The Monster in the Deep Forest (2)
"Is this the place? For now, I don’t sense any beast presence inside."
"It’s a wreck all right. But where are the bodies?"
A fully armed group of men had come to the village. With buildings smashed to pieces and household goods strewn everywhere, the place was a complete disaster.
Even they, hardened by plenty of rough work in rough places, were on edge now, their caution sharpened. The atmosphere was unlike anything they had expected.
If a village had simply been attacked by a single beast, there should have been people left behind. But right now, they couldn’t feel a single trace of life anywhere inside.
"Were they wiped out?"
"What a load of crap. Looks like they ran off, same as that old man."
Keeping their nerves taut, they continued to search the village interior. The deeper they went, the stranger it all felt. Dried chunks of flesh, scraps of entrails, and pools of blood were left everywhere, yet the corpses themselves were nowhere to be seen.
"Look at that. What the hell is that?"
But that question didn’t last long.
One of them had spotted it in the center of the village.
"Z-Zack!"
"It’s the body we were looking for. Or rather, what used to be a body."
Their leader, Zack, stepped forward and examined the mound of what had been piled there. Then he let out a grim sigh.
"As you know, sucking the juices out of prey is one of a spider beast’s characteristics."
"I-It ate all of this? That doesn’t even make sense."
"Fine, sure. But where the hell is the spider?"
Unlike the composed Zack, his companions—already with weapons drawn—looked a little pale. And with good reason: no matter how monstrous a beast might be, wiping out an entire village like this was no easy feat.
Did it head into the forest?
In the midst of it all, Zack’s sharp eyes caught a faint trail nearly gone from the floor and tracked the other side’s path.
"There isn’t even a proper map here. It’s all just the villagers’ testimony. Isn’t this dangerous?"
"Then what, you want to come all the way out here and go home empty-handed, Toby? You know beasts pay better the stronger they are."
"W-Well, yes, but..."
Leaving the village behind, Zack and the others began following the trail deeper into the forest. Along the way, Zack even took one complaining companion to task.
In truth, the others had already started feeling uneasy, but Zack was the exact opposite—his competitive streak was burning brighter by the minute.
"This is... footprints?"
"There’s more than one. Did those village bastards leave these behind while running away?"
Then they found something else: a number of footprints, preserved by sheer luck. And those footprints ran on in clusters, one after another, as if a group had all been moving somewhere together.
"They weren’t running away."
Zack frowned. Judging by the spacing, he could tell the owners of those prints had been walking, not running.
"Either way, it means we’re on the right track. Keep moving. Preferably before the sun goes down."
Using the footprints as a guide, they kept walking. Even Zack was now tense enough to feel that something was about to appear.
"...No way. Again!"
"What a feast. Just how much is this thing planning to eat?"
At last, something came into view. Just like what they had seen in the village: the mangled corpses of several wolves, dead in a state of utter ruin.
Zack’s eye twitched as he inspected them.
Arrogant beyond belief!
He disliked the way the beast had so blatantly left its meal lying around. Unlike ordinary animals, beasts often behaved in ways that went far beyond simple instinct.
For example, they might throw themselves at an enemy with a savagery that didn’t even care whether they themselves lived or died. Zack rubbed at his arm, which had begun aching for no reason, and shook his head to dispel the bad memories creeping back up.
"Huh?"
Then Zack noticed a tree trunk with a long gash in it. Before he realized it, his gaze followed that wound upward, and his eyes shook violently.
"Holy crap! A spider web!"
"No, wait. It’s not here!"
The others looked up too, horrified. Milky webs blanketed the trunks and branches of the trees. But the spider that should have owned them was nowhere to be seen.
"Keep moving. It’s just a web. Torch, now."
"Damn it, I’d rather it just show up already."
Zack made his decision. For some reason, unease kept welling up inside him, but he didn’t abandon the hunt. With torches in hand, they continued to follow the trail.
And at last, deep in the forest, just before sunset, they found something.
"...A cave?"
"Draw your weapons."
Everyone understood instinctively. Whatever was inside that cave, something was waiting there.
But none of them—not even Zack, who had awakened mana and trained in it—noticed the being watching over them from above.
"You. Who are you?"
"What the—"
"Behind you! Behind!"
Only when she finally spoke did they flinch in alarm and whip around, leveling their weapons.
A girl...?
Zack sucked in a breath, his eyes wide, the tip of his sword trembling ever so slightly.
The being that had been hiding without the slightest trace of presence, watching them from the trees with the help of the tentacles sprouting from her back—though she wore the face of a beautiful girl, the body beneath the black carapace was absolutely not human.
"Why have you come here?"
"Damn... what the hell is that..."
As she released her tentacles and dropped to the ground, they all staggered backward in shock. They were experienced outlaws, yes, but at best they had only ever hunted low-grade beasts under Zack’s lead.
A monster with a human face and a human voice was something none of them had ever heard of.
"Answer me."
"I don’t know who you are, but since we can talk, I’ll tell you this. We didn’t come here to fight you."
Sensing danger from the way she frowned, Zack stepped forward. He wanted to avoid a clash if at all possible.
"We only came to hunt a spider."
"A spider?"
"A hideous monster spider that trampled a decent village and slaughtered countless people. An old man who escaped from there hired us to kill it. We just followed the trail here."
To avoid provoking her, Zack explained the facts as gently as he could. He wanted to make it clear that they were not her enemy.
"...A decent village? A hideous spider... kill? Hideous? Kill? Kill?? Kill???..."
But the reaction of the girl standing before them was nothing like Zack had expected.
"Zack!"
"Shit."
As if some hidden trigger had been pressed, her face twisted viciously and she bared her teeth, her red eyes flashing. Killing intent burst outward in waves, and the eight tentacles jutting from her back writhed like mad in response to her surging emotions.
"Shut up. How dare trash like you try to hurt Him!!!"
"Fight them all!"
The moment her tentacles launched forward with a howl drenched in madness, Zack raised his sword and knocked one of them aside.
But the black tentacle, encased in a hard outer shell, only left a scratch on the steel blade and refused to be cleanly severed.
"Kill them all! Tear them apart!"
And that wasn’t all. Zack was already horrified by the screams of several companions pierced through by her tentacles, and now he was staring in disbelief as Ascalas’s minions poured out of the cave behind her.
The minions, using hobgoblin warriors as their base, were even stronger than before when they had been ordinary village residents. The startled outlaws were swept away before they could do anything about it.
"What the hell are you? A demon race?"
"Don’t you dare compare us to garbage like that."
Listening to his companions’ shouts and screams, Zack blocked the nails of the girl rushing at him and sucked in a strained breath. With a feral grin on her face, eyes flickering with madness, she swung her arm with all her strength.
Once again sword and claws collided with a deafening crash, and Zack was forced backward by the difference in brute force.
[3. Tear the intruders to pieces]
I can win. I can do it!
Even now, she could feel it. The will to kill the enemy. If that was the case, then carrying out that will was her duty—and her happiness.
Grinning, she thrust out the hand tipped with sharpened claws toward Zack’s heart as he staggered.
***
[1. Decapitate the intruders brutally]
[2. Hack the intruders to pieces horrifically]
[3. Tear the intruders to pieces]
"What kind of choices are these!?"
The instant the group introduced themselves as mercenaries met Lena, the choices appeared. But the contents were insane.
I shouted in confusion, but Agares only snorted.
"Choices don’t always present a variety of paths, you know. Deciding is your role, but providing the chance to decide is what your units do."
"What the hell does that mean... Are you saying I might not be able to control them however I want? Then what the hell is the point of my existence?"
"That too is part of your skill. Why else would there be Dominion and Command? If you dislike it that much, then use any means necessary to dominate your units. Make them move the way you intend."
This game wasn’t simply about picking choices. At those words, I lowered my head in a daze. On the screen, Lena had completely gone berserk, and together with the other minions, she was mercilessly slaughtering the enemies who had come looking for them without even knowing what they were walking into.
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