A massive anaconda lunged at Ian, jaws gaping wide.
-Boom!
The snake slammed into the spot where she had been standing just moments ago.
Coarse dust rose from the shattered bricks.
Ian leapt high into the air, cutting through that cloud of dust.
“After all this, now a water snake shows up?”
She raised her sword above her head.
Slashing technique, Slash.
Her blade came down on the anaconda from midair.
-Slash!
The anaconda writhed in pain.
However, its body was far too enormous to sever.
‘In the end, I’ll have to focus on inflicting as many wounds as possible.’
The enraged anaconda’s tail whipped toward the moving Ian like a lash.
She could have dodged it, but Ian raised her sword to test the tail’s power.
“Gah!”
Unable to withstand the overwhelming impact, Ian’s body was instantly driven back near the wall.
“Damn thing’s strong.”
Her arms trembled.
Without a shield, Ian was certain that clashing head-on with its tail was not a wise choice.
-Hiss!
The anaconda hissed and charged at Ian.
Before the distance closed, Ian took out her staff.
Fire magic would not work on an enemy soaked in water.
The best magic in this situation would be lightning-attribute magic, but Ian could not use the lightning attribute.
In that case…
Her staff filled with mana.
First Circle ice magic, Ice Spear.
Spears of cold ice battered the anaconda’s body.
-Crack!
The anaconda’s skin began to freeze where the spears struck.
With a snake’s strength, it would break the ice quickly, but until then, it should slow its movements.
Having achieved what she intended, Ian immediately gripped her sword and stamped her foot.
Charge skill, Sword Rush.
Ian’s blade left a long gash along the snake’s flank as she passed by.
Blood poured from the deep wound.
Not wanting to miss that opening, Ian leapt into the air again.
But then, the anaconda, writhing in pain, threw itself into the water.
“Damn.”
After landing, Ian clicked her tongue.
Just when it was time to finish it off, she had no choice but to watch blankly as the anaconda slipped into the water.
Even so, diving into the water would have been suicide.
She had no experience in underwater combat, and without any support items, fighting itself was impossible.
However.
“It’s a lot more anticlimactic than I expected… but whatever.”
The quest objective was not to defeat the anaconda, but to find a way to escape.
It was frustrating, but just as Ian was about to move in search of a clue that had to be somewhere—
-Splash!
Once again, the anaconda emerged from the water, sending up a violent spray.
And when Ian saw the snake, her pupils widened.
“The wounds… are gone?”
Even though her sword had clearly inflicted serious wounds on the anaconda twice, its body was clean.
‘Could it be a different one?’
Ian immediately shook her head.
No matter how large the pool was, she doubted there would be another snake that size.
That meant the snake before her was the same one as before, and that it had healed its wounds somehow…
At that moment, one possibility flashed through Ian’s mind.
“No way?”
Yesterday, the bathhouse water had the effect of healing wounds.
At the time, she had simply found it fascinating and let it pass, but what if the bathhouse water and the water in this pool had the same effect?
-Hiss!
She had no time to think.
The anaconda’s jaws were already right in front of her.
Ian threw herself aside and evaded the anaconda’s fangs.
At the same time, she leapt high to avoid the tail coming to constrict her body.
Spears of ice once again froze the anaconda’s skin cold.
And using that opening, Ian’s sword advanced, trailing a blue arc.
Her target was the relatively thin tail.
‘This time, I’ll cut it off completely.’
Two-hit combo, Double Accel.
So that it would not end with a mere wound, Ian’s sword struck the anaconda’s tail with fierce momentum.
-Slash!
The tail flew upward, and blood spurted from the severed cross-section.
The anaconda writhed again.
This time as well, its head was turned toward the water.
“I’m not letting you do that!”
Ian charged, raising her sword to waist height.
Her blade sank into the severed section.
She planned to pierce straight through its hide and cut all the way to its head.
But then.
The severed tail began moving on its own.
“Urgh!”
Forced to twist her body to avoid the tail, Ian had no choice but to put distance between herself and the anaconda.
And in that interval, the anaconda slipped into the pool together with its tail.
Ian swept her wet hair back and bit her lip.
“No, why did the tail move there?”
Was it called a reflex?
Ian knew very well that snakes could keep moving for a while even after their bodies were cut.
But once she had become immersed in battle, she had momentarily forgotten that such a trait existed.
Even though she knew this game was not simple enough to ignore that kind of realism.
“I won’t let it get away next time.”
The one fortunate thing was that the anaconda’s pattern was not particularly bizarre.
Unlike when she had faced the Alraune, her life was not hanging by a thread.
Ian stared at the still surface of the water and made up her mind.
“All right. I’ll use it.”
Ian took a flag out of her inventory, looked at it for a moment, then slammed it hard into the ground.
A clear sound rang out.
Then a window appeared before Ian’s eyes.
[Please decide a guild name.]
After thinking for a moment, Ian wrote down a name that came to mind.
[I AM SOLO]
[Do you wish to confirm this name?]
“Ah, whatever. It’s not like it’s that important.”
Ian pressed the confirm button.
Then another window appeared before her eyes.
[Guild Name: I AM SOLO]
[Guild Leader: Ian]
[Guild Rank: Grade 1]
[Guild Members: 1/20]
[Guild Buff: None]
She entered the window to set a guild buff.
“There’s more here than I thought.”
There were buffs that raised attack power or defense for a short time, and even permanent buffs that increased experience and gold rewards.
Ian could understand why people were so eager to create guilds.
Among them, there was only one buff Ian would choose.
Just then, the surface of the water began to churn, and with a violent spray, the anaconda appeared again.
“Here it comes.”
Ian selected the buff.
[Guild Buff Activated]
[Attack Power Increase Lv 1]
[Effect: Increases the attack power of all guild members by 10% for 10 minutes.]
Her last chance.
The will to never let it return to the pool again filled her body.
As expected, the anaconda had recovered from all its wounds.
Even the tail she had cut off was moving powerfully through the water, as though it had never been severed in the first place.
The massive snake surged forward.
It opened its jaws and tried to crush her beneath its enormous mouth.
Ian leapt high into the air to evade the attack.
Spears of ice were launched toward the dust cloud.
The anaconda’s movements slowed, if only for a moment.
The same pattern, and the same response.
But this time, the weapon in Ian’s hand was not a sword.
What she held was a spear.
Charge skill, Drive.
A red meteor fell toward the anaconda’s head.
-Bang!
Ian’s spear, brought down with all her strength, pierced through the anaconda’s head and drove into the floor beneath it.
Like a nail hammered into place, the snake’s head, hissing in pain, could not move.
Ian stepped on the slippery head and sprinted along the snake’s body.
In the process, the snake’s tail lashed toward her, but it could not keep up with Ian’s movements after she had activated Haste before driving down the spear.
Ian jumped with her sword in hand.
As long as the snake was a living creature, it would not be able to revive without its head.
She swung her sword while spinning her body in a wide arc.
Two-hit slashing combo, Double Attack.
A continuous assault.
Ignoring the snake’s struggles, Ian did not stop swinging her sword until it was completely severed.
In the end.
-Splash!
The body, separated from the head, fell into the pool.
-Hiss!
The head, still unable to escape from the spear, thrashed one last time on the ground before dying.
Seeing the anaconda finally go completely still, Ian let out a sigh of relief.
“Somehow, it worked out in the end.”
And once again, she became certain of something.
In a situation where she could not receive anyone’s help, the more options she had, the better.
Ian roughly collected the spoils and looked around.
“So now the question is how I get out of here…”
At that moment, Ian spotted a staircase leading to the surface.
When she lifted her head and looked toward the end of the stairs, several doors were arranged as if surrounding the space.
Why were there doors in a place like that? She wondered for only a moment.
“Well, I guess they do need to maintain the place.”
Of course, if they knew a monster like the anaconda existed, they would have locked the doors, but there was still a chance that one of them might be open.
Since she had no other suitable method, Ian began climbing the stairs.
After arriving on the upper floor, Ian turned the doorknobs one by one.
As expected, most of the doors were locked.
Except for one.
-Click!
“Huh? It opened.”
Ian carefully opened the door.
Inside was a dark passage.
Ian stared into the darkness for a moment.
“I have no choice. I have to go in.”
She did not know where it led, but her hope existed at the end of this passage.
Ian stepped into the passage.
-Thud!
The door closed.
Ian moved forward through the darkness without looking back.
How much time passed like that?
“Kyaaaaaah!”
Ian’s scream rang out from behind the closed door.
***
“Ah… this is nice.”
The frontline player, Wei, was relieving his travel fatigue in the bathhouse, Winsley Village’s famous attraction.
The sensation of soaking his body in the warm water and enjoying an unprecedented leisure.
It was addictive, the feeling of his whole body being healed to the point that he wondered if heaven existed, whether this might be it.
“I should come here often from now on.”
“I agree.”
Khalid, a member of the same party, also nodded with a faint smile.
It was not just them.
Though only a single day had passed, rumors about the bathhouse had spread quickly among the players.
In the world of Arcadia, where there had not been a single proper leisure facility, the first bathhouse to appear brought peace to both body and mind.
Even the players whose genders had changed ended up practically afflicted with bathhouse syndrome after experiencing it once.
Even though it was afternoon, the area around Wei and Khalid was full of players who had come to enjoy a bath.
However, they could not spend forever simply enjoying the bath.
“Let’s get up soon. The others will be waiting.”
“No helping it. Let’s come back tonight.”
Since they had promised to go party hunting afterward, they rose from their seats and left the bath.
And at that moment, the mysterious door on the opposite side of the entrance opened.
-Step, step.
“Is this… a bathhouse?”
A voice that should not have been heard echoed through the men’s bath.
“Huh?”
“You’re…”
“Ian?”
Wei, Khalid, and Ian met one another’s eyes.
After briefly scanning her surroundings, her gaze slowly checked once upward, then once downward.
“Ah…”
Ian’s voice slipped out in a daze.
Only then did Ian realize where she had emerged.
The men’s bath of the bathhouse.
Ian’s face turned bright red after setting foot in a zone forbidden to women.
“Kyaaaaaah! I-I’m so sorry!”
Screaming like that, Ian hurriedly dashed toward the exit.
Only the quest clear window shone emptily in her field of vision.