That day, something was different from usual.
Inside the chapel, the murmurs that could normally be heard faintly were completely gone today. The priest was clearly distracted, too, and after rattling through the ritual phrases at high speed, dismissed everyone early.
There had not been any specific incident, nothing in particular.
But the residents hurried home as if being chased.
If someone talked about “recently,” there had been talk of crows increasing like crazy, and of a bright star appearing at dawn or at dusk—everyone had noticed a different air than before.
From the northern highway, men came running.
The cleric-soldiers noticed first.
With a prickly tension, the cleric-soldiers of Jechi stepped in their way.
“H-help us!!”
But they were not assailants, nothing like that—just a group of merchants who had departed early that morning.
“...What happened!”
After they exchanged a quick look, the cleric-soldiers eased up a little. They recognized the faces.
“A monster! A monster destroyed everything!”
“...!?”
Merchants and employees, and guards as well.
Even if they were called merchants, in truth they were monitors with ties to the Divine Kingdom, but putting that aside—
After calming them down and getting the story out:
While the wagons were moving along the highway, a gigantic spider-like monster suddenly came chasing after them. It closed in at a speed far beyond what the wagons could ever outrun, and everyone panicked.
They fled at full speed, horses included, but it caught up in no time and smashed the wagons with those enormous legs. With the spider monster blocking the way, they scattered and ran in every direction.
“What the hell was that...!? I’ve never even heard of a monster like that...!”
A new kind of monster?
But this was the far eastern edge, almost the opposite side from <Demon Forest>, where monsters were supposed to be.
Even if a stray had wandered in, from the way the men described it, the monster /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ had attacked from behind.
Which meant it had appeared from the direction of this town.
Yet, of course, in this town and the surrounding area, there had been no witness accounts and no traces of anything that huge—if the men’s claims were to be believed, a monster even bigger than a house.
“Got it. Anyway, let’s go to the dormitory. You’ve been running hard...”
“Yeah... sorry. That helps... We lost the horses and the wagons... so we can’t go anywhere for a while...”
And so, lending their shoulders to the utterly exhausted men, the cleric-soldiers started walking back toward the dormitory—
And at that sound, they finally noticed.
“Hey. Don’t you hear something?”
“Huh?”
“Something that hits your gut, like an underground rumble... you hear it?”
DRO-DRO, or maybe GRO-GRO. A heavy, low sound was resonating.
The pitch was so low that nobody had realized it was even sounding.
“Yeah, what is this... it really is like an underground rumble...”
A low sound that could be heard on extremely rare occasions, accompanying a tremor.
But this was ringing out even more clearly than that.
“I don’t know. But first, report to the priest. Something unbelievable seems to be happening...”
One of the cleric-soldiers, looking around restlessly, found it.
In one corner of the forest spreading out beside the town, birds were wheeling in the sky.
Not a few.
Probably on the order of hundreds.
“Hey, look at that! Something’s there—over there!”
“...!”
A flock clearly concentrated in a single spot. Something was underneath.
It was far. The air was not bad, but not good either—there was a slight haze, and it did not allow a clear view out to that distance.
“Damn it, I don’t know what it is, but it’s bad! I’ve got nothing but a bad feeling!”
The cleric-soldiers of Jechi chose to run while carrying the men. They judged the situation demanded urgency. Able to exert strength more than double that of an adult man, the cleric-soldiers quickly apologized to the merchants they had been supporting, hoisted them up, and started running.
But—
Far away, the trees burst upward.
Literally—trunks still attached, leaves still lush and green—everything flew into the air as if in an explosion.
“...!!”
It had started moving.
Without a word, the men increased their running speed.
In under a minute they reached the dormitory, and after setting the merchants down, the cleric-soldiers sprinted at full speed toward the chapel where the priest was.
Something gigantic was approaching the town.
That information spread across the entire town in an instant.
Soil spraying up, trees smashed apart—those signs were definitely drawing closer.
“Please stay calm! We will protect the town, just go back home—!”
The cleric-soldiers all moved to contain the situation. They ran through the town, shouting so the residents would not panic.
But everything was too late.
If, when the merchants appeared, everyone in town had been sent fleeing in all directions, then maybe some residents would have escaped and reported to the next town.
Something sprang out of the forest.
Compared to the trees, it was not tall.
But compared to a human being, it was the size of despair.
It moved its long legs in a frantic blur and encircled the town in the blink of an eye.
And no—it was not just one.
So many poured out of the forest that counting them would have been ridiculous.
“W-we’re surrounded...!”
They would not let a single person escape. It was the manifestation of that fierce intent.
Giant spider monsters had formed a ring around the entire town.
And then—
The ground trembled with a KATA-KATA vibration. The cries of birds—GYAA-GYAA—grew louder little by little.
“What... what is that...!”
Something enormous was approaching while tearing the forest apart. A few people scrambled up onto the church roof.
They saw it. They saw it.
It was far higher than the trees.
More than anything, it was unbelievably huge.
The spider monsters surrounding the town were huge too, but they were not even worth comparing to it.
DRO-DRO echoed.
The ground shook.
And then that gigantic something appeared, blasting the forest aside as it came.
Trees in its path were ripped out by the roots and smashed to pieces.
“It’s... huge...”
Someone muttered in a daze.
What had happened? What was going to happen?
Even though it should have been at a considerable distance, it was so big it had to be looked up at. A pure-white giant body pressed in like a wall.
Everyone was frozen. From the shock, from the terror, nobody could do anything but stand there.
A few people’s legs gave out and they toppled backward.
Up above them, that wall slowly came to a stop.
Residents cautiously peeked out from their homes. The cleric-soldiers could do nothing, only stare up at it.
But a few people noticed.
Even with something that huge approaching, the spider monsters encircling the town did not move at all. Even with it right behind them, they did not so much as twitch.
Which meant—
This impossibly gigantic something and these spider monsters were moving together.
A part of the giant wall slowly lifted.
Like a top-hinged window—except it moved on its own, without anyone touching it.
From the opened “window,” small somethings—spider-like somethings—came crawling out in a steady stream.
“H-hey... that, that is... spider monsters are coming out...!!”
Small spiders.
No—that was wrong.
That white wall was simply too huge.
Those crawling out were the same size as the spiders surrounding the town. Those monsters crawled out in uncountable numbers, in a flood.
“U-uwAAAAAAAH!!”
Fear spread.
A man who could not take it screamed and ran. Others followed, residents fleeing one after another.
Some ran with nothing but what was on their backs. Others dragged out carts to load household goods.
All of it was pointless.
The spider monsters spilling out from the white wall surged into the town one after another. Bodies far larger than humans moved six legs with deft precision, racing through the streets at speeds far faster than any person.
A cleric-soldier of Jechi, remembering duty, grabbed at one of the monsters with the resolve to die stopping it.
The huge forearm swept the cleric-soldier aside with effortless ease.
