Mission Complete

“Ahh”

I stretched out my arms and let out an exaggerated breath.

“Nothing beats that country air. It’s great to finally get away from it all.”

Unfortunately there wasn’t anyone around to hear my declaration, but it still felt good to say. After traveling with those merchants I realized that the most ‘city girl’ behavior was badmouthing the city. Then you needed to treat the outside world as some sort of stress free vacation, despite the fact that the people living out here were in a constant life or death struggle.

I didn’t quite understand what I was happy to be getting away from, but it was enjoyable nevertheless.

Needless to say, I’d never appreciated the simple rustic life out in the country until I moved to the city.

Hmm? Then I should just leave the city?

Anyone thinking things like that obviously couldn’t understand the mindset of us big city people. I didn’t understand either, but I at least knew how to act.

Anyway, I followed Rachel’s advice and things went perfectly. Well, not exactly perfectly. I couldn’t manage to find any merchants that actually trusted me enough to let me work as security, but it didn’t take long for one of them to take pity on me. Does my charisma know no bounds?

He wasn’t going all of the way to Renzo, but he offered to take me most of the way there. When we first started the trip everyone was really nice, treating me like a lost little kid or something, but after spending some time together they all started looking at me like I was some kind of strange creature. Honestly, I’d never understand the mind of a merchant.

After having been dropped off in an empty field and watching the merchant caravan ride off into the distance, I felt a slight moment of concern. Was it just me, or were those guys in a real hurry to get rid of me? I’m pretty sure I even heard one of them mumble that ‘looks can be deceiving’ as they rode off. They didn’t just abandon me, did they?

I followed Rachel’s advice, but didn’t I end up in a really dangerous position?

Sure, the merchants said they took me most of the way, but I never actually bothered to learn how close exactly. I just kind of figured that after dropping me off the path forward would be clear. They kept saying things like walk toward the mountains, but I didn’t know where the mountains were in the first place. What were mountains anyway? I remember Eris mentioning something about a big hill with fire in it, but something like that couldn’t possibly be real.

Either way, I still hadn’t really grasped how big the world was outside of the forest.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I started mindlessly wandering around. I mean, I knew it wasn’t the direction the merchants came from, or the direction they went after dropping me off. With a head-start like that I was certain that I’d manage to find the village within a few years or so.

Fortunately, it didn’t take me nearly that long.

I noticed a series of tracks on the ground. There were a lot of them, and they weren’t in any kind of expected pattern. Now to most people, that would have been the end of it, but I wasn’t most people. I spent centuries doing nothing but observing the creatures of the forest. Most of those memories were lost, yet some of the knowledge still remained.

They were the tracks left by a spider. Now, considering their size and the relative space between them it was clearly a much larger spider than any that I’d seen before. That didn’t change anything though. If anything, it made everything fall into place.

A giant spider was on the prowl, and they made a request to some mercenaries. I let out a sigh of relief, having realized this mystery quest was an extermination mission.

And having found the spider’s trail, I knew exactly where to go. Following it would either lead me to the village it was harassing, or back to its nest. Finding the village was my priority at the moment, but finding the nest wouldn’t be so bad. I’d need to deal with the spider eventually anyway.

The trail itself was also really easy to follow. The rest of the ground was hard, but the path the spider had taken was covered in mud. It was almost as if the spider had been splashing water as it walked.

After following the trail for a little while, I ended up at what I assumed was Renzo. I assumed that because it was a small farming village. Oh, also, it was currently under attack from a giant spider.

And I’m using ‘giant’ as a general descriptor. I’m sure there’s a monster out there called a giant spider, but I had no way of knowing if that’s what I was looking at. It was just some kind of spider that happened to be giant.

I should also note that it was giant in terms of spiders. It was a pale white and around the size of a horse. As it moved a surface that looked like glass formed around its legs. I didn’t notice that stuff before, so it must be some kind of ability it can activate.

It lunged forward, easily covering a few dozen meters before landing on an ox’s back. Before the animal could panic, the spider bit into it. In seconds, more of that glass like material covered the entire ox.

The whole scene was rather amusing, and I wanted to watch some more. That glass looking stuff was particularly interesting. I decided to touch some of it, and it was really cold. Even colder than me. It was also pretty slippery. If I let the spider get big enough, or if there were enough of them, could they cover the entire area in that stuff? I wasn’t sure, but the idea of sliding around on it seemed amusing.

Fortunately, I remembered why I was there in the first place before it could do any more damage. Villagers loved to keep animals like that ox around. If I let the spider kill all of their pets I doubt the humans would be willing to pay up. And if the humans didn’t pay up then this whole operation would be meaningless.

Wait a minute, what if I was getting ahead of myself. I just assumed that the ox was their pet, but what if the spider was their pet, and they actually hired me to find their lost spider? Would humans keep a horse sized spider as a pet?

Probably not, right? A giant spider seems like it would be pretty useful, but you can’t always go by that. Humans don’t seem particularly good at figuring out what to do with animals and monsters. I mean, in my short time as a city girl I’d already noticed that Ah’Ruh was full of rats and mice; and yet the humans there weren’t even trying to make use of that massive army of rodents. I hadn’t figured out what to do with them yet either, but I was sure I’d figure something out.

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh, the spider.

Thinking about it wasn’t getting me anywhere. I decided to just go with my gut.

Alright, time to kill a spider.

Now, I feel like in the past I might have said a thing or two about not being particularly violent, and I’d still agree with anyone who made a claim like that. I wouldn’t even disturb a bee gathering pollen.

But as I mentioned before, there are also extenuating circumstances. You know, like self defense.

Hmm? I was the one who tracked down the spider and then unilaterally decided to kill it?

Well, that might be true, but it was still a form of self defense. One could make the argument that by simply existing such a creature warranted a risk.

And as the magnanimous, intelligent, and beautiful person that I am, I consider the entire world to be within my sphere of influence. I may not have heard of it, but these Renzo villagers were practically my own children. No, that still doesn’t feel right. Those villagers were practically my younger siblings. It should be accepted, no, applauded that I rose above my peaceful ways in order to protect them. Threatening my younger brothers and sisters was practically a direct threat against myself.

I know, big sis is a hero. Brave enough to do, and say, what’s important.

Besides, that spider was standing between me and my reward money. Staying alive was an assault against me. If my actions weren’t self defense, then I don’t know what is. Murdering that spider was the morally good option.

I slipped a bit on that glass, but with a single punch I turned the spider into an unrecognizable mess.

Anticlimactic? Sorry, most monsters aren’t on the level of a soul reaver.

And despite what people might be thinking about me, it’s worth remembering that big sis here is actually pretty strong. I didn’t have any kind of techniques to outsmart an intelligent opponent, but in a battle of pure strength against a mindless monster I was pretty much unbeatable. That was even more true now that I could make my muscles super charged whenever I wanted. I still didn’t understand the concept of using my life force as magical fuel, but it was easy enough to activate.

Some of the goo that used to be a spider splashed over the arm that punched it. It felt like it was being stabbed by lots of tiny needles as that glass started to form. I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it, so I decided to just smash it on the ground. The glass, along with my arm, shattered into tiny little pieces.

Surprisingly it didn’t really hurt at all. At some point I must have lost feeling in that arm. As my new one grew back I gave it a few stretches. I breathed a sigh of relief as my shirt sleeve reformed as well.

Actually, it felt kind of nice. Some of the goo must have gotten inside me when my arm was reforming, because I could feel a nice cooling sensation coming from inside my body. It’s not like I needed to regulate heat in the first place, but it was an interesting sensation.

It’s also worth mentioning that ever since accepting I’d never been a human, my sense of bodily harm had diminished. Sure, things still hurt and I usually didn’t enjoy the pain very much, but it was somewhat difficult to care anymore. I wasn’t concerned with the pain of enhancing my strength and I didn’t even blink at the prospect of smashing my own arm off. I knew it would always come back, so there were no real consequences. If anything, becoming cool mint flavor was a fun little change.

Moving back on topic, in my experience spiders tended to be solitary hunters. That meant I didn’t need to bother looking for any others, at least not for the moment. Once the villagers realized what happened they would certainly come out of hiding and shower me with praise. Ideally, they’d also shower me with the reward money.

“I killed it. Mission complete.”

I decided to make that loud declaration in order to speed things along.