Solo Extermination of the Ungoliants
After fully donning the Ungoliant suit, I made my way to the Ungoliant Cave. The cave itself sat at the midpoint of the Dark Forest, and the path there was littered with monsters eager to test their luck.
Kiiiing!Boom!
But none of them could withstand the ultra-high-temperature plasma beam. To find a monster with a hide tough enough to endure it, you'd have to venture into the deepest parts of the Dark Forest.
“This must be the place.”
I had pushed quite far into the forest before I finally reached the Ungoliant Cave. The entrance looked like a human skull, its gaping maw the gateway to the lair where the Ungoliants made their home.
“Coming here this early… it feels strangely new.”
The Ungoliant Cave. Originally, this was a location reserved for practical training in the first semester of the second year—about a year from now. In the game, players would get trapped inside when the cave collapsed, isolated with one of the heroines for roughly three hours. The protagonist would protect her after she injured her leg, and that shared hardship would slowly draw them closer. A cliché romance arc was supposed to unfold here.
“It’s also the site of the worst possible tragedy, though.”
That only happened if you successfully cleared the hidden event. Fail it, and the genre flipped from romance to horror. One of the prime heroine candidates would be lost forever.
“…Still, it should be weaker than it was back then.”
The catastrophe had only occurred because the Ungoliants were under the demon’s influence at the time. That was also when the first hints about the demon began to surface. Right now, before that corruption took hold, I figured I could handle this place alone without much trouble. The plasma mana shield I’d developed was practically their natural counter.
With that thought, I stepped into the cave where an abyss of darkness waited.
Each step I took made the light grow fainter and the shadows thicker around me. Soon the only sounds were my footsteps and the steady drip… drip… of water. The space had become utterly silent, filled with pure darkness. The only illumination came from the faint blue glow of the mana stones attached to my suit.
Even in that blackness, I could feel the sticky gaze of predators locked onto me. Countless crimson eyes dotted the ceiling, shifting restlessly. The Ungoliants had already begun to follow.
When?
I waited calmly for the right moment—the instant they would lunge.
Scrape. Scrape.
Their hurried footsteps matched my own pace, drilling into my eardrums. They had stopped trying to hide their intent. Hiss. Hssss. They communicated in low, ominous tones while observing me.
“If you won’t come to me, I’ll make you.”
I knew exactly how these repulsive monsters toyed with their prey. They lurked in the dark, stalking just out of reach, relentlessly wearing down their victim’s nerves.
Bang!
I fired a flare forward. A streak of light pierced the cave, revealing dozens of massive spiders that immediately scattered with frantic scrabbling, fleeing back into the shadows.
“There it is.”
In that brief flash, I had mapped the terrain perfectly. I had cleared this place dozens of times before; its complex layout was already burned into my memory.
The staff-shaped rock.
I locked onto my landmark. Using unique geological features only veterans would recognize, I navigated the paths. Out of dozens of branching tunnels, I chose the one with the staff-shaped rock.
Hiss! Scraaape!
Dozens of Ungoliants pursued me. I was worried the cave’s layout might have changed, but it’s exactly the same. The structure matched the game perfectly—an intricate network of tunnels resembling an anthill. That complexity was what made clearing this place so difficult. In pitch darkness, with passages branching in every direction, the constant threat of ambush drained a person’s will to fight.
But that didn’t apply to me. I was a veteran among veterans of El Pandor Runeterra. I knew nearly every hidden Easter egg and hidden event. The cave’s geography was memorized like mathematical formulas in my head.
I moved without hesitation toward my target.
“Sssht!”
Suddenly, something sticky latched onto my ankle. One of the Ungoliants, sensing danger, had fired its web.
Crackle!
I channeled mana into the suit, generating instant high heat that melted the web away. The dozens of additional webs fired at me suffered the same fate.
Whoosh!
I had no intention of letting them bind my movements. After burning through every strand, I broke into a sprint toward my destination.
“Sssshhhiiit!”
“Ssshhht!!”
The creatures let out urgent cries and began charging in earnest. Even with their diminished intelligence, they realized I was heading straight for their most precious area without getting lost once.
Kiiiing! Boom!
But it was already too late. I repelled the spiders with minimal engagement, then fired another flare to brightly illuminate the area. After confirming my target’s location, I concentrated mana into my legs, accelerated sharply, and shook them off. Before the Ungoliant swarm could mount a proper response, I had breached their final line of defense.
“Sssshhhiiit!!!”
“Suuuaaat! Shk! Sssik!”
They were furious. I had reached the hatching chamber. Hundreds of eggs pulsed like living organs, and several newly hatched spiderlings were devouring various monsters wrapped in webs. Some were even sucking the spinal fluid from human corpses.
“Now it’s an all-out war.”
I loaded the plasma beam and fired at one of the spiderlings greedily drinking spinal fluid. With a wet splat, its body exploded, sending fragments flying in every direction. Dozens of hostile red eyes glared at me with raw hatred, and a horrific scream echoed throughout the entire cave.
“Kiii-aaaaaaaahhhhh!!”
My provocation had worked. The creatures were enraged. I thrust my right hand backward and unleashed a barrage of plasma beams across the hatching chamber. Dozens of adult Ungoliants, having lost all reason, charged at me at once.
“Good. A fair, head-on fight is exactly what I wanted.”
This sort of frontal battle was the best combat scenario I had designed for. I immediately activated the plasma mana shield. An ultra-high-temperature plasma barrier formed in a two-meter radius around me.
The Ungoliants, driven mad by their destroyed eggs, hurled themselves against the shield without hesitation. It was like dozens of zerglings swarming a firebat equipped with an irradiated defensive matrix—one that was blocking the entrance to a ramp.
“Kiii-eeeeeek!”
“Krrraaaaak!”
They melted the moment they touched me. The Ungoliants of the Dark Forest couldn’t properly manipulate mana, so the plasma mana shield slaughtered them easily. Their true danger came from endless guerrilla warfare in total darkness that exhausted their opponents. In a direct confrontation, they could never defeat me.
“Tsk. They’ve kidnapped quite a lot.”
I turned away from the moths flinging themselves into the plasma and surveyed the hatching chamber. Countless corpses hung from the ceiling—goblins, white wolves, gnolls, harpies, quillbeasts, and every other kind of monster, all tightly wrapped in webs. The most numerous by far were human bodies. Since Ungoliants considered human spinal fluid a delicacy, they often kidnapped adventurers passing through the Dark Forest or children who had lost their way, feeding them to their young.
The heroines I couldn’t save in previous runs had probably suffered the same fate.
“This is really starting to piss me off.”
Kiiiing! Boom!
I fired another plasma beam into their eggs. The bereaved monsters attacked my mana shield with even greater frenzy.
Crackle! Hiss!
Yet their serrated legs could not reach me. My mana reserves were nearly equal to Enya, one of the top NPCs. It would take far more than this to drain me.
“Sssht…! Ssshhht…!”
I watched the moth-like creatures throw themselves into the flames until they finally began to hesitate. No matter how many charged, only they died. Their assaults gradually slowed.
“Looks like I need to recharge their anger.”
They seemed to have spent it all. Seeing them waver like that made it obvious.
Kiiiing! Boom!
I fired several more plasma beams into the hatching chamber. Hatred reignited in their eyes. The charge was complete.
“Kiii-aaaaaaaahhhhhk!”
A single firework rose into the quiet night sky above the 3rd Danger Zone.
Jennen, the guard stationed at the exchange post, was chewing on jerky when he saw the flare bloom across the darkness. His face twisted into a scowl and he scratched the back of his head furiously.
“Goddammit, I fucking knew it! Boss! Told you, didn’t I? We shouldn’t have let him go!”
“……”
The old man with glasses remained silent at Jennen’s irritable outburst, then let out a sigh.
“The amount of mana I sensed was considerable… but it still ended up like this.”
“These noble young masters get drunk on heroic tales and it’s always the same. They charge in without thinking and end up like this. How many times have we seen it?”
“Hmm…”
“What, you think he won’t send a rescue signal? Damn it all. He was acting so high and mighty, too.”
Even as he cursed roughly, Jennen gathered his weapons and equipment. He strapped on his armor, donned his helmet, and slung his greatsword across his back.
“I’ll head out first. Just call the cleanup team. If there are corpses scattered everywhere, it’ll be a pain in the ass for me to handle alone. Oh, and you’re giving me ten gold when I get back, right? I won the bet.”
With those words, Jennen activated his mana. Blue haze coiled around his body like evaporating steam. Then he shot forward like a spring, racing toward the location of the rescue flare.
“Ha, the Ungoliant Cave? The kid’s lost his mind.”
After confirming the flare’s position, Jennen let out a mocking laugh. He’d wondered where the fool had gone to shit himself, and it turned out to be the Ungoliant Cave of all places—that hellish pit where even veteran swordsmen easily became spider food. How many adventurers had marched in claiming they would conquer it, only to become a meal for those horrific monsters?
Still, it seemed the pretty young noble had at least come to his senses near the entrance and run away. The fact that he could fire a rescue flare proved it.
“Huh?”
But when Jennen reached a point ten meters from the Ungoliant Cave, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Ed—who should have been fleeing from Ungoliants that had chased him outside the cave—was standing calmly at the entrance. Around him lay nine corpses and two survivors. The survivors were sobbing continuously, offering grateful words to Ed.
“H-how the hell…?”
Jennen arrived in front of Ed with a bewildered expression and demanded an explanation. Ed, who had been removing the webs wrapped around the bodies, turned to look at him with indifferent eyes.
“I couldn’t just leave the corpses here. I need to identify them and return them to their families. As for these two, they’re the lucky ones who survived.”
“……”
Jennen stared at the survivors who kept crying and thanking Ed. Then he looked back at Ed with an incredulous face.
“Wait… did you… bring out the corpses and survivors from inside the Ungoliant Cave?”
“Yes.”
“……?”
It felt like he’d been hit in the head with a hammer. The Ungoliant Cave was a labyrinth you could never escape once you entered. Just coming out was shocking enough, but to bring corpses and survivors with him? The Ungoliants stored their food in the deepest parts of the cave.
“Then I’ll be on my way. Please handle the bodies properly and send them to their families. Give these survivors something to eat. As you can see, they’ve been wrapped in webs and starved for days.”
“……”
“Take care.”
Before Jennen could even voice his questions, Ed turned and left. Curfew at the dormitory was approaching.
“…What the actual fuck.”
Left alone, Jennen muttered that it was impossible and stepped into the cave, still full of doubts about how Ed had escaped.
Whoosh!
But the moment he entered and lit a flare, he had no choice but to accept the truth. The interior of the Ungoliant Cave, illuminated by the flare, was…
“Holy…”
Absolutely packed with Ungoliant corpses in every direction.
Jennen stared blankly at the scene and muttered under his breath.
“…Looks like I just lost ten gold.”