A Mad Dog Needs a Leash (9)

Pushed out of the room by Alice, the maid Dana let out a long sigh. If things went wrong, it would surely be someone lowly like her whose head rolled first.

Should I tell the Count in advance?

But if she did, the young lady would never let her hear the end of it. Unable to go forward or back, she hesitated for a long while — and by the time she finally checked the hour, it had grown far too late. She hurried on her way.

She had to report to the Count, one way or another.

Darkness was just beginning to settle in, blurring the path, but for Dana, born and raised here, that was no great obstacle.

She was striding along when she stopped dead at the sound of wingbeats somewhere overhead.

"What is that noise?"

It sounded like the whir of an insect's wings, only impossibly loud — loud enough that she had to clamp her hands over her ears. Her heart began to pound.

Dana was too terrified even to lift her head.

The sound drew closer and closer, until at last she forced her chin up and looked toward its source.

Grotesque, misshapen monsters had swarmed thick and black above her head.

Whether they had noticed Dana or not, they wheeled about and came hurtling straight for her.

Run — the thought flashed through her mind, but her legs refused to move.

I'm going to die like this?

Dana's vision went white. The monsters' horrible legs were inches from her face.

Then someone shoved her hard, and her body slammed into the ground. An arm pressed her down, pinning her so she couldn't rise, and she squeezed her eyes shut without meaning to.

"Damn it."

The one pinning Dana down was Daisy. Daisy had been sprinting through the garden to summon reinforcements when she saw the dungeon's shape changing and had no choice but to stop where she stood.

The hundreds of insects had moved as one single body, coalescing into an enormous mass.

Wasn't this supposed to be a low-rank dungeon?

Watching them move in unison, Daisy shuddered with a sense of dread.

That dread soon became reality.

The mass transformed into a dense, net-like lattice — and then hurled itself at the sky above. Before she could so much as scream in shock, it was already over.

But what came next was more astonishing still.

The swarm that had been tearing through the open air suddenly lunged straight at Daisy.

Seeing that nightmarish horde of bugs charging toward her, Daisy shrieked, hauled Dana up by the hand, and staggered backward before spinning on her heel to run. Dana, overwhelmed by sheer visceral revulsion, was already fleeing with a scream of her own.

But two women of ordinary physical ability were never going to outrun a monster.

In an instant they were caught. A hard, sticky monster leg scraped along the back of Dana's neck and snagged her clothing, yanking her back.

Startled, Daisy grabbed for Dana's hand ahead of her. In that moment, Dana found herself staring eye to eye with the horrific monster looming behind Daisy.

She instinctively slapped Daisy's hand away — and Daisy was dragged off in her stead.

Meanwhile, Ezra — after a frantic struggle to peel the clinging insects off his body — realized that he had been abducted and dragged deep inside the dungeon.

"I had to kill the dungeon's master anyway, so this might actually work out."

Ezra grumbled as he scraped the sticky slime from his skin with his hands.

Of all things, why did it have to be insect-type monsters? Their mere appearance was enough to turn his stomach, and he'd lost his head swinging his sword — that was how he'd gotten swept up in this mess.

Still, it had worked out for the best. He'd been worrying about how to get into a dungeon entrance floating in midair, and here they'd gone and extended him a personal invitation.

That aside, the sticky mucus coating his body was enough to make anyone feel ill.

Choking down the desperate urge to dunk himself in a hot bath that very moment, Ezra pressed deeper into the dungeon. He pulled a compass from his subspace pocket and oriented himself toward the master's chamber.

This dungeon had been built on the design of an insect nest, its interior as tangled as a maze.

So Ezra made his way inward by ruthlessly smashing through the walls. The repulsive insect-type monsters that appeared along the way he burned to a crisp without mercy, tearing open magic scrolls one after another.

The variety of bugs was staggering — the bee-like monsters that had come to snatch him earlier, of course, along with grasshoppers, dragonflies, ladybugs, and yes, even cockroaches.

Profanity climbed all the way up Ezra's throat.

If these had been small insects, a single stomp would have ended things. But at human size, everything changed. Things too small to notice before, now grown enormous and seen in perfect detail — this went well beyond a little creepy.

Ezra wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and incinerate every last one of them, but he barely clung to his sanity and carved his way through instead.

Who knew how long he'd wandered, but at last he found himself standing before the door believed to house the dungeon's master.

"I do wonder what's waiting behind this door."

For the first time, he hesitated to open it. Not out of fear of what powerful monster might await him.

No — he was worried about what horrifying bug might be barring his path.

Please, let it be an ordinary monster.

Perhaps the heavens had heard his prayer, because when he opened the door, the dungeon's master was not the unexpected pest he'd feared.

"Ugh."

It was only that Ezra's most hated creature of all — a spider — stood there in all its gigantic glory. And its form was even more dreadful than any spider he knew.

In shape alone it was a spider; the parts composing the monster were pieces of the insect-type monsters he'd seen until now. The wings of one thing, the legs of another, the body of yet another — all fused together into the shape of a colossal spider.

The overall silhouette was that of a spider, but so enormous that dozens of legs had to be attached just to hold its body upright.

And it hung from ropes-thick webbing — webbing that looked sticky at a single glance.

Absolutely horrific.

He thought this with his eyes screwed tightly shut.

I never have any luck.

When Daisy opened her eyes again, everything around her was dark.

She looked around. She had no idea where she was, but one thing seemed certain: she was trapped somewhere narrow and black. So narrow that she could barely move her body.

Daisy ran her hands over herself, recalling her last memory — the swarm of repulsive bugs swarming toward her.

Thankfully, there was no pain anywhere, and nothing seemed injured or torn.

"What a relief."

No — it wasn't a relief at all. Her body was fine, sure, but she'd been dragged here by those monsters.

She had risked injury to save the maid because she'd looked to be in danger, and the woman had repelled her hand and gotten taken in her place.

They say that when a person is desperate enough, they can't recognize even their own parents...

I saved you at the very last second, you know. That was seriously low.

Daisy grumbled under her breath and twisted her body. She wasn't bound, but her whole form was fixed in place, wedged tight against something on every side. It wasn't a hard wall — there was some give to it, just enough for her to move her hands a little.

In dozens of regressions, she had never once experienced anything like this. Even Daisy, usually so composed, couldn't help but panic.

"Not a single thing goes my way."

She was grumbling through her options for escape when suddenly the walls began to shift.

"Huh?"

The springy walls began compressing against her body, then releasing, over and over. It wasn't strong enough to crush the breath from her, but it was uncomfortable all the same.

Daisy stood there baffled, unable to make sense of the situation — until a thought struck her, and she shuddered from head to toe.

Is... is this digestion?

If something had swallowed her during the abduction, and she was inside its stomach being digested right now...

Daisy hurriedly groped around for the bottles Ezra had handed her.

"There."

Fortunately, not a single potion was missing. She'd carefully memorized where each one sat, so finding the right one was no trouble at all.

She pulled out the potion — a potent acid strong enough to melt iron. Before shattering it, she curled her body as tightly as she could, trying to carve out a pocket of space.

Dying and reviving was practically routine by now, but pain was another matter entirely. This potion was acid of a strength that demanded careful handling — especially in a situation where she could barely move.

Somehow, painstakingly, Daisy worked out a gap near her lower belly. She cracked the vial open a sliver and let the liquid drip in, drop by drop.

As the wall around her body began to dissolve, a noxious stench rose up and made her eyes water. But she would far rather endure this acrid reek than be digested alive in here.

"This is genuinely revolting."

Ezra felt close to tears.

The dungeon's master itself wasn't strong. The problem was that every time he met those hideous eyes, his sanity snapped without warning and he swung his sword wildly, unable to land a clean, decisive blow.

After the scene repeated itself again and again, Ezra began to suspect this wasn't mere disgust.

Could this actually be an A-Rank dungeon?

But those insects were textbook low-rank dungeon monsters.

He batted away a sticky web that came flying at him, thinking hard as he fought half-heartedly.

Unless, perhaps, only the dungeon's master was an A-Rank or higher monster...

He was still turning half-baked theories over in his head when the monster suddenly shrieked and flinched violently.

"What the—?"

Ezra's eyes went wide as he readjusted his grip on his sword. But then the dungeon's master let out a tremendous cry and crashed to the ground.

Ten times the size of a man, the giant spider died just like any ordinary spider would — belly-up, legs curled in the air.

Ezra blinked at the sudden turn of events, then slowly approached the fallen creature.

He saw a small hole near the middle of its abdomen. The moment he took a step closer, something burst out from within it.

"Gah!"

Ezra shouted and stumbled backward in shock.

What had shot up out of the hole was a human hand.