Giant Spider (2)
From the blaze rising from Baek Sang-ah’s fist, a massive shape began to ripple and take form.
It was a spider, and yet not a spider.
Its body was so enormous that even Rangi’s seemed small by comparison, making the great cavern itself feel cramped and narrow.
Eight long, glossy black legs extended from its lower half.
The strange, precise grace of those limbs moved with an unnatural discipline, like some machine from the world Baek Sang-ah had once lived in.
Parting the clinging strands of webbing as it advanced, the creature was as repulsive as it was impossible to look away from.
Of course, the most unsettling thing about it was not the lower half at all, but the upper body of the spider demon.
“Yo-ouuuu. Yooouuuu. Hooooo… Raaaaaangiii!”
At a glance, it was the body of a human woman.
No—closer to a shape copied from a human and then made wrong.
The torso that rose incongruously from the spider’s lower body had a waist so beautiful it would have made any mortal stare blankly in admiration.
The skin above those curves was so pale it seemed almost bloodless, and under the light it reflected with a faint bluish cast.
Her shoulders were narrow and softly sloped, and her neck was thin in a way that did not suit the volume of her voice.
Especially striking was her chest, which, if not quite on the level of Baek Sang-ah—whose own seemed to swell larger every time her cultivation rose—was still enough to steal a man’s breath.
“Mouuuntaiiin—— Loooord! I-I thought you were deeeead!”
Her face was so beautiful one could have called her a peerless beauty fit for the histories, yet that beauty only served to make her seem less human.
Her lips, colorless and thin, were pressed into a tight line, and her eyes burned with a deep, molten gold.
Within them lay an emotion no beast should have been capable of: sorrow.
Baek Sang-ah instinctively drew in a breath.
She’s sad. Why?
Within the intent streaming from the demon, rage and grief tangled together into a dense, dark blue.
And all of it was aimed at Rangi.
“Grrr?”
“Rangi, did you do something wrong?”
Rangi, having no idea what it might be, shook her head frantically, but there was no time to relax.
Thud!
The spider demon had launched a stabbing strike at Baek Sang-ah with claws sharp as blades.
“Yooooouuuuu, Moooouuuuntaaaaiiin Loooorrrd! Youuuuu abaaaandooooned uuuuus!”
Its black legs came crashing down like a rain of spears.
The pointed tips were viciously sharp, tearing into the ground with a deafening screech.
Baek Sang-ah twisted on instinct and sprang clear.
“Sniff. I don’t smell human blood.”
A shark’s most reliable sense was smell, and blood was what she read best of all.
She could tell what sort of fish had spilled its blood in the sea just from the scent, and she had enough confidence in her nose to track it.
And yet, for some reason, the spider demon—who looked as though it ought to have fed on hundreds of humans without trouble—gave off no scent of human blood at all.
What she felt from it was only sorrow.
Something was wrong.
“Yooooouuuu! Becaauuuseeee oooof yooouuuu, weeeeee alll dieeeed!”
Seeing its master attacked, Rangi immediately bared her claws and lowered her stance.
She stilled her presence, looking ready to lunge and tear the spider before her to pieces.
“Rangi, don’t kill it.”
“Grr?”
“You understand?”
“Rrrow!”
The moment Baek Sang-ah finished speaking, Rangi moved.
Perhaps because they had fought side by side for over a decade, their breathing matched perfectly, as if they were one person.
More than that, thanks to the consciousness-training Baek Sang-ah had learned from the two immortals, she could send commands to Rangi without speaking aloud, directly through her own awareness.
As Rangi planted herself before the spider demon and drew its attention, Baek Sang-ah used the Great Void Divine Method to hide her consciousness within Rangi’s.
First, I need to get Hyeongeuk and the others out.
Using earth techniques, she bored a small hole into the cavern wall, slipped inside, and sealed the opening behind her to conceal her movement.
Following the trail of Hyeongeuk’s consciousness on the far side of the wall, she began building a stairway within the stone and climbed upward.
Even though it was only a basic earth technique for a cultivator, it proved astonishingly useful depending on how it was used.
“Whyyyyyyy! Whyyyyyyy did yooooouuuuuu aaaabaaaandoooon uuuuussssss!”
Meanwhile, with a roar, the spider demon hurled its eight legs at Rangi.
This cavern was a disadvantageous battlefield for her.
Tigers were not beasts that fought while openly exposing their bodies, and Rangi’s great size limited her movement.
But if she smashed the cavern apart, there was a chance the collapse would injure Daeji and Hyeongeuk.
“Grrrrrr!”
Rangi leaned against the wall and bared her sharp claws.
Compared to its enormous body, the spider demon sprinted with impossible speed, thrusting its spear-like legs at her.
Rangi’s claws and the spider’s legs clashed dozens of times in an instant, shaking the cavern to its roots.
She managed to block the demon’s assault, but the ground split beneath them, and her body was forced back toward the wall.
“Yoooouuuuu—beeeecaaauuuseee oooof yoooouuuuu!”
As the spider legs surged toward Rangi, who had been pushed back after several exchanges, Baek Sang-ah shouted,
“Rangi, you can use that now!”
“Rrrow!”
The spider demon reacted to the shout, lifting its head to look at the humans it had bound in its web.
But it was too late.
Baek Sang-ah had already torn through the web with her pointed teeth and tucked Hyeongeuk and the mole spirit beneath her arm, hiding herself inside the wall.
“Gaaaaahhhhhh!”
The spider demon roared in fury and lunged to smash itself against the wall where Baek Sang-ah had disappeared.
Then—
Flash!
The cavern flooded with blue light.
The source of that fierce radiance was neither the spider demon nor Baek Sang-ah.
It belonged to no one else but Rangi.
“Grrrrr….”
Blue light bloomed over Rangi’s entire body, and within that glow her form gradually shrank smaller and smaller.
Just as the spider demon, trembling, lunged at her again, one of its legs was seized by a tiger’s forepaw that shot out from the light, leaving it unable to move an inch.
Rangi recalled the voice of the Immortal Sword Celestial.
“The reason a demon’s body grows larger in the first place is to contain and bear the spiritual energy it cannot fully digest.”
“Grr?”
“Of course, a larger body also means it can hold more spiritual energy, but that is, in truth, an inefficient form.”
“Grrr?”
“Take your master, for example. She was much larger than you, and yet now she is far smaller than you are. And still, she has become stronger than she was then.”
“Grr!”
“That is compression. By fully digesting and absorbing spiritual energy, a demon does not become bigger, but smaller—more complete.”
At last, the light vanished, revealing Rangi’s transformed body.
She had become significantly smaller.
And yet the tiger now stood upright on two legs with regal poise, lifting her forepaws like hands.
“Rrrow!”
A tiger standing on two legs, its whole body packed with tightly honed muscle, blazing blue eyes, and a magnificent mane of black fur.
This was the form Rangi had learned from the Immortal Sword Celestial.
“Whaaaat kiiiiiiind of a poooose is thaaat!”
It was the stance of a mountain lord.
If Hyeongeuk had seen it, he would surely have burst into tears from the nose out of sheer emotion.
The flustered spider lashed out wildly like an animal, but Rangi’s forepaws blocked every strike as though letting the attacks flow past.
Her systematic, restrained movements made the demon’s assaults miss entirely.
“Graaah!”
“Yooooouuuuuu!”
When its attacks failed to land, the spider demon began spewing silk from its tail.
Clinging to the strands here and there was a green liquid—that was the spider’s poison.
The rocks touched by the webs dissolved at once, but not a single thread reached Rangi.
Soon, blue light gathered in Rangi’s fist.
The Immortal Sword Celestial’s spiritual energy, received from Baek Sang-ah, roiled within the tiger’s forepaw.
Then, slipping deftly through the web that spread across the cavern like a net, Rangi drove her fist straight into one of the spider’s legs.
Crack!
That steel-hard leg bent inward in an instant.
“Kyaaaaaaaah! It huuuuurts!”
The spider demon began thrashing in agony.
As the remaining seven legs flailed, cracks started spreading through the cavern walls.
Just as blue light flared once more around Rangi’s forepaw, Baek Sang-ah—now carrying Hyeongeuk and the two mole spirits—called to her.
“Rangi!”
“Rrrow!”
“Come here!”
The instant Baek Sang-ah called her name, Rangi dropped the mountain-lord stance, returned to all fours, and ran to her.
“Well done, Rangi. But don’t kill it.”
“Grr?”
“That spider wasn’t trying to kill us. I think there’s a story behind this.”
“Krrr….”
“I’m curious. The reason.”
Baek Sang-ah hoisted Hyeongeuk and the two mole spirits onto Rangi’s back.
Rangi, having understood, nodded.
“Go ahead first, Rangi.”
When Baek Sang-ah patted her on the rump, Rangi set off toward the cavern entrance with the labor union members on her back.
After sending Rangi away, she turned again to the spider demon, which was still rampaging in place.
It’s still sad.
[And now you mean to meddle in some other useless matter? A demon is something that ought to be slain.]
I’m still curious. I want to know why it’s sad.
[Hah. So this is your way. How could I stop a childlike curiosity such as that?]
Baek Sang-ah’s eyes flashed as she knelt and placed a hand on the ground.
Yellow-brown light flowed from her dark inner core into her palm, then sank back into the earth.
The cavern trembled, and the floor and walls shifted.
Before long, the cavern wall split apart, and rocks shot forth from within it, crashing into the spider’s body.
As more and more stones burst out from every direction, the wild thrashing of the spider demon was soon brought to a halt, pinned in place by countless rocks.
It’ll break free soon, so I need to figure it out before then.
Baek Sang-ah climbed the square jutting stones that had sprung up to hold the spider demon’s body, leaping from one to the next until she reached its upper half in an instant.
Then she silenced every one of her senses and focused all her consciousness on the spider alone.
I was able to see Dam So-dam’s memories, so I should be able to see the spider’s too.
With the world before her eyes turned completely black, the moment Baek Sang-ah’s consciousness touched the naked upper body, she began to sense the flow within.
Demonic energy ran through the legs and the whole body.
At the center of it all, she felt a demon core where purple and navy energy mingled together.
Then, the instant the spider demon’s intent was swallowed by Baek Sang-ah’s consciousness, its memories seeped in like fragments of broken glass.
“Shaa…!”
“Sniff?”
Before she knew it, Baek Sang-ah found herself amid a thicket.
And before her, between the branches, was a spider no bigger than the tip of a finger, spinning web after web.
That was the spider demon.