No to Being the Suffering Heroine! – Chapter 31

While Wolfgang watched over the fire burning the corpses and baby spiders, we searched every corner of the storage looking for anything valuable.

“…Just a bunch of odds and ends. Nothing useful in sight.”

“That’s a shame.”

Unfortunately, there was nothing that could be considered profitable.

Well, this wasn’t some dungeon after all. Even if we searched thoroughly, it would just be the personal belongings of miners who had become spider food.

Unless they were mine owners, ordinary miners wouldn’t be carrying anything valuable.

All we found were pickaxes with completely rotted handles, daggers, crude cheap rings, and a small notebook.

“…A notebook?”

“Looks like journal! I can’t read!”

Kikel answered, showing a small notebook half-soaked in blood.

He said he could speak human language awkwardly, but couldn’t read at all.

It wasn’t particularly something to be ashamed of.

A lizardman might not be able to read human writing. In a world where illiterates who can’t read or write their own native language are everywhere, what’s the big deal?

“Let me see.”

Of course, I could read it.

Ever since I fell into this world, I could naturally pronounce and read both the spoken and written language as if it were my mother tongue. It’s a strange thing.

Could it be some kind of possessed person’s perk?

Or did whatever that stuffed me into Brunhilde’s body implant knowledge of this place’s language and writing in my head?

Thinking about it that way made it somewhat creepy.

It felt like something I couldn’t even notice was kneading my mind at will.

…Let’s not think about it.

There’s no solution even if I worry about it, and it’ll just make me feel bad for nothing.

In any case, thanks to that, I could avoid being a stranded isekai person who couldn’t communicate through speech or writing, right?

I closed my eyes tightly and opened them to stop the negative thoughts, then took the notebook Kikel was holding and examined its contents.

“Hmm… Ah, this is indeed a journal. It’s the previous village chief’s journal.”

He said he became spider food, right? Looking at the journal being here, that part seems to have been true.

I quickly flipped through the pages of the journal, skimming it.

Records of the mine’s development progress and output.

Complaints about his only son leaving for the city, saying he didn’t want to be a miner.

Concerns about hearing some strange sounds from deep in the mine shaft.

Even content about his son, who had left to start a business, unexpectedly returning. Various stories were written in scrawling handwriting.

And on the last page of the journal…

“…Blood?”

Unlike the previous pages, short sentences written in blood, not ink. Could it be some kind of last will left before dying?

“Bastard son… betrayal… legs… cursed…?”

It was damn hard to make out what was written.

The handwriting itself was scrawled, and most of the letters were either smeared sideways or completely blotted out as if erased.

Still, reading it carefully to the end, I could roughly understand the content.

“The previous village chief was murdered.”

The last will written in blood by the previous village chief. It contained the truth about his death.

“The culprit is his son, and the motive is… the all too common inheritance issue.”

The son who returned to his hometown after failing in business, demanding that the mining rights or ownership be handed over.

When the previous village chief refused, it seems he attempted to murder him.

He planned to quietly kill him in the mine shaft and then crush the body with rocks to disguise it as a cave-in accident.

The problem was that just before he could finish off the previous village chief, giant spiders burst through the mine shaft wall.

The current village chief kicked his father’s legs, breaking them, and then ran away, while the abandoned previous village chief crawled to the storage and hid himself, it says.

And here, certain that he wouldn’t live much longer, he left this will.

A blood-written letter cursing his son’s betrayal and unfilial conduct.

* * *

Although we had learned that the current village chief was a historical bastard, what we had to do hadn’t changed.

Our role was to clean the mine shaft, not to realize social justice.

“What should we do with this journal?”

Handing it over to the current village chief would be the worst option.

It would mean his perfect crime had been discovered by novice adventurers, so wouldn’t he naturally think of killing us to silence us first?

Like hiring an assassin with money earned from restarting the mining business, or something like that.

“We could hand it over to the security forces and report the village chief… but there’s no benefit and it would just be troublesome.”

Laute argued that we should just bury it carelessly.

Even if we reported the village chief with this, there would be no reward money, and if we got into a dispute over its authenticity, we’d have to go back and forth to the security forces several times, which would be annoying, she said.

It was an attitude befitting an experienced adventurer.

“Couldn’t we demand hush money in exchange for keeping quiet?”

Wolfgang also proposed an adventurer-like opinion. The idea of blackmailing the village chief for hush money.

Once we take the bribe, we’d become accomplices or accessories, so the village chief wouldn’t try to harm us afterward, he said?

Indeed, it was an adventurer-like idea. In the sense of only thinking about today.

“I don’t know, I don’t think someone who killed his own father would just leave adventurers who blackmailed him alone.”

I shook my head, refuting Wolfgang’s opinion.

Unless we were silver token adventurers or something, beings that a mere village chief couldn’t possibly touch, it was an excessively dangerous idea otherwise.

In the end, we decided to quietly bury this matter as Laute suggested. Though we did sneakily keep the journal just in case.

* * *

With all the offspring in the storage eliminated, all that remained was the cavity at the deepest part of the mine shaft.

We went back the way we came to the fork in the road, then chose the right passage this time and continued on.

We walked like that for about twenty minutes.

I thought we’d have to fight a couple more times on the way, but strangely, we didn’t encounter any giant spiders after passing the fork in the road.

Were the spiders gathered at the fork the last ones?

Maybe so. Considering that none came to stop us even as all their offspring were being burned to death.

Anyway, we finally reached the end of the mine shaft.

“This is…”

A wide cavity riddled with holes like an osteoporosis patient, as if they had stopped digging out soil and rocks.

Spider webs were tangled in every hole in the walls, and the floor was strangely damp.

“Have we arrived?”

“It seems so.”

The interior was much more spacious than expected. So much so that we couldn’t even see the state of the ceiling with just the torch light.

“There don’t seem to be any giant spiders… Kikel, how’s the ceiling? Can you check by smell?”

“Grrrr…! Difficult. Nose hurts, smoke was too strong…!”

Kikel clicked his tongue and growled in his throat.

He said his nose was numb from the rotten smell and burning smell that had filled the entire storage.

…So this was the problem with relying on smell for reconnaissance.

“Then we have no choice. For now, let’s look around while being wary of what’s above us.”

If there were spiders clinging to the ceiling, they would attack us eventually.

So, we just needed to walk around inside the cavity while thoroughly covering our heads to prepare for ambushes.

“Right. Shield woman. Laute? Use shield as umbrella.”

Kikel said, holding up his shield above his head.

Since giant spiders could ambush us from the ceiling, we should investigate the inside of the cavity with our shields covering our heads.

“Like this?”

Laute nodded and raised her round shield to cover her head.

Just as she was about to step towards the inner part of the cavity in that state.

“Hmm… in that case, wouldn’t it be better to just throw the torch towards the ceiling?”

“Ah.”

Surprisingly, truly surprisingly, the octopus chimpanzee achieved a dramatic evolution.

Perhaps thanks to the experience points gifted by the giant spiders.

He had finally evolved from a beast life of flailing his front and hind legs to a primitive human who understood the concept of ‘throwing’!

Throwing.

It was the secret that allowed humanity’s ancestors, the distant ancient primitives, to hunt huge beasts and reign as predators.

Even hairy primitive ancient elephants couldn’t withstand their thrown spears and had to meet their deaths.

The fact that Wolfgang had grasped the concept of throwing meant that we could finally recognize him as a member of humanity.

“That sounds good. Kikel, could you please?”

“Trust me!”

Kikel, who received Wolfgang’s torch, lightly rotated his shoulder a couple of times, then with a sharp roar, threw the torch he was gripping above his head.

Whoosh!

The torch soaring up, shaking its crimson tail. It was a sight like the morning sun rising.

Three seconds later. The light of the torch, which had been rising unhindered, finally reached the cavity ceiling and brightly illuminated the surroundings.

And then.

“Kiiiiiieek!”

The monster clinging to the ceiling let out a fierce shriek, startled by the light.

“What is…?!”

The expressions of my companions hardened.

They were shocked by the form of the monster that was clinging to the mine shaft ceiling with its claws, looking down at us.

A body covered in carapace. Eight legs bristling with hair. Fangs protruding on both sides of its wide-open mouth.

Looking at just the external features, it was similar to a giant spider at first glance.

“It’s a gi-giant spider!”

Unlike giant spiders that were at most as big as a human torso, this one was problematic because it looked more than three times the size of a person.

And was size the only difference?

Unlike ‘giant spiders’ that were just bigger but otherwise no different in appearance from commonly seen spiders.

On its head…

“Kiiii…!”

Instead of an arthropod face with eight eyes, a human face was attached.

“Have you come…!”

And it was even a face that could speak.

An inhumanly bald, wrinkled forehead.

White hair, barely remaining on the back and sides, hung limply like seaweed, and both cheeks were sunken like someone who had starved for ten years.

The sagging, dangling lower jaw was full of grizzled beard, and in the empty eye sockets, as if the eyeballs had been plucked out, blue ghost fire flickered.

“…We’re screwed.”

A curse involuntarily slipped out.

A spider monster several meters in size with the face of a person with their eyes plucked out. I knew what it was.

“Good heavens…!”

Laute seemed to have heard of it too, her expression not just hardened but her face completely pale.

“A vengeful spirit spider…!”

She spoke its name.

Vengeful Spirit Spider.

The name of a monster that couldn’t be confronted without being a silver token adventurer or knight.

“Come… my son…”

“…Son?”

Kikel glanced at Wolfgang, then opened his mouth with a somewhat trembling voice.

“Head same. You, father?”

“No!”

Wolfgang shouted as if having a fit.