Hit My Butt!
“Kieeeeeeeeeek—!”
The murderous aura Arachne emitted pressed down on the forest air like a heavy weight.
Eight crimson eyes locked onto me as prey, gleaming with grotesque hunger.
When the monster lifted one of its massive forelegs to stomp down, I instinctively hunched over into an awkward crouch.
“Ugh!”
My thighs and glute muscles, already shredded from yesterday’s brutal training, screamed in protest.
But right now, I didn’t have the luxury of caring about the pain.
“Hey! Don’t just stand there spacing out!”
Jinny, who had been summoned outside by me rubbing my butt, shouted at me.
“One graze from that thing’s leg and your body will be sliced clean in half!”
She was right. It was terrifying.
If that razor-sharp foreleg hit me, that’s exactly what would happen. This wasn’t a mana-based attack—it was pure physical force aimed straight at me.
“I know! Jinny, I’m trying to recreate the feeling from the training we did at the dojo yesterday!!”
The moment I yelled back desperately, Jinny, floating above my head, broke into a wicked grin.
Her blue eyes sparkled with equal parts mischief and bloodlust.
“From now on, clench your butt muscles with everything you’ve got.”
Then she showed a seriousness befitting an Original spirit—the first time I’d seen it.
“Imagine shooting your mana straight toward me.”
Jinny took a combat-ready stance and continued.
Supply mana to me. I'll handle the strikes.
I had no choice.
Right before Arachne’s leg came crashing down over my head, I squeezed my eyes shut and focused every nerve in my body on my buttocks.
I contracted every lower-body muscle I had—sphincter, gluteus maximus, the works—like a madman.
Immediately, the colossal mana that had been condensed inside my butt began to surge back violently.
Rumble—
The ground around me shook. A storm of mana aura swirled like a typhoon.
Jinny’s tiny body, receiving that overwhelming flow of power, blazed with blinding golden light.
“Alright. Time to show you my real strength.”
When Jinny thrust her small fist forward, a golden wave rippled in front of it, tearing open a massive ‘dimensional gate’ of mana.
And what came out of it was…
BOOM!
A gigantic fist.
Jinny’s punch had burst through the dimensional gate, swelling to enormous size as it smashed straight into Arachne’s foreleg.
Kieek?!
With a tremendous crash, Arachne’s leg was helplessly knocked away.
I stayed clenched tight, staring blankly at the scene.
The mana pouring out of my butt had transformed into that kind of absurd physical force.
“Hahaha! Did you see that?”
“Krrgh…!”
I grit my teeth and poured even more strength into my glutes.
The pain felt like my muscles were tearing apart, but I couldn’t stop.
Every time I maintained the flow, more dimensional gates opened around Jinny.
Bang! Bang! Thud!
A colossal golden foot descended from the sky and crushed Arachne’s back. A massive fist shot out from the side and slammed into its flank.
Jinny danced through the air like a puppet master controlling a giant marionette, mercilessly toying with the monster.
Every physical strike shook the entire forest as if an earthquake had hit.
Kieeeeeeeeeek—!
Along with Arachne’s piercing shriek, dozens of purple-mana-infused spider threads shot toward me like whips.
The sound of air being sliced stabbed my eardrums, and a sticky, acrid stench brushed past my nose.
“Uh… uhh?”
In the white-out terror where my feet were about to freeze, right at that moment—
KWAAAANG—!
Jinny appeared in front of me, golden hair whipping wildly, and threw another tiny punch.
The enormous golden fist that burst from the dimensional gate in front of her fist obliterated the incoming bundle of threads in one strike.
The smell of burning spider silk filled the air from the friction heat, and sparks flew everywhere.
“Hey! Don’t lose focus!”
Jinny whipped around and yelled at me.
“If you stop concentrating, I can’t draw mana from you!”
Her shout snapped me back to reality.
The golden aura surrounding her body was flickering in sync with the trembling of my glute muscles.
“O-okay! I’ll focus!”
Of course I wanted to focus.
But when I thought about it, this was unfair.
A normal high schooler was fighting a spider bigger than an eight-ton truck.
And that giant spider had nearly killed me just now.
“That thing’s momentum is no joke!”
I grumbled in frustration, only to get a snappy reply from Jinny.
“Shut up and clench that butt harder!”
She reached out toward Arachne again.
“If you go limp, I can’t use my full power either.”
But Arachne, enraged that its attack had been blocked, began to swell its body. Its eight red eyes rolled grotesquely.
Gurgle— Gurgle—
The bizarre pattern engraved on its back burned with purple light.
Rumble rumble rumble—
An unbelievable amount of spider silk poured out from Arachne’s mouth and the tip of its abdomen like a waterfall.
A mana web powerful enough to cover the entire forest came crashing down on us.
“…Huh? Wait, this is a lot—”
The moment Jinny’s panicked voice rang out, the massive wave of silk swallowed us whole.
I didn’t even have time to scream before I was swept into the sticky, mana-infused mucus.
Everything was covered in purple threads. The more I tried to move, the tighter the silk bound my limbs.
“Kyaaak! You monstrous bastard…!”
Jinny, tangled in the threads and flailing, squeezed out the last of her mana.
“You dare tie up this Jinny?!”
A brilliant golden flash exploded from her entire body.
KWAAAAAAAAANG—!
The shockwave blasted the silk pile that had covered us outward. Arachne, which took the hit head-on, was also thrown backward.
But ironically, it landed right on top of the giant, sticky spider-web trap it had just spread across the entire forest.
Splat!
Blasted by the powerful impact, Arachne couldn’t even control its own body and became helplessly stuck to its own silk.
It flailed all eight legs, but the berserk mana threads it had spewed out mercilessly restrained even their owner.
In the end, a bizarre scene unfolded in the middle of the forest.
A giant spider monster, a golden-haired spirit, and me—hunched over and wrapped head-to-toe in spider silk—were all frozen in place at regular intervals, unable to move an inch.
“Haa… Jinny, are you okay?”
To my worried question, Jinny grumbled back.
“Do I look okay? I’m completely out of mana… ugh, it’s so sticky.”
She too was dangling in mid-air, bound by the threads, pouting her lips.
“What the hell is this situation?!”
Perhaps because she had exhausted her mana, her body had become slightly translucent.
Just then, the sound of someone rustling through the bushes reached us.
“Baek Gangjin? …Jinny?”
The person who emerged from the thicket was Lee Chaeyeon.
After seeing the photo I sent, she must have gone to the gym storage room, then followed the suspicious spider silk and ended up here on the same path as us.
“You’re here!”
“You suddenly sent me just one photo, so I came wondering what was going on, but…”
Chaeyeon froze in place, staring blankly at the absurd three-way standoff before her.
A giant spider monster called Arachne, and me and Jinny wriggling around, bound in the exact same spider silk.
Her pupils shook, unable to find a place to settle.
“Um, Chaeyeon… the situation’s a bit complicated right now…”
“You don’t need to explain. I can see it.”
Chaeyeon pressed a hand to her forehead, looking utterly dumbfounded.
“You guys… all got tied up together?”
I saw blue lightning crackle around her right leg.
She looked ready to strike Arachne at any moment, but the mana density of the spider silk the monster had released was so high that attacking recklessly might endanger us too.
“Hey! Stop staring and help us!”
Jinny, still bound in silk, shouted at her.
“If you just reboot me right now, I can finish that thing off!”
“Reboot? What are you talking about?”
When I asked, Jinny looked at me and explained.
“Exactly what it sounds like! I’m stuck in the spider silk right now!”
She wriggled between the sticky threads.
“Just hit Gangjin with an external shock to temporarily paralyze his mana circuit!”
Here was Jinny’s plan.
Strike my butt to disrupt the flow of my mana.
Since she existed as scattered mana particles without a fixed form, the disruption would free her from the silk.
Right before her consciousness cut out, she would gather the scattered particles back together and reform her body.
That way, Jinny could escape the spider web.
It was actually a very simple method.
“Give it a shock? How exactly?”
“Simple! Just slap his butt really, really hard!”
Huh?
“That will temporarily twist his mana circuit and scatter my mana.”
I have to get my butt slapped?
“Then I can grab the scattered mana again and pull myself out of the silk.”
Jinny’s clear and utterly brutal explanation caused my brain to short-circuit.
Slap… my butt?
I was currently tied up in spider silk, so I couldn’t slap my own butt…
Oh?
But help had conveniently arrived. All I had to do was ask.
It was actually pretty simple, wasn’t it?
Still dangling from the silk, I shouted loudly toward Chaeyeon.
“Chaeyeon! Hit my butt!”
After my desperate plea echoed through the forest, everyone in the area fell silent for a moment.
I instinctively sensed that the mood had turned strange and reconsidered the meaning of the words I had casually blurted out.
Aha!
That was definitely not an appropriate request to make of Chaeyeon.
Her face, which had stayed silent until now, instantly flushed bright red like a ripe tomato.
She frowned and snapped at me.
“What the hell are you saying right now? Why would I slap your—!”
Kieeeeeeeeeek—!
In the meantime, Arachne, still bound in silk, began twisting its body little by little, loosening its restraints.
I could see venom gathering at the corners of its mouth again.
There wasn’t even a second to waste.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Caught between shame and survival, I ultimately decided to abandon my dignity.
“Chaeyeon! I’m sorry! But she says this is the only way!”
Still tied up in the silk, I desperately twisted my body and pushed my barely exposed butt toward her through the tightly wrapped threads.
“Please! Just slap my butt! Hurry!”
My desperate cry rang throughout the forest.
Some of the students hanging in the cocoons must have regained consciousness, or maybe they were startled by my scream, because a few let out groans.
Chaeyeon stared back and forth between my thrust-out butt, my deadly serious expression, and Jinny who was urgently yelling at her to hurry up and hit it.
The greatest logical conflict of her life was exploding inside Chaeyeon’s head.
Her reason screamed that this was insane, but the Arachne right in front of her had already finished preparing to break free from the silk.
“Baek Gangjin… you… seriously…”
Her voice trembled thinly.
She bit her lip hard, then concentrated mana into her leg with an expression like she was turning her back on the world.
Blue electricity crackled and hummed around her right leg.
“…If you say one weird thing about this later, I’ll kill you.”
Chaeyeon walked toward me with shaky steps.
“I really will.”
Her eyes were filled with a strange, complex mix of emotions—shame, shock, and a deep, fundamental doubt about where exactly her high school life had gone so horribly wrong.
I clenched my eyes shut and waited for the physical impact that would arrive any second, along with the moment of social annihilation that would never be erased for the rest of my life.
