Chapter 70 Spider Nest: Prelude

"You said your family was researching them, right?"

Eliza tilted her head to the side as she asked, her blonde hair swaying to the side as the person she spoke to nodded in affirmation.

She studied the angular face of the girl with chestnut-coloured fairly long hair who walked over and sat on the other side of the bonfire in front of her.

Despite being four years younger than Eliza, the girl's looks and air of maturity suggested she was far older.

Her most noticeable feature, was her pair of blue eyes that reflected the light of the flames. Within her pupils, Eliza could see something similar to what she saw in the eyes of a particular gray eyed boy a few months ago.

It was a crest that was made up of a single letter, from an ancient language lost to time.

'Truth, huh?'

The girl once claimed that the crest in her eyes was the word, 'Truth'. This was seconds before blood began trickling down from the corner of her eyes, startling Eliza.

The fifteen-year-old was even more shocked when she discovered that her unique skill was unable to discover the cause of the bleeding, neither was it able to heal the girl.

'She seems to have some sort of 'deep' connection to Evan. For some reason, that pisses me off.'

Eliza heaved a sigh as she picked up her staff and placed it in her spatial expansion bag before standing up and dusting her clothes.

As she stood on her feet, one could see that she had grown quite a bit during the past six months. While there wasn't much of a change height wise, her once child-like, twin tailed blonde hair was now flowing down to her waistline, glistening a lustrous gold.

Her sapphire eyes were deep, like they contained countless years. Furthermore, her white skin looked smooth enough that water droplets could flow down seamlessly

"Are you really not coming with me? We're already on the last lap of the trip, by tomorrow, we'd be in Geto."

Eliza asked once more but her travelling companion only shook her head making Eliza shrug her shoulders as she turned and began walking towards the carriage parked nearby.

"Send my regards to him for me."

"I will, Laurene."

Eliza climbed onto the carriage after replying, closing the door behind her as the coachman rallied the horses to begin moving.

While watching the carriage trail off into the distance, the blue-eyed girl Eliza was speaking with, Laurene smiled lightly before turning her gaze to the top of a tree behind her.

"You can come out now."

The tree shook lightly and a black clothed figure dropped down from it.

"Your highness."

The black clothed figure dropped to his knees and greeted Laurene, however, she ignored his greeting and proceeded to tie up her hair in a ponytail.

'That's better.'

Standing up she instructed him to prepare another carriage for her as she began walking towards the city lights in the distance.

"Don't slack off Evan, or you won't know when I'd catch up to you."

◇　◇　◇

Geto City Gate

Great Western Empire

November 5th

Year 1051

Evan yawned as he climbed onto the not so comfortable carriage, his gaze alternating between the three other adventurers seated within it.

Taking a seat himself, he looked at the guild master who spoke a few parting words before signalling the coachman to begin the journey.

The horses neighed and began trotting the road, pulling the carriage behind them as the quartet of adventurers made their way to the newly discovered dungeon, the 'Spider Nest'.

'Well, they only named it that after it was explored by players for the first time. Hopefully, none of this lot here has a fear of spiders.'

Evan thought to himself while gazing out the window and admiring the scenery.

The dungeon was located not too far from Geto, in the middle of a small area that was cleared out for the construction of a farming village.

Adventurers who had entered the dungeon reported that the monsters located within were spider-based monsters that had a lot of known weaknesses.

One of them was fire, hence the reason that Merle, a C rank adventurer that specialized in fire magic was recruited for this expedition.

'It'd take an hour to get there, and as a single floor dungeon, it should not take us more than a day to clear it.

Once we are done, we can return today.'

Ever since Evan left the capital, he had not entered any dungeons or gone on any expeditions that required him to sleep in a dungeon.

The reason; he simply didn't like it!

As such, Evan was hell bent on making suite that the group completed the expedition and returned on the same day.

He thought about the reward he would gain when he cleared the dungeon and looted the Spider's domain afterwards.

'I hope I am able to get a new weapon there, preferably a one-handed sword so I can dual wield with Pride's sword.'

While thinking such random thoughts and fantasizing about himself cutting through monsters like butter with his new sword, an hour passed and the quartet of adventurers arrived at the dungeon.

Coming down from the carriage, Evan looked around to see a semicircle of incomplete buildings, with a half dug well at the centre.

Right in front of the well, was a swirling whirlpool of grey clouds about half a meter above the ground and three meters in diameter.

Merle greeted the adventurer's guild officials who had surrounded the dungeon gate and showed their pass permit from the guild.

After receiving the go-ahead, Merle came back and asked them to cross check their supplies, antidotes and potions before they embarked on the expedition.

To avoid drawing attention to his inventory skill, Evan only carried a bunch of random potions and stuffed them in his spatial expansion bag which he attached to his belt.

Today, he was wearing a white undershirt with a black jacket and a pair of similarly coloured trousers. He had partial metallic armour covering his chest and joints.

Merle was outfitted in a fiery red dress that matched her eyes. While it looked fluttery, it was actually a dress made with the hide of a Gnoll Mage.

It provided sufficient defensive capability and increased her total magic power amount by half a rank.

Strapped to her waist, was a black belt adorned with red lines. It was a magic catalyst, a weapon that had the effect of amplifying flame magic spells.

Evan turned his gaze to Nodin who wore steel armour on his upper body alone and Iolana who was outfitted in a similar style like Evan but with a great shield strapped to her back.

The MIN Triad entered the dungeon first with Evan following suit, however, before he could enter, he felt someone's gaze on him.

'Hmmm...?'

He snapped his head in their direction and was met with the figure of a brown-haired man wearing a simple short sleeved tunic shirt and shorts, floating in the air while staring at him with a look of surprise.

Kayla who was seated on his head turned her gaze to the man as her eyes widened in shock.

[Uncle Earth...?]

'Huh?'

The man narrowed his eyes at Kayla before snapping his fingers and disappearing from the spot.

Evan looked around for the man but his mystic eyes only caught the figures of tiny little brown lizard-like spirits floating in the air.

He decided to enter the dungeon while asking Kayla about who that man was as she seemed to recognize him.

[He was Uncle Earth!]

The young spirit replied as she grabbed fistfuls of Evan's hair and began to weave them together. The look on her face showed she considered weaving his hair to be more important than whoever that man was.

[He was an Earth spirit, most likely a high ranked one.]

Kuro came to the rescue, giving Evan the reply, he was seeking, but leaving him with two more questions.

'What would a high rank spirit be doing here? What if he recognized Kayla as the Great Spirit of lightning?'

Kuro wanted to say that there was no way for the earth spirit to realize, but he then remembered the 'Pseudo Authority' Kayla recently displayed and couldn't be so confident about that anymore.

While the shadow spirit was lost in his thoughts, Evan had finally stepped into the 'Spider Nest' dungeon for the first time.

He looked around to see he was in a completely dark forest, dense with trees he had never seen before.

The sky was no longer blue, but jet-black. At the same time, two moons, one yellow and one red, were lighting up the world.

"You're finally here, hmph."

Evan's eyes flashed with a golden light as he ignored the stupid remark from Nodin, placing his hands in his spatial expansion bag and retrieving his gauntlets immediately.

It was a pair of steel gauntlets with what Evan called a 'dragon' theme. The steel plates were shaped like the scales of a dragon and the finger tips were shaped like a dragon's claws.

He silently put on the gauntlets while locking eyes with Merle who had noticed the same thing he did.

She nodded towards Evan as a ball of flames lit up in her palm.