Spider Queen Arachnainera – 7

What I found was a ring on the right index finger of a shriveled, dried-up corpse.

Overall, it was close to a silvery color with a grayish tint, and complex patterns were engraved on its upper part. Even though a considerable amount of time must have passed, it hadn’t lost any of its original luster.

This is the item needed to progress the next main story. That’s why Arachnainera is a boss that must be defeated to advance the story.

I deliberately ignored the horrible sensation on my fingers and grabbed the shriveled, dried-up corpse’s hand. If I just took this out and left, I wouldn’t have to come back here again.

‘Taking the whole corpse wouldn’t work, right?’

Even in-game, if you pressed the interaction key here, the character would only take the ring. The story would progress just fine anyway.

Besides, it was firmly fixed to the wall with spiderwebs. First, I couldn’t detach it with my strength, and while the Knight Captains might be able to, there was a high chance the corpse would be damaged in the process.

Rather than destroying a part of it to take it, it would be better not to take it at all.

‘……More than that, why isn’t it coming off?’

I struggled for a long time trying to pull the ring off the finger. I thought it would be easy since it was on a shriveled, dried-up corpse, but it didn’t budge, as if it had been glued on.

I put more strength into my hand. Then, I felt the ring slowly coming off. My arm trembled. Since the ring was slowly sliding out, if I just applied a little more force in this state-

ㅡ*snap*.

‘Oh.’

The ring came off.

The problem was, the corpse’s finger came off with it.

“……”

I stared blankly at the broken finger, then subtly tucked it back among the spiderwebs. I decided to just pretend I hadn’t seen it.

After much difficulty, I put the ring I’d extracted from the finger into my potion pouch, secured it well, and came out of the cave. I saw the Knight Captains, who had dealt with Arachnainera, waiting for me in the distance.Rije smiled brightly and waved at me.

“You’re quite late. What were you doing?”

After wondering what to take as proof of subjugation, they must have decided to conventionally cut off its head and take it, as Claudia held Arachnainera’s severed head in her hand.

I took the ring out of my potion pouch and placed it on my palm. Three pairs of different gazes turned towards my palm.

“To get this.”

“This is……”

Erica seemed to know something. Her eyes narrowed.

“Do you know something, Erica?”

“Yes. This is a noble family’s crest. Just a moment. Which family was it again…?”

The Knight Captains fell deep in thought.

Originally, this event occurs after returning to the knight order and showing them the ring, but since they all came together to subjugate Arachnainera now, it seemed to have just started here.

Of course, I knew which family it was. However, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the name might have changed, so I quietly waited for Erica’s words.

No, rather, looking back at everything that’s happened so far, it would be more accurate to assume that it definitely changed. At this point, it would be faster to find things that *haven’t* changed names than those that have.

“I remember now. It’s Fratroyd. It’s definitely the crest of the Fratroyd family.”

‘As expected.’

It was a name I had never heard before.

“But…… why was a ring symbolizing that family found here?”

“Why do you think?”

I pointed to the countless corpses scattered on the walls. Every single one of them was shriveled and dried up, with all their blood drained, and firmly fixed by spiderwebs. Some even had swollen parts on their bodies.

Realizing the meaning at once, the Knight Captains’ expressions hardened.

“……I understand. Let’s take this ring for now. I will send a letter to the Fratroyd family later.”

Erica said in a slightly subdued voice. Claudia tightened her grip on Arachnainera’s head, and Rije bit her lip slightly.

“Okay. I understand.”

One of the Knight Captains sends a letter to the Fratroyd family, and the player directly visits that place to deliver this ring, thus progressing the main story.

If the ring isn’t acquired, the exit path itself doesn’t open, so it was safe to assume that a player would never fail to notice the ring’s existence.

Even if there was a player who couldn’t find the hidden passage, they would wander around the boss room because they couldn’t see the exit, then discover the cave and naturally enter it, thinking it might be the exit.

“Ah, finally returning to the castle-?!”

At that moment, Claudia stopped mid-sentence and covered her mouth with her hand. Our gazes focused on Claudia. Claudia then let out a rough cough, as if she were about to cough up her insides.

“*Cough! Cough, cough!*”

As soon as I heard that coughing sound, cold sweat ran down my back. The thought, ‘No way,’ flashed through my mind.

“Claudia. What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“……No. I just suddenly started coughing a bit. It must be because the air here isn’t good. I’ll be fine once I go outside.”

“You don’t look fine at all. Your complexion is serious.”

Rije and Erica each said a word with worried expressions. Their worries were justified. If my thoughts were correct, Claudia was definitely not okay right now.

“What’s wrong with everyone? I’m really fine, I tell you. I just need some fresh air.”

Claudia forced a smile and made excuses, but the beads of cold sweat on her face showed that her condition was far from okay.

“You’re not okay, so give that to me first.”

“Huh? Delta, you……”

I snatched the Spider Queen’s head from her hand. Claudia couldn’t even finish her sentence and slumped weakly to the ground. It seemed she no longer had the strength to hide it, as her breathing became noticeably labored.

“Rije. Please hold this for me.”

“What on earth happened? Why is Claudia suddenly like this?”

“I told you these guys’ bodily fluids were coated with potent venom, didn’t I? And that’s why I also told you never to touch them if you didn’t want to get poisoned.”

“……No way?”

I nodded forcefully.

“That’s right. It’s poisoning.”

Poisoning was one of the status effects in Black Dark 4 caused by regular poison and potent venom.

Once poisoned, health is depleted by a percentage over the duration. For regular poison, 50% of maximum health is lost over 3 minutes, and for potent venom, 85% of maximum health is lost over 3 minutes.

Since it’s proportional to maximum health, one might say it’s advantageous to have low HP, but that wasn’t necessarily the case because there was a minimum damage threshold.

In fact, the duration of poisoning was so long that it was very rare to die from poison damage unless something truly unusual happened.

Based on regular poison, 50% of maximum health is lost over 3 minutes, so the damage per second is merely 0.2% of maximum health. Even potent venom’s damage per second was slightly less than 0.5%.

However, the true terror of poison lay in its ability to restrict the player’s movements.

Once every 15 seconds, if it’s regular poison, for 1 second, and if it’s potent venom, for 2 seconds, it causes coughing, rendering the player unable to perform any actions. If a cough erupts during combat? You just die.

That was precisely why the poisoning lasted for as long as 3 minutes.

“……Sorry. For being in this state.”

“It’s something that naturally needs to be done, so please stop apologizing. If you do it one more time, I’ll tell Erica.”

Claudia, while being carried, smiled weakly and repeatedly apologized throughout the entire journey out of the valley. It seemed to be bothering her quite a lot.

There was a reason why I was carrying Claudia instead of Rije and Erica.

In terms of sheer strength alone, Rije and Erica were much stronger than someone like me, but their height was their downfall. Claudia was incredibly tall, and Rije and Erica were not.

Erica was exactly average height for a woman, and Rije was considerably shorter than Erica. Due to the height difference, if Claudia were carried, both of them would be in an uncomfortable position.

That’s why I, being taller than Claudia, had no choice but to take on this role. Even I was certainly strong enough to carry one person.

We returned to where we had tethered the horses and leaned Claudia against a nearby tree. Her entire body was drenched in sweat, her limbs hung limply, and her complexion was severely poor.

“*Cough, cough!*”

Then, she would cough as if her lungs were tearing.

‘I should have brought items to cure poisoning before starting the boss fight.’

I had told them how to deal with most unexpected situations, so thinking that Knight Captains of their caliber would be fine was the root of the problem.

Of course, there actually wasn’t any major trouble.

That is, until an incredible series of coincidences intertwined and messed things up. Who could have imagined that a situation so difficult to orchestrate intentionally would happen at precisely that moment?

‘The symptoms should be the same as in the game.’

In the game, it just causes some coughing and depletes a portion of maximum health. But here? Will it also just end with some health depletion here?

‘I don’t know.’

There was nothing I could be certain of.

“Riding a horse in that state is……”

“It’s absolutely impossible for her alone. Erica, you go back to the castle first and find a solution. Delta will ride with Claudia, and I’ll escort them from the side.”

Rije and Erica exchanged words with serious expressions. The atmosphere was utterly serious.

“Because I’m too tall…… I’m sorry…… If Rije had been like this…… she would have fit right into Delta’s arms, *cough*, but……”

“Are you still making jokes in this situation, Claudia? We’re serious, so please shut up.”

Claudia let out a hollow laugh and made a joke. It seemed to be an attempt to lighten the mood, but it only backfired. Erica let out a deep sigh.

“Is there perhaps no way, Delta-ssi?”

It seemed she was trying to place her last shred of hope on me. Her gaze held a subtle expectation as she looked at me.

“Not none.”

Black Dark 4 was a difficult game, not an unreasonable one, so in places where monsters using poison and potent venom appeared, consumables that cured poisoning would usually drop as well.

‘The problem is Darkest Light mode.’

But Darkest Light mode is unreasonable.

Originally, you could find clumps of grass that functioned as antidotes for potent venom around here. Furthermore, they regenerated after a certain amount of time, so it was possible to stock up on them infinitely if time allowed.

But not in Darkest Light mode.

First, everything near Arachnainera’s boss room was completely gone, and you had to go a long way from here to barely acquire one, and it didn’t even regenerate, so it was a one-time use.

If your skill level was such that you’d get a status effect from a mere early-to-mid-game boss, it meant you should just die from the poison.

‘……I don’t know how far it is.’

I know the direction. The important thing was how far it was from here.

“If you go in this direction, you can find antidote grass. However, I don’t know how far we have to go. Whether it’s one hour or two hours. Or even more than that.”

“Time doesn’t matter. Anyway, there’s a way, isn’t there?”

As I nodded, Rije made a determined expression, as if she had made up her mind. I could easily anticipate what she was about to say, so I prepared to go find the antidote.

“Erica, get ready. We need to go find the antidote. If Delta is right, there will definitely be an antidote in that direction, so before returning to the castle, first-“

“It seems you need help?”

A strange voice, one I had never heard before, came from somewhere. Rije and Erica swiftly drew their weapons and scanned their surroundings. Flames blazed on the katana, and ice formed on the twin daggers.

I was the same. Since it was a situation where someone else appearing here had never happened before, I gripped my blood-stained sword, full of tension.

“Who spoke? Answer or show yourself. Otherwise, we will consider you an enemy.”

“We’re quite short on time right now, you know? If you don’t want to fight, you’d better come out quickly.”

A chilling atmosphere hung in the air. Both of them might have acted a bit more leniently if it were a normal day. But because Claudia was poisoned and time was of the essence, they seemed to be reacting this way.

“Oh dear, how scary. I just said I’d kindly help, there’s no need to get angry, is there?”

The standoff didn’t last long. From behind a nearby tree, pushing through the bushes, a woman walked out.

She was a woman with blonde hair and green eyes.