The Strongest Gun Magus: I Cast Bullet!-Chapter 26: Marien Is Bored

The spider’s nest was woven high in a tree. A human would have to climb it to get there, but a Singing Spider could simply reach it from the ground if it stood fully upright.

The entire tree and nest were covered in spiderwebs. Leaves, dust, insects, and small rodents were stuck to it in abundance, and to not get caught as well, Reynard and Terence had to cover the webs with more leaves and dust.

The spider eggs were iridescent like its mouthparts and the size of small apples. There was an entire pile of them, and when Reynard finished passing them to Terence, their bag became full to the brim.

"There are fifty-one! Mister Artemy, even if each of them costs only five points, you will be rich!"

Reynard jumped off the tree and scowled.

"Do they really cost only five points, Terence?"

The kid shrugged.

"They should cost more! Singing Spiders are classified as Final Cycle Nigredo beasts by their physical strength, but their ability is Albedo-level, I think. Or... I don’t know... The manual was unclear. The classifications are hard... Mister Artemy, do you think I can work for you for a salary?"

Reynard gave Terence a withering stare. The kid’s shoulders hunched.

"Maybe later, if you need a servant. I remember, I still owe you!"

"That’s right! If not for your impulse to help everyone who cries for help, we could have just avoided the Singing Spider altogether," Reynard glanced at the bag of eggs and softened. "But, I guess the risk was worth the reward. Let’s go! When we get to the instructor, we might as well notify him that there are severely wounded students out there."

***

Marien made ten more steps forward and stopped.

The Wind of Mana that she had followed, instead of gathering into a whirlwind she could have used to meditate, dissipated entirely.

"Aaaaah! This is so unfair! The Autumn Beast Hunt was supposed to be exciting!" She pouted and shook her fist at the nearest tree.

The tree didn’t react, and even the birds on it didn’t hurry to tell Marien something nice.

The forest around her, which was such an interesting and new place a day ago, became her prison of boredom. Not a single beast dared to attack her, and she couldn’t find a single burrow to earn points.

With a huff, Marien picked a random direction and resumed walking. Five steps later, she stopped again, but this time excitedly.

She ran up to her new find: a dessicated corpse of a deer, half-covered in spiderweb.

This was a trail! A trail of some giant spider.

Emboldened, Marien went on, looking for more, and found them. She followed the trail of old meals like they were breadcrumbs, and the farther she went, the more excited and eager for a fight she was.

Her hands were already raised in a spellcasting stance when she stepped from behind the trees and saw it—the giant spider!

It was truly giant, and a spider! And it was...

"Dead! It’s already dead! I am laaaaaate!" Marien sniffed at such unjustness. "Agaaaaaain!"

Her cry spooked several crows and rats that had been picking at the spider’s flesh.

She walked around the site of battle, hoping for at least some danger to appear. But there was nothing, and the spider was the only corpse in the clearing.

Marien kicked it and stomped away.

***

Each of the Singing Spider’s eggs cost twenty points.

As Reynard found by asking the instructor, they had a lot of uses in combat, making extra-strong glue, or just for their venom. Their eggs would have cost more if the spiders were easier to raise and tame.

After gathering so many points from a single, Reynard felt like going off his way to hunt more wasn’t worth it, so he and Terence made camp not too far from the edge of the Growlgrove and just gathered wild herbs nearby.

They still gathered a bit more points from magical bird nests that Terence spotted in the trees, but they were just a drop in comparison.

Several times, other students passed by, but they didn’t try to accost Reynard and Terence, and they weren’t Marien, so their meetings weren’t worth remembering for Reynard.

And then, the seventh day passed, and the entrance tokens of Reynard and Terence glowed brightly to notify them that the hunt was over. Any beast babies brought after this time wouldn’t give points.

By then, most of the students had already gathered close to the exits, and it didn’t take long for them to leave and travel back to the Blue Bismuth school. In a few days, the winner of the hunt will be declared there.

"Here we part ways, Terence," Reynard told the kid when they left the Growlgrove, and patted him on the shoulder. "Good luck, you don’t owe me anymore. Next year’s hunt, you might actually earn something!"

Terence nodded with a serious face. The effect was broken by his gaze constantly darting to the side.

"Thank you! And... Maybe you need someone to help you in your garden, Mister Artemy?"

"Really? Do you need extra cash?"

"I just... I have Fire Affinity, but when there’s a real fight, I don’t know what to do... Maybe you can give me some hints as a payment... Well, so I thought."

Reynard sighed.

He could hold himself in a fight because he was thrice as old as he looked to be, and after dying once, death didn’t seem as paralyzingly scary. That was not something he could impart to Terence.

But the kid was trustworthy enough to not steal from him, which was more than Reynard could say about the guy he already hired to keep watch over his plants.

"Can I just pay you with money?"

Terence’s shoulder slumped.

"You really can’t teach me?"

"I will try... But it really depends on you whether you will learn," Reynard replied with intentional vagueness.

"Trust me, I will! Teachers say that I’m easy to catch onto things!"

Reynard chuckled and shook his head, then silently gestured for Terence to keep walking.

And it was on the road toward the Blue Bismuth School that Marien caught up with them.