“Keep moving! Quickly!” As bottles shattered and trees caught fire, several people sprinted ahead.

The spiders’ “skree, skree, skree” rang out all around them. In the chaos, they’d already been surrounded on every side…

“Do we have any more Molotovs?” Liu Haimeng glanced at the spiders closing in. They made his skin crawl, but he had to act.

“Yeah!” Su Lin handed one over and gave him a look.

“…How many points do we have left?” Sweat beaded across Liu Haimeng’s forehead. They’d been ambushed at camp, and now they were all in a truly sorry state.

“A little over a thousand. We spent almost all of it on Molotovs.” They’d lost count of how many they’d thrown along the way. At a hundred points apiece, every Molotov hurt to use. Add in the camping gear and other supplies they’d just abandoned, and their losses had come to well over a thousand points.

“Can’t be helped. There are too many of them, and they’re so aggressive! What did we do to provoke them?” Wang Tong fired several shots at the spiders blocking their way. The bullets struck with tremendous force, sending several of them flying.

“Could that demon Yueye have summoned them…?” Zhao Zhihua said. It was only a guess, but it reflected what the team members thought of Yueye.

“Probably. These things started hounding us as soon as she left. If that’s not revenge, what is…?” Zhu Chao chimed in, aiming his gun at a spider leaping down from a tree. But he accidentally emptied the magazine.

“Help!” With a heavy thud against the ground, Zhu Chao was pinned beneath a spider. Its two huge mandibles were exposed as it prepared to strike a lethal blow…

“Bang!” A shot rang out from the side. Green blood splattered across Zhu Chao’s face. Du Shengjie had reacted in the nick of time and saved his life.

“Damn it…!” They’d managed to save him, but they were still surrounded in a circle… All around the fourteen of them, spiders as big as giant dogs waited for a chance to attack.

“So, what do we do now?” Wang Tong wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at the skin-crawling creatures all around them. He couldn’t help feeling despair.

“I… I don’t want to die! I won’t die at the hands of these monsters! Yueye, you’re such a bastard!” Wang Qian collapsed to the ground. Even with death staring her in the face, she still blamed everything on Yueye.

The peril before them and the arguing among the team threw Su Lin into disarray. He clutched the Molotov in his hand tightly… It was one of the last few they had left.

“Why? Why aren’t we getting any kill rewards…?” Their reward points were almost gone, yet not a single kill reward had appeared. Despair filled Su Lin’s eyes.

Su Lin watched the spiders ahead, searching for an opening. His heart felt as good as dead. A thick web covered the way forward. They were grasshoppers on a dinner table now, with no way out…

“Everyone… I was lucky to have you as my teammates, and to be your captain…”

He hurled the Molotov in his right hand at the ground nearby, trying to hold back the spiders closing in…

“Getting this far with all of you today… It was my mistake, but it was also my honor. Thank you for staying by my side all this way.” Su Lin slowly raised his gun to his chin, looking ready to give up. It seemed he’d rather die quickly than be eaten alive by bugs.

“Su Lin, get a hold of yourself!” Zhu Yue saw what he was doing and immediately stopped him.

“Do you really deserve to be the leader of this team?” Zhu Yue pulled Su Lin’s hand away from under his chin, looking furious.

“…There’s no chance left.” Su Lin watched the spiders on the other side of the flames chittering, as if discussing how to eat them…

As soon as Su Lin finished speaking, the spiders on the other side of the flames began to stir, as though something unexpected had happened.

“Boom!” A tremendous crash came from deep in the woods, followed by a powerful shockwave. Everyone there—and all the spiders—turned to look…

Through a gap between the tree trunks blasted aside by the shockwave, they could see a huge shadow slam into the ground. Its spider-like limbs twitched.

“Skree!” A piercing sound came from the huge shadow. The surrounding spiders seemed to be stirred by it and rushed toward the source of the strange noise.

“You’re so damn annoying! One wave after another. You’re practically begging for a beating…!” The green scales on Yueye’s hand gleamed eerily in the moonlight. She grabbed the enormous body in front of her, lifted it, and hurled it to the other side…

“Boom!” Another tremendous crash rang through the woods, accompanied by the insect’s agonized shriek. Yueye’s brow tightened at the sound…

“You’re ugly, and you sound awful, too! No wonder nobody likes you… You might as well just die already…” Strange blue magical runes lit up beside her. An ice spear sliced through the air with a whoosh and pierced the giant spider in front of her. At the same time, countless shards of ice burst out from inside its body, tearing the more-than-ten-meter-long creature to pieces…

“And you little pests are annoying as hell, too!” Yueye stared at the little spiders swarming toward her, murder in her eyes. In her previous life, she’d been terrified of spiders. Now, she couldn’t wait to wipe every last one of them out…

Several blue blades of water streaked through the air, silently reaping the lives of the hundreds of spiders before her. In the blink of an eye, spider corpses covered the ground in a circle fifty meters around Yueye—a veritable spider slaughterhouse.

Yueye stood in the woods about a hundred meters from the group. She’d sensed them here long ago, and shook her head helplessly. But she didn’t plan to leave… She’d decided to prove something to the people before her.

“What a bunch of clingy nuisances.” Yueye spoke softly, her brow creasing slightly… She didn’t even know why she’d come here.

“Yueye?” Liu Huiying recognized the petite, solitary figure at a glance. In that moment, her heart suddenly clenched… She seemed to realize she’d made another mistake.

“It’s me…” Firelight fell across Yueye’s pretty face, revealing a few pale green scales that caught the light and lent her an even more alluring air…

“Why did things turn out like this…?” Liu Huiying had finally understood everything, and suddenly realized how foolish a thing she’d done. But she couldn’t accept Yueye becoming what she was now.

When Yueye heard Liu Huiying, a cold smile touched her lips… It was a playful sort of smile, as if everyone before her were toys…

“That’s right. That dragon turned me into the ‘monster’ you all talk about…” Yueye’s words carried a hint of menace and mockery. Looking at the shocked, frightened people before her, she couldn’t help feeling that this choice of hers had been another mistake…

“Anyway, since things have come to this, I hope we really never meet again.” Yueye seemed to have lost all desire to stay. She turned and walked away from the group… without giving them a chance to speak.

“This is goodbye. I hope… we never meet again…” Yueye’s voice grew fainter and fainter, her words heavy with sorrow. Her figure disappeared from their sight like a ghost, carrying endless sadness with her.

“Wait!” Liu Huiying tried to call Yueye back… but the figure there had already vanished, as if it had been an illusion.

“I was wrong! I was wrong!” Tears streamed uncontrollably down Liu Huiying’s face. Yueye’s utterly expressionless face in that final moment was seared into her mind.

“Master, you still wanted to save them?” White Radiance looked utterly confused, as if she couldn’t understand Yueye’s actions just now.

“I wasn’t trying to save them. Those spiders just kept coming in wave after wave and annoying me.” Yueye spoke with no expression, as if what she’d just done had nothing to do with her.

“They even shot at you, Master! You were never going to be able to stay with them… and you still can’t let them go.” White Radiance’s deep blue eyes fixed on Yueye, as if she were looking at a best friend who just wouldn’t learn.

“I don’t know…” Yueye hadn’t planned to go back, but the thought of those spiders still following the team gave her pause.

“Master, believe me: if you’d made even the slightest hostile move toward them—or even taken one step closer—they would’ve shot at you just now…” White Radiance looked at Yueye, conflicted. She really didn’t know how to talk sense into her. She just didn’t want to see Yueye get hurt again.

“…” Yueye said nothing. She couldn’t understand her own circumstances. Why was everyone so hostile toward her…?

“It’s Dragonblood Degeneration, Master…” White Radiance sighed helplessly. She felt she had to tell her the truth.