The One Thing She Fears
The massive stone doors rumbled open with a deep, grinding ku-gu-gung.
Beyond the boss room entrance stretched nothing but endless darkness. From within, an ominous wave of mana poured out, thick and unsettling.
“……I’m going in.”
“Yeah.”
Yet Aspilia showed no sign of tension despite the heavy mana pressure. Her extensive dungeon experience must have made this level of threat feel trivial.
Seeing her completely unfazed, I allowed myself a small, secret smile before stepping into the boss room alongside her.
Whoosh!
The moment we crossed the threshold, flames along the walls ignited one after another, illuminating the chamber.
It was vast. Impossibly vast.
That was the simplest way to describe it. The space was nothing more than an empty cavern, completely hollowed out.
The boss room had been swept clean. As Aspilia tilted her head at the barren interior, I had already drawn my sword and fixed my gaze upward.
Considering a boss’s habits, this was hardly surprising.
“Above us.”
The boss room’s high ceiling remained untouched by the firelight. It had clearly been designed that way on purpose.
When I lifted my eyes to the pitch-black ceiling, a chilling, razor-sharp killing intent washed down over us.
There, clinging to the stone with eight legs, it stared at us with eight gleaming, murderous eyes.
As if welcoming long-awaited prey.
A colossal red spider.
It was weaker than the arachne, the strongest of the spider race, but in the early stages it was one of the most troublesome bosses. And now it was looking down at us from above.
Well… with my current specs and Aspilia’s, we should be able to handle it without too much trouble.
Even though the red spider was considered an early-game bully, Aspilia’s stats had already far surpassed that stage.
I couldn’t know my exact numbers, but I was certain I had exceeded the early-game threshold as well. On top of that, I already knew all of the spider’s patterns. Clearing this should be straightforward.
“The fight starts the moment it drops down. Just watch out for its front legs and the webs it shoots.”
If it stayed glued to the ceiling, it might have been annoying for us since we lacked long-range attacks. But the creature was kind enough to come down to the floor.
The real danger began once it descended, and even then, the only threats were its front legs and silk. Its shell was unusually tough for a spider, making most physical attacks useless, but that only mattered in the early game.
“……Aspilia?”
When I didn’t hear a reply during my briefing, I turned toward her with a puzzled frown.
Aspilia was staring blankly at the red spider, as if she hadn’t heard me at all.
Her face had gone deathly pale. The sight of her looking so strangely drained made me furrow my brow.
Because I could already feel the red spider beginning to move.
“What’s wrong, Aspilia?”
“……S-spider.”
I watched her eyes tremble as she stared at the creature, and only then did I remember a certain setting.
Aspilia has a severe phobia of insects.
……That’s right.
Wasn’t that why the community always recommended not bringing Aspilia to this dungeon?
Well, at this point in time there had been no way to get close to her anyway… but still.
Yeah.
We’re screwed.
@
Aspilia dil ven Orgonia, the noble daughter of the Orgonia ducal house.
There were very few things in this world that she feared.
Her father, the duke, was a man of genius talent and was famous for doting on his lovely daughter. There was nothing in the world that could threaten her.
At the same time, although she was from a distant branch, she was still a member of the imperial family. Even the imperial family could not treat the ducal house lightly.
Thus, Aspilia had been raised as someone who rarely knew fear or terror.
But there was one thing she feared above all else.
Insects.
The countless legs covering their bodies!
Their repulsive appearance that inspired nothing but disgust at first glance!
The multitude of eyes crammed onto tiny faces!
One could say that insects existed solely to frighten a girl who feared nothing else in the world.
Even the smallest bugs were enough to trigger her terror, but that thing… that thing…
A giant spider…!!
Insects were usually not threatening because they were small.
Of course, even small ones were disgusting enough, but a giant one? Aspilia could never understand such a repulsive species.
Fear wrapped around her entire body like chains. The moment she met those enormous eyes, she became trapped as if caught in its web, unable to move a single muscle.
The sensation of eight eyes crawling over her body made goosebumps erupt across her skin.
She gripped her weapon, the massive double-bladed axe, with all her strength, but the fear refused to fade.
“……Aspilia?”
She heard the boy calling her name, yet she could not respond. All she could do was stare at it with vacant eyes.
Thud!
Finally, the red spider made its move.
It dropped from the ceiling to the floor, its crimson eyes glowing as it stared at its prey.
Ta-da-da-dak!
Having noticed that Aspilia was trembling in fear, the red spider kept its gaze locked on her and began moving its enormous legs.
Kiiiieeeeeeek!
It let out a screech and charged at her. But Aspilia’s body, frozen solid by terror, refused to obey her will.
I-I have to dodge…
Spiders are scary. Bugs are scary. That single thought looped endlessly through her mind.
No matter how powerful her strength was, no matter how easily she could have crushed a red spider under normal circumstances, the fear rooted deep in her bones had begun to paralyze her actions.
“Stay back.”
Just as the red spider closed in and Aspilia shakily raised her axe with trembling hands, someone grabbed her shoulder, pulled her behind him, and stepped forward to face the monster.
Seeing that familiar back, Aspilia finally snapped out of her daze. It was the same back she had seen in her previous life.
The boy whose name she still didn’t even know.
The boy she had approached out of simple curiosity.
Yet the boy with that familiar back.
Looking at his back, Aspilia bit her lower lip. The boy she had observed today hadn’t shown anything particularly outstanding.
Of course, he had dismantled the trap with ease and possessed skill beyond most students his age, but he still seemed somewhat lacking compared to the person who had delivered that strike against it.
Even so, Aspilia could tell.
It was because of his bone-deep effort and the sense of justice that would let him throw away his own life to save the world that the boy could become strong.
It was a heart that someone like her, who had never cared about others, could never possess.
Kiiiieeeeeeek!
Its target had changed, but the red spider didn’t care. To it, both of them were nothing more than food.
Unlike the trembling prey from before, this new one radiated intense hostility, but that didn’t matter either.
After all, two mana-rich prey had walked right into its lair. The red spider shrieked and lunged at its new target.
Kiiigigig…!
He lightly parried the spider’s front leg with his sword, steadied his slightly shaking blade, lowered his stance, and slipped into the creature’s embrace.
This is my mistake.
Killing the red spider wasn’t particularly difficult, just a bit tedious.
The real error was that he had forgotten Aspilia’s extreme hatred of insects.
In the previous timeline, he had never entered this dungeon with Aspilia or the other main characters. Even in the game, he had never grown close to her during the optimal time to clear this place.
That was why he hadn’t remembered that he shouldn’t bring her here.
So he could understand why her body had frozen up. It was unfortunate that Aspilia had effectively left the fight, but there was nothing to be done about it now.
Kiiiieeeeeeek!
“Shut up!”
Boom!
Irritated by the way its prey kept dodging like a fly, the red spider screamed and slammed its leg into the ground.
Because of its massive body, the spider’s attacks had a very long wind-up. Dodging them after seeing the motion was easy.
He evaded the strike with room to spare, his eyes flashing sharply as he targeted the creature’s joints.
The red spider’s entire body was covered in a hard shell, so ordinary attacks were useless. But as always, even such creatures had weaknesses.
The eyes, the underbelly, and the joints between its armored plates were among them.
He sliced cleanly through the joint of the spider’s right front leg, then leaped backward to create distance.
Kiiiiek! Kiiiieeeeek!!!
Enraged that its joint had been severed, the spider thrashed wildly, swinging its front legs in a frenzy.
But none of the attacks reached him. The right front leg’s joint had already been cut, causing the limb to dangle uselessly.
Looking at the limp leg, he gave a faint smile.
Methodically cutting the joints one by one was the easiest way to deal with a red spider.
Even though the situation had forced him to solo the fight, he didn’t mind at all.
Solo play was something he had done so often it made him sick. It was practically his specialty.