Unraveling the Threads
The spider thrashed in its own web, grunting and straining as if desperate to break free, but Seok-jun paid the sight no attention whatsoever. He simply walked past it and approached Mina.
"Are you badly hurt?"
"Ah, no." His tone was utterly casual, as though the icy expression he'd worn moments ago had never existed. She nodded in response. Simply facing Seok-jun was enough to make the trembling that had gripped her body while her life hung in the balance feel like a lie. A strange calm settled over her.
"You've injured your shoulder."
"It's just a little sting." If not for the sharp pain blooming where blood met air, she might have forgotten everything that had just happened.
"I'll apply first aid for now."
"Ah, thank you." Even that felt oddly gentle. When he sprayed the wound with hemostatic and wrapped it in bandages, the injury felt more like an accidental scrape from fighting a weak monster than anything serious.
"Don't ignore me!"
The spider, which had been struggling furiously, saw them chatting while completely disregarding it and shrieked in rage. It sent Seong-gyu lunging forward in an attack.
"Seok-jun! Behind—!"
"I was wondering where this guy had gone. So this is what he was up to?"
Before Mina could even finish her warning, Seok-jun seized the arm of the charging Seong-gyu and slammed him into the ground. The limp way he collapsed was slightly different from before, yet it was a perfect reenactment.
"You—what are you? You looked so insignificant that a single chimera should have been enough!"
The spider seemed stunned by the sight, forgetting to struggle as it shouted. Even Mina, who knew the extent of his power, still found the scene astonishing; to someone unaware, it must have been utterly shocking.
"Chimera, you say. How strange. All I've ever seen were crude failures."
Seok-jun answered in a bored tone, and the spider froze. Mina stared in confusion, unable to understand what was happening, but only for a moment.
"Failure?! You dare call it a failure?!"
His words must have struck a nerve. The spider began thrashing even more violently.
"Where do you see a failure?! I combined those worthless scraps that couldn't even qualify as imitations and turned them into something at least usable—a masterpiece!"
"Groooar."
As if responding to the spider's fury, the chimeras surrounding them let out low, ominous roars in unison. Some were the size of small hills; others took human shape. The sight was intimidating enough to make anyone shrink back, regardless of their actual strength.
"Then let's put that to the test."
Seok-jun showed no particular reaction to the display.
"Mina."
"Yes?" She answered reflexively when he called her name. He pointed to the chimera closest to their position.
"Would you face that one while adjusting your strength like before?"
"Is it really okay to fight it just like this?"
"If the rapier is an issue, I'll return it."
With a soft tap, Seok-jun somehow snatched her rapier—which had been stolen by the web and left dangling in midair—before it could embed itself in the ground where they stood. He offered her the hilt.
"I don't think that's the problem." Mina accepted the rapier in a daze and glanced at the spider. It was still grunting, focused entirely on trying to free itself from the threads that bound it. She still had no clear idea what was happening, but seeing it restrained, she decided it was safe enough to proceed.
"Grrrrr!!"
Right on cue, the chimera Seok-jun had indicated charged toward her as if it had been waiting for her attention. She decided to engage.
It was a named monster in the most common chimera form—a humanoid shape cobbled together from various swamp creatures.
I struggled quite a bit with these back then, too.
It had been one of the most annoying monsters she'd faced during practical training while still in college. She wasn't sure how it would fare now, but with other chimeras that could rush in at any moment, she stayed cautious. She formed flying knives, infused them with mana, and hurled them.
Slash!
Thud!
"Graaaah!!"
Its leg was severed with ridiculous ease and the creature toppled over. But only for a moment. It reattached the limb and came at her again. Mina tilted her head.
"Huh?"
"Hyahaha! See?! It's perfect no matter how you look at it!"
The spider interpreted the result as a victory and crowed arrogantly, but—
"It's too weak."
"Nonsense!"
The creature shrieked as if it couldn't believe what it was hearing, but her assessment was accurate.
Swoosh!
"Gr—ugh."
The chimera had barely reached them when Mina swung her rapier in a light vertical arc. It split cleanly in two, collapsing without managing a proper regeneration. Her conviction only grew stronger.
"But humanoids aren't supposed to die from something like this, right?"
The chimera they were currently standing on was infamous, but the humanoid variants had a notoriety all their own. While the massive ones relied on overwhelming size and power, the humanoids made full use of the special traits of the monsters that composed their bodies to defend and counterattack. Because they were smaller, they regenerated quickly, which was why the common strategy was to target and destroy the core. Yet this chimera had fallen apart so pathetically that it seemed impossible for it to be the same type of monster.
"No! No, that's not possible!"
"Of course it is. You can't just stitch together random wandering monsters to look roughly similar and expect them to become something else."
"Wait. Then all of these...?"
Mina looked around at the surrounding chimeras with dawning realization. At first glance, they all appeared to be named monsters. With this many, it might have been more accurate to call the place a C-Grade gate, or perhaps a demonic landscape.
"Yes. They are ordinary monsters pretending to be named ones."
"No! They're all real!"
"Then why haven't any of them moved until now? If what you say is true, they should have come running to help you long ago."
"Th-that's—!"
The spider faltered, seemingly unable to explain the reason itself.
"Eeeek! Fine, no more holding back! Vessel or not, I'll kill every last one of you!!"
It shouted triumphantly, as if it still had a hidden trump card, but—
"?"
Nothing happened. The area remained deathly silent. Mina scanned her surroundings in confusion. But nothing had changed. The only sight was the desolate ring of monster-puppets standing motionless with blank stares.
"Wh-why? Why won't my threads move?"
The spider's voice now carried an emotion closer to terror than mere panic—the voice of a child abandoned alone in an unfamiliar place.
"If you're talking about the threads that were inside these things," Seok-jun said, giving the chimera corpse beneath their feet a light kick, "then yes."
"How could you possibly—?!"
"Seok-jun. What exactly is going on here?" Mina finally asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. She could tell something was happening, but she was the only one completely in the dark.
"You'll understand quickly if you look at the cross-section where you cut that one."
Following his suggestion, she walked over to the spot she had sliced open and peered down. The grotesque sight of tangled monster flesh in the cut surface was revolting enough on its own, but something else immediately caught her eye.
"Threads?"
Dense strands, like a spider's silk woven through an old building, were packed throughout the severed chimera, connecting the disparate parts.
"He filled the chimeras with threads and used them to overwhelm you, creating a battlefield that favored him completely."
"So from the very beginning..."
"You were fighting on his home ground."
Only now did Mina understand how those nearly invisible threads had appeared out of nowhere in midair, without any anchors, and manipulated her so freely. The very ground they stood on had been part of his trap.
"But those threads... wait." Suddenly she noticed something. What she had assumed were all identical strands actually included some that looked different. Upon closer inspection, a portion of them were clearly not the same.
"Ropes? The reason that spider can't move its threads is..."
"Because I've bound them all with my mana."
When she checked the strands restraining the spider again, sure enough, what she had taken for spider silk were actually incredibly thin ropes formed from Seok-jun's power. The creature had mistaken them for its own.
"Impossible. Even so... something like this shouldn't be possible..."
The spider seemed to have pieced together the truth from their conversation. It trailed off as if losing its mind, then suddenly jerked its head up to stare at Seok-jun.
"Ah, ah, uwaaa. No way? No way! This can't be! It can't!"
It began flailing every leg in chaotic panic, all coordination forgotten, and screamed.
"Please forgive me! I didn't mean to do it on purpose!"
Mina couldn't comprehend why the spider was reacting this way. It looked exactly like a child caught doing something wrong.
"Contract? When this space disappears, I'll vanish quietly!"
The closer Seok-jun drew, the more desperately it struggled, to the point it was almost pitiful to watch.
"Peace! Let's settle this peacefully! Peace is good, right? Isn't it?"
It rubbed its two front legs together in a begging gesture, but—
"You know what? I don't believe in the word 'peace.'"
"Kr—krrk!"
Seok-jun grabbed its head without the slightest hesitation.
"Peace is something that has to be shown through actions."
"Sp-spare—!"
Crack.
The spider never finished its plea. Seok-jun twisted its head before it could.
"You should have chosen your footing more carefully."