Spider Queen Arachnae.
One of the bosses that must be defeated to progress the main story in the Silver Dawn Knights route, this was the very target that Claudia set off to subjugate upon the lord’s orders.
Since she received only rough information about the location, she probably never imagined it would be a monster of this kind.
As indicated by her title, Arachnae had the appearance of a gigantic spider.
Specifically, just her lower half.
Her lower half had eight legs and the grotesque patterns characteristic of a spider, with the upper body of a human woman attached to the head of the spider in a peculiar manner.
She was even quite pretty. Considering she was covered up to her neck in carapace to avoid any indecency, at least.
Because of that, she gained a cult-like popularity among certain tiers who preferred monster girls, and even those who weren’t into monster girls still found her attractive as one of the few pretty females in Brightest Darkness 4.
Moreover, since one of the death gods was of that very type, it only added to her popularity.
The patterns were quite simple, as expected for an early-game boss. Even considering the Darkest Light Mod, it had barely over ten. There was only one phase.
Compared to later game bosses, whose patterns often exceed twenty variations, she was definitely on the easier side.
Except for one thing: the pattern that summoned countless baby spiders.
This appeared twice—once when her health dropped to 60%, and again when it dropped to 30%. This was no doubt the highest difficulty of the Darkest Light version of Arachnae.
In vanilla, she’d simply summon about 50 spiders, allowing players to roll and evade while beating them all down. If it got too tedious, they could wipe them out with area damage spells.
But in the Darkest Light Mod, it was different.
The number of summoned spiders soared to outrageous heights. When her health decreased to 60%, 250 spiders popped out, and when it was down to 30%, a whopping 750 came at once. So that made it a total of 1000.
On computers barely meeting the minimum requirements, there were countless instances where the system would overload and crash during the second wave.
The health of the baby spiders was so low that anything touching them would kill them. Based on the first playthrough, it was a mere 1, and even the max playthrough only reached 11.
The sheer number was too ridiculous, and they swarmed from all directions.
They even stored poison like their mother, the spider queen. If players allowed the baby spiders to attack, they’d end up either dying from being stunned or slowly succumbing to poison.
“So this is why I said I needed a type of attack spell that could target a wide area continuously. And that’s just you, Erica, right?”
Or alternatively, a spell obtained from defeating the flaming golem.
To handle the baby spiders reliably, it required an attack that could deal damage ‘continuously’, ‘over a wide area,’ and do so ‘quickly,’ with the exact magic required being the reward for the flaming golem.
Flaming Rotation Ring.
A spell that creates a ring of flames for 30 seconds around the caster.
Fast casting speed, relatively long duration, low mana consumption, but in exchange, the damage was pathetically low. Nonetheless, that terribly low damage was enough to take down the baby spiders in one hit, making it perfect for targeting the summoning pattern.
The strategy pretty much involved using magic when the pattern started and then running for dear life while incinerating the baby spiders until the boss room was clean.
“……”
“……”
“……”
The expressions of Lize, Erica, and Claudia slowly began to sour as they listened to my explanation.
Iris backed out, saying that she wouldn’t get caught up in this monster since it didn’t match her, as someone had to stay to defend the castle anyway.
“Now I understand why Delta emphasized the need for a wide-area attack. Baby spiders, huh…”
“Not to mention they have poison in their fangs and claws? We need to take them out before they get close.”
“When you first mentioned a thousand spiders, I was confused, but now it makes sense. There are collective-type monsters among monster girls, so I guess I assumed it would be something similar.”
The knight commanders each made a remark. Though they seemed to grumble about how disgusting it was, none of them appeared particularly fearful of Arachnae.
“Here we are. We’ve arrived.”
I stopped speaking, and the knight commanders stood in place with me. We were at the entrance of a gorge overgrown with dense woods.
Despite it being broad daylight, it was dark due to the dense trees. A few rays of sunlight barely trickled through the leaves.
“This place looks like it’s crawling with bugs just by looking at it.”
Erica remarked with disgust. I agreed with her. I hadn’t noticed it when seeing the game graphics, but being here in person felt like a jungle.
“Alright. Let’s check everything again.”
Swoosh, we each drew our weapons. The armor was well-hidden with the gem we used when we went after the Rock Centipede last time.
“Where is the poison applied?”
“It’s on the spider form’s lower half. The human upper half doesn’t matter. Even just a few hits will get us poisoned, so we were told to keep our distance except when attacking.”
“What about the web attacks?”
“It’s best to avoid them if possible, but if they come simultaneously with other attacks, we’ll have to choose what to avoid and take the web hit. Taking one or two hits wouldn’t be too hard to shake off.”
“If we take any more than that, we won’t be able to shake them off, so be careful.”
“I’ve explained their behaviors to you all, so… Oh, just in case, I should mention that the place we’re fighting might get pretty gross. Don’t get shocked hearing that. Got it?”
“…How gross are we talking?”
“It’s hard to explain with words. You’ll realize once you see it, so just prepare yourself mentally.”
You might as well consider it the hellish version of the bug dungeon we’ll be visiting later.
Conversely, it means that the bug dungeon, the upgraded version of the Spider Queen’s boss room, is going to be unimaginably disgusting.
With the final inspections complete, we set our steps toward the Spider Queen’s boss room. Knowing the way, I took the lead, and the three others surrounded me on my sides and behind.
The path was incredibly treacherous. Roots were everywhere, almost causing me to trip multiple times, and the plants were so thick they hardly cut through at all.
If Lize hadn’t frozen the plants blocking the way and smashed them, it would have taken us even longer.
“……Looks like this is it. Right?”
“I have a feeling I can already predict the interior scenery.”
We stopped in front of a path leading into a much deeper part of the gorge.
Instead of weeds and trees, it was covered in spider webs.
Lize stomped down hard once before raising her foot. Sticky spiderwebs clung to the bottom of her silver sabatons. It wouldn’t come off easily even after several taps.
“Can we actually move here?”
“Try to avoid the places that look gray. It’s going to be hard to maneuver properly.”
In the game, areas covered with spider webs had the rolling mechanics slowed down substantially, and you couldn’t run or walk quickly; you had to walk everywhere. It was best to avoid spiderweb-covered areas.
“Everything around us is gray, though?”
It’s just harder to find areas that aren’t covered in webs.
“Exactly. So we have no choice.”
“Can’t we just burn it?”
“Uh… I’m not sure. How about trying it?”
Having heard my suggestion, Erica immediately infused her sword with flames and swung it horizontally. The flames swept across the webs, but they didn’t catch fire.
“Doesn’t work.”
Erica cleanly gave up and stepped back.
At first, I thought about asking Lize to freeze the ground, but it seemed better to fight on the spider webs than on ice, so I dropped the idea.
“Still, the inside should be fairly okay. Let’s go in.”
Now that we were faced with a straight path, Claudia took the lead into the gorge. Following her was Lize, then me, and finally Erica.
As we moved in, around a dozen spiders the size of my thigh lined up, but Claudia swung her greatsword and took them all out in one strike.
Those that just appeared were the baby spiders seen in the summoning pattern of the Spider Queen.
The deeper we went, the thicker the spider webs around the cave walls became, while the number of attacking spiders gradually decreased. A foul smell wafted from all around.
“…Ew.”
Not long after, we arrived at the Arachnae boss room. Right away, Erica made a pained noise. The other two didn’t show it outwardly, but their expressions clearly weren’t pleasant.
Green eggs were scattered all around.
Not just on the walls but also plastered on the ceiling and the floor near the spider webs, perfectly round eggs were stuck together. The silhouettes of baby spiders were faintly visible through the membrane of the eggs.
The spots where eggs weren’t laid were covered in webs, while areas without webs had eggs. Scattered, dry human corpses added an unsettling ambiance.
“Oh, guests, are we?”
From between the eggs came a sultry voice, and the Spider Queen emerged. Due to the sheer amount of spider webs on the ground, her footsteps made no sound at all.
As she came closer, we could finally see her properly.
Overall, she had the grotesque bottom half of a giant spider with greenish markings and the beautiful upper half of a woman attached to the head of the spider. No doubt about it, it was the Spider Queen.
Her dark green hair flowed down to her waist, and as she wore nothing on her upper half, her pallid skin, which was close to gray, was fully exposed. Her eyes and lips were green.
The Spider Queen, upon seeing us, spread her arms wide as if welcoming us like guests. With that motion, her bare chest jiggled.
As I tried to prepare for battle, following the other knights, I momentarily froze, wondering if I had misread what I saw, and looked back at Arachnae again.
‘…Huh?’
Why is she completely naked?
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