Spoils

The adventurers from Brekka Town were still scavenging for spoils. None of them cared what their employer thought after he had paid them. Adventurers offered no after-sales service.

And so the Mage left alone with his Golem. Renato only hoped he understood the rules of the Phantom Forest.

Looking at the Giant Spider's corpse, its severed limbs still twitching faintly, Renato put away his knife.

"I don't know much about Giant Spider anatomy. I ruptured the venom sacs both times. That's another silver coin lost. Looks like I'll have to learn more if I want to make money. Now that I can afford it, I'll buy a Monster Guide from the guild when I get back."

Renato had killed two Giant Spiders, but only the first had a carapace intact enough to sell in town.

After extracting the tendons from the joints, Renato stopped working.

Four spider forelegs, one carapace, and a sack of insect tendons, Renato tallied silently. Add in the ones the Golem killed in the cave, split those evenly, and I get another three forelegs. Shame the Golem smashed them so thoroughly. It didn't leave a single intact carapace or venom sac.

He tied the seven forelegs together with rope, cinched the sack full of tendons shut, then joined the others scavenging through the spider lair.

Avoiding the areas already searched by those who had arrived first, Renato bent down, passed over the remains of cocoons that clearly belonged to small animals, and focused on the human-shaped ones.

After prying apart layers of astonishingly tough gray webbing with his sword tip, the first things he saw were a suit of badly rotted leather armor and a human skeleton.

Renato rummaged around for a long time without finding anything valuable. All he found was a rusted shortsword, almost fused to the finger bones.

Coming away empty-handed was part of an adventurer's life. Renato turned to another cocoon and kept searching, hoping to find something.

That night, in the clearing outside the cave, the adventurers from Brekka Town began their own celebration.

The sharpened stakes and wooden clubs they had used against the Giant Spiders during the day became fuel. The Giant Spider hind legs they could not carry away were tossed straight into the fire, while the small fragments of broken carapace became pots for stewing soup.

Adventurers squeezed every last bit of value out of their spoils.

A few hard blows with a rock shattered the glowing-hot shell of a spider leg, exposing grayish-white meat.

At first, Renato refused. He could not imagine what sort of person would try eating these foul-smelling insects that oozed green fluid.

But after one bite, he quickly discarded those useless prejudices.

"This is delicious!"

The spider leg meat was almost absurdly firm. He practically had to tear off a strip with his teeth.

Simply roasted, without any seasoning, it burst with a rich, sweet savoriness on his tongue. Its distinct fibers were springy, and he could even feel the thick muscle fibers as he chewed. It had plenty of bite.

Marcus took out a Giant Spider's fatty "liver" and put it in a piece of carapace to stew.

Renato did not believe Giant Spiders had livers, nor did he think that grayish-white lump of an organ was a "liver," but he admitted that it tasted quite good.

Though the gray-green broth looked unappetizing and smelled no better, like rotten fish being boiled, drinking it gave Renato a sense of satisfaction he had not felt in a long time.

The abundant fat cut through the rank taste. Perhaps it was because he had gone so long without eating anything fatty, but he actually found the soup surprisingly tasty.

"Well? Not bad, is it?" Marcus blew on the soup in his hands. "I was even more reluctant than you the first time I ate this stuff."

Renato bit off another mouthful of roasted spider leg and asked curiously:

"Where did you learn this? Most people would never think of eating these things."

"I was younger than you back then, just a kid. Some sheep had gone missing from a nearby village. My uncle was a soldier, and he figured a band of Goblins had done it. He said he'd take me along to get some practice."

Marcus chuckled a couple of times and gazed into the distance, as though recalling something:

"But there weren't any Goblins. It was a whole pack of Giant Spiders! My legs went weak with fear. Luckily, my uncle reacted fast. He grabbed me and ran deeper into the woods."

"Those big creepy-crawlies were like things possessed. They stayed right on our heels. We had to keep circling through the woods to shake them off, hiding for days."

"Eventually, my uncle found a chance to kill one that had strayed from the pack. But we couldn't light a fire, so we had to eat it raw."

"I flat-out refused to touch that gray-green stuff. But he grabbed me by the neck and forced it into my mouth."

"I still remember him shouting as he stuffed it in: 'You can't let yourself starve! Even if it's shit, you're going to swallow it!'"

Marcus added a handful of firewood to the flames. Intrigued by the story, Renato pressed him:

"What happened next? How did you escape?"

The smile on Marcus's face suddenly faded. After a brief silence, he answered quietly:

"After that, my uncle led me on a long detour. We lost almost all the gear we had with us, but we finally got out."

"When we returned to the village, he said he had to go to the city to report to his lord. I never saw him again."

"It wasn't until I was older that I understood. The armor my uncle had thrown away to escape our pursuers in the forest wasn't his. His lord had 'lent' it to him."

Marcus spoke flatly, his gaze resting on the dancing flames.

"He sold his little house in the village to pay for it, but that still wasn't enough. He had to go to the city to earn money and repay the debt."

"Then we never heard from him again. He probably died."

That morning, Renato strapped the carapace and spider legs to his back. Carrying a sack of tendons that seeped bloody fluid in his left hand and his longsword in his right, he followed Marcus.

He had found nothing valuable in the Spider Nest. Most of the dead people's weapons and armor had rusted away. The only things worth calling a haul were a dozen or so copper coins covered in dark green corrosion. Renato hoped they could still be spent.

The eight remaining adventurers had split into two distinctly separate groups, walking one behind the other along the shore of Mirror Lake.

Joe, Bagg, Marcus, and Renato walked at the rear, deliberately keeping their distance from the group ahead.

Things had felt off ever since the Mage left.

And when "Pockface" Martha spoke up, the two sides had nearly come to blows.

"We did the work together and killed the spiders together. Everyone pulled their weight. Fair's fair, shouldn't we split those gold coins evenly? What do you say, Big Guy?"

Martha, her face covered in freckles, toyed with a dagger. Three adventurers accompanied her, surrounding Bagg as he warmed himself by the fire.

"Want to steal my money?" Bagg gripped his greataxe in both hands, refusing to back down.

"Go ahead and try, bitch!"

Renato drew his longsword and forced back the bald man behind Bagg.

This time, he could not stay out of it. He and Bagg had both received payment for the spider eggs. If he let them extort Bagg, he would likely be next.

The bald adventurer seemed quite surprised by Renato's intervention. Backing away from the blade, he threatened him:

"This is none of your business. Don't get yourself killed!"

"You're the ones breaking the rules!" Marcus approached with his Military Billhook in hand. "We agreed beforehand. Whoever went in first got paid!"

Martha raised the crossbow from her back and shrieked:

"Nobody's keeping my money for themselves! My crossbow doesn't care who it hits!"

"Mine does! Watch that face of yours, sweetheart!" Joe circled up the slope and leveled his Hand Crossbow. "I suggest you calm down, Martha!"

The two sides spent that night watching each other warily, but never actually came to blows.

Yet Renato knew the real conflict had not erupted. This was only a probe, a prelude.

"Real" adventurers from Brekka Town would never let an opportunity like this slip away.