tiny body.
They don’t break through.
I might not look it, but my defense stat is over 2,000.
I haven’t Appraised the arch taratect that’s chomping on me, which means I don’t know for sure, but if it’s similar to the ones I fought before, its attack is probably over 4,000.
It’s probably using Mental Warfare and Magic Warfare to buff that, too, but its skill levels probably aren’t as high as mine.
Even if it does break through my body and bite off a chunk, it won’t be the end of the world.
Still, the damage would be huge.
And that’s in addition to the severe damage Mother’s already inflicted on me.
My injuries are so bad that without Pain Super-Mitigation, I probably would’ve passed out by now.
On top of all that, I can feel something seeping into my body from those fangs.
I know exactly what it is, since I have the same move.
Poison Attack. Deadly Poison, to be precise.
Even with my high resistance, I can’t nullify it completely.
I have to get away from these fangs soon, or I’ll succumb to the poison seeping into my body and die.
That is, if the raw damage doesn’t kill me first.
In the midst of the biggest pinch of my life, I become strangely calm and quickly start activating some magic.
Specifically, Earth Magic.
An earthen spear bursts out of the ground and smashes into the arch’s head.
I’m not expecting it to do much damage.
All I want is for the impact to loosen the jaws clamped down on my body.
Just as I hoped, the attack makes the arch taratect stumble, loosening its grip for just a moment.
I seize the chance to hit the arch in the face with more magic and escape from its claws.
To my surprise, the attack seems to have weakened the arch more than I thought.
I guess it doesn’t have Dragon Scales or anything like that to ward off magic.
That skill is what’s prevented me from doing major damage to a dragon with a single attack in the past, but I guess without it, even stats equal to a dragon’s won’t protect an arch taratect from a big hit.
That’s only the defense side of things, though.
As far as attacking goes, the arch has stats and skills that are easily on par with the powerful Araba’s.
It might not have the power to cause a huge catastrophe like Mother does, but it’s still enough to do some serious damage to a corner of the labyrinth like Araba did.
And there are five of those powerful creatures here.
Isn’t that a bit of overkill?
I guess that just shows how seriously Mother is trying to kill me.
And I have to say, that plan seems to be going pretty well for her right now.
Mother’s breath attack decimated part of my body, the arch’s fangs put holes in the rest of it, and now poison is eating away at me, too.
It’s enough to make you wonder how I’m even still alive at this point, honestly.
Well, I know why. It’s thanks to Perseverance.
My HP already hit 0 a long time ago.
However, the Perseverance skill can substitute MP for HP.
As soon as my MP runs out, I’m dead.
Thanks to Height of Occultism, my MP regenerates faster than it can go down, so I’m not going to die that easily.
However, that doesn’t mean my wounds are going to heal anytime soon.
Perseverance really just passes off my MP as HP to delay the inevitable.
If I take enough damage that I can’t move anymore, I’m sure the archs will damage me faster than my MP can recover.
I’ll be beaten to a pulp.
Or maybe just devoured.
Even Perseverance can’t do much if my body itself is gone.
I’m already just a step away from that line.
And I have no time to think about recovery, because all five archs are coming to attack me.
I definitely can’t worry about appearances now.
I dodge the oncoming archs and run for my life.
Instead of going down to the ground crawling with countless spiders, I use Dimensional Maneuvering to flee through the air.
Without all my legs, I can’t reach my usual speed.
Filled with fear and frustration, I intercept the huge amount of thread coming up at me with thread of my own.
My destination is the Middle Stratum.
I might not be overly fond of the place, but the spider army is even weaker to the heat there than I am.
The fiery environment of the Middle Stratum is terrible for spiders without resistance.
An arch or greater taratect can probably endure it, but anything weaker than that would probably die from simply being there.
But they’re still one step ahead of me. As I race toward the entrance to the Middle Stratum, something stands in my way.
It looks almost like a doll.
No, I think it actually is a doll.
It has a smooth, faceless head.
An inorganic body with spherical joints.
The obstacle resembles a mannequin that could be found at any department store.
Here in the labyrinth, something so obviously artificial seems strangely out of place.
But it makes sense once you know what’s inside.
Appraisal reveals to me that the doll is full of thread, with a tiny spider at the center.
And this spider is a horrifying monster whose stats all exceed 10,000.
According to Appraisal, this is a puppet taratect.
But I’ve never heard of such a creature.
Even the evolution tree that Wisdom showed me didn’t contain any monster by that name.
But my instincts tell me that this mysterious monster must be one of Mother’s trump cards.
The humanoid doll readies the swords in its hands.
All six of them.
Though the doll looks like a human being, it has six arms.
If you include the legs, that makes eight limbs: just like a spider.
While I’m being distracted by such a stupid observation, the six swords come at me.
Unable to dodge, I feel it summarily cut off my two front legs.
Monsters shouldn’t use weapons, dammit! I want to shout.
I don’t know if you stole them from humans or made them yourself, but that’s just not fair!
One would be all right, but six swords at once? How am I supposed to avoid that?
I’ve almost never lost to anyone in terms of speed.
The only exceptions would be Mot
her; the earth dragon Araba, which I encountered early on; and the fire dragon Rend.
With my amazing speed, Thought Super-Acceleration, and Future Sight, I’ve always been proud of my evasion abilities.
But now I’ve been outdone at the one thing I do best.
Thought Super-Acceleration and Future Sight can theoretically figure out how best to dodge something instantly, but that works only if I can get my body to do it in practice.
If the attack moves faster than my body can react, of course there’s no way I can dodge it.
I promptly use magic to knock back the doll, but the situation is only worsening.
The puppet spider in front of me, five archs behind me.
On top of that, I’ve lost half my legs, leaving my body in tatters and my mobility drastically low.
I can feel death closing in on me, even more keenly than the time I faced Araba.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die!
I can’t just give up!
I’ll claw my way toward survival for all I’m worth, until my very last moment!
If I am gonna die here, I’m taking as many of them down with me as I can!
Half-crazed with desperation, I still try to check myself as I fire off a barrage of magic.
My main goal is quantity over quality, so the spells aren’t very powerful.
But since these spiders don’t have the skill Dragon Scales, it should still do decent damage.
Even if it’s not much, I doubt they’ll want to charge right into the line of fire.
Sure enough, the puppet spider and the archs all pause to defend themselves.
They use magic, swords, or whatever else to fend off my attacks.
But the other spiders, who can’t even counterattack my lowest-level magic, start going down from the direct hits.
Oh?
Maybe this desperate strategy could actually work?
While keeping the puppet spider and the archs at bay remains my top priority, I start aiming for the other spiders, too.
Especially the bigger ones that look like they’d be worth more EXP.
The little critters are dying from the aftershocks alone, anyway.
While I’m at it, I switch from Inert Evil Eye, which probably won’t work that well, to Jinx Evil Eye.
Leaving only one eye for Future Sight, I apply Jinx Evil Eye to all the others, stealing MP and such from my enemies.
