NOVEL WEB Chapter 51: Arachnophobia
After being on one knee and unable to move an inch for what felt like a full minute or two, Victor sensed a large, silvery presence approaching from behind. Surprisingly, it was Lumen — his ever-loyal companion. With a woof, she nestled against him with her soft fur as she lay down beside him.
“Oh, it’s you… You know, I haven’t punished you for going against my words,” Victor teased with a mischievous smirk.
Hearing that, Lumen’s ears drooped slightly, as if expressing sadness at the prospect of punishment. Pfft! At the end of the day, Lumen is still a wolf pup, no matter how large her size has become.
“Haha, just kidding.” Victor shook his head and rested it on Lumen’s plush fur, sighing contentedly. “Just… let me stay like this for a little while longer.”
In the distance, the echoes of the players fighting the rest of the spiders still lingered, gradually fading away like the dying embers of a once-fiery forest. It was as if the world was returning to its former state, and all that remained were the fading memories of the conflict.
Victor, preparing to rise and assess the situation, was suddenly halted by a peculiar sight. The charred corpse of the queen spider, believed to be lifeless, began to twitch. In a matter of moments, its abdomen expanded, doubling in size.
“H-How is it still alive?!” He had gravely underestimated the tenacity of this creature yet again. While it might be classified as a pseudo-Elemental Adept rank creature, its resilience far exceeded anything Victor had encountered thus far. To add insult to injury, he found himself completely out of juice — when he checked his remaining MP, it only had a measly three points left!
Far from enough to cast even a single Aleph-tier spell.
Or so was his initial assumption, as it showed no other signs of movement other than a suddenly expanding abdomen.
“Wait… This is just a bodily reflex that animals usually exhibit after dying…” Victor felt that his words weren’t quite fitting. He knew that magical beasts couldn’t be easily equated to normal creatures. Strong extraordinary life forms would even leave supernatural phenomena upon death that would affect the surrounding area, while weaker ones often had the ability to move their bodies even after death, displaying a lingering combat potential. This phenomenon was intricately tied to the study of souls and the nature of the undead.
“But what kind of reflex would…” He had his eyes set on the queen spider’s grotesquely stretched abdomen, now pallid.
At that very moment, his Master Shadowlink Mark sprang to life, projecting a holographic screen that framed the visage of his assistant fairy, Lizbeth.
“Master! Get away from there! It’s about to explode with countless of its children!” she warned from behind the screen before hanging up.
“What?!”
At first, he thought he might have heard it wrongly. However, in the next heartbeat, the queen spider’s bloated abdomen ruptured at a single point, releasing countless black dots into the sky. On closer inspection, these dots were diminutive spiders the size of a thumb — and there were thousands of them!
“SHIIIT!!” Panic surged through Victor as the grim reality set in. I’m out of magic…! What should I— Wait!
In a brilliant, sudden spark of idea, Victor retrieved a magic scroll containing the spell {Inferno Burst} from his interspatial ring. It was the exact same one he’d gotten from the gacha draw. Without a moment’s hesitation, he activated the scroll by injecting a little bit of his inverted mana.
Boom!
A fiery explosion materialized directly above the queen spider’s lifeless body, engulfing everything in a three-meter radius in scorching flames.
Nevertheless, because it had been three seconds from the moment the mini spiders were released to Victor thinking of an idea and another two seconds for the magic scroll to activate, the numbers that were skydiving from the air had skyrocketed. To make matters worse, they seemed to be consciously aiming at him?
Don’t tell me, these spiders are also hive-minded? Victor questioned in his mind. And they must have been instructed to chase after me before their queen died…! Jesus Christ! A shiver ran down Victor’s back, paralyzing him momentarily.
Noticing the grimness of the situation, Lumen sprang into action. She bit onto Victor’s back and hoisted him onto her own, immediately setting off to avoid the incoming spiders. To end this nightmare, Victor was determined to use the scroll again!
Boom!
And again!
Boom!
Two fiery explosions were unleashed, annihilating the pursuing spiders and reducing the magic scroll into a useless piece of paper. Even then, several dozen of the tiny arachnids managed to escape the radius of the explosions, with two to three managing to land on his back despite Lumen’s fast speed and almost bit him if not for his quick actions.
Finally escaping from the predicament, Victor plopped down next to the equally pooped-out Lumen, gasping for air like an overworked steam engine. “Huff… Puff… No more… I can’t handle that many spiders!” He waved his hands frantically, as if trying to swat away phantom spiders still crawling on him.
Victor’s legs had turned into jelly, and his hands were shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. This experience sure had left him with mild arachnophobia. In fact, if there were an achievement for this, he would have gotten one like “Arachnid Avenger” or something already — complete with a spandex costume.
[Hidden Achievement Unlocked: Queen Spider Killer]
[Congratulations on fulfilling the condition (killing the queen of the Lesser Hiveborne Arachnid) for this achievement.]
[The award (Aleph-tier {Spatial Mirage} spell book) has been granted.]
Huh? Speak of the devil. It had been a while since Victor last earned a hidden achievement from the System, and the timing couldn’t have been better. Furthermore, the reward this time was a spell book and a Cosmo element one at that. What a pleasant change of pace. How wonderful!
Just as Victor was rejoicing in his newfound gains, a foreboding premonition washed over him. At the edge of his vision, an ominous crimson, intangible force shot toward him from the direction of the deceased queen spider. It was so fast that he could barely see its afterimage. The force was on the verge of seeping into his body when it was abruptly intercepted by Lumen, who swiped at it with her front leg.
“What the fuck was that?!” Victor stared at the sinister crimson force with wariness.
Once more, it launched an attack on Victor, taking on the form of the dead queen spider.
“A curse!”
“GRRHH!” Lumen pounced at the crimson curse and swallowed it whole and then burped; it was as though the curse was its food.
The heck? Did she just… Victor gaped at the silvery wolf, utterly befuddled.
Regardless, Victor had no knowledge about this curse. Instances of a group of third-stage Initiate Attunement acolytes defeating an Elemental Adept rank magical beast did exist, but for an inexperienced acolyte like him, such matters remained a mystery. Without the aid of the System, he was essentially a clueless ignoramus.
It was important to mention that the Arcane Radiance College didn’t specialize in curse-related magic and similar things. Thus, it came as no surprise that Victor lacked expertise in this area, much less the knowledge of how to cast curses. However, he did understand that among Magi, using curses came with severe consequences, even though he wasn’t entirely clear on the specifics.
In one of the books he read, there was one alternative method that some Magi used to avoid these consequences, which involved harnessing life force. This could be achieved by either utilizing their own life force or through sacrificial rituals, though the latter was often frowned upon and associated with even graver dangers.
Either way, the one he’d encountered must have been cast by the queen spider just before its death, likely expending all its remaining life force, which made Lumen’s actions in swallowing it without any apparent consequences all the more remarkable.
“Whatever, I’ll question you later. For now, let’s go back to check on the players,” he decided, climbing onto Lumen’s back.
***
As the sharp bone spear thrust into the last arachnid, green blood sprayed out, further soiling Jacky’s already filthy face. Oddly enough, instead of disgust, he was consumed by a perverse exhilaration like a serial killer on a killing spree. Something was changing within him, slowly but surely, as he lived in this game longer and longer. True, he’d spent most of his time on the sidelines, but this final clash had sparked the cogs inside his brain to start turning.
He felt like he was truly alive. In this strange game world… he felt like he was back home, far away from his leeching wife and the sickly life out there.
Just then, a fellow player beside him stepped on the corpse of another spider nearby and shouted, “Taste that! This is revenge for killing me in the past! Hah!”
The manic look on Jacky’s face disappeared as he sighed, shaking his head. “Save your energy, Locktekei. We can’t be sure this is the end of them.”
Locktekei chuckled, seemingly untroubled. “Well, you say that, but I don’t see any more of those creepy crawlies headed our way.”
The landscape around them had turned into a desolate expanse of charred ground. A strong, acrid stench hung heavy in the air, causing anyone to inhale it to winch and cough. Amidst the devastation, countless spider corpses and humans alike were strewn about, turning the ground into a nightmarish display of red and green. In the not-so-far distance, patches of the forest continued to smolder even now, casting an eerie glow that almost turned the night sky into day, shrouded in a haze of eye-watering smoke.
It was like a scene straight from hell.
“You might have a point,” Jacky admitted. Strangely, he had become apathetic to his fellow players dying on the battlefield. A contrast to the previous time.
“Hey, do you think the fire will reach the Thornwood Flower field to the north? It’d be a shame to see it burn after all of this.”
Jacky tapped on his chin for a moment before opening his mouth. “I doubt it. The headmaster emphasized the need to create a firebreak by cutting down trees and clearing the foliage on the forest’s edge. But whether it’ll be effective in stopping the fire, especially with the limited time we had, is anyone’s guess.”
“That’s true.” Locktekei nodded in realization. “Speaking of which, I wonder how the headmaster’s battle against the queen spider is turning out…”
“Oh, he’s the headmaster, after all. With his formidable magic, there’s no way he’ll lose, is all I can say.”
Locktekei agreed. “Mhm! If this game’s power scale goes beyond what we’ve seen so far, we could become superhumans. Screw those RPG open-world games on PC; they won’t even compare to the thrills this game offers!”
Indeed, who hadn’t dreamed of soaring through the skies, feeling like a god? It was a daydream that almost everyone had indulged in at least once during moments of boredom, allowing their imagination to take flight and explore boundless “possibilities.”
“Haha, imagine trying to control characters with complex powers like this using a keyboard and mouse. Or even using a conventional VR headset for a better perspective… We’d be spinning in our chairs and probably puking our guts out.”
“Pfft! Couldn’t agree more.”
Both players shared a laugh, reveling in the unique and over-realistic experience of the game they had chosen to immerse themselves in.
This is what I think when the queen spider unleash its many children. (Watch with caution)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdRuKC0rLLQ&t=2s
