## Chapter 49 – Encounter With Shackles
My original plan was really nothing special.
1. Secretly smuggle out all the beastmen by faking their deaths.
Setting Arachnella loose in the beastmen’s quarters was the foundation of this operation.
The female beastmen had suffered greatly giving birth to the Kernel Worms, so I ordered that some blood be drawn from the male beastmen.
The difference between humans and beastmen is evident here; they are demi-humans with tough bodies based on resilient beasts, so they wouldn’t die from having a bit of blood drawn.
“Are you okay, honey…?”
“Uh… yeah… I’m a little… dizzy…
But why are there three of you…?”
‘Though they were a bit dizzy.’
Still, perhaps thinking they couldn’t pass this task onto the females who had suffered the ordeal of birthing two Kernel Worms each, the male beastmen willingly slashed their own limbs, scattering blood throughout the quarters.
And as if even that blood was too precious to waste, Arachnella, with a blissful expression, dipped her hands into the shallow pools of blood on the floor, smeared it all over her body, and licked it off—that was the blood-soaked figure first witnessed by the mercenaries.
Therefore, at this moment, we could say that Plan 1 had been completed long ago.
The beastmen who escaped through the tunnels I had dug using the Kernel Worms would now be huddled in a room of decent size somewhere underground, waiting for the next path to open.
‘But…’
Now, all that remained was Plan 2: disguising Arachnella’s identity, who was supposed to have killed the beastmen, as a death.
From the start, Arachnella was in a position where she had to make people believe she had killed the beastmen, so we couldn’t use the same method as when we helped the beastmen escape.
It was obvious that she was strong, and if an existence that slaughtered students like that was killed by something other than a student, they would investigate what that existence was.
If that happened, my identity might be revealed in the process, and the academy’s flowerbeds might echo with the sound of police car sirens.
Therefore, unlike the beastmen, Arachnella had to use a method of naturally exiting while fighting the students as much as possible.
It seemed that the way these students conducted battles was for swordsmen to charge ahead while alchemists or medical students supported them from the side, buying time for the mages to prepare and finish with a large-scale attack…
‘Let’s just say she was cleanly evaporated by a fireball or something. How about that?’
Of course, she would have to endure some minor injuries, but what if she hid in the pre-dug tunnel immediately after being attacked?
We could create a situation where it seemed as if she had literally evaporated from the attack.
Arachnella seemed to think it was plausible as well, responding enthusiastically.
“So, this is an operation where you want to kill me off quite thoroughly?”
‘Good thinking. I’m telling you, this will really work!’
“Haa… My fair skin, which I’ve been maintaining with the blood of my prey…”
Arachnella, who was very satisfied with my plan (?), was now heading towards the rendezvous point, having reduced the number of students to below the dangerous level, as per our plan.
But there was a problem there…
‘I’d have to mobilize all the Kernel Worms…
But I ended up using half of them to send out that guy named Yui or Yu-sam…
If it was Yu-il, I could have used only half of that…’
“What nonsense are you spouting?”
‘Ah, I mean, since it’s Yu-‘i’, if it were Yu-‘il’, then 2 divided by half…’
At the sudden, irritated voice, I had to shut my mouth, and Arachnella’s urgent voice began to be heard.
“Stop talking nonsense!!
There are uninvited guests, we must proceed with the operation!!”
‘Uninvited guests…?’
When I arrived next to Arachnella through another Kernel Worm, hearing the voice, I finally understood.
The reason she was so urgent.
‘Crazy…!! It’s that Avengers team from earlier…?’
The formidable party, consisting of the orange-stone, purple-stone swordsman, the alchemist scamming with a mechanical bird, the excellent mage, and the strangely unpleasant apothecary, was preparing for battle.
‘The lineup is really spectacular…’
Arachnella, judging that the situation was unusual, was no pushover either, but she had a penalty.
‘I have to attack without killing or retiring those guys as much as possible…’
Our goal from the start was to be attacked.
Only by being attacked could we fake death, and the ultimate goal was to be hit directly by a strong magic attack.
So, firstly, the mage was absolutely off-limits.
And to feign inferiority, we couldn’t kill them either.
Until the very end of the special evaluation, if we didn’t thoroughly deceive those we were facing now, an investigation into strange signs might come in through their testimonies.
The opponent who was pushing them so hard suddenly evaporates with a mediocre attack?
That didn’t make sense, did it?
From the students’ perspective, it would be nice to just pass through like that, but if it entered the ears of the faculty and raised questions, it would create an even bigger threat.
‘I have to do it properly…’
But the problem was that the opponents were too good for that.
Feigning inferiority to those Avengers who had been showing off their excellent skills from earlier?
I would rather have done that to mediocre students, but I honestly doubted whether Arachnella could endure while giving even an advantage to those who were pretty good, without a preemptive strike.
Didn’t Vivian say that the orange-stone female swordsman was far beyond the student level?
‘Tch… Either way, I have to buy time…’
Although the Kernel Worms were quite fast, it would take some time to send Carla’s roommate, Yui, out to the outside in the vast dungeon.
‘And if you add the return time…?’
With the remaining Kernel Worms, the construction time would be insufficient, so if we rashly touched it, only the trick would be revealed, and the situation was only making my head ache more and more.
‘It’s not easy…’
In response to Arachnella’s question to me, who was frowning without eyebrows, I said a short but worried word.
“Is the preparation complete?”
‘I’m working on it, can you hold out a little longer?’
“I must.”
Was it just my imagination that she looked a little lonely when she answered my words?
Or…
‘Do as you’ve been doing. I’ll help a little too.’
Or maybe it’s because I felt that much responsibility that I was even worried about her complexion.
As she moved quickly without a word, I could feel the vibrations of unfamiliar footsteps echoing on the ground.
The traces of these footsteps moving besides Arachnella.
Anne’s team members were starting to move.
Thus, Anne and her sister, divided into pairs as before, and the attacks of the man and the oriental woman began to focus on Arachnella.
Arachnella nimbly moved her four pairs of legs as before, avoiding the attacks with the speed based on them.
Crawling on the floor, climbing the walls, and sometimes jumping here and there as if springing out with powerful legs, repeatedly sharing moves with the opponents and dodging without raising suspicion.
Even so, it seemed that she had not used all of her abilities so far, and Arachnella, who had left behind a secret weapon, was taking the lead.
Slightly pushing her waist forward and exposing her bare chest, Arachnella’s attack, which used the shocking spider web dispenser from earlier to clump spider webs or weave them like nets and fire them as projectiles, was moderately struggling with the opponent.
“Eek…!!”
Anne, perhaps inevitably due to her still immature parts, seemed unfamiliar with the sticky spider web, an unfamiliar attack, and was busy cutting through the spider web with difficulty.
And similarly, the man who was protecting the oriental woman named Hyeryeong with a mechanical bird robot seemed to be trying to respond by utilizing the functions of the machine.
‘But still, precision machinery is precision machinery…’
– Malfunctions have occurred in the 32nd gear and the 45th C-piston.
“Annoying attack.”
“Haa… I hate bugs…”
In the end, the spider webs that got tangled in the driving parts of the gear-made machine and subtly interfered with its operation seemed to make his expression not very good either.
Therefore, in the end, the woman also gave up being fully protected and was moving her body herself.
Therefore, the only one fully dealing with Arachnella, who was constantly scattering spider webs, was that unusual orange-haired woman.
In both light and fast movements, and in terms of swordsmanship that showed a fairly elegant appearance.
With the movements of that woman who was following Arachnella’s offensive in either direction, I had to make a quick decision.
‘What I can do is…’
