Chapter 64 – Earning Your Keep (Part Five)

“What… what was that?”

Il-hyeon looked around in confusion.

A voice had clearly come from the darkness.

But it was impossible for a person to be in this deep monster den.

Il-hyeon strained his eyes, peering into the gloom.

There was no person or anything resembling one.

There was only a single, massive spider monster—the source of the voice.

“Get out now. Before I tear you to shreds.”

The threatening voice spoke again.

A harsh voice, like scraping metal. It wasn’t a trick; the sound was coming from the spider’s opening mouth.

“No way! I’ve never even heard of a talking monster…”

Il-hyeon stared blankly at the monster, not even thinking to raise his weapon.

A giant queen spider, its massive body black with a reddish sheen, glared down at him menacingly.

He couldn’t believe what was happening; it felt like a dream.

“Ugh!”

The rest of the team and his summons, delayed by fending off the swarming spiderlings, finally arrived.

They landed with a few spiderling corpses, and Il-hyeon could feel the queen spider’s eyes glint at the sight.

But the queen spider swallowed its bloodlust, forcibly suppressing its instincts.

“Disappear from this place at once.”

“Wha… what?”

“It can talk?”

The team members had the same reaction as Il-hyeon.

In the twenty years since the Gates opened, not one of the countless monsters that had appeared had ever spoken.

While monsters had their own unique methods of communication, this was the first time one had spoken a human language so perfectly.

*This makes no sense…*

Even if it could use language, for a monster from a completely different world to speak Korean was unthinkable.

“What are you?”

Having arrived first, Il-hyeon was the quickest to regain his composure and speak.

But the creature merely flashed its red eyes and didn’t answer.

“Why did you cross over to this world? What kind of dimension do you come from?”

He fired off question after question at the monster.

In this unbelievable situation, there was so much he wanted to ask.

But no answer came.

“Unlike in the past, my patience is not deep. Leave. This is your final warning.”

The queen spider threatened in a clipped, halting tone.

It wanted to devour them on sight, but it knew its opponents were quite strong, so it was holding back as much as it could.

“But there’s a problem. Your offspring are attacking people.”

Ghost said, looking up.

“Then vacate the land above and leave. We have survived for over a decade by devouring our own kind. Whatever stands before us is nothing but prey.”

“I don’t think we can do that.”

CRASH!

A spider leg shot out, shattering the floor and sending fragments flying in all directions.

The team members quickly retreated to dodge.

The queen spider’s patience had run out.

“Then I will devour you all!

The beast shrieked ferociously, slamming its forelegs down wildly.

Il-hyeon narrowly dodged the attacks and struck a leg, causing its carapace to dent slightly and the spider to stagger.

SLICE! In that moment, Lee Soo-yeon cleanly severed one of its legs, and Seok Pil-joon leaped up, aiming for its head.

But just then.

SKREEEEEE!

A terribly high-pitched scream echoed through the chamber.

Everyone in the room clapped their hands over their ears in agony. When the nightmarish sound ended, their vision began to slowly fade.

“Dammit… it’s a psychic type.”

Lee Soo-yeon cursed, clutching her head.

Her vision was completely blocked, and all sorts of things churned in her mind, making it impossible to think straight.

It felt as if all her senses were being twisted, turned inside out, and violated.

Even Lee Soo-yeon couldn’t resist; she let out a groan and collapsed to the floor.

“Ugh!”

Il-hyeon staggered into a wall and slumped against it, sitting weakly.

He tried to calm his churning stomach, which felt like it was about to turn inside out.

In a situation like this, where the monster’s identity was unknown, even the strongest Awakened were always at risk due to the countless variables.

A leg of the queen spider shot toward the defenseless team members.

But Seok Pil-joon’s sword blocked the incoming attack.

Seok Pil-joon stood perfectly fine, completely unaffected by the psychic attack, and swung his sword to parry the leg.

“Aghhh… damn… j-just take care of that thing, quick.”

Ghost, writhing on the ground with his head buried in the dirt like a worm, said to Seok Pil-joon.

Regardless of his rank, Seok Pil-joon possessed an innately high resistance to special powers.

Thanks to this, he could resist most psychic-type abilities.

It was one of the most valued traits in his former unit at Aegis, the anti-personnel team, where battles between Awakened were common.

“Just wait a moment.”

Seok Pil-joon said, glancing behind him.

It didn’t look like it would be as easy to finish as he thought.

A commotion could be heard from the only entrance.

Predicting it was the spiderlings swarming in response to the queen’s cry, he looked to his side and said.

“Cover the rear.”

Next to Seok Pil-joon were Il-hyeon’s summons, who were also completely unaffected by the psychic attack.

The summons nodded and headed for the entrance, while Seok Pil-joon twisted his sword to parry another approaching leg.

“Ugh… huh?”

Someone tapped Il-hyeon on the head as he leaned against the wall, grimacing.

Even with his eyes open, Il-hyeon couldn’t see, so he was puzzled as to what had touched him, but he soon recognized it by its cry.

Squeak!

It was the mouse.

“What is it?”

Squeak, squeak!

“Agh, I’m a mess right now, talk to me later…”

Not understanding what it was trying to say, Il-hyeon gently pushed away the mouse that had climbed onto his shoulder and was pestering him.

But unlike usual, it didn’t back down easily.

“Ack… what are you doing…”

The mouse suddenly grabbed Il-hyeon by the collar and shook him.

He wondered if it was staging a mutiny after getting bigger from eating a few cores, but then it took one of his fingers and touched it to its own eye, then to Il-hyeon’s eye, back and forth.

“Don’t tell me…”

Roughly understanding what it was trying to convey, Il-hyeon’s eyes shot open in surprise.

Despite his disorientation, he managed to find his balance and staggered to his feet.

And one by one, he began to shut down his own scrambled senses.

Soon, his lost senses were replaced by those of the mouse beside him.

He synchronized with it, just as he had first shared his vision with the phoenix, and slowly expanded his senses.

Just sight, smell, and hearing.

“It… it worked.”

Il-hyeon, now standing steady, stared ahead in a daze.

The attack must have induced hallucinations in various ways, because he no longer felt any psychic damage.

It felt a little strange, but not enough to impair his movement.

Picking up his sword, Il-hyeon, with the mouse on his shoulder, jumped straight into the fray where Seok Pil-joon was fighting.

CLANG! He powerfully deflected a leg striking down from above.

“What? You can move?”

“Well, it just kind of happened.”

Il-hyeon replied awkwardly to Seok Pil-joon’s surprised look.

CRASH!

SKREEE!

Just then, the sound of a fierce battle erupted from behind them.

A massive swarm of spiders had encountered the summons at the entrance.

Heads were crushed in the wolf’s jaws, and the bugs went up in flames from the fire of the phoenix and the nine-tailed fox.

But their numbers were so great that it seemed endless, no matter how many they killed.

It was uncertain how long they could hold out.

“No time to drag this out. Let’s end it in one go.”

“Okay.”

The moment they spoke, the two of them charged the spider simultaneously.

Seok Pil-joon leaped up first, while Il-hyeon circled to the side.

The queen spider, perhaps making a mistake, targeted Seok Pil-joon, who was awkwardly suspended in mid-air.

It swung two large legs, intending to kill him first while he was unable to move freely.

But he kicked off the air itself and leaped once more.

In the opening created by the Leap ability, Il-hyeon jumped onto the queen’s head and placed his hand on it.

Sssss.

The hard carapace covering the queen spider’s head slowly weakened.

Removing his hand, Il-hyeon immediately raised his sword high and plunged it down with all his might.

CRUNCH! SKREEEEEE!

The spider, with the sword embedded in its head, thrashed about madly.

To finish it off, Il-hyeon twisted the sword, gouging the wound, but even then, the queen spider struggled tenaciously.

Moreover, it lowered its head and charged at the wall, intending to smash Il-hyeon against it.

But it couldn’t.

Seok Pil-joon, having leaped twice, dropped down and stabbed the creature’s head once more.

The deeply embedded sword pierced straight through its brain, and the spider staggered and collapsed to the floor.

As if its power had vanished, Ghost’s and Lee Soo-yeon’s vision also returned.

Seeing the flow of Ether at the back of the spider’s head, Il-hyeon quickly extracted and secured the core.

Then, he and Seok Pil-joon leaped down from the corpse and approached the two who were still on the ground.

Still not fully recovered from the aftereffects, they staggered and clutched their heads.

“Ugh… my head.”

“Haa, good work. That was close.”

Lee Soo-yeon, helped up by Il-hyeon, looked toward the entrance.

A tremendous number of spiders were still swarming in.

She had secretly hoped they would disappear along with the queen, but since they were offspring hatched from normal eggs, they seemed to remain perfectly fine.

“Uh… what do we do now?”

She said blankly, her eyes slightly unfocused.

Normally, she would have assessed the situation and given orders immediately, but right now, she couldn’t seem to get her bearings.

And Ghost was even worse off.

“Get a grip.”

“Ugh, stop it.”

Ghost grabbed Lee Soo-yeon’s cheeks and squeezed them, and as she tried to resist, they got tangled up and rolled on the floor together.

Seeing the two suddenly acting so strangely, Seok Pil-joon and Il-hyeon turned to look at each other.

“The hallucination must have been stronger than we thought…”

“Looks like the two of us will have to handle this.”

SKREEEEEE!

Suddenly, a piercing cry echoed through the chamber.

Not from the entrance, but from behind them.

The sound came from the corpse of the queen spider—the one whose head had been split open and whose core had been removed, the one that was definitely dead.

“I curse you! Forever!”

The rotting corpse, which was decaying rapidly, shot up and cursed them.

The queen spider’s body seethed, twisting violently with the sound of cracking joints.

Then, a shriek filled with rage echoed out.

“What is this now…”

Startled, Il-hyeon and Seok Pil-joon flinched back.

From the creature’s collapsed corpse, black phantoms began to rise slowly.

Their forms were hazy, like deeply twisted souls, and they radiated killing intent as they turned their heads.

KYAAAAAK!

They opened their maws wide and charged at them all at once.

The two swung their swords in alarm, striking down the dozens of creatures one by one.

They were surprised, but having faced countless monsters, they were adept at handling any situation.

Before long, they had subdued all the phantoms.

But that wasn’t the end.

Their deep wounds all healed, and the creatures rose again to charge at them.

No matter how many times they were killed, they kept regenerating.

Even when trapped inside rock using the Transmutation ability, they seeped out through the cracks like shadows.

At this rate, it would never end.

“This is no good! We’re getting out of here!”

The two of them hoisted Ghost and Lee Soo-yeon over their shoulders and called their summons.

Then they climbed onto the back of the enlarged phoenix and flew back up the tunnel they had come down.

It was a steep vertical passage, but the phantoms relentlessly pursued them, scrambling up the walls right behind them.

CRACK!

Suddenly, the solid ceiling began to crack.

“Hah… no way. Right?”

Il-hyeon looked up at the ceiling despairingly, but the cracks only continued to grow larger.

RUMBLE!

The ground began to collapse.