"That guy... he was infected by fear!"
"He's turned into a spider monster!"
"Aaah!" Screams erupted from the crowd as the razor-sharp spider legs acted like invisible scalpels. Wherever they swept through the air, cold flashes of white light followed, blooming into fountains of blood and sending heads tumbling to the ground.
The people gathered in the courtyard hadn't even had the chance to see what the monster looked like—they couldn't even see what was attacking them. All they saw were dark shadows flickering across their vision, followed by a sudden, dizzying whirl of the world as everything turned a visceral crimson.
The entire courtyard instantly fell into chaos again. People trampled and shoved one another. The frantic, dancing spider legs hovered above, occasionally sending large numbers of heads flying as blood sprayed everywhere. No one knew if death would descend upon them or the person next to them in the next moment. Instinctively, they tried to flee this place, but the seeds of fear had already taken root in everyone's hearts, growing by feeding on their sanity.
"Kid, get the hell away from me!"
A salaryman shouted as he shoved down a little girl in front of him, his face twisted in a mangled, ghastly expression. In the next instant, a fierce wind swept past. His head soared into the sky, and a spray of dark-red, still-warm blood splashed across the little girl's entire face.
Her thin, small frame shuddered. The little girl tried to crawl up, but physiological terror made her retch. Her vomit was similarly filled with white spots the size of rice grains. As her vision blurred and a slender black shadow split the air toward her head, the little girl closed her eyes, her face pale. The imagined pain did not arrive for a long time.
Opening her eyes and looking up, she saw a girl's elegant and determined profile. Mori no Natsu Kuri had appeared at some point, flipping a spider-venom dagger in her hand. She stood sideways in front of the little girl, blocking the monster's attack.
"Quick, start running," Mori no Natsu Kuri said.
The girl stepped aside and turned, her spider-venom dagger slashing down in a clean, decisive stroke. The spider legs that had been flailing wildly in the air were sliced in half.
Dark-green blood hissed as it corroded the ground.
A pained roar from the monster echoed in the darkness.
Mori no Natsu Kuri straightened up, pulled another spider-venom dagger from her waist, and spun it in her hand. She held them in a cross formation in front of her.
Cold light and sparks intersected as dense, crimson compound eyes opened behind the edge of her blades.
Everything around her slowed down in her eyes. The fear on the faces of the fleeing people was frozen in time, and the trajectories of the invisible, chaotic spider legs became clearly visible. One of the girl's eyes had transformed into a compound eye resembling a spider's. People were often deceived by the little family head's quiet side, overlooking the fact that she was a grade 3 shadow striker.
The intense pain enraged the monster in the darkness. A shuddering spider-like roar sounded, followed by two lightning-fast spider legs. They curved like whips, slicing through the granite walls like they were cutting tofu, reaching Mori no Natsu Kuri's face in an instant.
She didn't dodge. Instead, she charged forward. Her toes pivoted on the ground, allowing her to step precisely between the two spider legs at a tricky angle. Holding her twin daggers, she performed a rapid spin. A flash of cold light flickered, and a burst of dark-green spider blood and stone fragments flew past the girl's cheek.
Immediately after, Mori no Natsu Kuri's feet pushed off the ground again. She bent low and darted into the darkness, weaving through the spider legs that were shooting out continuously. Wherever her blade light passed, blood sprayed and spider legs snapped.
Sensing the threat from Mori no Natsu Kuri, the monster in the darkness let out a shuddering roar. Its lower abdomen bulged, and a spray of dark-green saliva erupted, turning into a massive web that blanketed her position.
Mori no Natsu Kuri reacted extremely quickly. An instant before the corrosive liquid could touch her, she leaped nimbly. A blood-curdling scream came from behind her—some fleeing fellow had been caught in the web, his body instantly reduced to charred bones by the highly corrosive fluid.
The highly corrosive liquid hissed against the bluestone floor, creating a large cloud of thick white smoke. The monster's dense compound eyes locked onto the charred corpse on the ground. Just as it thought the girl had been dealt with, the air behind it rippled. Mori no Natsu Kuri slowly phased into view, a chilling glint in her crimson compound eye.
The monster shrieked and turned, but the girl's dagger had already sunk into its throat. She withdrew the blade with a clean movement.
A moment later, the monster's head slid off and blood geysered out from a perfectly smooth cut. It was only then that Mori no Natsu Kuri finally saw the monster clearly. Its body had already undergone massive mutation; eight spider legs were bursting from its back and twitching violently. Its skin was a sickly bluish-black, and a pair of massive spider chelicerae were clicking on the fallen head, the right side of which was covered in carapace and dense, orange-yellow compound eyes.
Not long after the monster died, its body began to secrete a translucent white silk that covered its entire frame until it became a white cocoon. Mori no Natsu Kuri sighed softly and used fire to burn the white cocoon to ashes.
In just a few seconds, all the man's internal organs had dissolved into a dark-green liquid. Once the cocoon was burned open, the liquid bubbled out, corroding everything it touched.
Suddenly, the sound of breaking wind came from behind. Mori no Natsu Kuri's pupils shrank slightly, and she whipped around. The little girl from before had, at some point, also turned into one of these monsters. Countless meters-long spider legs had erupted from the right side of her small face, supporting her entire frame to move rapidly as she sprinted toward her.
She tried to pull out her twin daggers, only to find that her hands had been firmly bound by spider silk at some unknown moment. Her eyes trembled slightly. While calling out "big sister," the little girl's mouth split into a bizarre arc, spraying out a massive amount of spider silk that pinned Mori no Natsu Kuri's entire body against the wall.
The contrast between the thin, small body and the spider legs several times its size was jarring. With every step, the little girl suspended in the air swayed violently, looking extremely eerie—as if her facial skin would be torn off by the running spider legs at any moment.
Mori no Natsu Kuri couldn't break free for a long time, and a bad feeling surged in her heart. The deeper the fear, the more powerful one became when infected and transformed into a monster. Spider-morphs transformed from children were often the most troublesome.
Before today, she had only read about these spider-morphs in textbooks. This child had clearly been normal just a minute ago; she hadn't expected the transformation to be so fast!
Seeing the sharp spider leg about to slice through Mori no Natsu Kuri's face, a gray figure descended from the sky. Golden hair fluttered in the air as a foot slammed the monster into the wall. Immediately after, a long blade was hurled out, instantly pinning the little girl's body. Eight spider legs splayed out during a shuddering roar, then slowly fell limp and silent.
After finishing this, Xu Xiaoyou turned around. Mori no Natsu Kuri was stunned to see her. Using a burst of strength from some unknown source, she tore through the webbing and hurriedly covered her left eye, which had turned into a spider's compound eye.
"Yuzu..."
Xu Xiaoyou said nothing. She didn't look closely at Mori no Natsu Kuri's current appearance. She turned her head as a long whip materialized in her hand.
The courtyard before them had turned into a complete mess. Monsters chased and slaughtered defenseless ordinary people. Countless monsters surrounded a woman and tore her apart, tossing her remains into the sky. She saw with her own eyes countless spider legs burst through the body of a man crouching on the ground with his head in his hands. She saw people who were fleeing in terror one moment turn into those monsters and join the horde the next.
"Phobia."
She finally knew what strain of the Sickness she had been infected with. If Anya hadn't fed her that vermilion medicine back then, she probably would have long since become one of these monsters as well.
Xu Xiaoyou looked at the courtyard once more. The fear on the people's faces was so deep, yet so gray and broken, as if they had long expected this day to come.
She hadn't expected that the people of Red Heaven were all suffering from such a terminal illness. Was it due to the influence of the Eight-Spider Hive Mother's will?
Living under such harsh conditions, how exactly had they made it to this day?
"What is with that outfit..." Behind her, Mori no Natsu Kuri changed the subject. She hadn't wanted the other girl to see her like this.
"Are you cosplaying Dark Gold Rose?"
Xu Xiaoyou turned around and said with a serious face:
"That's not it. I am Dark Gold Rose."
Rate on N.U.
