A Showdown with a Giant Spider!

――The next day.

I wanted to defeat that huge spider living in the cave and mine the crystals.

A crystal that huge must be worth more than ten million yen. That would be a considerable source of income.

But to be honest――I would probably make more money by entrusting all of it to Primula and having her run a business with it.

But wouldn't that make me a kept man?

As a man, living a slow life as a kept man would compromise my pride.

"A spider..."

Could there be anything useful for this――before setting out, I searched Shangri-La for something that might help us exterminate the spider.

The simplest solution would be to set it on fire, but using kerosene or gasoline in such a confined space would put us in danger too.

Come to think of it, it was probably a good thing Anemone's magic failed. Still, magical flames vanish quickly.

Explosives, perhaps?――But I had never made any, and there wasn't time to make them. Besides, I had no idea whether I could use them safely.

There was also the risk that using them would collapse the cave. Perhaps I should ask the experienced Nyamena.

"Nyamena, what do you think about using Flames of Wrath—Fireball inside a cave? Wouldn't it be dangerous?"

"Well, it would be dangerous if you poured oil on something, but magical fire goes out quickly."

If the cave wasn't a dead end but went all the way through――the so-called chimney effect could occur, and we could burn to death.

And if the flames kept burning, I would be worried about the oxygen running out.

"What about something like this?"

I had found something promising on Shangri-La. I didn't know whether it would work, but I thought we might as well try it.

For now, I bought twenty of them. They cost 1,000 yen each.

"Anemone, are you sure you're all right? If you're scared, you can stay home, you know?"

"I'm fine! I'll do my best!"

Nyamena must have given Anemone a pep talk, because she seemed to have recovered her spirits.

I was curious what she had said――but oh, well.

"That's right, Miss Ane. Women have to be strong!"

"Yeah!"

"Everyone, please be careful and don't overdo it."

Primula, who had no combat ability whatsoever, was staying behind to organize the shop's books. As a precaution, I left two crossbows with her for defense.

"Heh, if I hadn't pushed myself, I wouldn't have been able to defeat Shaga and save you."

"That's true, but..."

"I heard from Miss that the Boss was the one who defeated the notorious bandit Shaga."

"Don't tell the people in the city about that."

"I know. But I'd heard rumors that the amazing mage who defeated him had fled Dalia... I never imagined it was you, Boss."

"It was going to become troublesome."

"So you abandoned Miss and ran away?"

"Urgh... Well, that was..."

"To someone like Kenichi, I was nothing more than a pebble lying by the roadside――that's what it means."

Primula's cold gaze pierced me. She still seemed to resent me.

"That's not what I meant..."

"Boss, a good woman like Miss is hard to find, you know?"

"I know that."

I set that matter aside for the moment――.

I put the reinvigorated Anemone on the rear seat of the off-road motorcycle, and we set off.

We rode along the hardened lakeshore, sending up splashes. It was freshwater, of course, so there was no danger of rust.

If we did this along the ocean, the saltwater would make a terrible mess unless we washed the bike afterward.

The motorcycle was reaching a top speed of about sixty kilometers per hour, but the beastfolk were still running alongside us――their speed left me speechless.

After about ten minutes, we saw the tree marked with pink paint.

"That draisine powered by magic runs incredibly fast."

"Yeah, well, you two are pretty fast too."

"We can go a little faster if it's only for a short time."

――Then their top speed was probably around eighty kilometers per hour.

Nyamena seemed to notice the marked tree.

"Did the Boss put that strange-colored mark there?"

"It's easy to spot, right? If we go straight into the forest toward the cliff, we should come out in front of the cave."

I turned the handlebars to the right and rode into the forest with the beastfolk following behind me.

After traveling through the dark forest for a while, we saw a black fissure.

"Is that it...? It's pretty high."

"But it gets narrower farther inside."

"Even so, sometimes a wide-open area suddenly appears, and that's where they make their nest."

Apparently, cave spiders weren't the only creatures that settled in caves. Fang Bears and other monsters did the same.

"So even after you defeat the monster, another one might move in and use the cave as a nest after a while?"

"That happens. But big-monster hunts are rarely undertaken. Do you know why?"

"――Because they're too big? It must be difficult to transport them."

"Exactly."

Transporting a large monster required a wagon, but wagons couldn't enter the forest because their wheels would sink into the ground.

There were large wagons with broad wheels for hauling timber and other materials, but they couldn't be used unless the forest was cleared and a road built.

Besides, the monster would usually rot while it was being transported.

It took manpower to butcher one, and you had to hire a mage capable of using cooling magic to preserve it――and so on.

Only a small portion of the prey could be butchered on-site and transported as materials. Even if you risked your life to kill a monster, it apparently wasn't worth the effort at all.

That was exactly why you needed an Item Box.

The beastfolk with LED headlamps went first――I was in the middle, and Anemone, wearing a helmet, brought up the rear.

I had attached an LED headlamp to Anemone's helmet too. It was pitch-black inside this cave, after all.

Before I knew it, Bell had joined the party again. Could Bell tell we were hunting from the atmosphere everyone gave off?

We proceeded through the cave in that formation and reached the place where the giant spider had attacked us.

"Whoa, this is incredible. Is that magical light? Boss, you really have everything."

The crystal formation and blue generator were illuminated by the blue light shining from Nyamena's head.

"This is the place!"

"That's right, nya! There are even traces of a campfire, nya!"

The generator and electric hammer we had left behind were still lying there.

I had left the generator running, so it had run out of fuel and stopped where it stood.

The barricade I had summoned had partially collapsed, and Bell, who had come with us, was sniffing at the scent clinging to it.

Fragments of the monster and what looked like fur were stuck to the tips of the sharpened logs.

"It must have caught itself trying to get over the obstacle. What do we do? Should we fight it here?"

"Sure. We can probably use this obstacle as it is. How are we going to lure it out?"

"It came when I turned on the magic tool, so maybe I should turn it on again?"

"All right! Boss, give it a try."

"Anemone, are you ready?"

"You sure you're ready, Miss Ane?!"

"Yeah!"

Anemone seemed ready and raring to go.

"Anemone, we're in a narrow cave, so don't use that metal that increases the power of your magic."

"Got it."

I took the new weapon I had bought from Shangri-La out of my Item Box.

What I had bought was a bazooka-like insecticide in a yellow can.

It could spray as far as twelve meters, so it would easily reach beyond the barricade. It was originally meant for bees, but the ingredients listed a pyrethroid.

The insecticide for spiders listed the same chemical, so I figured this should work on spiders too.

"Use this weapon. Hold it like this, aim it like a crossbow, and pull the trigger to fire the poison."

"Seriously?!"

Nyamena aimed beyond the barricade and pulled the trigger. A powerful stream of white mist shot into the darkness.

"This is incredible!"

"Nyaa!"

"Hey, hey, don't use too much. The chemicals will run out quickly. I don't know whether it'll work on a cave spider, though."

"Now that we've come this far, we might as well try everything."

With that decided, we began the operation.

To lure out the spider, I filled the generator with gasoline and pressed the starter.

Once the generator began running, I immediately started using the electric hammer to mine the crystal.

The deafening noise and vibrations traveled through the rock. The last time I started mining, the spider came almost immediately too.

"Whoa! This thing is loud! It's so noisy that the spider must come right up to us before we'll even know it's here!"

"It can't do anything unless it comes close anyway, nya!"

"I suppose that's true..."

After I had been hammering the rock for a while, it seemed the spider had come from deeper inside.

"Kenichi, it's here, nya!"

"It really came!"

"Hissss!"

Bell hissed fiercely into the darkness.

I immediately switched off the generator's engine. If it ran out of fuel again, that would be wasteful.

White, long legs covered in wire-like hairs emerged from the darkness, folded beneath the creature.

One of its blue-glowing eyes had an arrow from Myaree sticking out of it.

"It's the same one that attacked us!"

"This is it?!"

"Nyaa!"

"Poison! Use the poison!"

We all raised the yellow cans and sprayed the chemicals at once.

"Aim for the gaps! Aim between its plates!"

When the cans were empty after about thirty seconds, we threw them away and started spraying new ones one after another. We drenched the monstrous spider in the chemicals.

"Giiiiii!"

The giant spider shrieked and repeatedly slammed into the rock walls on either side, sending tremors through the cave.

"Anemone, can you do it? Flames of Wrath—Fireball!"

"Yeah!"

We quickly put some distance between ourselves and the spider. If we stayed close, we might be caught in the magic or suffocate.

"Mmm—Flames of Wrath—Fireball!!"

The ball of flame that formed in front of her flew over the barricade and struck the giant spider, erupting into a massive fireball that surged all the way to the ceiling.

A mass of heated, expanding air rushed at us.

But this time, we weren't using the aluminum plate that increased the power of the magic, yet the explosion was still rather powerful.

Maybe the insecticide we had sprayed had caught fire.

"Hot, hot!"

"Amazing!"

"Nyaa!"

I peered into the depths of the cave after the flames died down.

"Giiiiii!"

I couldn't tell whether it was the insecticide or Anemone's magic that had worked――.

The enemy had lost its will to fight. It staggered backward and disappeared into the darkness.

"You did it, Anemone!"

"Amazing, Miss Ane!"

"Nyaa!"

"Yeah!"

"Meow."

Bell rubbed its black body against Anemone as she pumped her fists in triumph.

Anemone crouched down and hugged Bell. Perhaps she had been terribly frightened inside, after all.

"But I thought it would be burned to a crisp. The magic didn't seem to work very well..."

"Monsters have a certain resistance to magic, nya."

"That's why using shells like that as armor protects them from magic."

"Huh..."

It was too soon to celebrate. What should we do now?

"The poison seemed to be working, though."

"It certainly seemed to, Boss."

"Nyaa."

"Do we still have any poison left?"

"Yeah."

For now, I ordered another twenty cans and put the insecticide that had arrived into my Item Box.

"Looks like we have no choice but to do this."

"Nyaa!"

"So we're doing it?"

"Yeah!"

Anemone had overcome the ordeal and was eager to fight. It might be better to press the attack and have her defeat the enemy, giving her confidence.

"All right, store the barricades!"

I stored the four barricades stacked in a triangle in my Item Box. They were a little scorched by the magic, but they were still usable.

We proceeded farther into the darkness, but after walking for about five minutes, the path in front of us ended. There was a cliff about two meters high.

We could have jumped down, but it was dark, and footing was uncertain. It would also be troublesome if we got hurt. I took an aluminum stepladder out of my Item Box and lowered it down.

A few minutes after climbing down, we reached a wide-open space――it was like a grand hall.

Looking up, it seemed to be more than five meters high, but in the darkness, I couldn't tell its exact height.

There was a hole in part of the ceiling that seemed to lead upward, but we couldn't confirm it from here.

I took a laser rangefinder out of my Item Box and measured the ceiling's height――apparently, it was seven meters.

It was pitch-black, so I couldn't really grasp the situation... The headlamps on our heads illuminated too narrow an area.

When we reached near the center of the hall――I bought an LED floodlight from Shangri-La. Apparently, it was a waterproof fifty-watt model.

I also took a mobile battery out of my Item Box and connected the floodlight to it.

A straight beam of light too bright to look at extended through the dark cave, illuminating the area around us. It was like a lighthouse cutting through the darkness of a dark sea――.

"There it is!"

At the edge of the hall, the cave spider we had sprayed with insecticide was dying. In front of a huge rock, it desperately rubbed its entire body with its legs and continued making erratic movements.

It resembled the random movements of an insect sprayed with insecticide. It must have been its death throes.

"Should we finish it off?"

"Yeah!"

The moment we tried to approach the giant spider, the huge rock deeper inside moved.

"Whoa! What the heck is this?!"

"Boss! Is this...?"

"Fgyah!"

"Ahh!"

Illuminated by the floodlight's white beam was a gigantic white spider. It was more than twice as large as the spider we had been fighting.

The obvious difference from the smaller one was that its eyes were red. Those enormous red eyes seemed to be fixed on us.

"Boss! It's a female!"

Nyamena shouted.

"A female? The female is bigger? And something that huge couldn't fit through the passage."

"That's why the male hunted and fed the female."

So if we let the male die, the female would have no choice but to starve to death here.

Had she entered the cave when she was small, then grown this large by having the male feed her?

"Hey! Let's get out of here! If the male carrying her food dies, she'll die soon too!"

"Of course!"

"Nyaa!"

Just as we turned to leave, the huge female spider knocked the dying male away with one of her long legs and circled around behind us.

"Ah! Damn it!"

"Do you think it's angry because we killed the male that brought it food?"

"Probably."

"Even if it kills us, it'll die anyway, nya."

"Logic like that doesn't apply to animals."

It might have been a fight to the death, but Nyamena was probably right――it was simply angry because we had killed the male that fed it.

I took another can of insecticide out of my Item Box.

"Summon barricades!"

I lined up all the log barricades I had in front of us.

Then Bell, who had come along with us, leaped over the barricades and attacked the giant spider first.

Bell nimbly dodged the giant claw the spider swung, ran along its leg, and dug its claws into one of its red eyes.

"Giii!"

But Bell's claws probably couldn't penetrate that hard shell.

As expected, it was our turn to act.

"I'll blind it with this light, so you two spray it with poison!"

"Sure thing!"

"Nyaa!"

Once I confirmed that the Forest Cat had moved away, I aimed the LED's piercing light at the giant spider's red eyes and blinded it.

"Giii!"

The cry sounded like the male's, but it was much lower, reverberating through the hall with an echoing quality.

But while it was flinching from the light, this was our chance.

"Now!"

Myaree and Nyamena sprayed the giant spider with the bazooka-like insecticide.

"Giiigiii!"

"Good! Keep going! Anemone, can you use magic?!"

"Mmm—Flames of Wrath—Fireball!!"

The balls of flame gathered in front of her shot straight toward the white mountain, then burst into a towering pillar of fire.

The flames surged all the way to the ceiling of the hall and scorched the rock.

"Giiigiii!"

But the female spider didn't move even while engulfed in flames.

What's more, it didn't seem to be doing much damage. As the beastfolk had said, it must have been resistant to magic.

Even so, why wasn't it moving?

We had planned to throw firecrackers if the spider came at us, slip past it, and escape into the passage, but so far, our plan hadn't worked.

"Why isn't it moving?"

"Boss, maybe it's planning to block the passage and die with us here?"

The giant spider's rear was wedged completely into the passage, so moving it would be extremely difficult.

Even if we tried to make a hole in its shell, its hide was so hard that not even arrows could pierce it.

It was so large that the insecticide didn't seem to be working very well either.

"Damn it! So it really is planning to die with us! What a stubborn piece of shit!"

"Boss! What do we do?"

"We can wait for it to die, nya."

"Wait three or four days for it to starve? Some insects hibernate too, you know. If that happens, it could take months."

"Boss, I don't want to sleep in a place like this!"

I didn't want to either――and Primula would worry about us.

Besides, it would probably attack us the moment we fell asleep from exhaustion. No, was that its plan?

Damn it... If I sprayed it with another hundred or so cans of insecticide, I might be able to kill it, but...

"You bastard! Don't underestimate someone with cheats!"

It was a female, so technically it wasn't a bastard, but that hardly mattered――I searched Shangri-La for a used heavy machine.

Yes! This was it!

"Come on out, Ko○tsu-san! Six thousand six hundred ninety cc, 157 horsepower――9.5 million yen! Click!"

A huge yellow vehicle appeared in front of me with a ground-shaking rumble.

Ko○tsu-san was a dependable, lovable tough guy that excelled at construction sites involving huge structures and the like.

But don't repeatedly call Ko○tsu-san a Yu○bo in front of it. It gets grumpy. That's a man's promise.

"You two! It's dangerous, so take this light and go stand in the corner of the hall!"

I stored the barricades I had set up in front of the spider.

Nyamena was so startled by the suddenly appearing iron monster that she fell on her backside.

But Anemone climbed into Ko○tsu-san with me.

"Stay with Myaree!"

"No!"

Myaree took the LED floodlight and volunteered to keep shining it at the giant spider.

Anemone was still with me, but there was no helping it. After making sure Myaree was dragging Nyamena away, I climbed into the glass-enclosed cockpit and turned the starter switch on the console to the right.

The diesel engine started with a powerful vibration――the fuel was fine.

I selected power mode from the illuminated console in front of me on the right.

"Um..."

I looked around, but apparently the machine had no headlights――there was nothing I could do about that.

Fortunately, Myaree was illuminating the enemy with the floodlight, so I could see it.

"You lowly creature! I'll show you the power of civilization!"

I stepped on the foot bar to move the heavy machine forward while swinging its body to the right.

"Ko○tsu Swing!"

I swung the vehicle to the left, and the huge steel bucket struck the white giant spider directly――a tremendous sound like a New Year's Eve bell rang through the rocky hall, and the monster was blown away from the passage it had been blocking.

"Hahaha! Ko○tsu Attack!"

The steel bucket, raised all the way to the ceiling of the hall, swung down at the giant spider.

But the female spider dodged it and climbed onto Ko○tsu-san's arm.

Something appeared on the display to the right, and a buzzer sounded. It was probably a load warning because something heavy was resting on the arm.

"Damn beast! How dare you! Ah, damn it! The arm won't move!"

The female spider was too heavy, and the arm didn't budge. In fact, when I tried to lift the arm, the rear of the vehicle began to rise off the ground.

"Damn it!"

I pressed both feet down on the pedals, pushing the giant female spider clinging to the arm directly against the wall.

Some warning alarm kept sounding, but I couldn't worry about that now.

"Giii!"

"Take that!"

The vehicle and arm groaned. Along with the deep rumble of the diesel engine, the metal tracks scraping against the rock rang through the cave, sending sparks into the darkness.

I pressed the pedals down harder and ground the monster's hard shell against the rock.

The shell seemed to have been filed down against the rock, and liquid began dripping from the gaps between its plates. It was a red bodily fluid similar to human blood.

"Mmm—Flames of Wrath—Fireball!"

Anemone's magic struck it directly, and the dripping fluid began to evaporate with a sizzling sound――this looked like it was doing some damage.

Then, weakened by the combined attack from Ko○tsu-san and Anemone, the spider's legs gave way――it lost its grip and fell to the ground.

It staggered from side to side, barely alive.

"Ko○tsu Attack!"

With my lever controls, I raised the steel claw high into the air and brought it down on the female spider.

The hard, sharp steel claw sank into its head, flipping the giant body over.

Red liquid flowed from the mangled wound――the huge white enemy stopped moving and fell silent.

Then its long white legs slowly drew together at the center of its body, as if in prayer.

To be sure, I nudged the spider with the bucket, but it was fine――it didn't move. It seemed to be completely dead.

"Whew――Had enough?"

I took a deep breath.

Damn it, because of this thing, I had wasted a huge amount of money again. Well, if I mined the crystals where I had left the generator, they might cover the cost of the power shovel...

I folded up the arm, shut off the engine, climbed down from the heavy machine, and stored it in my Item Box.

The yellow heavy machine disappeared from in front of me without difficulty.

Next, I stored the enormous corpse of the white female spider. Since it had gone into my Item Box, it must have been completely dead.

"Hey, Boss! Boss!"

Nyamena hurried over to me.

"What is it, Nyamena?"

"What the heck was that iron monster?!"

"That was my summoned beast."

"Summoned beast? That thing?!"

"Yeah."

"If you ever go against Kenichi, it'll tear you to pieces with that thing, nya. That's what happened to Shaga's men too, nya."

I looked at Nyamena, who was trembling. I hadn't expected her to be that frightened.

"Anemone, bring the light over here. We need to store the male spider too."

"Okay!"

"You cast three spells. Are you all right?"

"I'm a little tired, but I'm fine."

Carrying the floodlight, we went to look for the male.

There it was――the female had knocked it away, and it had died after crashing into the wall of the hall.

It had devoted itself to bringing food to the female. Thinking about that, I felt sorry for the poor thing.

I put the male spider into my Item Box too and looked around――there was a white wall where the female had been.

When I touched it, it felt like cloth with the springiness of a trampoline...

"Kenichi, this is insect silk, nya. They say cloth woven from it repels magic, nya."

Apparently, both insect and spider silk were collectively called insect silk.

"So if I give this to a clothier and have them make equipment from it, we'd have magical protection?"

"That's right, nya."

I took out the stepladder and cut away the white wall of insect silk that looked like cloth.

What appeared inside were five large, fluffy white balls, each about the size of a soccer ball.

"What the heck is this?"

"Boss, they're probably spider eggs."

"Ahh, I see. So, can we eat them?"

"Huh? I've never heard of anyone eating spider eggs!"

Even the knowledgeable Nyamena said she had never heard of such a thing――but whatever. For now, I put them in my Item Box and decided to think about it later.

The white balls were stored in my Item Box just like that.

Huh? I thought living things couldn't be put into my Item Box, but eggs were okay?

Come to think of it, I had put eggs bought from Shangri-La into my Item Box too.

Or was it that fertilized eggs weren't allowed, while unfertilized eggs were okay?

Well, I could worry about that later.

I searched the hall, but it seemed to be a dead end.

――Which meant the dungeon was safe now, and I could take my time mining those crystals.

I had to extract them as cleanly as possible and recoup the cost of Ko○tsu-san.