Spider Hunt (1)
“Forest Spider? And here I thought it was something serious. It’d be faster to go straight to the Spider Forest and see for myself.”
For all the complaint in his voice, his hands were moving briskly.
The receptionist checked the wooden tally sticks stacked on the counter, then reached for the cabinet. When the book he wanted wasn’t there, he called out to someone else.
“Risley! Who took the Spider Compendium from here?”
“What? Speak up!”
“The Spider Compendium! You know, the book that records those damn things in the forest.”
“Didn’t you say the whole set got burned up last time? I think a Bronze Plate mercenary borrowed it and that was that.”
“Ah… right, that’s how it was. Damn, now I feel bad. I’m pretty sure I’d put in a request upstairs, though. We don’t know when the spares will come in.”
The receptionist scratched his head.
A guilty look spread across his ratlike, shifty face.
“If you’ve got questions, just ask. If I know it, I’ll answer.”
“...Then may I ask where the extermination takes place?”
“Easy enough. Find a watchtower and climb up. You’ll see the mercenaries heading for the forest. It’s roughly at the far end of that route. If you’re not sure, just follow them. That’ll probably be the easiest way to find it.”
There were an enormous number of mercenaries gathered in Horos Village.
As far as Lawrence could tell, he would have no trouble getting lost.
“I’d also like to ask what weapons are effective against them.”
“Weapons? Fire, of course. Even if you’re only carrying a torch, they won’t come at you lightly.”
“You can’t kill them with a torch, though, can you?”
“True enough. That’s why all these mercenaries are gathered here.”
As if amused by his own words, the receptionist laughed.
“Spears and swords are no good. You’ll be safer if you cut off all their legs first. Their fangs aren’t just for show, either. The joints connected to the body are their weak points, so that doesn’t matter much when you’re dismantling them, but trying to hit those spots in a fight is nearly impossible. If you’re going to use anything, make it a blunt weapon. It’s easier if you think of it as smashing the spider instead of killing it.”
“Smashing it?”
“The things have pretty tough armor for a spider.”
“What about a crossbow? It has plenty of stopping power. If I aim for the head….”
“That won’t cut it. Not even if you bring the latest model. I can say for certain: if a crossbow could bring down a Forest Spider, there’d be no need to gather all these mercenaries in the first place.”
“……”
That was not good news.
The only weapons Lawrence had at the moment were a spear and a crossbow.
In other words, neither could bring down a Forest Spider.
“Don’t go trying to fight them alone. Everyone gathered here fights in groups, anyway. If you can, it’d be good to watch them fight first. Your chances of surviving will go up.”
“I see. Thank you for the information. I thought it’d be better to see it with my own eyes, too.”
“Good thinking. Usually, even when I say things like that, idiots don’t get it.”
We’re the ones who end up suffering for it, the receptionist grumbled.
Lawrence asked a few more questions about the Forest Spider’s byproducts and a couple of other things, then brought the conversation to an end.
“By the way, may I ask you one favor before I leave?”
“Go ahead.”
It was nothing more than an act.
He wanted to avoid drawing any suspicious eyes, if he could help it.
The receptionist nodded as though he understood.
Lawrence gathered up his plate and stood.
“Don’t worry too much, kid! I’ll make sure to post up the request of that bastard who skipped out on paying!”
Laughter rose around them.
…Just so you know, I didn’t ask to be called a kid.
* * *
Maybe because he had spent a while at the mercenary guild?
The street outside looked entirely different now that the sun was up.
Mercenaries ready for the extermination were leaving the village with resin-soaked torches and weapons in hand.
As the receptionist had said, there was no need to climb a watchtower at all.
The thinning street made it easy to estimate how many mercenaries had gone out.
He had considered stopping by the inn first.
But judging by the situation, doing that might make him late.
Lawrence followed the mercenaries out of the village.
They headed in the opposite direction from the road he had taken with Lionel.
What had once been forest was still visible around them, marked by scorched trees and logging tools scattered here and there.
He moved forward, crossing paths with laborers hauling timber.
Walk, and walk again. It had been about twenty minutes by the time he finally reached the edge of the logging site.
At first, he thought the place was some kind of market.
It was packed with stalls, not just mercenaries.
Some sold all sorts of things that might help in the hunt.
Others were cooking food on the spot for anyone who wanted a quick bite.
The fact that there was no one selling liquor might have been the only reason the place wasn’t noisier.
The best-selling item, as expected, was the resin torch.
Mercenaries were buying them as fast as they could, without exception.
The signboard listed them at five copper each.
“Expensive. They were three copper in the village, weren’t they?”
“What choice do we have if we didn’t bring our own?”
“Cheap enough if it keeps you alive.”
Lawrence looked at the torches for a moment, then turned away.
There was no need to buy one right now.
He had decided he wouldn’t actually go into battle until tomorrow.
Today, he had come to see the Forest Spider.
Once he left the clearing, the scenery changed a little.
Up to this point, the area had been a neat logging site, but from here onward, charred trees stood scattered and uneven.
There were no laborers in sight.
Only mercenaries with torches were walking along the dim path.
Some foul smell drifted from somewhere.
At the same time, it was an odor he had smelled before.
He was wondering where it was coming from when he noticed a mercenary behind him, carrying a sack dripping green blood over his shoulder.
That stench. It had to be a goblin.
For reasons Lawrence didn’t understand, the mercenary was hauling a goblin corpse.
Why? He didn’t even get the question out.
The road made from burned timber ended, and the scenery changed entirely.
The Spider Forest.
An endless forest stretched before him, so dense that not even sunlight could penetrate it, much like the Shadow Forest he had seen in the Spirit World.
Unfamiliar giant trees stood straight and defiant, as if challenging the sky itself.
Even the mercenaries who had been tossing out careless jokes all this time changed their manner.
They took positions in the wide spaces lined out before the forest, on both sides.
Then they checked their weapons and torches with tense faces.
So many had gathered that Lawrence couldn’t begin to count them.
Looking more closely, he saw small groups of three or four chatting among themselves.
He realized this was what the guild had called a party.
A mercenary carrying a sack stepped out to the front of the clearing.
The ground there was filthy with the remains of countless corpses, as though bodies had been dumped there again and again.
Monsters, dead by the score.
Goblins and Under Wolves made up the bulk of them.
Other corpses whose names he didn’t know were scattered among them as well.
The goblin body inside the sack was dumped on top of the pile too.
“The third spider hunt of the morning begins now!”
The mercenaries facing the forest shouted.
“Third spider hunt of the morning!”
“Time to go kill some spiders!”
Voices rose in answer all around them.
The mercenaries who had been checking their gear stood up.
As soon as they lifted their weapons, the murderous atmosphere spread like a contagion.
Torches rose everywhere, driving back the dark.
It was about to begin.
Lawrence swallowed hard, tension tightening in his throat.
An unidentified fluid was poured over the goblin corpse.
The stench grew stronger.
The mercenary who had stepped away from the goblin body held torches in both hands and stared into the forest.
And then it began.
The Spider Forest howled.
Something moved in the woods, a place where not even a single insect sound should have been heard.
Rustle.
It wasn’t a small movement.
From the sound alone, Lawrence couldn’t have guessed how many Forest Spiders were on the move, not even if he’d tried.
“They’re coming!”
Suddenly, a black shadow shot out of the forest.
It charged straight for the goblin corpse, not caring about the humans at all.
Crunch.
Something was being chewed.
The thing that had torn into the monster corpse was a spider bigger than a person.
Its body was tinged overall with blue.
The same shade as the trees in the Spider Forest.
In darkness without sunlight, it would be hard to tell apart at a glance.
Its legs, four pairs for a total of eight, were covered in fine bristles.
It was so strong that it was easily crushing the corpse, which had already stiffened after death.
Inside its mouth, where it was happily devouring its prey, teeth hard as steel kept worrying at the flesh without pause.
More frightening than anything else was the way it kept scanning its surroundings even while enjoying its meal.
As though it were checking for any moving humans.
As though it would never forgive anyone who interrupted dinner.
No mercenary moved first.
The Forest Spiders weren’t just one or two leaving the woods, either.
As the mercenaries counted the number of creatures coming out to feed, one of them raised his hand.
“Now!”
“Set the fire!”
The mercenaries holding torches in both hands rushed into the forest.
They seemed to have done this more than once before; they quickly and efficiently set the fire.
But the trees of the Spider Forest were as though they held water, and they refused to catch.
Even when the flames finally took, they died out before the sparks could scatter.
All the while, casualties were mounting.
“Aagh!”
“Hold the torches high!”
“Protect your own damned skin!”
Going near the forest meant becoming prey for the Forest Spiders.
The mercenaries exposed to their legs and fangs had to lose pieces of themselves as though they were being cut up for meat.
Even so, the damage wasn’t too severe.
At the cost of a handful of injuries, the forest had begun to catch fire.
Not enough for the flames to spread through the whole forest—only enough to scorch the front.
Watching that scene, Lawrence understood how the road leading this far had been made.
It was all the trace of spider hunts.
“Let’s go make a killing!”
Once the forest was wrapped in flames, no more Forest Spiders emerged from it.
In other words, the enemies here were all the Forest Spiders that had gathered in this place.
There were nine of them. Mercenaries nearest each spider rushed them at once.
Keek—!
Interrupted in the middle of their meal, the Forest Spiders went on the offensive.
But they didn’t charge straight at the mercenaries.
They had been unnervingly fast when they first burst from the forest, yet the torches held by the mercenaries, clustered together in twos and threes, were completely shutting down the spiders’ movements.
Taking advantage of that, the mercenaries went after the legs and fangs first.
There were almost no swords or spears in sight.
A few mercenaries had brought crossbows, too.
But no matter how many quarrels they fired, they couldn’t pierce the gleaming armor.
What was proving effective were blunt weapons like maces.
If you can’t cut it, smash it.
Every time a burly mercenary swung his mace, another of the Forest Spider’s legs was taken away.
The creatures’ pained shrieks never stopped.
Once they’d lost most of the eight legs that held them up, they collapsed and could no longer support their own weight.
After that, things moved quickly.
The mercenaries rushed in and finished off the Forest Spiders that could no longer move.
So ended the third spider hunt of the morning.
The injured fell back, cursing, while the dead were dragged to one side.
It had been one round of fighting.
There were fewer injured than Lawrence had expected, but far more dead.
Just from what he could see, there were more than six.
One mercenary split clean in half at the waist. Another with his head blown off.
Another pierced from top to bottom….
It was a scene so horrific he could hardly bear to keep his eyes open.
“Where’d that bastard with the spear go?”
“Cromwell? He got hit by a paralyzing dart earlier and was dragged into the forest.”
“Tch. Guess he’s dead too. What a pain, having to recover people.”
“Where’s his gear? I could use some drinking money.”
“I already called dibs.”
...Not exactly the sort of conversation Lawrence wanted to hear.
At this point, it was better for the mercenaries who had died here.
He didn’t want to know what had become of the ones dragged into the forest.
“This bastard’s legs are the ones I broke, you know?”
“I know, so take it and shut the hell up. You’re driving me crazy.”
“What the hell? If I hadn’t stepped in, you’d be the one lying there.”
“What are you talking about, idiot? If it hadn’t been for you, I would’ve gouged out the spider’s damn eyes myself.”
A small argument broke out over the Forest Spider’s corpse.
They seemed to be dividing up the byproducts according to each person’s contribution to the hunt, though given that they’d fought together, it looked difficult to make the distribution truly fair.
“Good work.”
“You’ve got some skill.”
“What skill?”
“Running away. Puhaha! Did you see that earlier? This bastard threw down his torch and ran for it.”
“You son of a bitch! That was all part of the plan, damn it?!”
Laughter rose too, celebrating the ones who had survived.
Once the tense hunt was over, the mercenaries had returned to the familiar figures Lawrence had come to know.
After the spoils were divided, some mercenaries left while others remained behind, and the group split in two.
Watching them for a moment, Lawrence checked the Forest Spider corpse left in the back.
Stripped of everything of value, the thing looked so mutilated that it was hard to believe it had ever been a spider at all.
It was far from pleasant, but he needed to inspect it.
Lawrence grimaced and reached for the creature’s carapace.
“Careful there, kid.”
“It might start moving and eat you.”
The mercenaries’ voices carried amusement.
To them, it must have looked ridiculous—a boy as young as Lawrence studying a Forest Spider corpse.
Let them say what they wanted.
He’d lost count of how many times people had looked down on him just because he was young.
At this point, he ought to be immune to it.
The Forest Spider’s carapace was covered in a sticky fluid.
Blood? No, something different.
It was viscous, but not a normal slime. It even seemed to have a faint white sheen, making it look almost threadlike.
Thread. That reminded him.
If it was a spider, then of course it would be spider silk.
Apparently, the thing’s blood and web had mixed together when it died.
The carapace beneath the slime was hard as iron.
When he tapped it with his finger, it rang crisply.
Even with all the wounds on it, it still seemed to carry some memory of the strength it had in life.
He lifted it slightly, and to his own surprise, it came up with ease.
Now he understood why the mercenaries had moved so quickly.
It was light and tough.
It would be hard to land any real blow without a blunt weapon.
The mercenaries with swords and spears had only moved in once the legs were already gone.
In other words, it was useless unless the situation was certain.
Lawrence’s weapons were a crossbow and a short spear.
Even with the strength of a grown man, those weapons would be difficult to use effectively.
There was no chance at all that a boy this young swinging them could make them work.
But it was too early to be disappointed.
Lawrence had a power none of the others here possessed.
Magic.
Now, with the third spider hunt over and the surroundings quiet, this was his chance.
For the first time since learning magic, he would cast it in front of other people.
The circumstances were different from all those times he had secretly used it to keep it hidden.
He cut the first fuse with his most confident spell: Fire.
It was magic that had grown through real combat while accompanying Lionel on his business trip.
I can do this.
He steadied his pounding heart with a deep breath.
Compared to standing before a goblin, this was nothing.
“What’s wrong with that kid?”
“No idea. Looks like he pissed himself or something.”
He sank down.
Deeper and deeper, until the voices around him could no longer be heard.
He descended into the depths of consciousness.
When he came to himself again, he was already submerged in an expanse of darkness where nothing could be seen.
Across the lake.
The upside-down corpse of a Forest Spider appeared.
His awareness sharpened.
Lawrence grasped the dim light trembling before his eyes.
“Fire.”
Flames rose, sweeping away the dark.
The Forest Spider’s carapace burst into flames in an instant.
It worked.
No wonder the goblin had gone out of its way to avoid Fire.
The power he saw with his own eyes was beyond anything he had imagined.
Magic, after all.
The energy that had shrunk back while watching the mercenaries fight now surged through him all at once.