EP.19 House of the Spider -5
EP.19 House of the Spider -5
Two holes were punched through my abdomen, and flesh-searing venom poured into them.
An excruciating pain, the same kind I'd felt since Taotie pierced my belly. It was so agonizing I thought tears would come.
"Rather than the rabbit... the Divine Beasts' Companion Keeper, is it? Not a poor trade at all."
"B-Boss!!"
Polar opposite reactions.
One side was satisfied, deeming it a decent outcome; the other wore a shocked expression and called out to me desperately.
Arachne and Alice alike must have thought I would die from this strike.
Considering the situation, it was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but...
"Whoa! That fucking hurts!!"
I had no intention of ending my life so anticlimactically just yet.
Before it was too late, I stumbled backward and pulled the spider's fangs out of my body.
Then I immediately cast an illusion upon myself.
Arachne's attack had never happened from the start, and my body was in perfect condition. By holding that sentence in my mind, I altered my body and the world all at once.
Finally, I used my Materialization ability—usable only once a day—and simultaneously stepped out of the illusory world I had built.
And just like that, I returned to a body without a single wound.
"Wh-What in the world just happened?! I unmistakably felt my fangs stab you just now, and the marks were there...!!"
"Hmm, who knows~?"
My mouth itched to tell her exactly what I'd done, but I clamped it shut and held back.
I could somehow recover on my own once, but if I got stabbed a second time, I'd really be done for.
The moment I got cocky and let even a scrap of information slip to Arachne, it would all be over.
"Immortality in a human? No! Impossible! There's no way a human could possess such an ability...!!"
Leaving the bewildered Arachne behind, I first melted every strand of webbing binding Alice's feet with fire, freeing her from her restraints.
To think the webbing would prevent her from using a Time Leap...
It was a trap even I hadn't anticipated, so Alice, the one who actually fell into it, must have been utterly horrified.
There was no other way to explain the dumbfounded look on her face at that moment.
"Alice, are you okay? Can you move?"
"B-Boss, your body...!!"
"Hm?"
Alice suddenly started groping around my abdomen with her hands.
Apparently, my not being dead wasn't the only thing the rabbit hadn't foreseen.
She seemed just as bewildered as Arachne that I was standing there perfectly fine.
Come to think of it, I'd never once mentioned my abilities to Alice.
When I'd fought her before, I had revealed them, but only in fragments.
I'd never once shown her Materialization, so it was only natural for Alice to react like this...
"You see, Alice. There's a perfectly valid reason I took the fangs in your place."
"A valid reason...?"
"Yeah. I'm sorry I didn't explain beforehand, but the truth is..."
So that Arachne couldn't hear, I quietly brought my lips to Alice's ear.
Then I briefly explained my Materialization ability and revealed my scheme to use it to overcome the crisis.
Now that I'd laid out the whole picture, I figured she'd understand—but Alice's face was still filled with an expression of incomprehension.
"Boss, if you had an ability like that, it would have been fine for me to take the hit. So why did you shield me? Why on earth!"
"Huh...? Is that really such a problem?"
"It is! You're the employer, and I'm the employee! For the employer to not only take responsibility for the employee's mistake, but even try to sacrifice himself...! That makes me completely worthless... Oww!!"
To cut off the rabbit's intense self-reproach, I lightly rapped my fist on the crown of her head between her rabbit ears.
"No matter what, that's going too far."
"Ugh...! Why do you think that?"
"Because if you judge a person's worth by a single mistake, then everyone in this world would be a worthless bastard. Besides, it's not wrong for an employer to protect an employee, is it?"
"But still..."
"No buts. I shielded you purely of my own will. So there's no need for you to blame yourself. At least, that's what I think."
"Ngh...!!"
To tell her to stop with the unhealthy thoughts, I gently stroked Alice's hair.
At that, Alice's ear flinched, then its tip immediately folded inward.
Seeing Alice's face flush faintly pink, it seemed I'd done something a little embarrassing.
I quickly withdrew my hand from her hair and, instead of an apology, cleared my throat with a fake cough to break the odd mood.
"Ahem...!! Anyway, stop blaming yourself. If you absolutely can't get it off your mind, then at least say thank you. That's enough for me."
"Okay... Thank you for saving me."
"Don't mention it."
Having successfully rescued the rabbit and calmed her down in the process, I turned my body back toward the spider.
The spider, too, seemed to have mostly quelled the confusion in its head, as it was glaring at us fiercely.
"Oh? You still want to fight after witnessing my regeneration ability?"
"It matters not. Even if you truly possess immortality, I need only bind you tight in my webbing and render you unable to move for eternity!"
"Can't speak for Miho, but personally, I'm not a fan of bondage play..."
I pulled my sword free from where it had been lodged in a spiderling corpse and seared the blade section with flame.
It was caked in spider blood and webbing, so I was burning it clean, a sterilization of sorts.
And so my Segmented Whip Sword was rendered spotless, free of any impurity.
I'd used it without rest all day, yet it still looked so sharp that merely touching it to a drifting fallen leaf seemed like it would slice it in two.
My body and weapon were both perfectly fine. All that remained was...
"Alice."
"Yeah."
"I'm asking just in case, but... you don't want to become a completely worthless person, right?"
"Of course not."
"Good. Then prove it, properly, this time."
"Got it!"
Even before I could tell her how to prove her worth, Alice tightened her grip on the crowbar she was holding.
And inside her eyes, the giant spider was reflected—meaning she already knew without me having to say it.
My comrade was fine, too.
The spiderlings had all been taken care of by me earlier; they were gone. The only enemy remaining was Arachne herself.
If Miho joined us, we could finish her off for sure. But there was no telling when more newly hatched spiderlings might show up.
Thinking of it that way, this was the optimal moment—a golden opportunity to fight Arachne without anyone's interference.
There was nothing stupider than letting an opportunity like this slip away... and so we entered the final stage of our battle with Arachne.
***
Sudden death, where both sides have only one life.
I'd bluffed about having immortality, but it meant nothing.
My Materialization ability only worked once a day, after all. I'd just used it, so I had no more.
On top of that, I'd even shown myself dodging an attack.
By then, the spider must have been certain that I'd never had any such thing as immortality.
"Die! You detestable creatures!!"
"Alice, don't worry about me. Go wild as much as you want."
"Okay!"
A baptism of thread harder than steel gushed from Arachne's mouth.
Having predicted it, I dodged to the right, while Alice simply used her ability to ignore the attack entirely.
Certain that Alice would appear near Arachne's upper body and attack just like before, I instead headed for Arachne's lower half.
"Kieeek?!"
Sure enough, from above the spider came the sound of carapace cracking, followed immediately by the spider's scream.
It was as unpleasant as ever, but for me, with only one ear functioning normally, it wasn't that big of a problem.
I dodged all the incoming legs and safely made it beneath the spider's cephalothorax. Gripping my sword in both hands, I slashed upward from below.
"Kiiieeeek!!"
-Fwooshaaak!
The line I carved was left directly on the spider's body, and from the gap in that line, spider fluid erupted.
Revolting, but now that my attack had landed successfully, this was a chance for a follow-up.
I quickly flipped my grip on the sword hilt and drove the tip deep into the spider's belly.
A heavy sensation, different from simply slicing.
Lightly deducing from the feeling transmitted through my fingertips, I realized the tip of the blade had penetrated all the way to the spider's innards.
The slight downside was that the sword was a bit too short to fatally wound the internal organs.
But it was a relief that it had a function built in precisely for moments like this.
-Shwoooosh!!
The moment I pressed the button on the crossguard, gas burst out from the stabbed area.
Proof that the technology Yata had introduced was starting to operate normally. Then, along with a terrifying explosion, an electrifying hand-feel surged through my body.
The fragments of the Segmented Whip Sword burst through the internal organs and tore through flesh in an instant.
As if a harpoon gun had been fired, the sword's segmented body had ripped its way from the point of entry all the way through to the spider's back on the other side.
"Kiiieeeeeeek!!"
With flesh and even parts of its organs bursting out, Arachne thrashed with an intensity on a completely different scale from before.
There was no way the giant spider would stay still after enduring the pain of having its flesh ripped apart from top to bottom.
Arachne shook off the rabbit riding on top of her, clung to the ceiling, and immediately began to flee.
"Ah! W-Wait, don't run away!!"
Even as its bodily fluids dripped incessantly and it grew closer to death, Arachne was fleeing with all its might.
The giant spider's destination was probably the multi-purpose hall.
It was obvious at a glance that she was planning to scheme something with the massive quantity of spiderlings hatching there.
"Kieek!! Kieeeek!! I swear I shall take at least one more of you humans with me to the grave...!!"
Honestly, Arachne's main body itself hadn't been that difficult an opponent, just as Yata had said.
But the thousands of spiderlings she had birthed were different.
Spiderlings you couldn't let your guard down against, not even against a single small one.
If those spiderlings hatched en masse and came flooding in like a tidal wave? That was already hell.
What's more, if the swarm scattered in every direction and even reached civilians...?
We'd be totally fucked.
"Ngh...!! We ha-have to chase it right now...!!"
Meanwhile, Alice was staggering and couldn't keep herself upright.
She seemed to have had her senses knocked out of whack by Arachne's most intense screech yet.
Certainly, there was no one better than her at pursuit, but in this state...
"No, I'll go. So you get some rest, Alice."
"But...!!"
"It's fine. Leave it to me."
Before giving chase, I helped the staggering Alice sit down on the floor. I then took a step forward to run after the spider, but—
I spotted a peculiar shadow far off in the distance and stopped dead in my tracks.
Starting with the silhouette of a human figure with nine tails trailing behind it, there was the familiar clip-clop of flower shoes and a blood-curdling humming song.
From that, I could tell at once who the shadow belonged to.
Thank goodness! Thanks to Miho showing up at the perfect time, it seemed we could avoid the worst-case scenario.
"Oh my? How lucky! My dear husband's Wish Ticket is coming straight to me all on its own!"
"Ah! Right..."
I'd completely forgotten. About the contest where we promised to grant one wish to whoever caught Arachne.
Alice and I had fought hard and brought it to the brink of death, but ultimately we'd failed to finish the job and it had fled.
If Miho dealt the finishing blow in this situation?
The winner of our contest would be the fox, regardless of contribution.
In other words...
"Now then, what shall I do with my dear husband using this luckily acquired Wish Ticket? Ufufu♡"
The endangered party had simply changed from civilians to me.
And this time, it was a definite crisis that even Materialization, an ability that could achieve anything, couldn't get me out of.
"Alice! Get up!!"