I Reincarnated into a Game Filled with Mods – Chapter 59

Chapter 59

“…”

I carefully opened my closed eyes. Judging by the fact that I was still alive and not dead, it seemed like the plan had worked. Or maybe I had died without even feeling the pain and had come to the afterlife.

Soon, the pressure that felt like it would crush both my arms weakened, and I fell, landing on my butt with a thud. My butt was throbbing, so at least it wasn’t the afterlife.

I lifted my head. Right in front of me was the wide-open mouth of the spider. I raised my head further. I saw Arachnainera convulsing with her whole body, her eyes rolled back and her mouth agape.

The four pairs of spider legs on her lower body were twitching uncontrollably, and her human arms were hanging down limply. It seemed like she still had some consciousness left, but no room to act.

In contrast, I was perfectly fine.

The plan was a success.

‘That was close.’

At the last moment, when lightning was about to strike above my head, I closed my eyes reflexively.

If Arachnainera hadn’t been just about to devour me, if there had been even a slight gap between us, I would have been struck by lightning for sure.

It was an action I took after calculating all those details in my mind, but the thought that there might have been errors in my hasty mental calculations naturally led to that kind of reaction.

It was a method I came up with on the spot from the beginning, looking at the direction of Claudia, Rize, and Arachnainera. I didn’t have time to verify the calculations because time was of the essence.

‘Is this the power of a fully charged Raging Thunderstorm?’

I looked around. The spiderlings that had filled the vicinity were all electrocuted without a single exception and scattered on the floor, and the surviving ones couldn’t even approach due to the aftermath of the lightning.

What Claudia had just used was a technique called “Raging Thunderstorm.”

It was an attack where she raised her greatsword to the sky, concentrated her mind, then swung it down, unleashing a circular shockwave centered on herself, creating a wide area of effect on the ground, and scattering an enormous amount of lightning.

As you can guess from my words telling her to hit it as hard as possible, the range and attack power vary depending on the concentration time. If she concentrated until the end, it could cover the entire boss room like this.

Of course, it’s not a technique from the vanilla game, it’s something added in Darkest Light mode. It was a frustrating pattern where the entire boss room would be covered in the area of effect if you didn’t interrupt it with a weapon with high stagger.

The reason why she didn’t use it from the beginning is that it doesn’t distinguish between friend and foe.

Rize and Erika each have a way to survive, but I don’t. If she just used it carelessly, I would have been caught in it and died as well.

Wasn’t that the reason I induced Arachnainera’s grab pattern in the first place? So you could take the lightning and shockwave instead of me.

“Delta!”

Erika, who had approached me at some point, carried me on her shoulder and retreated backward in an instant. The distance between the Spider Queen and me widened significantly.

I turned around to check on Erika. She was breathing quite heavily, and there were countless small wounds all over her body, but she didn’t seem to be seriously injured.

As a trade-off, her armor was completely destroyed. Her helmet had been torn off long ago, her upper body was barely hanging on by the shoulder parts, and her lower body only had the parts below her thighs remaining. It was embarrassing to even call it armor.

“Erika, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“That’s what I should be saying!”

Erika shouted and grabbed my shoulders, pushing her face close to mine. Her crimson eyes, filled with all sorts of complex emotions, came right up to me.

“Are you crazy? Who told you to do something so reckless?!”

“We both survived, so it’s fine. Don’t get so worked up. You won’t even know you’re hurt if you do that. You’ll collapse later.”

“That’s not what’s important right now!”

“Then what’s important?”

“…”

Erika seemed to be at a loss for words at my retort and closed her mouth.

Yeah. No matter what crazy plan I executed, no matter what nonsense I did, in the end, Arachnainera was neutralized, and we both survived.

Nothing was more important than that.

“…I told you before, Delta. Dying while subjugating monsters is something that can happen to us knights at any time. If I had to, I was prepared to sacrifice myself gladly-”

Her voice had softened slightly, as if she herself had nothing more to say.

“But I’m not.”

“Huh?”

Erika momentarily had a blank expression on her face.

“It might be for you, Erika, but not for me.”

I released my grip on her shoulders. I pushed Erika’s body, which had been uncomfortably close, back a little and got up from my spot.

Sacrifice? That was a ridiculous joke.

It’s not like we were in a desperate crisis situation that we couldn’t overcome, and one of the Knight Commanders of the Silver Dawn Knights would sacrifice herself to a mid-boss like this? Did she think I would just let that happen?

And even if such a crisis were to occur, I would find a way to resolve it on my own.

‘I have to save them no matter what.’

As long as the player doesn’t betray them first, the Knight Commanders of the Silver Dawn Knights will never betray the protagonist. There were no more reliable allies than these four in Brightest Darkness 4.

That means I can trust them unconditionally in any situation. How could I possibly let such allies die?

“…Delta. What do you━”

“Erika! Delta! Are you alright?!”

Erika muttered something with a dazed expression, but it was soon drowned out by Rize’s loud voice. Rize, who had rushed over in a very urgent manner, stopped right in front of us.

“See? I’m fine. I kept my promise again, didn’t I?”

I deliberately spread my arms wide and smiled exaggeratedly. Rize stared at me like that. I couldn’t see her expression because of her helmet, but it probably wasn’t a very good one.

“Yes. Let’s talk about the details later. Erika, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Huh? Oh, um, yes. I’m fine, Unni. I’m not hurt at all.”

Only after Rize asked if she was okay did Erika hurriedly come to her senses and nod her head repeatedly. Why was she rambling to herself again?

“Kyaaaaaaaaak!”

A piercing scream echoed from afar. It was a familiar voice.

The scream was coming from Arachnainera. Claudia, who had approached at some point, had started beating Arachnainera with her greatsword.

Every time the greatsword swung, legs were severed, the abdomen was torn, and the carapace was shattered. Seeing that, Rize and Erika seemed to have regained their composure and gripped their weapons again.

“Right. We still had this left.”

“We’ll take care of it quickly, so Delta, don’t even think about moving recklessly and stay by my side.”

As the lightning field subsided, the spiderlings started to swarm in, but they were all wiped out by Rize and Erika’s attacks before they could do anything.

Erika, in particular, unleashed a tremendous amount of flames as if to take revenge for what she had suffered. The spiderlings that came into contact with the flames turned to ashes without a sound.

It didn’t take long for the number of living figures in the cave to dwindle to five.

“Keheuk. Hek. Haak…”

Arachnainera, with most of her body torn away, leaving only her human upper body, was desperately trying to crawl away, tears and green bodily fluids streaming down her face.

“Going somewhere?”

“Kyaaaaaak!”

Claudia plunged her greatsword into Arachnainera’s lower abdomen with a thud. The mangled fingers desperately scratched at the floor. A futile effort.

“Phew, that was a close one.”

Claudia let out a short sigh and threw off her armor, which was covered in venom. Fortunately, it seemed the green liquid didn’t melt through it.

Erika didn’t even have any armor left to throw off. The remaining pieces had long since fallen off.

At least Rize’s armor still retained its shape, but it was more green than silver, making it pointless. Clank, Rize also unfastened her venom-covered armor.

Her sweat-soaked white tank top and dolphin shorts, the same color as her hair, were revealed.

“Speaking of which, Delta.”

Claudia, who was fanning her tank top to let air in, approached me. I turned my head, wondering what was going on.

“Things were a bit hectic earlier, so I didn’t have time to ask.”

Perhaps because she had some time to breathe now, a sly smile reappeared on her face. What was she trying to say?

“How did you know I could use Raging Thunderstorm?”

‘Ah, so it was this.’

For a moment, I thought it was because I had used informal speech, but thinking about it, Claudia wasn’t the type to nitpick about that in a situation like the one we had just been in.

She would have praised me for helping them survive.

“I heard it from Rize.”

“Really? Wow, she told you everything?”

Rize responded with a “Huh?”, but seeing my gaze, she quietly closed her mouth as if she understood something on her own. However, she didn’t forget to mouth the words, “Add one more debt.”

“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts… Sob.”

Arachnainera, with a greatsword still embedded in her abdomen, was helplessly repeating that it hurt while tears streamed down her face.

If someone who didn’t know the situation saw this, they might feel sorry for the Spider Queen, seeing a fatally wounded, beautiful woman lying naked with a greatsword in her stomach, sobbing in pain.

But we knew this was a monster, and Erika had barely escaped death at its hands, so feeling pity was absurd.

Moreover, it was a monster that had already killed hundreds of people. Their corpses were scattered throughout the boss room. This was just another tactic to try and gain sympathy.

‘I can leave the cleanup to them, right?’

After confirming that the Knight Commanders were raising their weapons and approaching Arachnainera, I turned around and headed deeper into the boss room alone.

To the place that was blocked by spiderwebs during the boss fight but could be accessed once the Spider Queen was defeated.

Rize, Erika, and Claudia didn’t react to me moving alone. They probably assumed I was going to do something on my own again.

I entered the cave filled with the corpses of people who had been drained of their blood by Arachnainera.

‘Ugh.’

I grimaced at the sight of a dried-up human corpse that seemed to be greeting me as soon as I entered. Even though the face was withered, the expression of pain was still vivid.

━Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

‘Whoa, that startled me.’

I flinched in surprise at the scream that came from behind me as I was walking. It seemed the subjugation was over.

I passed the spot where a wall covered in spiderwebs should have been blocking the path and continued further in. Finally, when I reached the dead end at the very back, I saw what I was looking for.

‘Found it.’