The once plump and alluring snow-white body was once again battered to ruin under the magical bombardment. The Honey Spider Empress had no mind left to repair this lure; although she did not rely on sight to perceive the figures of her prey, the injury to her eyes infuriated her greatly. Her thick, sturdy spider legs effortlessly shattered the cage formed from [Dark-Corrosive Thunder].
Her pitch-black spider legs were covered all over with scars seared by lightning. She reared her round, swollen tail high and sprayed out a great mass of spider webs, attempting in this way to net the people of the Gourmet Edifice all at once.
Strange—by all rights she ought to be very strong, so why was she still resorting to this kind of non-threatening ranged attack?
To resolve the doubt in his heart, Jhin directly summoned [Substitute: The World].
"The World!"
In the space where time had stopped, Jhin separated from the [Elemental Armament], directing it to charge with weapon in hand to the side of the Honey Spider Empress, then unleash a fierce burst of sword qi.
"Time begins to flow."
The Honey Spider Empress was simply dismembered into pieces by the sword qi, her corpse giving off a faint golden glow—clearly she had dropped rare materials.
Everyone stood frozen in place, unable to believe the sight before their eyes.
The mutated monster that had only just been pressuring everyone had died this easily?
"This empress isn't a fake, is she?"
Megumin's doubt was not without reason. Jhin manipulated the armor to flip through the chunks of the corpse and dig out the special material—a bundle half a meter thick, a ball of thread radiating seven-colored light. Besides that, there was also a special spider egg wrapped in white spider silk.
"Pecorine, is that ball of thread a special ingredient from the Honey Spider Empress?"
"By its appearance, it's exactly the same." Pecorine tilted her head in confusion, utterly baffled by the current situation. "But even a boss-class Honey Spider Empress shouldn't be this weak, let alone one that's a mutated monster."
"Hey, come over here quick—I found something over here!" Kyaru stood behind an inconspicuous stone pillar, waving to the others.
Jhin was the first to reach her side. After getting a clear look at the scene hidden behind it, his brow knit tightly. He immediately turned and covered the eyes of Pecorine and Megumin, who had hurried over, while instructing: "Kokkoro, close your eyes, don't look."
"Ah... all right." Kokkoro didn't know why he said this, but she did as told all the same. The elf's keen sense of smell let her catch a faint, heavy stench of blood.
Behind this stone pillar lay many naked adventurer corpses, all neatly cut into two pieces—men and women alike. Their intestines were strewn across the ground like balls of thread a cat had clawed apart, and blood was smeared all over the floor like a child's scribbles. But without exception, every one of them was rather good-looking.
Seeing this, Jhin roughly guessed how the Honey Spider Empress's lure had come to be—nothing more than connecting to and controlling these corpses through some means, to achieve the effect of catching people's eye.
As for why she had kept the lower halves... he suspected that before successfully capturing an adventurer, there must surely have been a passionate, flesh-on-flesh scene from "A Monster Fell in Love With Me: The Grand Body-Swap Spectacle."
"Rest in peace—at least I killed it for you." Jhin controlled the fire element to burn these adventurer corpses to ashes, and only then released the hands covering the others' eyes.
After Jhin and Kyaru had cleared the center of the labyrinth once over, he had formed a rough deduction as to why the Honey Spider Empress was so feeble: "This empress's mutation may have gone in a different direction than we thought—she may have mutated toward enchantment."
"That's certainly possible—after all, no one has ever heard of a monster that can speak human speech."
"It used the adventurers it captured at the very start, disguising them as lures to deceive those who came later, making them willingly fall into the trap it had woven. This also explains why its attitude toward us was so friendly at first—had I not suddenly launched a surprise attack, it would probably have kept up the pretense with us for a while longer."
"Since it enhanced its charm, then you don't really seem to have been enchanted at all, do you?"
Jhin silently shot a glance at Megumin, who had asked the question. She too seemed to understand something; the soft, fair toes hidden in her shoes curled tightly against the soles, as if once again recalling that hard, burning sensation against the arch of her foot.
The other three watched the two who could communicate with nothing but their eyes, rather at a loss.
Had they already grown this in tune with each other?
"Since we've already got the items in hand, let's head toward the Elemental Anchor and leave the pit."
"What do we do with that spider egg?" Pecorine pointed at the spider egg placed on the ground at the very center—in just a short while, its volume had already swollen to twice its size.
Jhin's method of dealing with it was simple. He pointed at the spider egg and gave a low shout: "Dark-Corrosive Thunder."
Pitch-black lightning blasted the spider egg directly into fine powder.
"No one can guarantee that what hatches out of it won't be the same type of mutated empress—best to just deal with it this way."
As one of only two people who had seen those adventurer corpses clearly, Kyaru thoroughly approved of this approach too: "Yeah, a monster that toys with others is better off dead."
"All right, it's as dead as dead can be—calm down now."
"I... I'm not angry at all."
"Understood. Kindly point me out a path, O tsundere Lady Kyaru."
"Don't use that weird way of addressing me!"
"Then... how about adorable Lady Kyaru?"
"Th-that won't do either!"
"You wavered for a split second there, didn't you?"
"I-I-I... no such thing."
The two's banter successfully dispelled the somewhat heavy mood within the group. Pecorine, walking behind Jhin, gazed at him with gentle eyes. Although her eyes had been covered, her nose was no less sharp than Kokkoro's—the heavy stench of blood alone was enough to make her understand just how brutal the scene had been.
Had he been the first to discover it, he probably would have burned it away outright before even letting Kyaru see it.
It wasn't as if she had never seen a bloody scene; precisely because of that, she understood just how precious this instinctive tenderness of Jhin's was—from the bottom of his heart, he did not want them to be tainted by such a cruel sight.
Equally aware of this tenderness was Kyaru. Although she had been the first to see the corpses, when Jhin turned to cover the others' eyes after discovering them, he had also consciously moved to block her line of sight.
What a... tender bastard!
Following the Elemental Anchor, the group walked out of the Magic Crystal Pit. Along the entire way they never once encountered another Honey Spider, as if they too had died together with the death of the Honey Spider Empress.
The long-unseen morning light made them realize they had explored the Magic Crystal Pit for a full day and night. Drowsiness came belatedly to greet their brains. Jhin couldn't be bothered to collect morning dew either; he simply found a flat patch of ground and tossed down the Capsule House.
"We won't collect morning dew today. Everyone, head back to your rooms and get a good sleep, get yourselves back into shape."
After saying this, he bid the girls a "goodnight" and immediately ducked into his bedroom.
The others yawned and returned to their respective rooms. After Kokkoro got back to her own bedroom, she changed into her pajamas and then quietly slipped into Jhin's room.
____
👻🔥+40 ch on Pátreon: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: DanMachi: But I am a Monster — read it on The_Mikudayo
📚 Forty chapters of advanced reading at Walnut-chan, and it goes straight into keeping the translations on schedule
Let's achieve our community goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 extra chapter for everybody