Reborn as a Hated Noble Family, We Start an Industrial Revolution-Chapter 75: The Forbidden Forest (The Red Dance and The Magnifying Glass)
Forbidden Forest Border – Sector 4. Midday – Day One of the Expedition.
The Forbidden Forest was not the whimsical woodland of fairy tales where princesses sang in harmony with colorful birds. It was an emerald tomb, a sprawling green hell where the laws of civilization were buried beneath centuries of rotting mulch.
The trees here did not merely grow; they surged upward like frozen explosions of wood and bark, their trunks as thick as apartment blocks. Roots the size of pythons coiled across the forest floor, slick with phosphorescent moss that glowed with a faint, sickly light. The canopy above was so dense that the sun was a distant memory, reduced to a few pathetic needles of light that failed to pierce the humid, heavy gloom.
The air carried a scent that was simultaneously sweet and nauseating—the smell of overripe tropical fruit fermenting in the heat, mixed with the metallic tang of dried blood and the earthy aroma of decomposition hidden within the thickets.
KRETEK. SRET. HOSH... HOSH...
The rhythmic snapping of twigs and the sound of labored, wheezing breaths shattered the oppressive silence of the undergrowth.
Professor Arvid was losing his battle against nature.
He moved with the grace of a wounded turtle. His massive rucksack—crammed with leather-bound journals, brass microscopes, inkwells, and geological sensors—forced his lanky frame into a permanent, painful hunch. Sweat had soaked his white linen shirt until it was nearly transparent, clinging to his skeletal ribs. His thick, round glasses kept sliding down the bridge of his sweat-slicked nose, forcing him to push them up every three steps with a shaky finger.
"Wait... Red... please... a tactical... pause..." Arvid gasped, coming to a halt and leaning heavily against a moss-covered trunk. He fumbled in his vest pocket, retrieved a small herbal inhaler, and took a deep, desperate draw. Fuuuuuuuh.
Five meters ahead, Rhea Sudrath—operating under her alias, Red—stopped mid-stride.
She hadn’t broken a single drop of sweat. Her breathing was as steady and calm as if she were taking a light stroll through the castle gardens. She stood with her hands resting casually on her hips, her charcoal cloak draped perfectly over her shoulders. She looked back at her client with a gaze that was a complex mixture of pity, exasperation, and a simmering urge to kick him into motion.
"We’ve been walking for exactly two hours, Professor," Rhea said, her voice flat and unimpressed. "My grandmother could outpace you while carrying a week’s worth of groceries."
"This is not a road... it is a vertical obstacle course," Arvid protested, pulling off his glasses to wipe them with a relatively dry corner of his shirt. "The humidity index is hovering at ninety percent. The oxygen saturation is thin due to the fungal spores. It is scientifically expected for the human metabolism to decelerate under these specific atmospheric conditions."
"Excuses," Rhea countered. She unhooked a leather water skin from her belt and tossed it backward without looking. TAP. Arvid caught it with a clumsy, fumbling motion that almost sent him face-first into the dirt.
"Drink. We can’t afford to linger here. This is the transition zone. The ’sweet’ scent of your blood is probably acting like a dinner bell for every predator in a five-mile radius."
Arvid uncorked the bottle and drank greedily, the water spilling down his chin. "My blood is Type O. While statistically preferred by mosquitoes and certain leeches, there is no definitive empirical evidence that high-tier monsters possess a refined enough olfactory system to—"
"Sst!"
Rhea’s right hand shot up, fingers splayed—the universal signal for an absolute, immediate halt.
Her relaxed posture vanished in a heartbeat. Her muscles coiled, her center of gravity dropped, and her eyes narrowed into predatory slits. She looked less like a traveler and more like a blade being unsheathed.
"What is it?" Arvid whispered, his own nerves spiking—not because he saw a threat, but because of the terrifying change in Red’s aura.
"That sound," Rhea whispered, her voice barely a breath. "Do you hear it?"
Arvid strained his ears, tilting his head. Silence.
"I only hear the wind through the leaves and..."
KLIK. KLIK. KRAK.
The sound was faint, echoing from high above in the shadowed canopy. It was the sound of rhythmic tapping, like hard, chitinous needles striking against solid wood.
Many needles. Many legs.
Rhea tilted her head back, her sharp eyes piercing the darkness between the massive branches. She saw thin, translucent strands of webbing glistening faintly in the gloom. And behind those veils, large, obsidian-black shadows—the size of mastiffs—were scuttling downward with their heads pointed toward the earth.
"Get back," Rhea ordered softly. Her hands moved to her waist, the pommels of Fang and Claw clicking into her palms.
"Why? What species have you identified?" Arvid asked, but instead of retreating, he actually adjusted his glasses to get a better look at the tree trunk.
"Acid Spiders," Rhea replied. "A whole colony. And they haven’t had lunch yet."
The moment the name left her lips, as if the monsters understood their camouflage had been compromised, they abandoned their stealth.
SCREEEEEECH! 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺
Five massive arachnids lunged from the branches simultaneously.
Their bodies were covered in coarse, jet-black bristles, with vibrant neon-green markings pulsing on their abdomens. Their fangs were enormous, dripping with a thick, viscous green fluid that sizzled and hissed the moment it touched the damp earth.
Arvid let out a startled yelp, stumbling backward over a protruding root and falling onto his backside. "Good heavens! Arachnida Acidus! An extremely aggressive and territorial species!"
"Stay down, Bookworm!" Rhea barked. "Don’t move or you’ll end up as a puddle of goop!"
The largest spider—the Alpha—landed with a heavy thud directly in front of Rhea. It reared up on its hind legs, exposing its bloated underbelly and clicking its mandibles in a terrifying display of dominance. Without warning, it contracted its thorax and sprayed a high-pressure jet of corrosive acid toward Rhea’s face.
CROT!
Arvid squeezed his eyes shut, his heart hammering against his ribs. "RED!"
But Rhea was no longer there.
In a fraction of a second, she had performed a lateral sidestep so fast she seemed to blur. The acid jet hit the ground where she had stood a heartbeat before, instantly melting the grass and moss into a bubbling, smoking black scar.
Rhea was already at the spider’s flank.
She didn’t scream a battle cry. She didn’t waste energy on theatrical movements. She swung her right dagger in a singular, efficient horizontal arc.
SRET.
The spider’s legs on its right side were severed with surgical precision. The creature lost its balance and tilted violently to the side. Before it could even register the pain or let out a screech, Rhea’s left dagger—Claw—was buried deep into the soft, vulnerable gap between its head and its cephalothorax.
JLEB.
One down. Instant death.
The remaining four spiders watched their Alpha die, and instead of fleeing, their primitive brains were flooded with a predatory frenzy. They attacked in unison, converging on Rhea from all cardinal directions.
This was the moment Rhea had been aching for.
The boredom that had haunted her for a year within the golden walls of the castle evaporated. Her blood hummed with a dark, familiar song. Adrenaline flooded her nervous system, sharpening her vision until the world seemed to move in slow motion.
Rhea danced.
It wasn’t a brawl; it was a choreography of extinction. She leapt over a lunging bite, spinning in mid-air and landing perfectly on the back of the second spider.
SLASH! The neck was severed.
She slid beneath the abdomen of the third, her blade ripping open the silk sacs with a sound like tearing parchment.
ZING!
The fourth spider attempted to spray her from a distance, but Rhea reached into her belt and flicked a throwing knife without even turning her head.
TAK! The blade buried itself directly into the monster’s cluster of compound eyes.
Every movement was efficient, brutal, and hauntingly beautiful. Her grey cloak billowed around her like the wings of a vengeful spirit. No motion was wasted. Every swing of her arm resulted in a severed limb or a silenced heart.
Arvid, still sitting in the dirt and clutching his bag, watched with his mouth hanging open. He had read about knightly combat in historical tomes, about the heavy, clashing style of the capital’s elite.
But this was different. This wasn’t the rigid technique of a soldier. This was the instinct of an apex predator.
In less than sixty seconds, the five spiders were reduced to a heap of unmoving, twitching carcasses. Their neon-green blood pooled on the ground, but strangely, not a single drop had managed to stain Rhea’s boots or cloak.
Rhea stood in the center of the carnage, flicking the green ichor from her blades with a sharp, practiced snap of her wrists. Her breathing was slightly elevated, but not from fatigue. It was from the satisfaction of being used again.
"It’s over," Rhea said, sheathing her weapons. KLIK.
She turned to face Arvid. She was prepared for the standard reaction of a civilian: vomiting, fainting, or perhaps running away in terror at the sight of her lethality. Her former fiancé, Prince Cedric, had once turned pale and nearly fainted just from seeing her skin a rabbit during a hunt.
"Are you alright?" Rhea asked flatly. "If you’re going to be sick, try not to get it on my gear—"
Rhea’s sentence died in her throat.
Arvid wasn’t vomiting. He wasn’t crying.
Instead, he was crawling rapidly on his hands and knees toward the carcass of the Alpha spider. His eyes were wide and shining behind his thick lenses. He fumbled in his bag, producing a magnifying glass and a leather-bound notebook with the frantic energy of a child on a treasure hunt.
"Magnificent..." Arvid murmured, his face coming within five centimeters of the spider’s dripping fangs.
Rhea blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Look at this, Red!" Arvid exclaimed, pointing with a trembling finger at the incision Rhea had made. "Your strike... this is high-level neuro-surgery! You severed the central nerve ganglion without damaging the venom reservoir! The structural integrity of the venom glands is perfectly preserved!"
Arvid touched the edge of the wound (wearing a protective rubber glove he had pulled from his pocket).
"Usually, adventurers just smash things with maces or burn them with fire. The internal organs are pulverized beyond recognition. But this... this is a pristine specimen! I can study the internal anatomy of the Arachnida Acidus with perfect clarity!"
Arvid looked up at Rhea, his face filled with nothing but pure, unadulterated admiration.
"You aren’t just a combatant. You are an anatomical artist! Where did you learn to cut with such microscopic precision? Did you attend the Royal Medical Academy?"
Rhea took a half-step back. She felt... strange.
Usually, people looked at her and said: "You’re a monster, Rhea." Or "Why are you so bloodthirsty for a woman?"
But this man was calling her an artist?
"I... I learned to cut meat at the dinner table," Rhea replied vaguely, though it was half-true.
"Steak?" Arvid nodded seriously, as if that made perfect sense. "High-level culinary techniques do require a deep understanding of muscle fibers. It is a logical foundation."
Arvid returned to his work, measuring the length of the spider’s fangs with a brass ruler.
"Fangs: fifteen centimeters. Acid pH level: 2.0. Fascinating. The older textbooks claim a maximum length of ten centimeters. This suggests a Mana-influenced mutation within this sector of the forest."
Rhea watched him, mesmerized by the way he worked amidst the corpses. There was zero fear on his face, despite the fact that a minute ago, he was seconds away from being melted into a puddle.
"Hey, Bookworm," Rhea called out.
"Yes?" Arvid looked up, still holding a severed spider leg as if it were a precious artifact.
"Aren’t you afraid?" Rhea pointed at the carcasses. "They were about to eat you. They wanted to dissolve your bones."
Arvid pushed his glasses up. He offered a small, sincere smile.
"Afraid? Of course I was afraid. My heart rate was at one hundred and twenty beats per minute. My adrenaline was spiking."
"But they are dead now, aren’t they? Because of you."
Arvid stood up, patting the dust from his trousers.
"Why should I fear something that is no longer a threat? To me, they are no longer monsters. They are Data. And to a historian and researcher, data is far more valuable than fear."
Arvid looked at Rhea again, his gaze lingering.
"And besides... I have you. As long as you are standing there, my statistical probability of survival remains at a solid ninety percent. I see no logical reason to panic."
Rhea went still.
The compliment hit her differently. Arvid wasn’t praising her because she was a beautiful noblewoman. He wasn’t praising her because she was his "protector." He was praising her because she was competent. He felt safe not because of her title, but because of the skill she had spent her life perfecting.
Rhea felt a strange warmth rising to her cheeks beneath her hood.
"Tch. You’re a weird one," Rhea said, turning her back to him to hide her expression. "Hurry up and take whatever samples you need. The smell is making me hungry."
"Hungry?" Arvid looked confused. "The scent of monster carcasses makes you crave food?"
"I mean... oh, just shut up! Move faster!"
Arvid chuckled, then began deftly collecting samples of the acid and the silk, placing them into sealed glass jars.
Ten minutes later, they resumed their journey.
The forest seemed a little less intimidating now. For Arvid, because he had the strongest shield. For Rhea, because she finally had a client who was... interesting.
"Hey Red," Arvid asked as they walked, his breath already beginning to grow heavy again. "If you can cut a spider with that much precision... could you cut hair? My fringe is getting quite long. It’s poking me in the eye."
Rhea nearly tripped over a protruding root.
"I am a professional assassin, not a damn barber!"
"Well... I thought you might want to diversify your skill set. Barbers in the capital are remarkably expensive these days."
Rhea felt a tiny, suppressed smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
Perhaps this mission wouldn’t be as boring as she had feared.
