Chapter 52: Demon King of Spider; Mother

I massacred countless ragno using 《Room Slash》 as I went down deeper and deeper into the nest. But, this ragno nest was much larger than it looked from the outside.

I might truly exhaust all the money in Manarak if I tried to exchange all the ragno that I subjugated here for the money.

I’ve even defeated several variants along the way.

Could I really find my way back with this ridiculous maze?

I mean, I might really get lost when I try to return to the surface.

More and more variants appeared the deeper I went into the nest. Starting from jumbo ragno who I saw back in the forest, black ragno with red gradations, ragno with the spiky body, etcetera.

Forget about red and spikey, I even found gold coloured ones amongst these variants.

I had no idea what made each variant differ from the others since all of them got done in after just one hit, but the difference might be in their level.

It was still within my safety margin though.

I brandished my index finger in the middle of a giant, empty, vast room.

Few hundreds of ragno who dared to block my path were severed at once from my 《Room Slash》.

Yeah, this was truly a mind-boggling job.

I heaved a sigh and wiped the sweat off my forehead.

That moment, I saw something coming toward me from the front.

I jumped back immediately.

「Pale blue… thread?」

The thread that failed to hit me fell to the ground in front of me.

The ground where that thread stuck to melted immediately.

It seems that the thread was really poisonous.

「Oh… good job for dodging it. Welcome to my humble abode, Hero-san.」

An eerie, clattering voice resounded inside the room.

And then, a giant monster appeared from the hole where the thread was fired from.

Its length was… around ten metres.

And just like the self-proclaimed third daughter, Marie from before, this one’s upper half had the outline of a woman too, albeit barely.

By barely, I mean that her beauty was a far cry compared to Marie’s.

Her outer appearance looks like a lump of pale blue rock.

The outline of her upper half was a mess, the size of her mouth was oversized, and even the size of her eyes were varied.

And there was jade coloured crystal embedded in her lower half.

「Quite impatient one, eh? You human might’ve found out about us, but to think that someone is stupid enough to charge in by himself. Do you really think that you alone can defeat I, the demon queen Mother? How naive of you, human.」

… She really was the demon king, eh.

To be honest, I wanted to exterminate the other four sisters first.

I mean, I wanted to reduce their combat potential as much as possible and once I beat them all and knew their average level, I wanted go to fight their mother with some safety margin.

And yet, she confirmed herself as the demon king the moment she saw me.

Her grotesque appearance and aura was completely different from Marie’s. It was enough to sent a chill running down my spine.

I stepped back slowly while glaring at Mother.

Though meeting the Demon King right off the bat was truly bad luck, my original intention was confirming the demon king’s level.

I’m going use 《Status Check》 on her and run from this place as fast as I can.

I guess no one would blame me for that since I cleaned up large number ragnos along the way. And that would be the end of this scouting job.

And once the level of the demon king is known, the kingdom’s side would be able to do something about her.

「Oh my… do you really think that you can escape after entering so deep into this Mother’s nest? How naive. Now let me to tell you about something. We, the spiders, are really good at cornering our prey. You seems to be quite strong, but stepping into this nest by yourself was your biggest mistake.」

Her eight eyes narrowed, glinting dangerously.

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『Mother』

Race: Queen Arachne

Ｌｖ　：999

ＨＰ　：7192/7192

ＭＰ　：3561/3596

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

「S-So… low? E-Eh…」

I rubbed my eyes and looked at the appraisal result again.

It seems there was something wrong with the information shown by the 《Status Check》.

Though her level seems to hit the counter stop, that wasn’t the thing that I was surprised about.

I mean, I saw tons of over thousands of level monsters after all.

But then, the result was staying the same no matter how many times I checked it.

W-Why level 999.

Did she get some sort of curse that prevented her from raising her level higher?

Was there really such coincidence?

Even if it was a coincidence, this matter was way too suspicious.

I mean, Philia herself had already reached level 1800.

No, wait a minute, upon thinking carefully, Philia was originally a homunculus created to protect the ancient kingdom. She was even revered as the God of Fear.

Well, it might be because she was created to counter the demon king.

「Having coming this far, it means that you at the very least entered from the entrance. Did you kill my adorable 3rd daughter, Marie? It seems you killed a whole lot of my adorable children too. You might ask for forgiveness but don’t think that I’ll forgive you. I’ll pluck your limbs, and slurp your brain while you’re still alive. Did you know…. A high level human’s brain…is really delicious, you kno~w? I wonder about yours~.」

… If it was seen from my perspective, Mother’s brain must be tasteless since her level wasn’t even a fourth of mine.

Well, not that I ever ate monster brains to begin with though…

B-But that matter aside, this fella was truly the demon king, eh?

And here I am, raising my vigilance against someone whose level hasn’t even broken through level thousand yet.

N-No, wait a minute here, an A-rank adventurer’s level didn’t even reach level 100… right?

「Oh my, got scared stiff already? Well, let’s enjoy this game, human. Since you managed to reach this far, you should be able to at least provide some resistance, right? Non-resisting opponens are boring you kno~w.」

… It seems I could at least communicate with her so let’s use this chance to confirm something.

「Uhm… you, aren’t one of four sister, right? You’re the demon king, right?」

Mother then spread her arms.

Four sword-like claws grew from her fingers, running along the wall.

The poor ragnos who happened to be in the way got mercilessly sliced up, sending down a rain of ragno liquids down below.

Seeing that, the rest of the ragnos retreated in hurry.

「You got some nerve to be able to speak in such a carefree way even at this kind of moment, eh!? Are you trying to piss me off!? Fine then, I shall toy with you!!」

Mother’s giant body then rushed toward me.

So it really came to this huh.

To be honest, I thought that the name “Mother” did ill fit with sisters.