Life Never Goes According to Plan
Life, as a rule, never goes the way you think it will.
—Ssssshhhrrrk!
A tearing howl of air. An overgrown foreclaw, developed like a crab's pincer, sliced through the darkness and came flying straight at him.
Only a few meters ahead of Gong Ryun lay a wide cavern — the very space he had been sprinting toward. A few more steps and he would have reached it.
The man was still propped against the wall, head bowed. Poison and wounds covered him from head to toe. To anyone looking, he was spent.
A hunter, by nature, waits for the moment.
You strike when the prey is weakest — and you drive the blow as deep as it will go.
Ah. The end of the hunted.
The Arachne's claw thrust clean and true, aimed straight for Gong Ryun's heart.
—Kishishishishi!
The Arachne grinned. It was over.
And then the mouth of that pitiful man who was supposed to take the blow opened.
"It ain't over yet, you son of a bitch."
Gong Ryun pulled out the hand he had been hiding behind his back — the hand that had been gathering internal energy at an angle the Arachne could not see. Blue force rippled along the flow of his qi.
"Parangjang."
Jayoongjirang. A wave that rises of its own accord.
Form Four was a brand-new technique — still hot off the press, barely learned. It did not wait for a current to meet a cliff and become a wave. The moment the flow left the palm and traveled a set distance, it became a wave on the spot. From the palm as a point of origin, a collection of points at a fixed length drew a specific shape: a hemisphere centered on the hand. Every ounce of the shockwave's power concentrated across that hemispherical surface.
In other words — a hemispherical barrier. A dense dome of shockwaves that bounced back an enemy's attack or projectile without a single gap.
—Kiiiiiing!!!!!
Micro-shockwaves poured from his palm and transformed midair into a hemispherical wave-barrier. It looked like some kind of energy force field. Duration: half a second at most. You could only use it if you knew the exact timing of the incoming strike.
Which was why Gong Ryun had staggered, braced against the wall, and played wounded. The Arachne was bound to attack one more time before he reached the open cavern. The thing would want to fight on ground of its own choosing. It might even pour everything into a finishing blow. So he had decided to bait the timing himself.
An all-out performance of pain. Of course, half of it had been genuine.
And it worked. Of course it did. Intelligence or not, a beast was still a beast. What did it think it was doing, standing before the lord of all creation?
Perfect timing. Perfect range.
In that half-second flicker, the Arachne's slash collided with the barrier.
—KAAAAAAAAANG!!!!!!
A violent crash. This barrier was not merely for stopping projectiles. The barrier itself was made of shockwaves. Land a perfect-timed deflection, and it unleashed a ferocious rebound pulse.
In short — a parry.
The Arachne's foreleg buckled backward under the impact. Its body lost balance and collapsed hard. A full-body stun from absorbing the parry's shock.
Now!!!!!
In that instant Gong Ryun flung himself toward the open cavern.
He truly launched his whole body. With his mobility already gutted by the spider silk, he took a few running steps and threw himself into a diving leap — like a base runner sliding home with everything he had.
…
And it was a spectacularly bad choice.
—Splorch!!!!!!!!
Huh? Why does that sound like a splat?
He had slid across the floor. Not a thud. Not a clatter. A splorch?
Gong Ryun looked down.
Then he looked around.
It was a wide cavern, all right — a great junction where several sewer tunnels converged.
But…
Poison webbing…
The entire floor was covered in toxic spider silk.
Sticky green liquid, thick with venom, pooled across the ground like a shallow lake. And in one corner of that liquid pool sat a familiar object — an egg the size of a human head, half-submerged as if taking a hot spring bath.
Gong Ryun had seen this sort of thing before. He had seen it when he fought the Hydra, hadn't he?
A nest.
An Arachne nest.
A giant spider's home sweet home, filled to the brim with toxic fluid.
Right. Arachne were space locusts too. Official designation: Cosmic Arachne.
"…No. No, wait. I definitely came back the way I—"
He had definitely been heading back the way he came. The way he came…
…
It hadn't been the way he came?!
Had he gotten lost? Taken a wrong turn?
It was more than possible. His head was fogged with poison, and he had been so busy tracking the Arachne that he barely had a thought to spare. The tunnels were pitch-dark and nearly identical. He could easily have mistaken the path and gone somewhere else entirely.
In the middle of a poison-slash-psychic triple combo, a few wrong turns would not have been surprising.
But into the nest?
That kind of coincidence didn't exist.
Wait. No way…
I got herded?
If the Arachne had been steering the direction of his escape — if all that chaos had been to drive its prey into the nest — then everything Gong Ryun had done with his hard-charging counterassault so far was…
—Kishishishishi!!!
The Arachne's mocking laugh rang out.
"Th… the lord of all creation…"
Had he been played? By a beast?
Gong Ryun was genuinely shaken.
—This way, it is. Kishishishishi.
A presence stirred from the tunnel Gong Ryun had emerged from.
The familiar Arachne strolled out at a leisurely pace.
It no longer bothered hiding in the dark.
It was that confident now.
Well… it was home ground. Prey caught in the web. Nothing left to fear.
Only then could Gong Ryun see the creature in full.
A giant spider, pure and simple.
A body the size of a large bull. Legs stretched long and thin. Eight eyes glowing a sickly yellow.
Two foreclaws and forelegs developed to an extreme length, like a flower crab's.
And separate from that grotesque spider head, something else sprouted from the creature's back like a mushroom — a human head. A neck and head dangled from its dorsal side as if someone had planted a sprout there. No other human parts. Just the head.
The fake human head had a woman's shape. Long hair, dead-pale skin. But no eyes — the sockets were hollowed out as if carved away. With eight eyes already on the spider head, it probably had no further need for them.
The human head opened its mouth.
—Madoka Mysterious Moonlight! Magical Girl of Justice!
That fake head was the organ that mimicked human speech.
No matter how many times I see it, it's still grotesque…!
Gong Ryun simply could not get used to this life-form.
—Shrrrng!
The spider raised its two pincer-like foreclaws.
It smacked its lips.
Gong Ryun settled into a stance.
The floor was far too sticky. Every step glued his feet down. Running was essentially impossible.
Toxic fumes rose through the air. Breathing was getting harder.
Still — fine.
The thing was no longer hiding.
At least now a real fight could take shape.
In a fair one-on-one, he wouldn't lose!
"Come on, then!"
Surely there wasn't anything else… right?!
—Kishishishishishi!
—Kishishishishishi!
—Kishishishishishi!
Then more laughter poured in — voices rising from the other tunnels connected to this place.
"…Huh?"
From the darkness of each separate sewer passage, spiders emerged.
Like gladiators stepping into the Colosseum.
"……A gang-up?"
It had called its kin. Three of them.
"…I—if we fight head-on, I still have a shot at…"
Gong Ryun forced himself to stay calm. And in the next instant—
—Chwaaaaaak!!!
A shape erupted from the slime pool behind him.
The broodmother.
A little larger than a common Arachne, and a little more viciously put together. Young enough that it wasn't as overwhelming as the Hydra broodmother he had faced before — but a broodmother was still a broodmother. The kind of thing mercenaries had to raid in groups to kill.
The broodmother twitched its long foreclaws and eyed the intruder. Drool hung in strands from its mouthparts.
"…"
Gong Ryun had no choice but to admit it. He was completely fucked.
Insane, stacked-deck bullshit.
By that point Gong Ryun had lost his words. In their place, his mind spun at a furious pace.
Somehow. Somehow he had to form a strategy. Even if he was about to die, he could not just stand there blank. Giving up on trying was not an option.
Gong Ryun glared at the spiders.
Too many of them. An area attack? Hwangheojang? No — not enough internal energy.
Geumnasu? He couldn't even reach them. At least not as an opener.
Parangjang. That still had a chance. If he used the parry…
Could he roll and dodge in this terrain? Or was he stuck tanking everything with protective qi?
Hit the broodmother first? He might just get flattened. Better to clear the minions first?
Attacking first was out. The second he left an opening, he would get skewered…
His head felt like it was going to explode. Maybe the goal was no longer victory but survival. Honestly, the odds looked nonexistent — and still Gong Ryun steeled himself.
"HEY!!! You animal bastards!! Come at me all at once, you sons of bitches!!!!!"
Gong Ryun fired a full-throated battle cry toward the front. Even if he died, he would die with his courage intact.
He set his stance and prepared for a brutal fight.
And not long after—
—Ssssshhhrrrk!!!
—Thud-crash-tumble!!!
Gong Ryun was rolling across the floor again.
He had taken a massive hit from a foreclaw.
Every roll coated his skin in more poison.
"Cough!! You cowards to the bitter end…"
The Arachne were clever, all right. They never simply charged in.
They just fired venom from every direction. The broodmother even launched bone-spike projectiles. A pure surround-and-destroy formation.
And in between: whenever Gong Ryun looked front, a slash came from behind; whenever he looked back, a slash came from front. On and on.
A textbook gang-up.
At some point a reasonable suspicion crept in — were they just toying with him? Highly possible. A sandbag as sturdy as Gong Ryun didn't come along every day. The spiders were probably having a blast.
Which might explain why, at a certain point, the slashes stopped feeling like cuts and started feeling like club swings. The broodmother's in particular hit so hard that each one made him feel like a baseball.
Of course Gong Ryun counterattacked plenty.
But Geumnasu was too slow to land, and the moment he raised his arm for Parangjang's casting motion they simply hopped backward out of range, rendering it useless.
In the end, Gong Ryun was just eating the gang-up's combo for all it was worth.
As if things weren't bad enough — and then they got worse.
—Kishishishishishi!
From beyond the tunnels, yet another laugh drifted in.
There's another Arachne? Medilla, what the hell did this woman—
Gong Ryun staggered to his feet.
The stamina he had left to hold on could be counted on one hand.
Maybe survival was already shot. Even if he killed every one of these, more kept coming. Still — he refused to die in a way that would embarrass him.
He decided that if he was going down, he was at least landing one Geumnasu on the broodmother.
—Ssssssshhhhrrrrk!!!
Right on cue, the broodmother launched a slash from behind him.
By now he knew the sound alone. Get hit enough times and you learn. He even had a sense of the timing. Experience really was everything.
Gong Ryun wrung out the last of his strength.
—KAAAAAAAAANG!!!!!
—???!!!
The broodmother flinched. Its toy had not gone flying with a satisfying thump.
Instead he stood upright. A little shoved back, his stance looking ready to collapse — but he held.
Blood vessels burst in Gong Ryun's eyes. His legs shook. Just now he had abandoned every scrap of protective qi dedicated to the poison. He poured every remaining shred of focus into physical defense alone. A death's-door second wind of pure killing intent.
The poisoning accelerated beyond anything before. And still Gong Ryun's eyes refused to die.
He clamped a hand around the foreclaw resting on his shoulder.
—!!!
The broodmother wrenched its leg back hard to free the claw, but Gong Ryun's grip might as well have been a mountain. It did not budge.
Gong Ryun did the thing he did best.
The joint-locking palm — refined into a crushing technique.
—Crrrack!!!!!!!
—Chwaaaaaak!!!!!!!!!
The broodmother's foreleg tore free.
Bodily fluid sprayed into the air in a glittering arc.
The claw and outer shell had been astonishingly tough — but the joint, it seemed, was not.
As Gong Ryun rotated his palm, the joint twisted in a direction joints were never meant to go, and the muscle shredded. He applied a little more force, and the mangled joint section ripped out whole.
Exactly like cracking a boiled crab leg at the joint and pulling the meat free in one long draw.
—Kiiiiirrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
The broodmother's scream tore free — not the mimicked voice, but its own raw cry.
The other Arachne's faces went pale in an instant. They clearly had not expected their toy to rip their broodmother's arm off.
They all lunged at Gong Ryun at once. This time they meant to take his head for real.
—Ssssshhhrrrk!
—Ssssshhhrrrk!
—Ssssshhhrrrk!
Ah. He couldn't stop those. Gong Ryun knew it by instinct.
The moment he understood that, time seemed to slow — the way it does when your life flashes before your eyes.
The scene in his vision played back in slow motion.
Foreclaws flying in. In the stretched seconds he almost felt he could see the fine structure of the claws. The furious faces of the spiders. The Arachne charging in the lead. The fake head on its back filling his vision. And beyond that, in the dark tunnel he had come through — another black shape bursting out. Probably a late-arriving Arachne reinforcement.
…
……
………
No.
"Kishishishishi!"
Not a mimicked voice. The original.
Long, black, wild hair. Pale skin. A gloomy, oddly cute face.
Medilla.
?
The instant he recognized her, time snapped back to full speed.
And what happened next was over in a blink. Gong Ryun barely even registered it.
Medilla came flying out of the tunnel. She looked as light and graceful as a butterfly — and still she was faster than the Arachne's charge.
As she flew she raised one hand. Her long black nails were striking. She flicked her wrist with a soft shhk.
The Arachne between Medilla and Gong Ryun — the one that had been leading the charge — was julienned. Like carrot strips for a kimbap roll. Its body was sliced into several strands exactly along the path of those nails.
Claw technique refined to the absolute peak.
The Arachne came apart in pieces, but inertia kept the body flying forward. Chunks of Arachne meat slapped wetly against Gong Ryun.
The other Arachne, animal instinct screaming survival, aborted their slashes mid-swing. They converted the momentum of their charge into a full leap past Gong Ryun into the space behind him — putting as much distance as possible between themselves and Medilla.
Having finished dressing her cold spider salad, Medilla alighted lightly on the floor. She set her feet on the toxic liquid and did not sink — she stood atop it. The water-walking art of Deungpyeongdosu.
Then she planted both hands proudly on her hips and greeted him with bright cheer.
"Kishishi! My first vassal!!! It is quitting time!"
Woo-heh-heh!
Medilla beamed.
"And to think you even played with the Arachne — how commendable it is! As expected of my vassal! Thou shalt become my full-time employee!"
That sunny smile — as if nothing were wrong, as if nothing at all had gone amiss — nearly made Gong Ryun lose consciousness on the spot.