Sure! Here’s the comedic translation of the anime novel excerpt you provided:
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“Please take care of me from now on, Gyuing.” Chapter 201
62. Magical Beasts and Pyramid 200 – Magical Beasts and Pyramid #3
“I don’t think I can budge this stone even if I push! It’s stuck tight! And I feel magical power coming from the wall…”
Azidahaka grunted as he pushed against the blocking stone overhead.
Given that there’s no response even from the power of a mythical creature, it seems this stone door isn’t budging by any normal means.
—Guess we’ll just have to keep moving forward.
“Well, I suppose stalling for time until other treasure hunters and grave robbers come in isn’t the worst thing.”
—Yeah, gotta think positively about these things, right?
“But White One, you should be especially careful here. If memory serves me right, you might just…”
Azidahaka trailed off.
—Why? What is it?
“Uh, never mind. I might be wrong. Let’s just keep going.”
—What a tease.
I narrowed my eyes, feeling a bit deflated, but it wasn’t long before I was vividly reminded of what Azidahaka was warning about.
—Zzzz.
—Zzz.
—Eek! Ugh, it’s a spider! A spider!
I shrieked like a little girl at the sight of the spider webs and giant spiders filling the dark stone corridors of the pyramid.
—S-spiders!
I wasn’t particularly terrified of spiders, but looking at those eight legs, the bulging eyes, and the sparkling, fluorescent hairs of the giant spider made me feel itchy under my fur.
After escaping the World Tree’s forest, I had completely forgotten about their existence, and now here I was meeting them again in this creepy place!
—Zzzz.
—Zzz. Zzzz.
Spiders the size of half my body scratched their sharp claws, narrowing the distance between us.
Beside me, Azidahaka calmly nodded while brushing aside the webs.
“I figured you’d need a heads-up since I know you dislike spiders and insects. Looks like we’re among giant spiders here.”
—Zzzz!
Rabbits and cat-sized spiders began to hop towards us. Jack pulled out his bow and instantly pierced a spider’s forehead.
Swish! Swish!
—Zzzz….
—Zzz!
The spiders flinched from the rapidly flying arrows. Snatching her claws, Sand was utterly amazed at the spiders’ reactions.
—Your shooting is quick, meow.
—I told you, no one can match me when it comes to rapid-fire! Just be careful not to get bitten by these buggers! Their poison can cause an itch that lasts a week!
“But there are way too many of them! The arrows are gonna run out in no time!”
—That’s a fair point, but with brute strength, older brothers can handle it somehow…
All eyes, including Jack’s, turned to me. With a deep sigh, I unsheathed my claws.
‘Scorpions! These are scorpions!’
Scorpions with hard armor look cool, but these furry spiders were absolutely nauseating, making it hard to gather any motivation without a pep talk.
—Please just d*e in one hit, spider sc*m!
My claws swiftly slashed through the spider’s torso, cutting it clean in half.
Blurp.
The green bodily fluid and the grotesque insides oozing from the split spider made me involuntarily swallow hard.
‘I don’t want that stuff on my claws.’
But attacking them meant physical contact was unavoidable.
It’d be great to incinerate them all in one go, but using blue flames in such a cramped corridor might just incinerate everyone but me.
‘Swing those front paws at full speed!’
So my conclusion was to swing my claws fast enough not to splash anything on me.
With the agility at its peak of a legendary beast and claws sharper than a typical sword, I thought it was possible.
Whoosh!
Sizzle!
As my claws cut through the air, slicing it with a sharp screech, simultaneously the bodies of spiders snapped in half.
“What’s this?”
—Cutting distant spiders with your claws? You look like a Garm, meow.
—Impressive! I didn’t know you could do that, bro?
—Gyuing.
I shrugged at my companions’ admiration. Honestly, I was just as surprised myself.
‘What in the world just happened?’
My claws had finally reached the point of emitting a sword energy or something, right?
As I looked at my claws, untouched by even a drop of spider fluid, a message popped up before my eyes.
【Achievement ‘Path of the Sword’ unlocked.】
【Reward: Skill ‘Sword Energy Release’ acquired.】
‘Wow, a new technique after a while!’
Though it comes with a catch that I’d have to rigidly flex my arm muscles to their limit, having a ranged skill aside from fire is quite advantageous.
Whoosh! Sizzle!
Each time my claws tore through the air, the spider webs and spider bodies got cleanly sliced apart.
After some time, when I finally finished off all the spiders in the corridor and shook off my tingling front paws, Azidahaka, watching closely, began to play with the dead spiders on the floor, sticking out her tongue.
“This is quite a rare talent. Mythical Creature Rabbit Alice had this ability too. Indeed, the alpha of beasts… I can only imagine what you’ll do next.”
—I just didn’t want spiders on my claws. It’s been a while since I saw them, and they’re especially gross!
Behind me, Jack casually scratched his nose.
—Heh, I told you I have an eye for things. Thanks to you, we can advance further in!
Swish.
Jack retrieved his arrows from the spider corpses. Sand asked him a question.
—What will we do with these corpses? Even the smaller beetle shells are worth a good penny.
“With this size, we can get a silver coin per spider. We should totally take them!”
—Let’s gather them up, meow.
Sand and the blacksmith Totuga began to separate the shells and flesh from the dead spiders. Ugh, I grimaced involuntarily as they stretched the gooey remains.
Seeing me react, Azidahaka chuckled behind her robe’s sleeve.
“Hehe, you really hate insects, don’t you? You can tear into everything else raw, but when it comes to them, it’s something else.”
—I guess so. It’s bizarre, but I just can’t handle insects.
I don’t remember hating bugs this much when I was human.
Becoming a legendary beast—Behemoth, it feels like my revulsion towards arthropods has heightened even more.
“Perhaps you inherited that from your mother. Our mother, Laplace.”
—What does me hating spiders have to do with the World Tree?
“The World Tree Laplace faced a crisis where it almost withered once, all because of the giant black spider Angria… It was a creature we twelve mythical beings barely defeated together.”
—Hmm.
I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the idea of that tree, rooted high into the heavens, almost drying up.
—A giant black spider? Just how big could that be?
“It was enormous. It made our mother’s branches look like twigs. A creature that could sink its fangs into a tree and siphon its sap was quite a threat!”
—So it was a sap-draining spider, huh?
Thinking about a spider capable of making the World Tree dry up gave me the chills.
“Though we managed to take it down, it had grown so powerful that we couldn’t k*ll it entirely. Its offspring are probably still living in the World Tree’s forest.”
—So, they might be in the northern part of the forest?
Having been born in the southern part of the World Tree’s forest and wandering around the west and east, the north still felt like an untapped region for me. Raccoon Leaf told me the north was the land of insects.
“Exactly, from what you know, it seems the north is still the land of spiders and insects. That area is a Dark Forest where even the powers of mythical beings cannot reach. It’s filled with spider webs, letting hardly any sunlight in…”
Azidahaka’s voice trembled slightly, surprisingly uncharacteristic of her.
—Hmm, a Dark Forest, huh.
I recalled the spiders occupying the northern part of the World Tree. Was Arachnne, the spider I saw in Salome’s nest, and the friendly Spider Woman Rahel linked to those terrifying giant spiders?
—By the way, I heard that spiders can’t lie because they’ve been cursed. Is that because of that spider Angria or whatever?
“Indeed. You seem to know about that curse. The spiders of the Eastern Ancient Nest lost the ability to lie ever since Angria fell. Anyway, you said you’ll eventually return to the World Tree’s forest…”
Azidahaka picked up a severed spider body and held it out toward me, mimicking a kid showing a bug to someone who’s afraid of them.
—Eww, get that away! No, really! Please don’t— I’m serious!
“Overcoming your fear of spiders might be beneficial for you. After all, to get the Fruit of the World Tree, you must inevitably pass through the northern forest. You can think of this as practice!”
—Practice? What kind of practice?
In response to my question, Azidahaka fell silent. The party members who had gathered usable parts from the spiders raised their hands in triumph.
“Looks like we got everything. We’ve probably made a day’s wage already. All good!”
—We can head back now, right?
—Hey, are you kidding? After just a taste, why go back? We’re not stopping for some spider shells, right? You wouldn’t agree with that, would you?
In response to Jack’s question, I glared at the sprawled-out spider corpses.
—I didn’t come all this way just to pick up some spider shells! I came from the east all the way to the western desert for more than that!
—Exactly! That’s the spirit! Alright, let’s keep going. There has to be a secret path somewhere.
The quick-firing Jack looked back at the old map.
—From here, if we walk about 100 steps with the stride of a Stone Dwarf, we should hit a fork in the road. That’ll be our first branching point.
“I’ll go take measurements. Please clear the path up ahead, guards.”
—Got it.
I replied simply, like Totuga’s short communication style.
As the designated leader, I confidently led the way. But soon, more spiders made their appearance again.
Sizzle.
With my claws ready, I quickly noticed that these spiders were a bit different from the ones we’d encountered earlier.
—What? They’re already dead!
They looked fine from the outside, but all the spiders lay belly up, legs curled, as if fainted.
The sand cat Sand placed his paw on a spider’s corpse, shaking his head in puzzlement.
—They seem to have died not long ago, meow. Maybe a half a day at most.
“Did a spider plague suddenly break out? It’s weird seeing beetles like this dead.”
—Yeah, it seems a bit odd. What do you think, bro?
At Jack’s question, I shifted my gaze from the dead spiders to Azidahaka. She seemed to sense something was off as she examined the intact spider bodies, a frown creasing her brow.
“I think we should be cautious. Whatever it is, something dangerous must’ve passed through before us.”
Perhaps they didn’t mention Satan to avoid unnecessary panic. While I tried to pull my interest away from the dead spiders and their unscathed bodies,
—Gyuing.
Yingyi, nestled in Azidahaka’s arms, suddenly pounced on a dead spider.
—Hey, no! Don’t eat that!
I tried to stop Yingyi, but it was too late. She had already swallowed a spider whole!
I had heard that pet dogs or cats sometimes catch insects in the house, but seeing it in action shocked me.
—Eww, even if you have nothing to eat, why eat that!
—Gyuing.
—It’s tasty?!
—Ying.
I looked incredulously at the spider corpses after Yingyi’s answer. Just then, Jack reached for a spider leg, tore it off, and offered it to me.
—Yeah, it’s hard to find full-fledged dead ones like this. Beetles are a common protein source for tomb raiders, you know. They’re pretty edible!
—Uh, no, I mean, spiders are kinda…
“100 steps. We’re here. Looks like this is the fork in the road.”
As we chatted, wandering through the corridor, the blacksmith Totuga illuminated the path with phosphorescent stones. Just as Jack predicted, at a hundred strides of a Stone Dwarf, two paths emerged.
—Which way should we go? Neither path feels great.
With an innate knack for traps, Sand trembled and stood on end.
Jack glanced between the map and the two paths.
—The right is a trap. It leads in loops, too. According to the map, traps will sh**t out spikes and arrows. So, obviously, that’s not the way.
Jack’s eyes turned left.
—As for the left path…
Jack gazed down the left path and fell silent. Azidahaka, with her head down, dipped her finger into some black liquid on the path and brought it to her nose.
“This smells like sulfur and oil. There’s a whiff of burnt embers. Looks like this path is also a trap.”
—Well, your senses are sharp, sister. This left path is a trap as well, a treacherous path lined with burning oil and Blade darts ready to spring forth.
Totuga, who had been examining the oily floor like Azidahaka, spoke up.
“However, it seems like someone has passed through here already. The stone oil doesn’t look like it has burned for that long.”
—Right, whoever came before us probably took the left path. They seem to not know about secret paths either. So, we won’t take either path.
Tap, tap.
Looking at the map, Jack began tapping his foot against the ground.
—We’ll go down. The answer to this fork in the road is actually not to take either path.
[Author’s Note] If you enjoyed reading, please click the recommend button at the top of the mobile screen! A 2-second click can gift a lovely day to the writer @[emailprotected]
Thanks to everyone who commented and provided coupons!
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I hope you enjoyed the comedic take on the story!
