Nox gazed towards the gorge from which water was said to have once flowed.
“To become an adventurer, you must first overcome aversion to dirty things, high places, and fear of insects and reptiles,” he murmured to himself.
It was a quote from an ancient adventure story he found in the mansion’s library.
Amidst a cliff in front of him and a group of spiders behind him, he suddenly recalled those words.
“Did you say something?” Dolk asked, the noise of the wind in the gorge drowning his voice.
“I just said it was simply creepy,” Nox replied.
On their side and a few hundred meters away on the opposite cliff, was the nest in question. White threads radiated radially over the rocks, capturing a variety of prey around the insect-like creature.
In the center of it all, there was a spider of such a large size that it defied scale. Additionally, in various parts of the gorge, bulging dome-shaped structures clung.
“Good thing Nana didn’t see it.” Although Nana had shown courage while navigating the Labyrinth Forest, Nox knew she was not a fan of spiders.
In Nox’s room, where no one else did the cleaning, there were small spider nests, but Nana, after confirming no spiders were present, would fearfully eliminate them.
Nox noticed that Nana did not notice these nests, so he took care of eliminating them before she noticed and worried that they would “steal” her work.
“Let’s finish this once and for all,” Nox murmured.
Although he was accustomed to it, it was not something he was an expert at. With an unpleasant sensation in his neck and cheeks, he extended his index finger towards the giant spider with the other hand to keep it steady.
“Flame Cannon!”
“Eh?”
With little preparation, a loud sound accompanied by a hot wind erupted, and a red sphere shot straight towards the center of the nest.
Almost immediately, emitting a deafening sound, the massive spider in the process of mutating fell burning towards the depths of the gorge.
“Ugh! It was about to mutate!” Nox, sensing something unpleasant from the noise, turned towards the valley.
“Hey, you’re an adventurer, right? Protect yourself!”
“Eh, yes, yes?” As he said this to Dolk, who was momentarily stunned by what had happened, the spiders that were moving calmly around them now turned their attention towards Nox.
“Let’s eliminate them before we go back to the carriage!”
“We’re not going back to the carriage?!” Dolk considered asking for help from the other adventurers accompanying them, but Nox pointed out they couldn’t leave Nana behind, who would faint if she saw this crowd.
It was not possible to retreat with this large group of spiders. While Nox burned the approaching spiders one by one, Dolk drew his sword from magical storage and began to fight, but it seemed like an endless task.
“Ah, how annoying! Hey, can you hold the edge of my cloak for a moment!?”
“Yes, yes!”
Nox quickly instructed Dolk and extended his hands forward.
“Tornado!” Reciting the short incantation, a furious wind unleashed unlike the previous heat blast, sucking up and lifting the surrounding spiders.
“Aaaah!” Hair and clothes in disarray, Dolk desperately clung to Nox to avoid being swept away by the wind.
“Fire Explosion!”
The tornado, clouded by the large number of spiders, wrapped itself in flames and turned red. Nox waved his hand towards the valley.
The tornado moved in the indicated direction, descending towards the valley floor as if with a will of its own, mercilessly burning the Dot Spiders’ egg nests around, and quietly vanished.
A moment later, the charred remains fell to the valley floor, and finally, all was silent.
“…”
“…”
Confirming that the spiders were no longer approaching due to the extensive burns on the ground, Nox sighed deeply and quickly set off on the return.
Dolk, left behind, murmured with a tense voice and trembling legs, “Haha… I understand, they are monsters.”
A little earlier, around the carriage, the adventurers remained vigilant, appearing bored. Although the giant spiders were repulsive, as long as they were not provoked, they posed no threat. However, the mysterious hooded adventurer whom the branch manager treated so courteously turned out to be much more unsettling.
“He seemed younger than us, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I couldn’t see his face properly, but he was almost the same height as the girl inside.”
“Why are we following his orders?”
“I don’t know.”
They simply obeyed because they felt they had to. That was the only way to put it.
Listening to this conversation from outside, Nana felt proud.
Suddenly, a scream or something akin to a scream was heard from the valley.
“Hey, doesn’t the spiders’ behavior seem strange to you?”
“Alert! …Huh?”
The vigilant adventurers, seeing the spiders surrounding them suddenly begin to move towards a specific direction, hurriedly wielded their weapons. However, the spiders, completely ignoring the carriage, were massing towards the same point.
“Isn’t that where the guild master and that strange mage went…?”
“Eh?”
Although Nana didn’t want to see more spiders, the situation outside also concerned her. After hesitating for a moment, she decided to lift the canopy curtain. However, she didn’t see any spiders; instead, she noticed something writhing in the distance.
“What is… that…?” Following the indication of one of the adventurers, they all watched as a dark and eerie line rose towards the sky.
It resembled a tornado, absorbing the surrounding darkness before quickly turning red in an instant.
“Nox-sama…” Intuitively, Nana knew it was Nox’s magic.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“What do we do? Do we escape now?”
“But, we’re not actually being affected, right?”
While listening to the distant and confused discussions,
“…Beautiful.”
Nana murmured a misplaced impression, observing the intense red similar to Nox’s eye color.
