Chapter 60
Chapter 60
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 60
Chapter Title: The Corpse's Ring
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What I discovered was a ring on the ring finger of a shriveled, twisted corpse.
It was a silvery gray overall, with intricate patterns engraved on the top. Even after a considerable amount of time had passed, it hadn't lost any of its original luster.
This was the item needed to progress the next main story. That's why Arachneira was a boss that had to be defeated to advance the plot.
I ignored the gruesome sensation touching my fingers and gripped the hand of the shriveled, twisted corpse. If I just took this off and carried it with me, I'd never have to come back here.
‘Taking the whole corpse isn't an option.’
Even in the game, pressing the interaction key here would have the character remove only the ring and take it. The story progressed just fine that way anyway.
Besides, it was firmly fixed to the wall with spiderwebs. With my strength, I couldn't detach it, and while the knight captains might manage it, there was a high chance the corpse would get damaged in the process.
It was better not to take it at all than to smash it up in places to carry it off.
‘...More importantly, why won't this thing come off?’
I struggled for a while trying to pull the ring off the finger. I thought it would be easy since it was on a shriveled, twisted corpse, but it wouldn't budge, as if it had been glued on.
I put more strength into my hand. Then I felt the ring starting to slide off little by little. My arm trembled. The ring was pushing out bit by bit, so if I just applied a little more force in this state—
Crack.
‘Huh?’
The ring came off.
The problem was that the corpse's finger came off with it.
“......”
I stared blankly at the broken finger for a moment, then quietly slipped it back between the spiderwebs. I decided to pretend I hadn't seen this.
After all that trouble, I finally extracted the ring from the finger, stowed it safely in my potion pouch, and exited the cave. In the distance, I could see the knight captains who had dealt with Arachneira waiting for me.
Lize waved at me with a bright smile.
“You took quite a while. What were you up to?”
I guess they decided to go with the classic method for proof of subjugation—severing the head—since Claudia was holding the severed head of Arachneira.
I took the ring out of my potion pouch and placed it on my palm. Three pairs of eyes turned toward my hand.
“Went to get this.”
“This is......”
Erika seemed to know something about it. Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“You know something about it, Erika?”
“Yes. This is a noble house's crest. Hold on a moment. Which house was it......”
The knight captains fell deep into thought.
Normally, this would trigger an event after returning to the knights' order and showing them the ring, but since we'd all come here together to subjugate Arachneira, it looked like it was starting right here instead.
Of course, I already knew which house it belonged to. But to rule out any possibility that the name had changed, I quietly waited for Erika to speak.
No, looking back on everything so far, it was more accurate to assume it had definitely changed. At this point, it was faster to look for things that hadn't changed rather than ones that had.
“I got it. It's the Prattroyds. This is definitely the Prattroyd house crest.”
‘As expected.’
It was a name I'd never heard before.
“But...... why would a ring symbolizing that house be found here?”
“Why do you think?”
I pointed to the corpses strewn all over the walls. Every one of them was drained of blood, shriveled up dry, and firmly secured with spiderwebs. Some even had swollen patches on their bodies here and there.
The knight captains instantly grasped the implication, their expressions hardening.
“......Understood. We'll take this ring for now. We'll send a letter to House Prattroyd later.”
Erika said in a slightly subdued voice. Claudia gripped the head of Arachneira tighter in her hand, and Lize bit her lip slightly.
“Yeah. Got it.”
One of the knight captains sends a letter to House Prattroyd, and then the player visits there in person to deliver the ring, advancing the main story.
Since the exit wouldn't open without acquiring the ring, it was safe to say no player would miss its existence.
Even if a player somehow missed the hidden passage, they'd end up circling the boss room because they couldn't find the way out, spot the cave, think it might be the exit, and go check it out.
“Ah, finally heading back to the cas—?!”
Suddenly, Claudia started to speak but covered her mouth with her hand. All our gazes focused on her. Claudia let out a harsh cough, as if she were about to vomit her guts.
“*Cough*! *Hack, hack*!”
The moment I heard that cough, cold sweat ran down my back. A certain thought flashed through my mind.
“Claudia. What's wrong? Are you hurt somewhere?”
“......No. Just a sudden cough. Probably the bad air in here. It'll be fine once we're outside.”
“You don't look fine at all. Your complexion is terrible.”
Lize and Erika each voiced their concern. They were right to worry. If my suspicion was correct, Claudia was absolutely not okay right now.
“Why are you all making such a fuss? I'm really fine. I just need some fresh air outside.”
Claudia tried to make excuses with a forced smile, but the cold sweat beading on her face clearly showed she was far from fine.
“You're not fine, so hand that over first.”
“Huh? Delta, you......”
I snatched the spider queen's head from her hand.
The moment I took the head, Claudia couldn't even finish her sentence and collapsed weakly to the ground. Now without even the strength to hide it, her breathing became noticeably labored.
“Lize. Hold this for me.”
“What the hell happened? Why is Claudia suddenly like this?”
“I told you these things have deadly poison on their bodily fluids, right? And that you absolutely shouldn't touch them if you didn't want to get poisoned.”
“......No way?”
I nodded firmly.
“Yeah. She's poisoned.”
Poisoning was one of the status ailments in Brutal 4 caused by regular poison or deadly poison.
Once afflicted, it continuously drains health by a percentage over its duration. Regular poison takes 50% of max HP over 3 minutes, while deadly poison takes 85% over 3 minutes.
Some might think it's advantageous if your HP is low since it's percentage-based, but that wasn't always true because there was a minimum damage.
In fact, poison's duration was so long that it was rare to die purely from poison damage unless you were really careless.
For regular poison, 50% of max HP over 3 minutes meant only about 0.2% of max HP per second. Even deadly poison was just under 0.5% per second.
But the real terror of poison was how it restricted the player's movements.
Every 15 seconds, it triggered coughing: 1 second for regular poison, 2 seconds for deadly poison, leaving the player unable to act. If it hit during combat? You're dead.
That was why the duration was a full 3 minutes.
“......Sorry. For ending up like this.”
“It's something you had to do anyway, so stop apologizing. Do it one more time and I'll tell Erika.”
As I carried her on my back out of the valley, Claudia weakly smiled and kept repeating how sorry she was. It seemed to really weigh on her mind.
There was a reason I was carrying Claudia instead of leaving it to Lize and Erika.
While they were far stronger than someone like me in pure strength, their heights were the issue. Claudia was enormously tall, but Lize and Erika weren't.
Erika was exactly average height for a woman, and Lize was quite a bit shorter than Erika. The height difference made it an awkward position for either of them to carry Claudia.
So I, being taller than Claudia, had no choice but to take this role. Even I could manage carrying one person piggyback.
We returned to where the horses were tied and leaned Claudia against a nearby tree. Her whole body was soaked in sweat, her limbs limp, and her complexion horribly pale.
“*Hack, hack*!”
She even coughed as if her lungs were tearing apart.
‘I should have prepared some poison-curing items before starting the boss fight.’
I'd told them how to handle most emergencies, so I figured knights of captain rank would handle it without issue. That assumption was the problem.
Of course, things had gone fine in reality too.
Until coincidences piled up into disaster. Who could have imagined such a contrived situation happening at exactly that timing?
‘The symptoms should be the same as in the game.’
In the game, it just caused some coughing and chipped away at max HP. But here? Would it really end with just some HP loss?
‘I don't know.’
There was nothing I could be certain of.
“Riding a horse in that condition......”
“No way she can do it alone. Erika, you head back to the castle first and find a solution. Delta rides with Claudia, and I'll escort from the side.”
Lize and Erika exchanged serious words with grave expressions. The atmosphere was utterly tense.
“So tall...... sorry...... If it were Lize...... you'd fit perfectly in Delta's arms, *hack*......”
“Are you making jokes in this situation, Claudia? We're serious, so shut up.”
Claudia let out a silly laugh and cracked a joke. It seemed like an attempt to lighten the mood, but it only backfired. Erika sighed deeply.
“Is there no way, Mr. Delta?”
She was pinning her last shred of hope on me. Her gaze held faint expectation.
“There is.”
Brutal 4 was a difficult game, but not an unfair one, so areas with monsters using poison or deadly poison usually dropped consumables to cure those status effects.
‘The problem is Darkest Light Mode.’
But Darkest Light Mode was unfair.
Normally, you could gather clumps of herbs around here that functioned as antidotes for deadly poison. They even respawned after a set time, so with enough time, you could stockpile infinitely.
But not in Darkest Light Mode.
The ones near the Arachneira boss room were all gone, and you had to travel quite a distance to barely find one—and it didn't respawn, so one use only.
If you were skilled enough to get status-afflicted by a mid-early boss like that, the game was basically telling you to die from poison.
‘......No idea how far it is.’
I knew the direction. The key was how far away it was.
“Heading that way, we can get antidote herbs. But I don't know how far. Could be an hour, two hours. Or even more.”
“Time isn't the issue. There's a way, right?”
As I nodded, Lize hardened her resolve with a determined expression. I could easily guess what she'd say next, so I prepared to go look for the antidote.
“Erika, get ready. We need to find the antidote. If Delta's right, there should definitely be some that way, so before heading back to the castle—”
“Looks like you could use some help?”
An unfamiliar voice I'd never heard before rang out from somewhere. Lize and Erika drew their weapons like the wind, scanning all directions warily. Flames blazed along the katana, and ice formed on the twin daggers.
I did the same. This was a situation I'd never experienced—someone else appearing here—so I gripped my bloodied sword, tense.
“Who said that? Answer or show yourself. Otherwise, we'll treat you as an enemy.”
“We're pretty short on time right now? If you don't want to fight, better come out quick.”
A murderous tension hung in the air.
Normally, they might have acted a bit more leniently. But with Claudia poisoned and time of the essence, they reacted that way.
“Oh dear, how scary. I was just offering to kindly help, no need to get mad, right?”
The standoff didn't last long. A woman emerged from behind a nearby tree, pushing through the bushes.
She was a woman with golden blonde hair and green eyes.