The moment they stepped into the Magic Crystal Pit, a dim, oppressive atmosphere came rushing at them. The soil here was extremely hard—even with a Void weapon in hand, Jhin could only leave a shallow scratch on it.
Relying on the glow of Kyaru's [Lighting spell], the group advanced cautiously and slowly. Jhin had assumed they wouldn't run into Honey Spiders until they'd at least pushed deep into the pit, but he'd never imagined that after walking barely a dozen meters inside, a rustling would come from directly overhead.
Honey Spiders—pink all over, about half a meter in diameter—hung in dense clusters upside down above everyone's heads. The instant they realized their presence had been discovered, they dropped down from above, spreading their sharp mouthparts as they lunged at the prey on the ground.
"Eeek!!!"
Apart from Pecorine, every one of the girls let out a terrified scream—which was only natural; even Jhin had been startled at the sight of spiders that big.
Without the slightest hesitation, he gathered an earth-element barrier to block above everyone's heads, and barked in a low voice: "Close your eyes!"
The Honey Spiders slammed onto the barrier like dumplings dropping into a pot, producing a string of "thud-thud-thud" sounds.
The pitch-black, sharp gauntlet was raised high, and within his palm a ball of light element kept gathering.
"Refraction Blinding!"
A brilliant flash burst abruptly to life within the pit, and the Honey Spiders let out anguished shrieks.
Having lived for years in the darkness of the Magic Crystal Pit, their eyes were extremely sensitive to light. Struck without warning by Jhin's blast of intense brilliance, the fragile eyeballs of some of the spiders burst outright, spurting the purple blood unique to monsters.
The once-orderly rhythm of their assault fell into disarray. The Honey Spiders, their eyes grievously wounded, began careening about like mad dogs, their spat venom catching no small number of their own kind in the crossfire.
Jhin gave them no chance to regroup. A javelin blending the twin elements of light and lightning was gripped in his hand and hurled at the enemy: "Prismatic Javelin!"
After piercing through the body of the first Honey Spider, the elemental javelin did not continue flying onward. Instead, countless sharp spearheads thrust outward with it as their center, in an instant skewering the monsters across the entire overhead region.
Having cleared out the Honey Spiders overhead, Jhin did not stop. He transformed into an efficient killing machine, reaping the lives of the Honey Spiders on the ground one after another amid flickering arcs of electricity.
"All right, open your eyes." A hoarse, metallic voice reached their ears, and the girls opened their eyes one by one. What met their gaze was a great heap of Honey Spider corpses and the pitch-black battle-armored figure, the electric light in his hand only just fading.
"So fast..." Kyaru walked over to one of the spider corpses and used the tip of her magic staff to examine the wounds on its body. "You actually used both light and lightning elements—is that a new spell?"
"Calling it a new spell isn't quite right either—it's an attack method that comes with [Elemental Armament]."
Jhin had fused all four skills of the Holy Sword Armor from the game «Stellar War Armor» into [Elemental Armament]. As for why he didn't pick the skills of the Shadow Holy Sword in terms of appearance—
that was because he thought a dark-looking suit of armor wielding the power of light would be really cool.
"You really do have a lot of strange ideas."
"Please, call them flashes of brilliance."
Using wind element to shove aside the spider corpses piled up on the ground blocking the way, Jhin again condensed a javelin and hurled it toward the distant ceiling of the pit. This time the attack didn't strike any Honey Spider.
"No more reinforcements?"
"Maybe this was just the first line of defense they set up."
Megumin, carefully avoiding the cold-gleaming spider legs on either side, asked: "There's no map of the pit, and even the monster distribution is unknown?"
"That's right. Every time the Honey Spider Empress is subjugated, the terrain inside the Magic Crystal Pit changes."
"Then doesn't that make finding the Spider Empress even harder?"
"You could put it that way." Kokkoro nodded, then noticed that Jhin was harvesting the seven-colored crystals within the Magic Crystal Pit, and asked him curiously: "Master, these crystals don't contain any mana or element—they're just nice to look at. Why are you collecting them?"
"There's no such mineral in my original world, so I want to bring some back to study."
Jhin kept in mind that producing the personal terminals required large quantities of rare materials; the special minerals of Another World might just be useful for optimization or as substitutes once brought back.
"So our future adventures will need to add gathering minerals to the list of options."
"There's no need to go out of our way to collect them. Once the cola and sanitary napkins are in production, we can use the money we earn to buy ore in bulk."
"Sanitary napkins aside—can cola really sell in numbers to match them?" Kyaru didn't understand what was so good about that fizzy, irritating beverage.
Megumin was the first to leap to cola's defense: "Kyaru, you mustn't underestimate cola. People who love it won't get tired of it even at four bottles a day—it'll absolutely be a huge seller!"
"Four bottles a day... just like you used to?"
"Exactly!"
"Why do I feel like it's the same as certain banned alchemical potions—it's addictive..."
Jhin kept continuously hurling [Prismatic Javelin] forward to sweep away the Honey Spiders lying in ambush in the dark. Hearing the exchange between Kyaru and Megumin, he couldn't help cutting in: "Don't go calling the drink contraband. You watched the whole process of making the prototype beverage with your own eyes—it's all perfectly legitimate ingredients, isn't it?"
"Ah... sorry, my bad."
Mid-conversation, the [Prismatic Javelin] was deflected by some creature for the first time. Jhin halted his steps and shielded everyone behind him. Out of the darkness slowly crawled a Honey Spider the size of a calf, deep blue all over, shaped like a great shield that had sprouted eight legs. There was no need to wonder—it was this thing that had deflected the earlier attack.
"Master, please be careful. This is an elite-class Honey Guardian Spider. Their magic defense is extremely high, and their carapace also carries an acidic venom that corrodes weapons."
"Corrodes weapons?" Jhin thought for a moment, then planted Pecorine's Void greatsword backhanded into the ground, brought both hands together before him and swiftly drew them apart: "Resplendent Blade!"
A dazzling long sword wreathed in flowing light was gripped in his hand, pointed from afar at the distant Honey Guardian Spider: "So if I draw a sword-flash, how will you cope, sir?"
Though the Honey Guardian Spider couldn't understand a word Jhin said, it still knew this was a provocation. It immediately let out an ear-piercing shriek to summon its kin, then itself charged unstoppably at the enemy who dared to invade the pit.
Sword-qi issued forth as Jhin swung the [Resplendent Blade], crashing like rounds of pure, bright crescent moons against the spider's fragile leg joints. He wasn't foolish enough to clash his sword-qi head-on against that shield-like body capable of deflecting the [Prismatic Javelin]—if the sword-qi were bounced back, he had no confidence a simple element barrier could block it.
"Pft."
The sword-qi sheared off the Honey Guardian Spider's long legs as easily as slicing vegetables. Robbed of its mobility, it could only let out an anxious shriek to call for its kin. And in the shadows, a Honey Shadow Spider radiating a purple gloom lit up its blood-red eyeballs.
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