The Arachne Queen's Nest
They say that when a person is too tense, they can't bring out their true ability.
The same held for Silphy, currently twisting through every acrobatic pose imaginable to dodge the spider silk spraying from the underbrush. At first she'd flailed in a panic when her ankle got bound in webbing, but now she was carving through the silk with dazzling flair, as if that earlier stumble had never happened.
She didn't look like she needed my help anymore, so I turned my attention toward the brush the webbing was coming from. No matter how well you sliced the silk, this wouldn't end until you dealt with whatever was firing it.
Slash! Slash!
Cutting through the incoming webs, I charged the underbrush. Then I cleaved the entire thicket in a single stroke, exposing the creature that had been cowardly sniping silk from inside.
"Ugh..."
The visual was more shocking than I'd expected, and I froze without meaning to.
The Arachne hiding in the brush was so large it was hard to believe it was a spider. Well — it wasn't an ordinary spider to begin with. It was a monster. A plump, massive body striped in orange and black. A cluster of eyes that looked like the horror-movie version of salmon roe. Eight disgusting, shaggy-haired legs. And a swollen abdomen so visibly packed with fluid that I was almost afraid to cut it.
In a word: revulsion given form.
The spider-type monster known as the Arachne ensnared its prey by firing silk from a distance.
Captured prey was spun into cocoons and stored deep inside the nest — a habit that kept those cocooned victims from rotting even after a year of storage.
Not exactly useful information, given the situation. Whether an Arachne's prey had a shelf life of a year or a month, what did I care? I just wanted these things dead as fast as possible.
I brought my sword down on its head at once.
Splurt!
"Ugh..."
The Arachne, its head split open, went limp and leaked purple fluid. If hitting the head did that, I was definitely not attacking that plump belly if I could help it. If I sliced it open and it burst and I got covered in that fluid... just imagining it was nauseating.
Meanwhile, Nigel, our party's leader, was finishing off his second Arachne. Like me, he'd dodged the webbing, gone into the brush, and cleaved the creature's body apart.
"Uwaaagh—! Blech!"
The Arachne's abdomen burst, and purple fluid drenched him from head to toe.
Wow. That had to feel disgusting. The thought that I'd almost ended up the same way sent a chill through me.
At any rate, we successfully wiped out the pack of Arachne. The surrounding ground was a grotesque scatter of remains, slick with fluid.
But the request wasn't over. The job was clearly to slay the Arachne Queen. The ones that had ambushed us were her children.
Even a regular Arachne was a nightmare of appearance and revulsion packed into one body. I was a little worried. How much more repulsive would the Queen be?
We'd worn ourselves out in the fight, so we lit a fire to rest a while. I sat down next to Silphy, keeping my distance from Nigel.
For the record, I absolutely did not sit next to her because she's cute. I just didn't want to sit next to Nigel.
Nigel seemed furious about getting doused in Arachne fluid during the fight, and he was muttering with a face full of irritation. There'd been a small puddle nearby, and he'd roughly washed himself with it, but if you got close you could still smell it — that faintly metallic, nauseating stench of Arachne fluid...
"Damn it! What the hell did you two even do? You have to actually pull your weight if you want me to write an evaluation! If this is how you're going to act—!"
Nigel jabbed a finger at me and Silphy, shouting as if he needed somewhere to dump his anger. Petty, and only so-so in a fight. In the battle just now, Silphy and I had more than done our part. Her ankle had gotten bound at the start, sure — but once she'd gotten a feel for the situation, it was no exaggeration to say she'd been more useful than Nigel.
Silphy's dazzling, agile movement had drawn the Arachne's attention, concentrating the webbing on her. That was what had given both me and Nigel the opening to finish off the ones hiding in the brush. None of that seemed to register with him, though. He was just pissed about getting covered in fluid, and he was taking it out on us.
"Especially you! You! Getting caught in the webbing and dragged off! I told you before we left, didn't I? Don't get in the way!"
"I-I'm soooorry..."
"And these are the people who want a promotion. Unbelievable."
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."
Silphy hung her head, thoroughly wilted under Nigel's scolding, and kept apologizing.
What an asshole. I'd been trying to let it go, but it was too ugly to watch.
"I've been holding my tongue, but this is really too much. We did our part."
"What? What did you just say?"
"It's pathetic. That's why. What even is the point of having a higher-ranked adventurer on a promotion exam? Isn't it to keep Bronze adventurers like us from falling into danger, and to actually teach us what we don't know? Are you even really Silver Rank?"
Well. I'd gone and done it.
I could practically see a Silver adventurer's badge drifting up into the sky and evaporating. But I didn't regret it. I'd rather skip the promotion entirely than become a Silver-rank adventurer on an evaluation from a piece of trash like this.
"Same thing earlier. When Silphy was caught in the webbing, what were you doing? I was the one who saved her in the end. Look at you now. You're the only one reeking of Arachne fluid. Isn't that because your skill is sloppy? And you're talking about evaluating us?"
"You little—! You don't want to get promoted?"
Nigel shot to his feet, bristling. Silphy looked back and forth between us with a frightened expression, trembling like a soaked cat.
"So now you're threatening us with the evaluation? That's genuinely ugly. Fine. I won't take the promotion. I won't. If all that work just puts me on the same rank as you, I'd rather not. Watching you work, that Silver Rank of yours isn't worth a damn. Do whatever you want."
I dumped every word I'd been holding back onto Nigel. It wasn't as if this was my only shot at a promotion, and I was not about to humor a guy like this.
Nigel looked ready to blow a fuse. He listened, then drew the sword at his hip.
Ah. This might actually be dangerous.
Ugly as he was, Silver was still Silver. On top of that, adventurers physically fighting each other during a request was taboo. Getting into it with a guy like this and getting expelled from the guild would be a loss I couldn't afford. From the looks of it, Nigel couldn't regulate his emotions either — and when a person got this angry, rational judgment went out the window.
I'd said everything I wanted to say. Maybe I should stop picking at him.
"P-please both of you stop! This is my fault! Please don't fight!"
Silphy jumped up, threw herself between us, and shouted with both eyes squeezed shut. I hadn't been planning to keep fighting in the first place. Nigel, though, was still fuming, his breath coming hard.
"Get out of the way! I'm not letting that bastard off!"
"I-if adventurers fight each other, you get kicked from the guild!"
Silphy cried out desperately, her voice thick with tears. I did feel a little bad for her. Because of me, the evaluation was wrecked, and her promotion had gone down with it.
"...Hmph."
Nigel glared at Silphy, then at me, and shoved his sword back into its sheath. The reminder that he could get kicked from the guild seemed to have cooled his head a little.
"From this point on, you two might as well not exist. Whether the Arachne Queen eats you or you drop dead, I don't care. Handle it yourselves."
He spat the words at us, then left us behind and started walking ahead on his own.
"Wh-what do we do? He seems really angry..."
Silphy watched Nigel's receding back and asked me, worry written all over her face. I actually thought this had worked out fine. If it were up to me, I'd have dropped the request right there, left Nigel to it, and gone home — but I couldn't. Failing the promotion because he wrote a garbage evaluation was one thing. Walking away from a request of our own accord was another. That would mean paying the guild a penalty fee, and we'd lose their trust besides.
"What do we do? We follow him, for now."
I took Silphy with me and set off after Nigel, deeper into the Arachne nest.
Nigel was thoroughly sulking. He led from more than ten paces ahead and never once looked back, as if he intended to treat us like we were invisible.
"Sorry about that. It was my fault."
"I-it's okay..."
Silphy was thoroughly dejected. Fair enough. Because I'd fought with Nigel, the Silver promotion was no longer something she could even hope for. But even if I'd kept my mouth shut, that guy would have written a garbage evaluation anyway. The real problem was running into someone like Nigel on a request in the first place.
"Silphy, you did well back there. Drawing the Arachne's attention made things a lot easier."
I praised her, hoping to lift her spirits.
"N-no, I should be thanking you for saving me..."
"I've never seen movement like that. It was incredible. Don't pay any attention to what that trash up ahead said."
Silphy nodded quietly. Which, in a roundabout way, meant she'd agreed that the guy walking ahead of us was trash.
We'd already come quite deep into the Arachne nest. Floor, ceiling, walls — all of it was webbing. You could no longer even tell whether the surroundings had once been a forest, or anything else.
That was when the voice spoke up in my head.
Yunoa and his companions were drawing near the innermost depths of the Arachne Queen's Nest.
What they did not know was that the Arachne Queen of this place was a Variant — mutated under the influence of the Demon King.
Mutated under the Demon King's influence... a Variant?
Variants, far stronger than ordinary monsters, were already appearing across the continent as the Demon King's power steadily awakened.
The Arachne Queen that Yunoa's party had come to slay was no exception.
And so, without the faintest idea that they were walking into a death trap, they simply kept moving forward.
Hearing the Narration, I stopped dead.
This... isn't this dangerous?
And the moment I thought that—
"W-what is this? It doesn't look like the one I know..."
A massive spider with vivid crimson stripes revealed itself in front of Nigel, who had been walking ahead.