Chapter 773: The Demon Feeds Spiders (Patreon)

Luke and Norn descended into the crater. The moment their feet hit the bottom, the spiders began to appear. Small compared to Norn, but numerous, they crawled out of holes, from behind the root, and through the webs. One by one, they surrounded the two of them, clacking their fangs together in a dry, repetitive rhythm, like dozens of teeth snapping at once. More movement spread along the crater walls, even behind them.

Either Norn’s presence confused these things... or they let us get this close because it’s a trap.

Luke was betting on the trap.

“Can Norn attack, Boss?” the spider asked.

Luke watched the circle tighten around them. “Not yet. Give me a second.”

[Dread Aura activated]

The aura spread. For half a second, nothing happened.

Then their clattering changed. It wasn’t aggression anymore. It was panic. Some curled in on themselves. Others backed away. Several started spewing dark sludge that looked suspiciously like vomit.

Pure fear. Fear of him.

Luke smiled. He almost never got to use this properly. Against normal people, one careless activation could drop them on the spot, maybe worse. But in the underworld, he’d found a few chances to put it to good use. This was one of them.

A heavy rustling came from behind the root, and then the webs moved. Not from the wind. Something enormous was pushing through them. A larger spider emerged, shoving webs and hatchlings aside. It was massive, even bigger than Norn, with long black legs, a glossy swollen abdomen, and a vivid red hourglass marking its underside.

[Nara, the Widow - Lvl 148]

Its eyes settled on Luke, and there was far too much intelligence in them for a simple beast.

Looks like I got the boss’s attention. Good. Deal with the biggest threat first. Then let Norn handle the rest.

“You dare enter my domain and threaten my children?” the spider demanded.

Luke raised an eyebrow. Huh. Interesting.

It wasn’t just powerful. It was sentient.

[Horns of the Demon of Darkness activated]

Black horns emerged from his forehead, and the pressure in the air shifted. Better to be careful.

“Horns?” The spider recoiled. “Don’t tell me you’re...”

“I’m giving you a choice,” Luke said, stepping toward her. “These are my lands. Submit willingly, or fight me and deal with the consequences.”

“As if I would fear some tiny humanoid creature.”

The spider let out something close to a shriek. The sound tore through the crater, vibrating across the webs and snapping her children out of the stupor caused by [Dread Aura]. Even the horns weren’t enough to keep them frozen. The smaller spiders retreated immediately, not fleeing but making room. Luke noticed.

So they know what comes next.

The mother charged, far too fast for something that large. Norn prepared to attack, but Luke raised a hand, ordering her to stay back. Then he drew both kukris and activated [Weapon Assimilation]. The blades fused together in a ripple of darkness, reshaping themselves into the axe he’d assimilated earlier.

The spider struck first with her legs, fast, heavy blows slicing through the air where Luke had been a heartbeat earlier. Each miss tore through webs or gouged chunks out of the ground. Then came her fangs, snapping shut in short, violent lunges around nothing but air.

Luke simply dodged, slipping past each attack with minimal movement. That only seemed to piss her off more.

“My turn.”

[Cloak of the Arcane Witch activated]

Luke shot forward like a bullet. The butt of the axe slammed into the spider with enough force to send her skidding backward, tearing through webs and kicking dirt into the air. For the first time, the crater went quiet.

Then Luke moved again. Before she could recover, he closed the distance, drove her into the ground, and rested the axe blade beside her head.

“Want me to keep going?”

“Keep going, Boss!” Norn shouted.

Wasn’t asking you...

“I yield! I yield!” the mother spider cried, her eyes locked on Luke.

“He’s attacking Mother!” one of the hatchlings screamed.

“Mother! Mother!”

The others rushed forward, furious. A lot of them. Small, fast, driven by instinct and panic, the mass of spiders made the entire crater seem to come alive as they leaped toward Luke at once.

Luke tightened his grip on the axe. He could cut through them easily. Not killing them was the annoying part. He sighed.

[Spectral Fusion I activated]

[Choose a core for Fusion: Ivory Leaping Spider or Scaled Strider]

Luke chose.

[Fusing you with Scaled Strider...]

Before the hatchlings could finish their leap, a cloud of black energy burst from inside him and merged with his body. A heartbeat later, Luke was covered in dark armor. The armor around his lower body was sleek and functional, but the boots were different, shaped almost like legs built for speed and explosive movement. There was no helmet, but pieces of metal formed near his ears, giving them a pointed appearance.

Then he moved.

With the Strider’s power, Luke tore across the crater at absurd speed. Instead of cutting the spiders, he hit them with open palms, each blow short, precise, and brutal, but controlled. He mimicked the Striders’ head-first attacks, turning them into some bizarre, violent martial art. One spider went down, then another, then five more. Every strike landed hard enough to put them down and no harder. The difference was deliberate.

One after another, the spiders dropped before they even understood where the hits were coming from. The mother spider rose with a furious shriek. She saw her children falling around Luke, with no way of knowing they were still alive. Her eyes locked onto him, burning with hatred, and she launched herself forward with everything she had, throwing her full weight behind the attack, venom glistening on her fangs.

Luke stood still, focused. She was fast. Strong too. Still not enough. When she reached him, he struck once with his palm. At the last second, he held back, not enough to kill her, but more than enough to end the fight. His strike cracked the air like thunder, and the spider collapsed.

“Mother! Mother!” the hatchlings screamed.

Luke opened his storage and pulled out a healing potion.

“I’m going to give you a choice,” he said, looking over the colony. “Try to kill me again, and your mother might not wake up. I hit her pretty hard.”

It was bullshit. He knew exactly how hard he’d hit her, but the hatchlings didn’t. The moment they heard "mother" and "not wake up" in the same sentence, every spider froze.

Luke scratched his own arm and let a drop of the potion fall onto the wound. The skin closed almost instantly.

“See? Now let me heal your mother and talk to her. Next time, stay out of it.”

Without waiting for an answer, he poured the healing potion over the spot he’d hit.

***

Nara woke in a daze. For a moment, everything was a blur. Then all eight of her legs found the ground, and she shot upright. The memory came back like a bite: the humanoid demon, her children attacking, falling, the blow, darkness.

Panic seized her. Her eyes swept across the crater, searching for her hatchlings. Bodies. There were bodies everywhere.

Nara’s insides went cold.

“Hello,” said a voice.

She barely heard it. Her eyes darted from one hatchling to another. One moved, then another. A leg twitched. A small body rolled over and pushed itself upright.

Alive.

Nara turned. The humanoid demon sat on top of a large rock. She had no idea how that rock had gotten there, and that bothered her more than it probably should have.

Black horns still rose from his forehead, and his presence remained deeply unsettling. Very deeply unsettling. He had two different eyes, one dark and one blue, both far too calm for someone surrounded by an entire spider colony he had just beaten into the ground.

My children. Where are they?

Nara looked behind her. They were gathering together now, slowly and confused, but moving.

She counted them fast. One. Two. Three... Her thoughts tripped over each other, and she lost count.

She started again.

One. Two. Three...

One hundred ten. One hundred eleven. One hundred twelve.

Nara froze. No.

Her eyes swept across the crater, but there was nothing. Then a torn sheet of webbing shifted, and something small crawled out from beneath it.

One hundred thirteen.

Nara sagged. All 113 were alive. Restless. Bruised, maybe, but unharmed in every way that mattered.

By the Broodmother... they’re all alive.

“The spider is very awake now, Boss,” said another voice.

It was the spider traveling with the demon.

“I gave you a healing potion,” the demon said. “You should be feeling better already.”

Nara’s attention snapped back to him.

“You used one of Norn’s healing potions,” the other spider complained. “You better listen to Boss because Norn is annoyed.”

The demon climbed down from the rock. Nara watched him approach one step at a time, with no hurry at all. The black horns, the oppressive aura, one dark eye and one blue. He had defeated her and defeated her children, and somehow, despite having every opportunity to do so, he hadn’t killed a single one of them.

That should have been reassuring. It wasn’t. If anything, it made him worse. Anyone strong enough to kill them was dangerous. Someone strong enough to defeat all of them without killing anyone was something else entirely.

He stopped close enough that she could bite him without even lunging. But it wasn’t carelessness. It was certainty, the certainty that if she tried, he would kill her effortlessly.

“Ready to talk now?” the demon asked.

Nara looked back at her children.

“They’re not hurt. Trust me,” he said. “And I didn’t touch them while you were unconscious.”

Nara reached out to the colony through their mental bond. Her bond with her children was intimate, instinctive, impossible to fake. They answered one by one, frightened and confused, but alive. Some had headaches. Some were terrified. One was apparently furious about being slapped. But all of them were alive. The demon truly hadn’t harmed them after she fell. More importantly, before that, he had taken down more than a hundred of them without killing a single one.

Nara looked at him differently after that. Not with trust, definitely not, but with a new kind of caution.

“Your colony is inside my kingdom’s borders. I’m making this forest safe, and soon a lot of my citizens will be traveling through it. I don’t want you attacking any of them. Since you’re sentient, I’m giving you a choice. If you don’t accept my terms, leave my kingdom and don’t come back. But if you stay, you’ll respect my authority and my citizens.”

For a moment, Nara considered attacking him. He was too close. One lunge would be enough. She could swallow him, crush that tiny body between her fangs, flood him with venom before he could react. But every instinct she had screamed something else. If she tried anything, she would die, and then her children would die too.

The demon was small, but his presence filled the crater. Even though Nara had to look down at him, she had the absurd feeling that she should be looking up, as if those horns made him larger than his body had any right to be.

“You’re not actually going to drive us out?” she asked.

If he wasn’t going to kill them, driving them out had seemed like the obvious alternative.

“I’m not driving you out. You can keep living exactly where you are, as long as you follow the laws of my kingdom.”

“All right,” Nara said cautiously. “I accept. I won’t attack your citizens.”

She wasn’t the type to wander far from the colony anyway. She had too many children to care for, feed, and teach. As long as they were safe, she didn’t care much about anything else.

“That also means you stop attacking the tree,” Luke added. “It’s a living being, which makes it part of my kingdom too.”

Nara tensed.

“Then what are my children and I supposed to eat?” she demanded.

She could ration their food, sure. Hunt less. Consume less. Take more risks. But she would never let her adorable children go hungry. They needed to grow big and strong. The tree’s sap was easy food, safe and close, something the hatchlings could eat without wandering away from the colony in search of prey.

“I’ll feed you,” Luke said.

Nara let out a low laugh. “You? Feed my colony? We eat a lot.”

“If you’re going to live on my lands and accept my rules, the least I can do is provide the basics. Food and protection.”

“Hmm...”

The demon made a motion, and something appeared in front of him: the corpse of a dead beast.

The meat looked fresh, thick, and juicy. Its scent spread through the crater, and several hatchlings reacted immediately. Nara studied the food. It looked real. It looked safe. Trusting the demon’s words was another matter entirely. Still, there was food, protection, and a home for her children. All he had asked so far was that they stop attacking his people and leave the tree alone.

Too easy. There had to be a catch.

“I assume, demon, you’re not offering to feed and protect my colony for nothing. What do you want in return?”

A faint smile crossed his face. “Glad you brought that up. I do have one condition.”

Nara narrowed her eyes. Of course he did.

“A condition?” she asked. “What is it?”

“You and your colony become citizens of my kingdom.”

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So you really thought Norn was the only talking spider in the forest? Bet you didn’t see that coming.