EP.19 House of the Spider -6
EP.19 House of the Spider -6
My first meeting with Alice had not gone well.
Our assignments happened to overlap, we happened to meet, happened to learn each other's identities, and ended up fighting.
One coincidence after another had made for a terribly troublesome first encounter.
If the rabbit hadn't loved games, we might well have fought until one of us was dead.
But once I discovered she liked games, I used games as bait to win her over, and to be honest I'd been quite pleased about it.
Ever since I learned about Alice's ability, I had been coveting her.
Not in any romantic sense, of course—it was the value of the Time-Leaping Rabbit that I was greedy for.
Time Leap. The ability to leapfrog into the future while time crept slowly for everyone else.
I was certain that ability would let me escape any crisis, no matter how dire.
That was why I'd tried to bring Alice over to my side, and I had actually succeeded in tempting her.
We might not have become Companions, but we did enter a relationship of employer and employee, which let me call on Alice whenever I needed her.
I could now use her as much as I pleased, though I hadn't exactly wanted to be a tyrannical employer.
On the contrary, I wanted to be a decent boss, so I treated Alice kindly and even threw my own body into danger to help her when she was in trouble.
Still, even for a guy like me, the Draining Hell and the death-by-snu-snu ending were too terrifying to endure.
And that was why, even knowing she could barely hold herself up, I was now asking Alice for a favor.
"Alice...?"
"Sorry, boss. Right now I can't..."
"Ah, no!!"
I couldn't lean on the dazed rabbit any longer in this situation.
Desperately, I prayed for someone to appear like a miracle and finish off the dying Arachne.
But no such miracle came.
Miho leapt up lightly, seized the spider's twin fangs, and mercilessly drove the spider into the ground.
Then, for good measure, she materialized a massive boulder above the prone spider and smashed it down to finish the job.
-Crunch!
The sound of the spider being crushed beneath the rock. From that I knew the giant spider was unquestionably dead.
Ahh, it was over. The spider... and me.
"Husband! You got a good look at me taking down the spider, didn't you?"
"Uh, uh-huh."
"Then victory in this contest, and the wish ticket, belongs to me—isn't that right?"
"Well... um..."
"...Isn't that right?"
Miho began crushing the boulder on top of Arachne with one hand, grinding it to pieces. That action left me with no choice but to nod.
If I imagined my own body ending up like that rock, my head just had to bob up and down on its own.
"Heheh♡ Then, husband! Since the work is done, let's hurry back home and..."
"It's not over yet, so why don't you stop counting your chickens?"
From the stairs behind Miho came a familiar voice, and a brown-skinned woman was descending with determined steps.
And right behind the woman followed a wolf-girl wearing an innocent smile.
It seemed that side had successfully wrapped up their assigned tasks as well.
"What do you mean it's not over, birdbrain?"
"Exactly what I said. This situation still isn't over. So calling it your victory is still a long way off."
"Don't bullshit me. Can't you see Arachne's corpse right in front of your eyes? Is there something wrong with your peepers?"
"Sorry, but my vision is perfectly normal. And whatever filth you spout, Arachne is still perfectly alive, so it's not over."
"H-hold on?! So you're saying the giant spider we just killed wasn't Arachne? Is that it?"
"No, strictly speaking, that spider was indeed Arachne. But she's not Arachne anymore."
"What do you! Mmp...?!"
Before I could finish, Yata pressed her index finger to my lips and told me to calm down, that she would explain everything.
Left with no choice, I kept my mouth shut as she'd said, and Yata smiled with satisfaction and began her explanation.
"The truth is, Arachne has a hidden ability she hasn't revealed to everyone."
"She didn't just have three abilities, there was one more?"
"Right. I'll explain what that hidden ability is now. Before that, dear husband."
"Hm?"
"Watching the baby spiders we've run into so far, did anything seem strange to you?"
Strange, huh...
Come to think of it, there was one thing all the baby spiders had in common.
"Uhmm... Nothing really stands out, but if I had to pick one thing, their movements were extremely stiff?"
"Exactly. If the baby spiders' movements felt off, that's because it was natural for them to. Arachne's baby spiders have no will of their own, you see."
"Huh, so are they not living creatures?"
"No, they are living creatures. They're just like biological dolls that follow Arachne's orders."
"The baby spiders are biological dolls...?"
"Spiders are animals with surprisingly strong maternal instincts. So how was Arachne treating her own young?"
True enough, Arachne had ordered her young to fight, and didn't so much as blink even as they were being killed off one after another.
From the start, she seemed to view her young as tools to be used and thrown away...
That was absolutely not how a parent and child relationship should look.
"It wasn't normal behavior."
"Of course it wasn't. I called them biological dolls, but in reality they're Arachne's spare bodies."
"Spare bodies?"
"Yes. Arachne can transfer her soul into one of the baby spiders she lays."
"Wha...?!"
"It's the ability to move her body, but only among the spiders she herself has laid. That's why the baby spiders have no will—they never had souls from the moment they were born."
I had never even considered it.
The baby spiders Arachne laid were actually new bodies prepared for emergency escape in a crisis.
Did that mean destroying Arachne for good was nearly impossible...
"You don't need to look that grim. There is definitely a way to finish her off."
"How?"
"Arachne's hidden ability has its limitations. Once she uses it, she can't use it again for a long time, and she loses the ability to mass-produce baby spiders until she is reborn as a full adult."
"So we have to find and kill Arachne's real body somewhere in this building before her ability cooldown runs out?"
"Right."
"Oh, you're shitting...!!"
This was practically impossible.
We'd killed a substantial number of spiders since arriving, but counting the spiders and eggs I'd seen in the multipurpose hall, there were well over a thousand.
Out of all those still remaining, exactly one was Arachne.
So how was I supposed to find Arachne?
And before dying, Arachne had declared she would unleash her spiders to kill other people.
Even though we were inside the government building right now, it was only a matter of time before they spread across the entire city.
That meant the absolute madhouse party I had been picturing was going to happen exactly as I'd feared.
"How am I supposed to find Arachne's real body..."
"Husband."
"Yeah?"
"If it comes down to it, shall we bring the building down and bury every spider underground?"
"...Let's not do that."
It was true that method would wipe them all out in one stroke without the trouble of finding Arachne.
But destroying a government building of long-standing history and tradition would be like burning the whole field to catch one pest.
The terrorists who saw the government building collapse would run rampant in the spiders' place.
So Miho's suggestion was rejected without any need for further consideration.
"Yata, isn't there another good way? Say, telling me Arachne's current location or something."
"Sorry, dear husband."
Shaking her head from side to side, Yata indicated she couldn't tell me the location.
Most likely because revealing Arachne's location would steer the future in a bad direction.
"Haaah..."
How was it that my life had never once flowed smoothly.
"It's not much of a substitute, but I did arrange an environment where Arachne can be finished off in advance."
"Huh? In what way?"
"Before joining up here, I blocked every exit with my flames beforehand so the spiders can't leave the building...!"
"Wait! Then aren't we in danger too?!"
"It's okay. Kor can change the properties of fire at will. If she wants, she can even produce flames that aren't hot at all, so it's fine."
"That's a relief, but in the end it still means we have to wipe out every last spider inside."
"That's probably impossible... The building is far too large, so there's a time limit on maintaining the flames..."
"Can you tell me how long the maintenance time is?"
"Well... From now, it's roughly one hour..."
No good. One hour was far too short to exterminate over a thousand spiders.
Besides, once Arachne realized all the exits were blocked she would desperately try to hide herself...
"Dear husband, have you ever seen Arachne's abdomen?"
"The abdomen? I got a full view of it once in the multipurpose hall..."
"Then do you remember seeing a red marking on the abdomen?"
"I do."
Arachne and all the baby spiders were black-type spiders.
The difference was that while the baby spiders were all solid black, only Arachne, like a black widow, had a red marking on her abdomen.
"But why do you ask?"
"Want to take a look over there?"
At the end of where Yata's finger pointed lay the giant spider's corpse.
A corpse that had been crushed beneath a huge boulder and was spilling bodily fluids in all directions.
There didn't seem to be anything special about it, yet a sense of incongruity kept nagging at me.
When I examined it more carefully, I instantly recognized the source of that incongruity.
"H-huh? The marking is gone?!"
"Right. The red marking only appears on Arachne herself. And that also applies to Arachne after she's moved bodies."
"In that case, we don't necessarily have to deal with all the spiders...!"
"We just have to identify and eliminate Arachne alone."
If I could somehow find Arachne and handle her within one hour, it was done.
The possibility had just barely become visible, but it was only that the possibility had gone up by a tiny amount.
The situation was still as hopeless as ever—I still had to find Arachne while she was hiding deep.
Perhaps reading this worry of mine, Yata patted my shoulder and suggested one decent plan...
"For my dear husband who worries so much, I'll let you in on one good method."
"What is it?"
"How about making a Companion Contract with the rabbit?"
"With... Alice?"
"Yes. Through a provisional contract, you can obtain part of a Companion Divine Beast's ability, can't you? If you can get the rabbit's ability, don't you think even you would be more than capable of finding Arachne?"
"True, but... would Alice even agree to a contract?"
"You don't need to worry about that. I'll vouch for it!"
"R-really?"
"Yes. Look at the rabbit."
When I looked at Alice as Yata said, the rabbit, conscious of my gaze, began to fidget.
With her sharp hearing as a rabbit, she must have caught the word "Companion Contract."
Even so, her expression didn't show any dislike.
In fact, she looked almost as if she truly wouldn't mind becoming my companion animal...
"It seemed she was pleased that dear husband protected her so splendidly."
"So you knew all along..."
"Of course. If dear husband hadn't protected her, the rabbit's future would have vanished right there."
"Why's that? I could've saved her with the Materialization ability, right?"
"If it were a Companion relationship that might work, but dear husband's Materialization ability can't affect Divine Beasts."
That was something I'd had no idea about at all.
After all, other than my own Companion Divine Beasts, I had never used the Materialization ability on another Divine Beast.
I had no idea it didn't work on other Divine Beasts at all...
In any case, it meant that if I hadn't taken the hit for her back then, Alice would have been in danger.
Alice, who seemed to have just realized this fact along with me, grew a shade redder in the face.
"As you can see, you don't need to worry about the Companion Contract with the rabbit."
"Y-yeah."
"If anything, what dear husband should be worrying about is over there."
"Huh?"
At some point, Yata's index finger had shifted to point elsewhere.
When I followed it once more, Miho was looking this way, smiling coldly.
And there, atop her hand, rested an object bound with a large quantity of red sticks—I could tell at a glance that it was dynamite.
"Heheh! Are you thinking of increasing the number of companion animals besides me again? Husband?"
"Wait a moment, Miss Miho...?!"
"I'll specially give you a choice~! Either don't form a companion contract and die by getting just the spiders buried, or form the companion contract and die by getting buried together with absolutely everyone!"
Would I... be able to make it back home safe?