The Real First Stream, Deep-Fried Blade Centipede Part 3
The bored stream-lurkers and malicious netrunners of the Hunter Community Forums had been intensely curious about the existence of Lee Sia from the very beginning.
She possessed a voluptuous figure with exceptionally large breasts and a face as beautiful as a celebrity's. On top of that, she was a returnee who had shown S-grade combat power immediately upon her return after decades of absence. It was only natural that expectations were sky-high.
Ever since the dawn of the Hunter Era, an S-grade hunter could easily become the face of an entire nation. From a country's perspective, it was the equivalent of acquiring another massive nuclear warhead.
It was only natural for all eyes to be on her.
This was especially true after her bizarre stunt in the Curtala Mountain Range, where she had made braised wyvern eggs with Cheon A-young, an A-grade hunter and professional streamer. Since then, she had kept everyone in suspense for a whole week without a single rerun or official announcement, making the stream-lurkers even more eager to tune in to this broadcast.
👁️ Viewers: 10,392
For a brand-new, small-time stream, pulling in over ten thousand viewers was an abnormal and unprecedented feat.
Yet, those who had tuned in to watch Sia's broadcast found themselves unable to tear their eyes away.
Of course, Lee Sia's stream frequently showed signs of her being a complete novice who had never broadcasted before.
Aside from running ahead without even checking if the drone camera was following her, she hadn't configured her stream settings properly. She hadn't even set up her chat filters, allowing raw profanity to be broadcasted live.
However, a few veteran stream-watchers noticed something else.
While this was undoubtedly Lee Sia's first time streaming, she clearly knew how to handle a crowd.
The toxic chat messages from malicious viewers didn't seem to faze her mental state in the slightest. Even though it was her first broadcast, she conversed naturally without a hint of nervousness—acting like someone who had stood before the public many times before.
"Huh? Why are you running away?!"
Sia was fully engrossed in her chase, tearing through Rotten Mountain to catch the plump, juicy ten-meter Blade Centipede.
If they were running on flat ground, Sia would obviously be much faster.
Her raw physical stats were on a different level, and the monstrous strength that could lift entire chunks of the earth was fully reflected in her leg power.
However, this was the B-grade dungeon, Rotten Mountain.
The dungeon earned its name from its countless dead trees, damp and humid soil, and ground heavily contaminated by the venom and corpses of Blade Centipedes.
While not as massive as the Curtala Mountain Range, it was still a vast erosion dungeon that had merged with the mountainous terrain of South Korea.
The ten-meter Blade Centipede darted through the rugged mountain paths, uneven ground, and rocky crevices to escape. Sia, on the other hand, kept tripping on the damp earth or getting blocked by trees and rocks, preventing her from catching the creature easily.
Thud!
"Ah, seriously...!"
She even threw her body forward to grab it, but the centipede desperately scurried its many legs to slip through the rocks, leaving Sia thoroughly frustrated.
"Isn't that centipede being too mean? I'm asking so politely, yet it just keeps running away..."
"Die? What a scary word. I'm just going to gently deep-fry its plump, fleshy body!"
"You guys are being mean too. Just watch. Out of sheer spite, I'm going to throw that Blade Centipede into the fryer and make it nice and crispy."
"Uh-huh, unhinged? I just want to become friends with the Blade Centipede!"
In the Hunter Community Forums, Sia was called by various nicknames like the 'Out-of-this-World Saintess', 'Titty Saintess', 'Egg Thief Saintess', or 'Phantom Thief Saintess'. However, it seemed the viewers of her official first stream had decided on her true nickname today.
'The Unhinged Saintess.'
Whether it was intentional or just a concept, she managed to draw out sharp reactions from the viewers without crossing the line. Instead of getting hurt, she turned it around to make them laugh with her bizarre antics.
The viewers didn't actually hate her antics.
In fact, it was strangely endearing, fitting, and hilarious all at once.
Her first impression was that of a beautiful, holy Saintess.
Then, things started getting weird when she stole the wyvern eggs. Cooking braised wyvern eggs in the middle of a dungeon was eccentric, but still within the realm of acceptability.
But deep-frying a Blade Centipede?
While spouting absolute nonsense?
This wasn't just eccentricity anymore.
This Saintess was simply unhinged by nature!
"Ugh, don't go!"
Like the tragic heroine of a romance fantasy novel, she reached out toward the centipede and called after it in a desperate voice. However, driven by the terror of being chased by an overwhelming predator, the Blade Centipede didn't stop, scurrying its legs to flee.
It was a mystery how a creature with a ten-meter-long body could move so quickly.
As the Blade Centipede slipped behind the rocks once again to escape her grasp, Sia narrowed her eyes and glared at the retreating creature in frustration.
"Hmph, if you're going to be like that, I have a plan too..."
Miracle: Holy Body Descent
Sia clapped her hands lightly, and more tentacles sprouted from her back like blooming flowers.
The five tentacles she had used before multiplied into twenty-five, writhing in the air. With so many of them, Sia looked less like a Saintess and more like a grotesque monster from another dimension.
"Alright, let's run!"
Clack! Clatter! Snap!
As if responding to Sia's command, the twenty-five tentacles gnashed their teeth in unison and lifted her off the ground.
Then, they began to fling her body forward like a shot put.
Crash! Boom!
Screeech...!
At that moment, the Blade Centipede felt it.
The presence of its natural enemy had grown far stronger than before.
The writhing, spider-like tentacles had multiplied significantly.
Earlier, she had at least run on her own two feet. Now, she was using those bizarre, slug-like tentacles to crush the very earth as she charged forward.
She wasn't even using her legs.
Four of the tentacles acted as legs, taking massive strides to eat up the ground, while another six gripped trees and rocks to adjust her direction.
And the remaining fifteen tentacles...
Clack, clatter, snap! Clack! Snap, snap!
Every single one of the fifteen tentacles was reaching out with vicious intent to grab the Blade Centipede.
Feeling the tentacles closing in, the Blade Centipede felt a primal terror, as if the maw of the abyss itself was opening up to swallow it whole.
"Don't... goooo~"
Screeech...!
Although the Blade Centipede normally possessed the intelligence of a human infant under a year old, the sheer terror of those grotesque tentacles opening their maws toward it temporarily boosted its cognitive abilities to that of a five-year-old.
It was a baseless theory, but life-threatening terror could spike a creature's intelligence and survival instincts. Thanks to this, the Blade Centipede strained its brain to find a way to survive.
Changing direction, the fleeing centipede began to lure her toward the rocks and forests where its kin were hiding.
But it was futile.
Crash! Thud!
Screeech!
Skreik!
The tentacles tore up the earth, shattering the trees and rocks in her path. Smaller Blade Centipedes that had been sleeping on the ground and rocks lunged at Sia for disturbing their slumber.
However, very few managed to touch her due to the sheer speed and force of her movement. Even when a few managed to crawl onto her body to bite her, Sia didn't pay them the slightest attention.
One furious little centipede bit Sia's face, but its venomous fangs simply crumpled against her hard skin. Only then did Sia notice its presence and glance down.
"Eat."
Snap. Clack!
Screeech!
Sia's spare tentacles instantly snatched and devoured the centipedes clinging to her body.
The swarm of its kin couldn't even slow her down, and the ten-meter Blade Centipede felt a crushing sense of despair and terror.
The viewers realized that Sia's eyes had indeed turned crimson.
Previously in the Curtala Mountain Range, when A-grade hunter Cheon A-young had pulled out the wyvern egg Sia was boiling, Sia had mistaken her for a thief and almost killed her on the spot.
Of course, Sia hadn't actually intended to kill her and regained her senses in less than a second. But if Cheon A-young had truly tried to steal the egg she had painstakingly boiled, her life would have been forfeit.
"Please stop, Mr. Centipede~ It won't hurt! I'm just going to fry you!"
The ten-meter Blade Centipede knew instinctively.
If it kept running like this, it would die. No matter how much it ran, its terrifying predator showed no signs of tiring. It had already burned through all the energy from the sewer rat it ate earlier.
Even though it was running for its life, it would reach its limit first. Once it collapsed from exhaustion, it would be caught and eaten by that terrifying tentacle monster.
Its kin had at least popped in an instant without time to feel pain, but its own death would surely be agonizing.
What should it do? What should it do?!
At that moment, the cells of the ten-meter Blade Centipede tingled.
Yes. If you want to deal with a monster, you pit it against another monster!
Having decided on its destination, the Blade Centipede veered sharply.
"Gotcha... Ah, where are you going now!"
Sia sighed as the Blade Centipede suddenly began to scale a cliff. Still, its climbing speed was significantly slower than its running speed on the ground.
"Whew, got you anyway. Hehe, come to big sister."
Just as she was about to stretch out her tentacles to grab the centipede, Sia froze.
What was that?
Something moved.
The ground?
The cliff?
Sia's hearing and sense of smell were far more acute than when she was human. Sensing the ground beneath her tilt slightly, Sia slowly looked down at her feet.
Something was emerging from beneath the four tentacles supporting her.
"Blades?"
Crack, snap!
Seeing a nearby rotten tree get torn apart, Sia realized.
Ah, I wasn't standing on the ground?
SCREEEEEEECH!!!
It wasn't the roar of a beast. Neither birds, monsters, nor goblins made such a sound. A horrific screech, like metal scraping against a blackboard, echoed from beneath the earth and the cliffside.
As the screech ended, Sia felt the ground she was standing on surge upward.
The viewers watching the feed from the drone camera gasped in horror.
The Blade Centipede Sia had been chasing was a ten-meter B-grade monster. She had targeted it simply because it was the longest and plumpest among the centipedes in Rotten Mountain.
But the creature now rising from the earth made them doubt if it was even the same species.
"Wow... it's huge."
Sia smiled faintly as a shadow fell over her.
Twenty meters... no, much longer. Maybe thirty meters?
A colossal centipede, as large as an apartment building, writhed out of the cliff and the ground. As it twisted its massive body and clattered its legs, Sia's mouth fell open in awe.
The legs attached to each segment looked far sharper and sturdier than those of a normal Blade Centipede, and a single segment of its body was larger than Sia's entire torso. She had rarely seen such a massive monster even in her previous world.
Centipede Dragon? What's that? Sia tilted her head.
Since it had 'Dragon' in its name, it must be different from a regular Blade Centipede. But then again, it smelled similar and was much bigger, so it must be packed with meat, right?
The Centipede Dragon dripped lethal acid and venom that could melt solid rock as it glared at the intruder who had disturbed its slumber.
It was a human. It had strange, tentacle-like appendages, but it was shaped like a human.
The Centipede Dragon, which had intended to sleep for a long time to gather strength, rose in fury at being awakened.
It was a monster born from a Dungeon Overbreak twenty years ago, which had mutated the Rotten Mountain dungeon and fused tens of thousands of Blade Centipedes into a single colony organism.
Since it was born from the fusion of countless monsters, it possessed a degree of intelligence. To avoid drawing the attention of humans, it had secretly fed on its own kin in Rotten Mountain to sustain itself, planning to fill the dungeon with enough of its kind to create another entity like itself.
Of course, it didn't actually know how to create another Centipede Dragon. It simply believed that if it bred enough of its kin to turn Rotten Mountain into a paradise for centipedes, another Centipede Dragon would eventually be born.
Once another was born, it planned to mate with it and turn Rotten Mountain into a nesting ground for Centipede Dragons instead of mere Blade Centipedes.
It would not let this human die easily. It would chew her alive and make her scream.
Grinding its teeth in rage, the Centipede Dragon coiled its massive body and blade-like legs around the human to block any escape route, ensuring she could be killed right here.
Yet, Sia's eyes weren't even on the Centipede Dragon. She was looking at something on the cliff above.
She didn't care about the Centipede Dragon at all. Even as the massive, segmented body coiled around her, Sia stared at the ten-meter Blade Centipede clinging to the cliff with teary eyes.
"Sniff... You... you were actually a good centipede...!"
"Everyone, listen. That Blade Centipede led me to good fortune... It was a lucky centipede...!"
Even with an S-grade monster appearing, the viewers somehow didn't feel worried about this unhinged Saintess at all.
Although they couldn't predict what other bizarre stunts she would pull or how she would defy expectations on her very first stream, they knew one thing for sure.
They didn't need to worry about this big-chested, gluttonous, unhinged Saintess losing her life.
"Guys." Sia looked at the drone camera hovering near her. "Want to see something cool?"
"Yeah. By the way, do you know how to send the drone further away? To a higher altitude. I heard it moves automatically, and I'm worried it might get broken if it stays too close to me."
"Really? Thank you!"
Learning the simple drone control method from the chat, Sia sent the association's rented drone high into the sky. It was a high-performance drone she had borrowed, and it would be a waste to break it here.
Even as she watched the Centipede Dragon's body constrict around her, crushing trees and rocks, Sia continued to smile calmly.
"Hehe, *drool*..."
Actually, it wasn't just a smile. Saliva was slowly dripping from her mouth out of sheer hunger.
Wiping her mouth, Sia felt the tentacles wrap around her body. The tentacles mutated by the miracle of *Holy Body Descent* shared her body, will, and emotions. Sensing what Sia wanted to do, the twenty-five tentacles slowly wrapped around her.
Like a flower closing its petals at sunset, or a caterpillar spinning a cocoon, the tentacles completely covered Sia's body.
Then, Sia's voice, laced with holy power, echoed through Rotten Mountain.
Great Miracle: False Deity Manifestation
Clack.
The sound of teeth gnashing.
Clack.
It wasn't just one.
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
One became two. Two became four. Four became eight, and eight became us.
Using our Evil Nature as a seed, watered by gluttony, sprouting from appetite.
Now, bloom.
The hideous maw of malice.
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
The sound of countless teeth gnashing, flesh squelching, rising, boiling, tangling, tearing, and regenerating.
The twenty-five tentacles wrapping Sia's body exploded in a burst of flesh. From the ruptured flesh, even more massive tentacles regenerated.
Startled by the sudden development, the Centipede Dragon coiled around Sia like a snake to crush her, but the swelling mass of flesh and tentacles was not something it could suppress, no matter how hard it tried.
Screeech!
Teeth erupting from the flesh began to bite and tear into the Centipede Dragon's body. The monster hastily tried to uncoil itself.
Skreik?!
However, the Centipede Dragon panicked as its body refused to budge.
With a massive body exceeding thirty meters, its strength was colossal. It could easily topple human buildings just by moving, and it could overturn Rotten Mountain if it wished. Yet, for the first time since its birth, the Centipede Dragon felt completely powerless.
The mass of tentacles coiled at the center of its body held it in an iron grip, swelling larger and larger.
Soon, the multiplying mass of tentacles and flesh grew to a size comparable to the Centipede Dragon. No, it was much larger—so large that the Centipede Dragon had to raise its head to look up at Sia's mass of flesh.
At the highest point of the mass, a giant flower bloomed.
It was not a beautiful flower. It was a terrifying, magnificent, and dread-inducing form, like the flower of a monstrous carnivorous plant.
And from that flower, Sia raised her head. Her lower body was buried in the mass of flesh and tentacles, while her upper body emerged from the blooming petals.
Having sprouted the hideous mass of flesh, Sia smiled at the drone camera zooming in on her face.
"Ah, can you see me clearly, viewers?"
The viewers watching the scene through the drone camera went beyond shock and felt genuine terror. After using some strange miracle, her tentacles had multiplied and grown to the size of the Centipede Dragon, turning the stream into a giant monster battle, while the streamer herself bloomed like a flower atop a chimera.
"What do you think? Cool, right?"
"Now, let the monster battle begin!"
Crunch!
With those words, the Centipede Dragon's head was bitten off by a massive set of teeth.
"Ah, I ate it... I wanted to have a monster battle..."
Crunch, munch, crunch, munch.
Crack, snap!
Gulp.
Clack, clack.
Crunch!
The Centipede Dragon didn't even have time to register its death. Fortunately for it, its head was torn off before it could feel any pain, ending its life functions instantly.
And Sia began to happily devour the potent Evil Nature it left behind.
The viewers suddenly questioned if she was truly a Saintess...
But what did it matter?
Since she was showing them something this spectacular and grand, if she said she was a Saintess, then she was a Saintess.