No monsters crept in, no sudden, furious dragon roars rolled like storm drums from the distant dark. The watch rotated like slow gears, yet nothing stirred; only the rasping saw-blade snore of teammates cut the stillness.
If anything felt off, it was Mira and Adelaide returning a shade too quiet, frost on their brows like thoughts weighed down by snow. The hint flashed and vanished like a firefly; Kabos and the “Inventor,” blunt as stones in a stream, didn’t even notice before the two were back to talking like normal.
Thus the first night in the Soul Devourer Sormaidon’s domain slipped by like ink across silk. Maybe the sleep was too calm, a deep pond without ripples; or maybe dinner’s shalagua, terrifying on the tongue, truly carried a bright effect beneath its thorns. At dawn, the team’s spirit rose like a banner in the wind. They seemed to adapt to the echo of lingering souls pressing down, vigor almost back to what they had before they came in.
Strangely, Kabos—the one who reacted worst at first—now shone the brightest, eyes clear like polished slate. Maybe human senses were duller than the Nacha Tribe’s, so they adjusted faster. Either way, he had retaken the front, and even struck up a chat with Hos—who’d woken after a morning spat with Tela and was eager to spill his woes like rain from a burst cloud.
“I just said this volcano’s too quiet, maybe it’s dormant, and that witch nagged me all morning, told me not to jinx it. She’s nuts, right? It’s a reasonable guess!”
Hos bared his teeth, but the words “she’s nuts” came out small, a sparrow under a hawk’s shadow. He glanced back at Tela, lagging with the rear half of the team, single-frame glasses glinting like frost as she walked and studied ancient tools dug from yesterday’s house, then hissed the rest under his breath.
Kabos clapped his shoulder, sympathy falling like a warm shawl, then peered in curiosity. “But bro, I heard the Hero big sis says you’re, uh, cohabiting with her?”
“Cohabiting? Cohabiting my ass! If those ‘Politicians’ hadn’t screwed me, seized my house, who’d choose to share a roof with that bookworm?”
“Oof, that’s rough…”
Kabos patted Hos’s shoulder again and sighed, a gust tugging at a frayed flag. “You’ve had it hard, man, being misunderstood like that. I can’t imagine—if someone called me a jinx every day, I’d go all in and—what the—aaAAAH!”
He didn’t finish. The ground flipped the world on him; a gray-white net surged up like frost-laced roots, snared his ankles, and hoisted him upside down into a clatter of dead branches.
It was so sudden Hos didn’t even process it. He lunged forward on instinct, reaching for Kabos, missing Varie’s warning behind him. A heartbeat later, the same gray strands licked his ankle and reeled him up onto another tree.
“Shi—”
The curse choked out as white silk wrapped them both, swelling into man-sized cocoons dangling like fat fruit. They squirmed and muffled, kicking at empty air.
“Stand still! Traps!” Varie shouted, voice sharp as a snapped bowstring. The rest formed back-to-back, a ring of blades and breath, defense blooming like a thistle.
Only then did the culprits reveal themselves.
“Spearhead spiders, just like I said!” Tela sounded absurdly triumphant, like a schoolkid who’d won a playground argument. The creatures in the branches had skulls bristling with spikes, spider in the front, scorpion in the back, each one swollen with mutation like boulders bulging from old roots. “And they’re huge—told you not to jinx it! Happy now?”
“Mm—mmph!” Hos wriggled in his cocoon, making a sound that meant, roughly, “like hell.”
“Ha, it’s fine. Watch your big sis save you: Type-24 Harpoon Assault Cannon, ready…”
Tela struck a dramatic shooting stance, aiming at a mutant spider angling for Hos, her lips curling with bright, cocky light.
“Hold on—” “—Fire!”
Whoosh cut the air like a falcon’s dive. Then came the wet pop of impact and a high, chittering scream. The ancient Nacha weapon finally sang like it should—the harpoon head buried deep in the spider’s side abdomen. Its four-to-five-meter body tore off the tree, crashing down, and the slick line scraped across, severing the silk that held Hos.
“Heh, I’ve totally figured out the Type-24’s firing pattern—”
She kept posing, but the weapon clanked—a harsh crackle—and the winch began to reverse, sucking the steel cable back in. The spider was too heavy, and the barbs had locked the harpoon in place. Tela herself got yanked like a kite by a storm.
“—it’s just the retrieval method I haven’t fully—waaah!”
Midair, another white strand flicked her waist, binding her to a trunk. She spun and stuck, cocooned like Kabos and Hos.
“You idiot…!” Hos clawed free of sticky threads, saw her hanging, then scrambled up, heat in his chest like burning coals—only for Varie to check him with a voice cold as a blade.
“Careful. There’s more than one.”
Tela hadn’t just fed a kill. In that instant, Varie pegged the silk wrapping her—shot from another angle.
Sure enough, seconds later, more spearhead spiders surfaced across the lattice of dead boughs. The small eyes hidden under their crown spikes rolled like beads; pupil-less insect orbs flashed with bloodlust sharp as glass.
The fight snapped taut.
One spider locked onto Varie, tail arched high, belching a clump of silk at her like spittle from a catapult, body lunging right after.
Varie slid aside, quick as a swallow through reeds. In that slip of air, she drew an arrow from her back and pulled to full draw—fluid, unbroken. Mid-pounce, the broadhead plunged into the spider’s mouth.
Without mana, this shot wasn’t the golden meteor she’d used to blow up Firefly. But on strength alone, it carried Type-24 force; the spider jerked like it collided with a cannon shell and froze midair. Its fangs, forelegs, its whole head burst into a spray of emerald gore.
Varie whipped her cloak around, a dark wave, catching the splatter and guts before they could fleck the Queen Dreamlan beside her.
“Wow, Varie, so cool~”
“You—! Find a bush and hide!”
She didn’t have breath for banter. She spun and leaped, loosing one more arrow that pinned another charging spider to the ground like a nail through a plank.
“Well, you say that… but where are the bushes?”
Meanwhile, for Mira and Adelaide, the fight was a thornier thicket.
Without mana, humans felt the handicap like weights on their ankles, worse than the Nacha Tribe. Even Mira, near peerless in the Empire, could only hold off two spiders. She could carve lines in their shells, green seams opening like split cucumbers, but no clean chance for a kill.
At last, the two on her flanked each other wrong and slammed together, legs tangling like thrown ropes. Mira dove in with a knee-skim slide, scraping under their bellies. Her blade drew a long, thin mouth, and organs spilled like wet fruit, landing with soft, sodden thumps.
They chittered for a few seconds, shrill as teeth on porcelain, then fell silent.
By then, Tela had been cut free by other Nacha teammates. Mira hadn’t even wiped the green blood from her sword when a spider burst from a shadowed burrow, arrowing straight toward Adelaide behind her.
“Sis, careful—!”
Panic pricked Mira’s skin like cold rain. Her feet moved before her words, and if she could, she would’ve snapped open her Time Domain by reflex.
Before she reached, Adelaide had already—
She turned, long skirt whirling like a white wave. A leg wrapped in white silk—stockings bright as fresh snow—completed a perfect roundhouse in the blink of an eye, and the rushing spider flew tumbling into the brush.
“…Careful.”
Mira’s warning landed useless, fluttering like paper in a void, especially as Adelaide’s heel pinned the spider’s head. The pure-white, slender ankle twisted; the shoe ground down, and the skull cracked like a sea urchin, splitting into neat, bitter petals.
But Adelaide’s face didn’t hold the thrill of force or conquest—quite the opposite. She lifted her eyes, irritation raking her brow like claws, and a faint blush crept in when she met Mira’s gaze.
Overloading the reinforcement sigils on her thigh meant more days in this journey where Mira would have to princess-carry her. Damn it—she could accept it at night when they were alone, but when the whole squad was marching, she wanted to keep her big-sister dignity intact.
