Chapter 59
Chapter 59
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 59
Chapter Title: Victory Over Arachnaira
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“…….”
I cautiously opened my closed eyes. Judging by the fact that I was still alive and hadn’t died, the plan seemed to have worked perfectly. Or maybe I’d died so quickly I hadn’t even felt the pain and ended up in the afterlife.
Soon after, the pressure crushing both my arms like it would pulverize them weakened, and I dropped to the floor, landing hard on my butt. My rear throbbed, so at least it wasn’t the afterlife.
I looked up. Right in front of me was the spider’s gaping maw. I looked up further. There was Arachnaira, eyes rolled back and mouth agape, her entire body twitching and convulsing wildly.
Her four pairs of spider legs on her lower half flailed about wildly, while her human arms hung limply downward. She still had a sliver of consciousness left but couldn’t move a muscle.
In stark contrast, I was perfectly fine.
The plan had succeeded.
‘That was close.’
At the last moment, when lightning had been about to crash down on my head, I’d reflexively squeezed my eyes shut.
If Arachnaira hadn’t grabbed me right up until the moment she was about to devour me—if there had been even a little more distance between us—I definitely would have been the one struck by the lightning.
I’d calculated even those fine details before acting, but since I’d done the math in my head at breakneck speed, it was only natural to worry I might have made a mistake somewhere.
It was a method I’d come up with on the spot, judging the positions of Claudia, Lize, and Arachnaira. Time had been too short to verify the calculations.
‘So this is the power of a full-charge Lightning Storm.’
I looked around. Every single one of the spiderlings that had filled the area was electrocuted without exception, sprawled lifeless on the floor, and the survivors couldn’t even approach due to the lingering shockwaves.
What Claudia had just used was a technique called "Whirling Lightning Storm."
She raised her greatsword to the sky, focused her mind, then slammed it down, unleashing a circular shockwave centered on herself that blanketed a wide area with an enormous barrage of lightning.
As I’d inferred from telling her to charge it as much as possible, the range and power varied depending on how long she focused. If charged fully, it could blanket the entire boss room like this.
It wasn’t a vanilla skill, of course—it was added in the Narak mod. Unless interrupted by a weapon with high stagger, it was an unfair pattern that covered the whole boss room.
The reason she hadn’t used it sooner was that it didn’t distinguish between friend and foe.
Lize and Erika each had their own ways to survive it, but I didn’t. If she’d unleashed it recklessly, I’d have gotten caught up in it and died too.
That was precisely why I’d baited Arachnaira’s grab pattern in the first place. So she’d take the lightning and shockwave instead of me.
“Delta!”
Erika, who had somehow come up beside me, hoisted me up and swiftly retreated. The distance between the spider queen and me opened wide.
I turned to check on Erika. She was breathing heavily, and her body was covered in countless small cuts, but nothing seemed seriously injured.
On the flip side, her armor was completely wrecked. Her helmet had been torn off long ago, her upper body barely clung to her shoulders, and her lower half was gone below the thighs. It was hardly worthy of being called armor anymore.
“Erika, you okay? Any injuries?”
“That’s what I should be asking you!”
Erika yelled, grabbing my shoulders and shoving her face right up to mine. Her crimson eyes, brimming with all sorts of complicated emotions, came right up close.
“Are you insane? Who charges into something that reckless?!”
“We both survived, so it’s fine. Don’t get so worked up. You might not notice your own injuries that way and collapse later.”
“That’s not the point right now!”
“If that’s not the point, then what is?”
“…….”
At my retort, Erika fell silent, at a loss for words.
Right. No matter how insane my plan had been or how reckless my actions, the result was that Arachnaira was neutralized, and we’d both survived.
Nothing was more important than that.
“……As I told you before, Delta. Dying while subjugating a monster is something that can happen to any of us knights at any time. If it had to be done, I was prepared to sacrifice myself—”
She trailed off, her voice softening a bit, as if she had nothing more to say.
“Not me.”
“Huh?”
Erika looked momentarily dumbfounded.
“It might not matter to you, but it does to me.”
I shook off her grip on my shoulder. Pushing back her body, which had closed in uncomfortably close, I stood up.
Sacrifice? What a joke.
This wasn’t some hopeless crisis we couldn’t overcome, and one of the Silver Dawn Knights’ leaders throwing herself away against a mid-game boss like this? Like I’d just stand by and watch.
Even if such a dire situation did arise, I’d find a way to resolve it on my end somehow.
‘These guys have to be saved no matter what.’
As long as the player didn’t betray them first, the Silver Dawn Knights’ leaders would never betray the protagonist. There were no more reliable allies than these four in BR Narak 4.
It meant they were allies you could trust unconditionally in any situation. No way I’d let them die.
“……Delta. What do you—”
“Erika! Delta! You okay?!”
Erika had been murmuring something in a dazed expression, but Lize’s booming voice drowned her out. Lize came rushing up in a frantic state and stopped right in front of us.
“Yeah. See? I’m fine. Kept my promise again, didn’t I?”
I spread my arms wide with an exaggerated grin. Lize just stared at me silently. Her helmet hid her expression, but it probably wasn’t a good one.
“Yeah. We’ll talk details later. What about you, Erika? You okay? Hurt anywhere?”
“Huh? Oh, uh, yeah. Yes. I’m fine too, sis. Not a single injury.”
Only after Lize asked if she was okay did Erika snap out of it, nodding vigorously. Why was she rambling like that on her own?
“Kyaaaaah!”
A bloodcurdling scream echoed from a short distance away. It was a familiar voice.
The scream came from Arachnaira. Claudia had closed in at some point and started pummeling her with her greatsword.
Each swing lopped off legs, tore open her abdomen, and shattered her carapace. Seeing that, Lize and Erika snapped to attention and gripped their weapons again.
“Right. She was still around.”
“We’ll finish her quick, so Delta, don’t go moving around recklessly. Stick by me.”
As the lightning field faded, the spiderlings started swarming in groups, but they were wiped out by Lize and Erika’s attacks before they could do anything.
Erika especially unleashed massive flames, as if venting her frustration from what she’d endured. Any spiderlings touched by the fire turned to ash without a sound.
It didn’t take long for the number of living figures in the cave to dwindle to five.
“Kehk. Hek. Hah...”
Arachnaira, most of her body torn away and only her human upper half remaining, crawled desperately across the floor on her elbows, tears and green fluids streaming from her.
“Where do you think you’re going.”
“Kyaaaaah!”
With a squelch, Claudia drove her greatsword into Arachnaira’s gut. Her mangled fingers scrabbled futilely at the floor. Pointless.
“Phew, barely finished.”
Claudia let out a short sigh and tossed aside her armor, soaked in deadly poison. Fortunately, the green fluid didn’t seem to be dissolving it.
Erika didn’t even have armor left to discard. What little remained had fallen off long ago.
Lize was the only one whose armor retained any shape, but with more green than silver, it was meaningless. With a clatter, she also shed her poison-soaked armor.
Her sweat-soaked white sleeveless top and dolphin pants the color of her hair were revealed.
“Oh yeah, Delta.”
Claudia, who’d been flapping the chest of her sleeveless top to fan some air inside, approached me. I turned, wondering what was up.
“Things were too hectic earlier to ask, but...”
Now that there was some breathing room, that sly smile crept back onto her lips. What was she getting at?
“How did you know I could use Lightning Storm?”
‘Ah, so that’s it.’
I’d thought for a second it was about her using informal speech, but Claudia wasn’t the type to nitpick over that in the middle of a crisis like just now.
If anything, she’d praise me for surviving thanks to me.
“Heard it from Lize.”
“Really? Wow, she just spilled everything, huh?”
Lize reacted with a puzzled “Huh?”, but seeing my glance, she shut her mouth as if convincing herself. Instead, she mouthed “one more debt” without forgetting.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch... Hic.”
Arachnaira, greatsword impaled in her belly, repeated “it hurts” over and over in a pathetically powerless state, tears streaming down.
To someone who didn’t know the situation, it might look like a peerless beauty, critically wounded and naked with a sword in her gut, whimpering in pain—enough to pity the spider queen.
But we knew she was a monster. And Erika had barely escaped death at this thing’s hands. Sympathy was out of the question.
Plus, she’d already killed hundreds of people. Their corpses littered the boss room. This was just another ploy to garner pity.
‘I can leave the cleanup to them.’
Confirming the knight leaders raising their weapons and approaching Arachnaira, I turned alone and headed deeper into the boss room.
It was blocked by webbing during the boss fight, but accessible once the spider queen was defeated.
Lize, Erika, and Claudia didn’t react much to me moving off alone. They probably figured I was off to handle something as usual.
I entered the cave lined with corpses drained dry by Arachnaira.
‘Ugh.’
I grimaced at the sight of a shriveled, twisted human corpse greeting me right at the entrance. Even in its desiccated face, the expression of agony was vivid.
—Aaaaahhhhh!
‘Whoa, startled me.’
As I walked further in, a scream from behind made me flinch on my own. Sounded like the subjugation was over.
I passed the spot where a webbed wall should have blocked the path and continued deeper. Finally, reaching the dead end at the very back, I saw what I was looking for.
‘Found it.’