A dark cave with no end in sight.
Baekyeon wore a bewildered expression, even though she was the one who had discovered it.
“This place is…”
“W-wow! To think there was a hidden place like this here!”
“I-indeed. To discover a hidden passage… Impressive.”
She had suddenly started knocking on the wall and found a hidden passage, so we were just as flustered.
When we applauded with awkward acting and praised her, lifting her up, Baekyeon grew bashful without the slightest suspicion.
“T-this is all thanks to the power I received from Lord Nidhogg. So please do not praise me too much.”
“Not at all. We only came here to briefly practice coordinating, but thanks to you, Miss Baekyeon, we even discovered such a fortuitous opportunity. You really are amazing.”
As we were giving all the credit to Baekyeon, a rustling sound came from deep inside the wide-open cave, as if something were crawling.
“They said this was Arachne’s hideout, right? I wonder if there are spiders?”
“Judging by the sound of several small living creatures walking around, I believe they are indeed spiders.”
We had just made a rough guess as to what monster was inside and were about to enter.
Thud.
Thud, thud—
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—
The sound was no longer the footsteps of small creatures from a moment ago, but something massive drawing closer. Sin Sua and Baekyeon both gripped their weapons and prepared to face the monster.
“Keeeeek!”
What emerged from the darkness of the cave was Arachne, with the upper body of a beautiful woman and the lower body of a grotesque spider.
The boss mob that should have been waiting in the innermost hideout had come rushing out.
Arachne looked down at the two of them with eyes gleaming with hunger and said,
“Kisit. Whoever you are, thanks for undoing the seal. As a reward, I’ll eat you without making it hurt.”
Arachne, who had looked ready to pounce on them at any moment, stopped when her gaze reached me, flying low behind the two.
Then her pupils dilated in an instant.
“…Keeeeek!? D-d-d-d-dragon?!”
“??”
“W-were they perhaps the slaves of a dragon?! O great dragon, what I said just now was a mistake made because I was blinded by hunger. Please forgive me! I have no intention of opposing you!”
Arachne bent her eight legs, lowered her body, and pleaded while trembling.
I hadn’t even done anything yet, and she was already scared.
Had she seen a dragon similar to me before?
“I have no intention of doing anything, so raise your head first.”
“Th-thank you…”
“There’s one thing I’m curious about.”
“Y-yes! Please ask me anything.”
“Have you ever seen any dragon other than me in the past?”
“Yes. In the distant past, I once beheld a dragon with a hundred heads…”
I see.
A hundred heads.
Since she seemed to have seen a dragon, I wondered if it was someone I knew, but apparently not.
The ones I knew were either larger than me or had golden bodies, not ones with a hundred heads.
“So. What was that dragon’s name, and what other distinguishing features did it have?”
“I-I do not know its name. But some of its heads were asleep…”
“Useless.”
Since there didn’t seem to be any more information to obtain, I gave a signal with my eyes to the two who were waiting while listening to my conversation with Arachne.
The moment the two understood my signal and prepared to attack, Arachne noticed and leapt in fright.
“Kishiit! D-dragon! I have no intention of opposing you! Please do not attack me!”
“Sorry, but what we need is your inner core.”
“N-no! My children!”
Realizing that we had no intention of sparing her, Arachne shouted loudly, and a large number of spiders crawled out from inside the cave. But all they managed to do was buy a brief moment of time.
With magic power filling their sword and spear, the two cut down and pierced through more than ten spiders in a single strike, killing them.
“If it has come to this! I won’t hold back just because you’re a dragon!”
Arachne, dropping her polite speech, used the time the small spiders had bought her to spew purple threads.
As part of the web spread wide in a lattice pattern touched the ground, the point of contact melted away with a sizzle.
Was the thread itself poisonous?
But the poisonous web that approached while melting everything it touched did not manage to harm either of them.
The Valkyrie standard armor was not so weak that it would fall to a mere Arachne’s poison, and Baekyeon, having accepted my power, had obtained a body that most ordinary poisons could not affect.
“M-my poison, so easily?”
“Let’s end this soon.”
“There is no need to waste any more time.”
The two kicked off the ground and charged forward at the same time, plowing through the spiders blocking their path like bulldozers and reaching Arachne in no time.
In the meantime, Arachne compressed her web into bullets and fired them at the two, but once again, they knocked them away far too easily.
Then, Sin Sua’s sword flashed and cut through Arachne’s legs, and Baekyeon’s spear pierced her neck.
“Kiek… gurgle…”
“Just die already, monster.”
Baekyeon coldly pronounced judgment on Arachne, who was gripping the spear and struggling to push it away in order to live. Then she twisted the spear lodged in her neck and swung it sideways. Arachne’s neck dangled, and the strength drained from her body as she went limp.
“Phew. A monster struggling to live until the very end. How pathetic.”
“She’s fine, right?”
“She doesn’t act like that toward us, so wouldn’t it be fine?”
I thought her personality might have mellowed a bit after the last incident, but not at all.
The sight of Baekyeon looking at the dead Arachne, whose neck dangled loose, and sneering with cold eyes was absolutely not the image of someone whose personality had mellowed.
She wasn’t going to suddenly change one day and stab me in the back, right?
“No way. Besides, didn’t you say something like a master-servant relationship had formed? Can’t you do something with that?”
“I know, but she’s just so damn bloodthirsty.”
Baekyeon stopped sneering at the dead Arachne and used her spear to split open the chest, taking out a purple inner core from within.
Then, as if the sneer she had worn until just now had been a lie, she smiled gently and handed the inner core to Sin Sua.
“You said you needed the inner core, correct? Here it is.”
“Th-thank you.”
Arachne’s inner core.
The reason we chose that inner core as our first fortuitous opportunity was none other than because Arachne’s inner core had the power to increase poison resistance.
On top of that, they said that if one ate Arachne’s inner core and then consumed just two more types of spiritual medicine, one would gain the ability called immunity to all poisons, which allowed no poison whatsoever to take effect.
I didn’t know whether that immunity to all poisons could block even my poison, but if most ordinary poisons no longer worked on her, it was an ability she absolutely needed.
As stronger and stronger Gates appeared in the future, enemies that used poison would also increase, so for Sin Sua to survive, she had to raise her poison resistance in advance before they appeared.
That was why Arachne’s inner core, which increased both poison resistance and the amount of magic power, was quite a suitable choice.
“Do you intend to eat it right away?”
“Ah! No. It’s highly toxic, so I need to prepare before eating it.”
“A wise decision. If you had received Lord Nidhogg’s power as I have, that would be another matter, but at Miss Sin Sua’s current level, eating it as is could cause trouble. I was going to stop you if you said you would simply consume it, but it seems there is no need.”
“Thank you for worrying about me.”
Sin Sua placed the inner core into a special case she had brought in advance, one that prevented toxicity or medicinal properties from leaking outside, and stored it away.
“Shall we head back now?”
“It is a little disappointing, but I suppose we must be satisfied with this much for today.”
After sweeping away all the monsters inside the Gate and securing the inner core, we exited.
Thanks to how quickly we dealt with the monsters, we had come out of the Gate, but the sun had not yet set.
Now all that was left was to hand over the magic stones from the monsters we hunted today, finish the settlement, and return. Just as we were about to head to the settlement office run by the Association—
“Mm?”
Baekyeon, sensing something just as she had when she found the hidden space inside the Gate, lifted her head toward the sky.
***
The Valkyrie Linnea, who had been ordered by Freyja and Odin to monitor Nidhogg, had spent a week high in the sky, concealing her presence and faithfully carrying out her mission.
Though as far as missions went, since Nidhogg had shown no particular movements for an entire week, all she had done was report his location.
Having continued the surveillance for a week, Linnea was beginning to feel bored and weary of Nidhogg, who showed no sign of taking any action.
If the other Valkyries, who were throwing themselves into the construction work, knew Linnea’s true feelings, they would have wanted to tear her to pieces. But since Linnea was the only Valkyrie assigned to this mission, that would not happen.
Today as well, Linnea had been monitoring Nidhogg since early morning. When she saw Nidhogg properly moving to another location for the first time in a week, she felt curious.
‘That is… a Gate?’
Sin Sua, who possessed power similar to a Valkyrie’s.
Baekyeon, who held power similar to Nidhogg’s.
Seeing Nidhogg enter the Gate with the two of them, she wanted to follow them in and see what they were doing, but the chances of being discovered would be far too high. So Linnea decided to wait until the three of them came out of the Gate.
And after not all that much time had passed, the three came back out of the Gate.
The three who emerged were carrying bags they had not had before entering, and Linnea, as a Valkyrie, sensed the aura of an inner core leaking from the luggage Sin Sua possessed.
Although it had been placed in a storage case that concealed its aura, it was not enough to fool Linnea’s eyes.
“What? They went in to get something like that?”
Certainly, the poison and magic power felt from the inner core would be of help to the weakened Nidhogg.
Having judged as much, Linnea thought that perhaps, if it was the current Nidhogg, then even without Lady Freyja or Lord Odin stepping forward, they—the Valkyries—might be enough to catch him.
That was what she thought.
Valkyries were reapers who chose the souls of warriors and warriors who stood on the battlefield. The moment Linnea thought of fighting, fighting spirit overflowed from her body.
And the instant that fighting spirit overflowed—
“Hm? That woman. Did she see me?”
The woman who held an aura strangely similar to Nidhogg’s raised her head, and their gazes collided.
Then, when she blinked—
“Isn’t this a Valkyrie?”
Nidhogg appeared right before Linnea’s eyes.