Arachne (4)
The puncture wound through her side was a strike Cheonsol had never even sensed coming. Sudden agony locked her body rigid, but her mind never stopped working.
To a martial artist, wounds and pain were lifelong companions. Sit down because it hurts, and you offer up your life along with them. Whatever had driven through her flank was already dissolving inside her body, paralyzing muscle and slowing the circulation of her internal energy.
Poison!
Cheonsol swiftly sealed her pressure points to halt the toxin’s spread and fell back at the same time.
Whoosh—
A few strands of her hair were sheared free by Elise’s leg and scattered on the air.
“How impressiveee. You actually dodged that?”
“Kh…”
She had no breath left for a reply. Even with the meridians sealed, the poisoned site was far too critical. She poured her internal energy into her abdomen and burned the venom out, but Elise was never going to let the advantage slip away.
“Martial artists really are pitiful, aren’t theyyy. If you’d been a mage or a priest, you could’ve just cast a detoxification spell. Wellll. Not that my poison is low-level enough to be purged that easily.”
Elise kept talking, trying to scatter Cheonsol’s focus while she pressed the attack. Cheonsol, busy driving out the poison, could only dodge without countering.
Pssht-pssht. Whoooosh—
Spider silk shot from Elise’s nipples, seeking to pierce her body. Dodge that, and a leg came sweeping in. The attacks were threatening, but just as Cheonsol began to read the repeating pattern, magic came flying in from a blind spot once more.
“This lady shall not fall for the same trick twice!”
She stepped through her footwork, and her form split into several afterimages. The ambush that had paid off so handsomely before only punched through a clone. By the time a few more afterimages had been skewered on Elise’s disappointed legs, Cheonsol had fully withdrawn.
Urgh—
She expelled the purged poison in a heave of black blood. Then she reeled her remaining clones back into herself as blood and absorbed them. The internal energy and blood she had spent driving out the toxin were replenished.
“Hooo…”
“Absorbing your clones to recover? That’s cheating.”
“The real cheat is thy magic.”
Cheonsol pictured the object submerged in the bloody fluid. Amid the bright crimson liquid had been a thread thinner than a strand of hair.
“To lace Heavenly Silkworm Thread with poison… I never even considered it.”
“So in your world they call my silk Heavenly Silkworm Thread, do theyyy. Is it a common material?”
“That is—”
Ssslick—
Another ambush came the instant she started to answer. Cheonsol, who had never once loosened her guard even while speaking, easily slipped past yet another strand of Heavenly Silkworm Thread.
“As expected of a race that deals in poison—cowardly to the core. In my world and every other, poison is a cheap trick for the craven and the weak.”
“You’re stubborn, and your mouth is filthy toooo. Why is poison supposed to be cowardly, exactly?”
“The means of poison itself is not cowardly. But thy methods are. Reinforcing the silk stuck to the floor and then launching it… Had this lady not been a martial artist skilled in detection, I would have fallen without even noticing.”
“Ugh. Your mouth really is filthyyy.”
Elise kept up her leisurely air, but she was anything but at ease. One of the guaranteed win patterns that had carried her to victory after victory had just been shut down.
I took out three of the Rank 1 trainer’s minions with that alone…
The stamina and mana cost had been so steep she’d lost to the last minion, but it was the technique that had beaten every other one and built her current ranking.
Time to stop looking for free wins.
Elise licked her lips and began searching for a path to victory. After raising those nine pillars, Cheonsol’s presence had grown several times stronger—so maybe she should start by destroying the pillars.
“Let’s see if the poison works at all, shall we?”
She fired Heavenly Silkworm Thread from her nipples, then charged the pillars without waiting to see Cheonsol’s reaction. The nine pillars stood at a distance from one another, but two extended legs could just barely bridge the gaps.
“Didst thou not say thou wouldst use poison?!”
“You’re so dumbmm. You believed what an enemy said?”
A minion who entered battle had to grow vicious to survive. Elise’s legs, tempered through endless training, punched through the hollow cores of the pillars.
A smile bloomed at the corner of Cheonsol’s mouth.
“Thou art the foolish spider.”
Blood erupted from the pillars and crashed over Elise. Startled, she tried to yank her legs free at once, but blood charged with cutting force scraped along them.
The milky-white protective film unraveled like spider silk and laid bare the outer shell beneath. The carapace that had withstood a few drops of blood was crushed under an overwhelming volume.
“Gyaaaaah!”
Elise howled at the long-forgotten pain and wrenched herself free. Pulling back in time spared her the worst outcome of losing the legs entirely, but the joints were shattered and hung grotesquely limp.
“Without a skill like Self-Healing, thou shalt not recover from that!”
“Tch!”
Cheonsol closed the distance to lock in her advantage. Elise clicked her tongue and braced for close combat. She had lost two legs, but six remained.
Heavenly Silkworm Thread sprayed from her nipples and wrapped her body, reinforcing her flesh. This, too, was a secret magic that had delivered her countless victories—a defensive spell several times superior to any shield. Contact with bare skin poisoned the opponent, and its toughness was extraordinary, not easily pierced.
She swung a leg at Cheonsol, who was brandishing a slender sword seething with blood energy.
“Insolent!”
She believed the monstrous strength of the Arachne race, the crushing mass invested in that leg, would shatter the pitiful little blade and kill her opponent. But the instant sword and leg met—
Shhk—
The Heavenly Silkworm Thread barrier she so prided herself on shattered. Carapace split, and the leg went flying.
“Kieeeeeek!!”
Cheonsol gave Elise no time to scream. She seized even the spider’s blood and moved to sever the remaining legs.
“In—insolent!”
Elise commandeered the severed Heavenly Silkworm Thread and drove it into Cheonsol. Holes punched through shoulder, forearm, and shin; the surrounding skin turned a livid blue.
“Heh heh heh heh heh! What now? You’re poisoned!”
“I was too flustered earlier to demonstrate, but now I can show thee.”
Unruffled, Cheonsol forced blood out through the holes. Black blood poured out by the liters until her complexion went deathly pale—then she absorbed the blood flooding the area around her and recovered.
“I finally poison you and you just detox like that? That’s cheating…”
“Thou hast yet to witness true cheating.”
Blood replacement was an act that consumed internal energy and stamina. She looked fine on the surface, but she had spent more energy than when she first cast Bloodflame Dominion, and the foreign blood still needed time to fully integrate.
Yohan’s Self-Healing, which restored stamina at no cost at all, was several times more broken.
“Accept thy defeat!”
“Nngh…!”
Elise threw every means she still had into the fight rather than go down like this, but nothing worked. Her true capability was Level 3. The Level 1 ceiling was bitterly, bitterly unfair.
“Why—why can you cut Heavenly Silkworm Thread so easily?!”
“This lady’s bandages, too, were woven of Heavenly Silkworm Thread.”
The breast-binding spun from that silk to protect the body’s vital points—and a woman’s most precious places—had been cut by Yohan’s sword when he used Impregnating.
What a Level 1 Yohan had done, a Level 1 Cheonsol could reproduce. And if that feat had been achieved with a sword, all the more so.
Genius husband or not, this lady has held a blade for far longer years!
Shhk—
The slender sword sheared off one more leg. Overdrawing her blood energy forced her to consume one of the pillars to restore her internal power, but the goddess of victory was already smiling in her direction.
“Kieeeek!”
With only four intact legs left, Elise felt the crisis close in. At this rate she would lose.
She would force a move even if it meant taking damage.
“Spider Cage.”
A magic not permitted to Level 1. The silk clinging to the floor—and the silk from her nipples—went rigid as wire and wove a curtain that blanketed the entire area.
Every single strand carried the strength of Heavenly Silkworm Thread, and the silk itself exhaled a venom so potent that mere approach was enough to poison. Even the blood of Bloodflame Dominion could not withstand the toxin; it frothed and bubbled.
“Kh…”
As the price of casting a Level 2 spell, blood surged back up her throat and the spinnerets in her nipples clogged shut. But if it meant catching Cheonsol—if it meant sparing the great Arachne the humiliation of an all-kill at the hands of a mere minion—it was a magic well worth attempting.
“So this web is thy true earnestness.”
Cheonsol was impressed. To have hidden a magic like this until the very last moment. The toxin had even invaded her reserve blood, sealing off the cheap trick of swapping her poisoned blood for the blood outside.
But the Arachne had already lost her strength. Cheonsol cut through the Heavenly Silkworm Thread protecting Elise and even severed the legs that had lost their luster. The spreading poison choked her breathing, and if she fell here Yohan would finish things—but she entertained no such weak thought as leaving the end to her husband.
A harlot who set her sights on another woman’s husband had to be punished by one’s own hand. Cheonsol, too, had surpassed the limits of Level 1. Every pillar sustaining Bloodflame Dominion collapsed, and she coughed blood.
As she gathered blood into her sword, the poison only grew denser. The deepening intoxication made it hard to hold on to reason. Yet through her clouding vision, the Arachne’s massive form stood out with perfect clarity.
“Blood Star.”
Starlight blooming from blood settled into Cheonsol’s blade. The star split Elise’s body cleanly in two.
“This lady’s…”
Congested blood she could not restrain even with a Vampir’s power over blood surged back up her throat. Just before she collapsed, Cheonsol heard the message she had been waiting for.
RNK.89 Trainer Sophia is victorious!