Arachne (1)
The items I'd busted my ass making went up on the Cosmic Market. Since they still had to go through quality checks and curse inspections, it would take a few days after I handed them over before they actually hit the sales listings.
Which meant until those items sold, I was flat broke. And for a poor, low-profile goddess trying to gather divinity, what options were there, really?
"So today we're running random matchmaking again!"
Battles, of course. When Lan-lan-i clapped with pure excitement, even Cheonsol — who'd been looking thoroughly unimpressed — started clapping with equal passion.
Clap clap clap clap
"Battle! Battle!"
"Lan-lan-i. Do you like battles that much?"
"Yeah! Mad Demon battle! Mad Demon fights good!"
"And how would you know that?"
"Mommy told me!"
Completely conquered by the cuteness, Cheonsol scooped Lan-lan-i into a tight hug. Buried in her mother's chest and giggling, Lan-lan-i started pawing at the thick martial arts robes.
"Hungry..."
"Just a little longer, child."
Cheonsol peeled off her clothes piece by piece and latched Lan-lan-i onto her breast. Since the girl had already drunk her fill of blood earlier, there was no need for any bloodsucking this time.
"Bwaah."
"Even Lan-lan-i's burps are adorable. Mother shall pat your back for you."
"Hehehe."
Sophia had been watching the mother-daughter bonding with envious eyes before she snapped back to herself.
"I'm starting the match now, okay?"
"You still haven't started it?"
"I was waiting for Cheonsol to finish nursing! Anyway, I'm really starting it!"
We'd been listed on the rankings, but that didn't mean we only matched against ranked players. Still, we only got paired with gods who'd won five or more matches in a row, so the quality of our opponents had gone up.
With that higher bar came longer wait times. After about a minute of searching, a match locked in.
Search Complete!
We arrived in the familiar Colosseum. Lan-lan-i, stepping into the spectator stands for the first time in her life, went wild and started scampering around in every direction.
"Kyaa!"
"Lan-lan-i. You mustn't run around like that."
"Mommy, you run too! It's so huge here!"
"Ugh!"
Cheonsol clutched her chest again. I understood completely.
"Lan-lan-i is pretty cute, huh."
"What are you talking about? It's because my divine realm is too small..."
"Ah. Right."
It was small, to be fair. What kind of divine realm out there had nothing but a single house? Everything beyond the house was just black empty space, and with transparent walls sealing it off, you couldn't even go exploring.
"Let's check our battle opponent."
"Mm. Yeah!"
We looked at the god standing on the opposite side. A body so massive you could recognize it at a glance even from far away. Each of her eight legs was as thick as a garden tree, gleaming with a healthy sheen.
Above those legs sat a spider-like lower body, and from the waist up she shifted into a humanoid form. Sitting atop a set of straight, defined abs was a pair of breasts bigger than Sophia's head.
She wasn't wearing a bra, so her faintly yellowish bare breasts and light-brown nipples were fully on display. Higher still: well-developed shoulders and collarbones. A jawline sharp enough to dig a hole in the ground if you used it as a hoe, and lips as vivid red as if she'd just eaten a mouse.
Add the beauty mark under her eye into the mix, and she was practically dripping with sensuality. If some deviant sex maniac from Earth had laid eyes on her, he would have risked death itself just to shove his cockhead her way. The name of this dangerously alluring race was...
"Those tits are huge."
"An Arachne!"
Sophia's scream was so loud it completely buried what I'd said. I was supposed to name the race, but those milk tanks looked so delicious I slipped up. Nobody heard me, so whatever.
"Mad Demon?"
"Our little Lan-lan-i. Want to play with Daddy?"
"They're big..."
"Haha! Our Lan-lan-i really loves her daddy!"
"Big!"
Hey now. Quiet, Lan-lan-i. Babies aren't supposed to say things like that.
"Uh, oh no. Of all things, an Arachne..."
"Is she a strong god?"
"You do not know of the Arachne?"
Cheonsol snatched Lan-lan-i out of my arms and began explaining.
"The Arachne are a truly mighty race. The raw power born of their massive frames. An outer shell as hard as a martial artist who has trained Iron Cloth to its absolute peak. Those two factors alone are enough to crush most warriors flat — but the ability one must truly fear is their magic."
"Arachne use magic?"
In every piece of fiction I'd seen, Arachne just bound their prey in spider silk and ate them, or offered up their cunts and that was it. They were such a niche character type that I'd never even faced one in a fighting game.
"Indeed. Their lower half may be a spider, but their upper half is human, is it not? They are a race born with a natural aptitude for magic, precisely to protect their vulnerable parts."
What a disgustingly unfair race. How was a human who couldn't even handle mana, let alone magic, supposed to live with that kind of envy? I was still grumbling when the Arachne opened her mouth.
"Are we done talking nooow?"
"Arachne..."
"I really hate that. I have such a pretty name — Ellis — and you just call me Arachne? How would you feel if someone ignored your perfectly good name and just called you by your race?"
The Arachne spoke with a nasal lilt trailing off the end of every sentence. Sophia's face went the color of dirt.
"Don't tell me you're Ellis, ranked thirty-eighth?"
"That's right. And you're that Sexy Newbie, aren't you?"
Sophia flinched hard. Cheonsol frowned and dug a finger in her ear.
"This lady must have misheard. There is no way she would look upon my Master and call her a Sexy Newbie."
"Mommy's a dummy! The spider lady called Master a Sexy Newbie!"
"Lan-lan-i?"
Cheonsol's pupils dilated from the shock.
"From whom did you learn such a foul word?"
"Mad Demon!"
"Wasn't me."
The kid figured that one out on her own. Seriously.
"We shall revisit this conversation after the battle."
"No, I'm telling you it really wasn't me."
"Did this lady not say we would discuss it later?"
I'd never once said the word "dummy" in front of Lan-lan-i. This was so unfair I could die.
Sophia, completely ignoring our little farce, was trembling.
"H-how did you know?"
"I saw the post that kid RealMan put up on the board. A goddess with breasts as big as our race's, a pretty Vampir, and a mad human — that combination could only be the Sexy Newbie, right?"
"I'm here too!"
Lan-lan-i got angry. The Arachne, startled, scanned us over — then craned her neck way forward before she finally spotted Lan-lan-i bouncing around in Cheonsol's hands.
"Oh my."
"I'm not Mommy! I'm Lan-lan-i!"
"You're sooo adorable. Lan-lan-i, was it? Want to be my babyyy?"
"No!"
Lan-lan-i puffed out her cheeks in fury. She looked just like me — adorable. The Arachne put a hand to her massive breasts in mock shock and sighed.
"What a shame. I didn't see her in the post, so she must be a recent addition. Whose child is she? The Vampir girl's, perhaps?"
"She is the child of this lady and the Mad Demon."
Cheonsol stepped forward, internal energy pouring off her entire body in streams. The force of her aura was so intense that the hems of her robes billowed and snapped.
"How dare you. With this mother standing here with both eyes wide open, you would try to snatch away her child! Even for a god, that is an unforgivable sin!"
"Sorry about thaaat. She was so cute I thought she was a fairy. Looking closer, she takes right after her mommy. But who's the daddy, you said?"
"Me."
I stepped forward, peeling off my top and tossing it aside. I couldn't blast out internal energy like Cheonsol, but I had the pecs and abs that Iron Man had built for me!
I flexed my chest and made the muscles jump, and Sophia dropped her head straight down. Even Cheonsol, whom I'd counted on, withdrew her internal energy and sent me a look of pure dismay.
"Just like I'd heaaard."
The Arachne lifted one leg and spun it in a circle beside her own head.
"You're completely insane."
"Khk!"
"Honestly, I thought it was just the ugly jealousy of a loser. But stripping your shirt off right in front of an Arachne? You're way more unhinged than the posts made you sound ♡"
Why did that sentence feel like it ended with a heart? And on top of that, the Arachne was licking her lips.
I couldn't make sense of it, so I asked Sophia.
"Why is she acting like that?"
"W-well, Yohan. Arachne are a race that doesn't wear clothes on their upper bodies, you know?"
"I can see that."
She was proudly displaying those giant milk tanks — how could I not see it? Anyone who wasn't blind would know.
"So when Arachne mate, they also take their tops off. But because of their racial traits, they're all female, so they have to mate with other races."
"What's mating?"
Don't look at me like that.
"It means sex."
"Haa... Fine. Anyway, they have to have sex with other races to produce offspring, but a race that's already expanded into the cosmos can't just grab random people and rape them, right?"
"Why not?"
I'd raped Evrande and raped Cheonsol and gotten eggs out of both of them. It was a perfectly reasonable question, and all I got for it was a knuckle to the skull.
"Anyway! A tradition formed where if a clothed race wants to have sex with an Arachne, they go find one and take their top off! Which means you just sent a green light to the goddess Ellis!"
"You abbreviated a lot, but you hit all the important bits. That's riiight."
So without even realizing it, I'd sexually propositioned an Arachne? And that was why this Arachne with the giant mama tanks was drooling over me?
Hmm...
"Possible."
"What do you mean, possible! Just because this lady calls you Mad Demon, have you actually gone mad?!"
"Think about it logically!"
Her lower half was a spider, but her upper body was human! How good would it feel to bury my cock between those plump lips? Her mouth was big enough that she could swallow my whole dick and still have room to spare.
And those huge breasts? If she pressed them together, I could probably lie down on them like a bed. Even her navel was lewd. It looked similar to a pussy, and given her size, the hole was deep enough that I could fit the head of my cock right in.
"Mad Demon. Remember this well. Your common sense is not common sense. Do you understand?"
Cheonsol's pressure was so intense I couldn't argue back. If I kept preaching the charms of the Arachne, I was going to get a brutal hit straight to the solar plexus.
A pitiful, henpecked husband, I raised the white flag.
"Fine..."
"Why so dejected? In the first place, it is not that goddess who appears in battle, but her minion."
"Wouldn't the minion be pretty too?"
"You truly are—! This lady is second wife and has tried to be as accommodating as possible, but this is simply too much! Do you intend to breed with an Arachne minion and make a little sibling for Lan-lan-i?!"
"I don't have a little sibling?"
Lan-lan-i, who'd been listening quietly, went wide-eyed with shock. Sensing she was about to cry, Cheonsol hurriedly soothed her.
"Why would you not have a little sibling? Do we not have an egg in our home even larger than Lan-lan-i herself?"
"Uuu..."
"Your little sibling is inside that egg."
"Really?"
"Indeed. If Lan-lan-i takes good care of it, a cute little sibling will come out."
"I like little siblings! Mommy! Mad Demon! Finish the battle quick and let's go home! I wanna take care of my sibling!"
Thank god Lan-lan-i didn't cry. Cheonsol really knew how to handle kids. As expected of Mama Cheonsol.
"Mad Demon. You had best prepare yourself."
"You only talk like that to me."
"If you do nothing wrong, this lady will have no cause to scold you."
She really only talks like that to me... Fine. I'd take this resentment out on the Arachne's minion.