The bug-men writhed crookedly, like blades of grass drifting in the darkness, stirring without any wind, tangled together, giving off an unceasing clamor.
Upon those ghastly green bodies.
Only at the very top of the "head" was there a large black region, within which split open a tender-pink mouthpart, and from it protruded countless tiny black tendrils dripping with crimson mucus.
And surrounding the mouthpart were dense clusters of eyeballs of every size, crowded together like insect eggs.
They went on rolling ceaselessly, making a sound like "kakaka."
It was not the first time, in this [Ancient Hunting Grounds], that they had seen the monster before them, but even so, Isagi and the girls still felt their scalps prickle.
Far too disgusting.
How could the Dungeon possibly create something this revolting?!
The monster before them showed no discernible original form—after all, from the [Great Tree Labyrinth] to this dense forest, there were simply far too many insect-type monsters.
Naturally, then, it was no surprise that this creature should appear.
Isagi reacted swiftly.
He immediately activated his magic, and so the pitch-black armor suddenly bulged out a "great stomach sack," and in the next instant, golden flames spewed forth from the maw of the spear-like giant wolf.
[Tongue of the Furnace of Many Forms].
Mimicking the breath of an ancient Great Dragon, it instantly melted everything before it, and in that very instant—with Ais and Ryuu-senpai at the front, Lefiya, Haruhime, and Heith in the middle, and himself and Tiona bringing up the rear.
The squad charged swiftly toward the gap they had just created.
In any case, facing monsters in such numbers, the most important thing was to avoid being surrounded by them.
And before leaving.
Isagi did not forget to summon Teardrop Big Bro.
The pitch-black liquid melted out of the Magic Crystal Stone in his hand and finally tangled together with his own shadow, and from it a humanoid figure utterly identical to himself swiftly crawled out.
Then, Isagi drew out from his Hades cloak the puppet that Airmid and Cecil had made.
He simply decided to name it [Teardrop Big Bro No. 1].
The "Teardrop Big Bro" part posed no problem at all; as for the "code name" tacked on after it, that was because Isagi figured this thing might still end up breaking, so for the sake of commemoration, it was better to refer to it by a code name.
The black humanoid swiftly fused with the puppet.
Upon that silver-white body's surface, dense runes began to flicker again and again, finally transforming into a dazzling, iridescent sight.
This kind of flamboyant design was, of course, deliberate on Airmid and Cecil's part.
Because it could draw the monsters' attention, it could thereby draw more damage as well; the girls had even smeared an "ointment" onto the puppet capable of luring monsters in, so that at this moment Teardrop Big Bro gave off some strange fragrance—a kind of "taunt," in a certain sense.
And so.
The bug-men swarmed toward Teardrop Big Bro, and very soon it too, learning from him, used the [Furnace of Many Forms] from ancient times.
Golden flames gushed forth once more.
Meanwhile, on their own side, rustling sounds still came from the grass on every side.
Lefiya and Haruhime began to chant their magic at the same time.
"Grow larger—by this power, by this deed, countless treasures, countless wishes. When the bell tolls, I pray for glory and illusion—"
A small golden mallet emerged and, with unerring precision, landed on the elf girl's head, tapping it lightly.
"O portent of the end, O pure white snow. Facing the hour of twilight, whip up the raging winds..."
And so.
Before the elf girl's magic was complete, Lefiya successfully raised her own level.
A bone-chilling blizzard swept past, and in the blink of an eye it dyed all the surrounding flowers and grass with silver-white frost and snow, which then spread rapidly outward, freezing solid all the bug-men surging behind the blades of grass.
Immediately after, Isagi swiftly led the girls to seize a small "hill" formed by the swelling of vines.
Secure the high ground first.
Then, by the light of the Magic Stone lantern in hand, they could see the surrounding grass, where countless tangled bug-men were crawling toward them.
Far off, they could still see the gigantic corpse of the Blood Dragon from just before.
The bug-men were using it as a nest, bursting out through its flesh from within, dragging crimson blood along with them, rushing toward their direction like a surging tide.
This momentum.
Truly was no worse than the so-called [Monster Feast].
And going by Isagi and the girls' own experience, it was actually about the same.
What followed was a long defensive battle.
Isagi, Ais, Ryuu, and Tiona each stood at four different positions on the hillside, while Heith and Lefiya took charge of two directions, continuously unleashing wide-area annihilation magic to ease everyone's pressure.
Of course, the most important thing was actually to destroy the Blood Dragon corpse in the distance that served as the insect nest.
Having already had experience with this, Isagi naturally knew this point early on.
So.
Leave it all to Teardrop Big Bro.
In the distance, the puppet, its whole body shining with radiance, gripped the [Moonlight Greatsword] and charged straight into that already tattered, riddled-with-holes dinosaur body.
Isagi had gone in once; the experience inside was quite unpleasant.
Stuffy, sticky, insect eggs everywhere, along with freshly rotted-out bug-men—it was practically no different from a cesspit.
That was exactly why he sent Teardrop Big Bro in.
After all, having gone in once, he had no wish to go a second time.
The most important thing was that, after entering, it was not enough to merely destroy it—if that were all, he could simply have had Lefiya and the others use magic to blast the Blood Dragon's corpse apart from the outside.
However, things were not that simple.
That was the bug-men's nest, and inside, naturally, there was a queen responsible for production and command.
It had no combat strength to speak of; it was simply rather thick-blooded—but the key point was that this thing was hiding underground.
That's right.
The bug-men actually dug tunnels from underground into the Blood Dragon's body, and then laid their eggs inside.
If they merely used magic to destroy it.
Then the bug-men queen, still hidden in the tunnel, would swiftly flee, and the result would be that it would hold a fierce grudge, trailing everyone's squad underground all the while, until it found the next monster corpse it could lay eggs in, and then, seizing the right moment, churn out a whole pile of bug-men again to launch an attack.
It might even gather companions, joining forces with other bug-men queens, together summoning still more bug-men to mount a siege.
Honestly, unbelievable!
Isagi had already suffered a loss once before, so he knew that to deal with these things, you had to "pull them out by the roots"!
Using Teardrop Big Bro's power, he would let it go find the bug-men queen itself, then enter the tunnel and finish it off.
And on his own side, he need only wait—once Teardrop Big Bro succeeded, the crisis would be lifted.
However.
This time, the situation seemed a little different.
Isagi suddenly felt that something seemed to have gone wrong on Teardrop Big Bro's side.
All at once, his thoughts felt as though they had been struck heavily by someone—and this was not a backlash caused by some blood pact he had signed with the puppet that Teardrop Big Bro used.
That contract was utterly shameless.
It was purely one-sided: only when he himself was injured would the damage be transferred onto the puppet, while no matter what happened on that side, it had nothing to do with him.
But there would still be "reminders."
Just like a moment ago—that sudden daze was in fact a kind of warning, letting him know that Teardrop Big Bro had just taken a heavy blow.
What was going on?!
Isagi wondered, dealing with the bug-men before him while looking toward the distant darkness. Then.
What he saw was that, amid the Blood Dragon's corpse, which faintly presented some colossal silhouette like a mountain range, some monster was crawling out from within.
And at the same time.
The originally surging insect tide stopped almost all at once, and then just died, suddenly, like that—the corpses even crumbling to ash, leaving behind only the extremely tiny Magic Stones within their bodies.
What was this?
It was not that the bug-men queen had been finished off, because in that case the swarm would only be stunned in place, falling into a frozen, crashed state, then suddenly slaughtering and devouring one another in a frenzy.
This—all of them dying off uniformly like this—was more like the activation of some "mechanism" originally within their bodies.
What Isagi thought of was that the Dungeon was once again "amassing power."
If quantity wouldn't do, then it would turn to quality.
At this moment, large numbers of monsters dying off directly represented the Dungeon reclaiming the power within this region, and thus, it could give birth to an even more terrifying existence.
Far off, a gorgeous sphere was tossed over.
It was the puppet's head.
But Teardrop Big Bro had long since left it—[Soul Teardrop] was a purely magical product; after suffering a heavy injury, it would naturally dissipate and return, and so long as he expended his mental energy again, it could re-coalesce into form.
So Isagi did not mind.
He just felt a little sorry for the puppet that Cecil and Airmid had made—this time it had broken not long after they'd only just come to the Dungeon.
But it also proved that the opponent seemed far from simple.
Far from simple, indeed.
Because, right then in the distant darkness, a humanoid silhouette gradually walked toward everyone, and at the same time, in the depths of everyone's hearts, its corresponding name also surfaced.
[SS-Rank Quarry · "Sword Saint" Zarkado].
____
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