“…….”
I cautiously opened my eyes. Since I seemed to be alive and not dead, it looked like the plan worked. Or maybe I died without feeling any pain and ended up in the afterlife.
Soon, the pressure constricting my arms loosened, and I fell and thudded onto the ground. My butt was throbbing, so this was definitely not the afterlife.
I lifted my head. Right in front of me was the gaping mouth of a spider. I raised my head further. I saw Arachnae, her eyes rolling back and her body twitching uncontrollably.
The four pairs of spider legs attached to her lower half were flailing wildly, while her human arms hung limply. She still had some consciousness, but was apparently unable to act.
In contrast, I was doing just fine.
The plan was a success.
‘That was cutting it close.’
At the last moment, when lightning was about to strike my head, I reflexively closed my eyes.
If Arachnae had gotten any closer to eating me, I would have definitely been struck by the lightning.
I had calculated even such details when taking action, but since it was all a frantic mental calculation, I thought it was natural to have that reaction.
It was a method I came up with on the spot while watching Claudia, Lize, and Arachnae’s movements. There was no time to verify my calculations.
‘Is this the full charge Lightning Storm’s power?’
I looked around. All the baby spiders nearby had been electrocuted and lay sprawled on the floor without a single exception, and the ones that survived couldn’t approach due to the residual effects of the lightning.
What Claudia had just used was a technique called ‘Raging Storm of Lightning.’
By raising her greatsword to the sky, she concentrated her mind, then swung it down, unleashing a circular shockwave around her and saturating a wide area with an overwhelming amount of lightning.
As I mentioned, the strength of the attack depends on the time spent concentrating. If she focused until the end, she could cover the entire boss room like now.
This wasn’t a technique available in Vanilla, but one added in Darkest Light Mod. If the weapon with high stun didn’t break, the entire boss room would be filled with a broken pattern.
Why she didn’t use it sooner was because it was impossible to discern friend from foe.
While Lize and Erica each had a way to survive, I didn’t. If I just randomly unleashed that attack, I would get caught up and die alongside them.
The very reason I’d led Arachnae into that grabbing pattern was for that very reason. You take all the hits from the lightning and shockwave for me.
“Delta!”
Before I knew it, Erica came up beside me, hoisting me up and swiftly pulling back. The distance between me and the spider queen widened significantly.
I turned to confirm Erica’s figure. She had a slightly labored breath and countless small wounds all over her body, but it seemed she wasn’t severely injured.
On the contrary, her armor was completely wrecked. The helmet had already been ripped off, and her upper body barely had armor on her shoulders, while the lower half was left with only the part below her thighs. It was embarrassing to even call it armor.
“Erica, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“That’s what I should be asking!”
Erica shouted as she grabbed my shoulder and brought her face close to mine. Her complex emotions were clearly visible in her crimson eyes.
“Are you out of your mind? Who said you could do something so reckless?”
“We both survived, so it’s fine. Don’t get too worked up. You’ll end up collapsing without realizing you’re hurt.”
“That’s not what’s important right now!”
“Well, if that’s not important, then what is?”
“…….”
At my rebuttal, Erica seemed at a loss for words, closing her mouth.
Right. No matter how insane my plan was, or what nonsense I pulled, Arachnae was incapacitated, and we both survived.
That was the only thing that mattered.
“I mentioned this last time too, Delta. Dying while subjugating monsters is something that can happen to our knights at any time. If it comes to that, I would gladly be ready for sacrifice—”
Her voice softened slightly as if she had nothing else to say.
“Not me.”
“Excuse me?”
Erica seemed momentarily stunned.
“Maybe for you, but not for me.”
I shrugged off her grip on my shoulder. I pushed her a little back, as her body was uncomfortably close, and stood up.
Sacrifice? That’s just ridiculous.
Not when faced with an overwhelming crisis I couldn’t overcome, nor would a commander of the Silver Dawn Knights sacrifice herself to such a mid-boss. Did she really think I would just watch it happen?
And even if such a crisis struck, I would find a solution within my means.
‘They are definitely worth saving.’
As long as the player didn’t pull any dirty tricks first, the commanders of the Silver Dawn Knights would never betray the protagonist. There was no better ally than these four in Brightest Darkness 4.
That meant I could trust them unconditionally in any situation. There was no way I’d let such allies die.
“……Delta. What’s that—”
“Erica! Delta! Are you okay?!”
Erica mumbled something with a blank expression, but soon her words were drowned out by Lize’s booming voice, rushing toward us in a panic as she stopped right in front of us.
“See? Look, I’m fine, right? I kept my promise again this time!”
I exaggeratedly spread my arms and smiled. Lize stared at me silently. The helmet covered her expression, but I figured it wasn’t a pleasant one.
“Yeah. We’ll talk about the details later. Erica, how about you? Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Uh? Ah, um, right. Yes. I’m fine too, sister. Not a single scratch on me.”
As soon as Lize asked if she was okay, Erica snapped to attention, nodding her head continuously. Why was she muttering to herself again?
“Gyaaaaaah!”
A piercing scream echoed from a distance. It was a familiar voice.
The scream was coming from Arachnae, as Claudia approached and began to beat her with her greatsword.
With each swing of the greatsword, her legs were severed, her abdomen was ripped open, and her exoskeleton shattered. Seeing this, Lize and Erica snapped back to reality and grabbed their weapons again.
“Right. I forgot she was still around.”
“I’ll handle this quickly, so Delta, stay put and stay close to me.”
As the lightning rain subsided, the baby spiders started to swarm, but before they could do anything, they were wiped out by Lize and Erica’s attacks.
Especially Erica, retaliating with an enormous surge of flames like she was avenging the way she had been treated. Any baby spider that touched the flames dissolved into ashes without a sound.
It didn’t take long for the moving forms in the cave to drop to five.
“Cough. Hah. Hah…”
Arachnae, now reduced to human upper half, was crawling on the ground, teeming with tears and green fluid, desperately trying to escape after most of her body had been torn away.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Gyaaaaaah!”
Thud, Claudia impaled her greatsword into Arachnae’s abdomen. Her damaged fingers frantically clawed at the ground. A futile effort.
“Phew, that’s a relief, it’s finally over.”
Claudia let out a short sigh and tossed away her armor, now covered in poison. Thankfully, it seemed like that green liquid wasn’t able to corrode her armor.
Erica didn’t even have armor to toss aside. What little remained had already been long gone.
Fortunately, Lize was still holding her armor together, but it was more green than silver and thus meaningless. Clang, Lize also unstrapped her armor covered in poison.
Her sweat-drenched sleeveless top and dolphin shorts the same color as her hair were now exposed.
“By the way, Delta.”
Claudia, who was crumpling the chest part of her sleeveless top to let in some air, came over to me. I turned my head, wondering what she wanted.
“I couldn’t ask earlier since the situation was so urgent.”
Maybe she was more relaxed now, as a sly smile returned to her lips. I wondered what she was trying to say.
“How did you know I could use the lightning storm?”
‘Oh, was that it?’
I briefly thought she was annoyed by my casual speech, but I realized Claudia wouldn’t be the type to complain over something like that.
In fact, she should have been praising me for helping her survive, not scolding me.
“I heard it from Lize.”
“Oh really? Wow, she really told you everything!”
Lize reacted with a “huh?” but upon seeing my gaze, she quietly closed her mouth. Instead, she opened her mouth slightly to convey, “one more debt.”
“Ow, ow, ow… sniff.”
Arachnae, with a greatsword stuck in her abdomen, lay there helplessly, tears flowing as she repeatedly mumbled that it hurt.
For someone unaware of the preceding situation, it might seem like a beautiful woman was crying in pain with a greatsword sticking out of her, evoking sympathy for the spider queen.
But we knew this was a monster, and with Erica having barely escaped the brink of death, feeling sympathetic was out of the question.
Moreover, this was a monster that had killed hundreds of people. Their corpses littered the entire boss room. This was just another tactic to garner sympathy.
‘I’ll just leave the cleanup to them.’
Having confirmed the knight commanders were approaching Arachnae with their weapons raised, I turned away and headed deeper into the boss room.
Though the path had been obstructed by webs during the boss fight, it was a place I could enter once the spider queen was defeated.
Lize, Erica, and Claudia showed no reaction to my move. They probably thought I would handle something on my own again.
I stepped into the cave filled with the corpses of those who had been drained of blood by Arachnae.
‘Ugh.’
As soon as I entered, I grimaced at the sight of a shriveled human corpse welcoming me. Despite the face being withered, the expression of agony was still vivid.
—Aaaaaaah!
‘Whoa, that startled me.’
As I walked in, the distant scream behind me made me flinch and shrink back. It seemed the subjugation was over.
Originally, the walls covered in webs should have blocked this path, but I continued further inside. Finally entering the dead-end I desired, I spotted what I had been looking for.
‘I found it.’
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