CHAPTER 8:

HANS?

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The spider-gorilla, or “Cento-arachni”, as named by its creator, was circling around the wooden door leading into the inner chamber - where it was born and raised, and also where its prey was hiding. It knew full well what the chamber looked like, and that there was no other way out but through the door it was looking at, because it had spent half its life in a glass tube within it. During that time it couldn’t move, but was still able to see its creator working and heard the sound of them talking to it, though it didn’t understand any of their words. 

By the time it was six years old, something must have happened, because within the tube, it could see its creator rushed into the chamber in a panic, packing up everything in a hurry, and then opened the tube. Still unable to move, it was picked up, brought outside for the first time, and was dropped on the floor of a large, square hall. Then the creator ran off, leaving it there, squirming helplessly.

Some times after, a monster walked into the hall, and saw it lying on the floor. Without hesitation, it was picked up, and put in the monster’s mouth. As it felt the burn from the monster’s digestive liquid, a switch was pushed. The survival instinct from when it was two separate entities, which previously lay dormant due to the countless experiments done on it, awakened at the sign of death.

The monster, after devouring its meal, was walking leisurely down a hallway when it felt its stomach move. Thinking it was just the meal still not fully dissolved yet, it didn’t think too much - it was not known for that anyway. But then the movement became pain, and before long it started screaming, as if its stomach was being cut open, which was unfortunately not its imagination. Before long, the Cento-arachni burst through its belly, covered in digestive liquid, mouth full of blood - it had eaten through the monster’s stomach to escape. As the monster fell dead, the Cento-arachni felt itself getting stronger. Waves of revitalizing energy surged through it as it absorbed the magical essence of the monster.

Afterward, it began to hunt. For smaller monsters, it crawled on the walls and dropped on them, paralyzing them with its bites before devouring them. For larger ones, it let itself be swallowed by them, then eat them from within. Before long, it had grown to a hundred times its original size, and became the king of the underground temple.

And the king was hungry. Not for meat, the monsters that idiotically wandered into the hall was enough to sate such desire. What it was craving for, was magic power. The feeling of the first time killing a monster stronger than itself and absorbing its delicious mana, it was dying to experience it once more. But the monsters in the temple weren’t enough anymore, as their powers were now too inferior. 

Not until the humanoid girl came. Never had it seen such a huge, yet pure pool of mana before, nevertheless taste of it. Though unfortunately its prey escaped due to it playing around, the Cento-arachni didn’t show much worry. Its meal would have to come back out some time anyway, lest it starve to death in that chamber.

Well, that might actually be the case, the monster thought, as it had been two days since the girl ran in there, and it was starting to worry she might have chosen to die of starvation instead of trying to fight. It couldn't just punch the door open and broke the wall either, because they had been cast with protection magic that prevented it from destroying them, in case an experiment were to go astray. But fortunately for it, on the third day it saw the door swung open, and the girl nonchalantly walked out. 

A smile crept on its face. It was foolish of the Cento-arachni to play around, then let its meal be postponed. So it wasn’t going to wait any longer. As its empty stomach was rumbling, it immediately jumped at the girl, who was standing motionlessly in front of it. The girl, in the face of danger, calmly took a knife from her thigh holster and lightly threw it. The monster, seeing the knife flying at it with pitiable speed, snorted as it only needed to slightly tilt its head to avoid the object, before resuming its chase. As it came near, it looked at the girl’s face, expecting a terrified expression to come out of her, but all it got was a half grin.

“BAAM!!!” It hit the wall the girl was standing in front of. “Strange”, it thought, as it couldn’t feel the softness of the flesh or the warmth of human blood, only the coldness of stone. It looked down at its mouth to check if it had somehow missed its prey, and was stunned to discover that the girl had, quite literally, vanished. The only thing left behind was, mysteriously, the same knife the girl had thrown in the beginning.

Confused, its numerous eyes darted around to seek for her, and soon found out the whereabouts of its target. The girl, somehow, was standing behind it, her arms crossed, hands holding her daggers tips down.

Luckily, it had insane reflexes, and swiftly jumped forward to avoid her strike. Unluckily, it was already facing the wall, so the jump resulted in the monster ramming it - again. And because of that, it couldn’t dodge what was coming.

“ROARRRR!!!” The Cento-arachni screamed as it felt immense pain. The girl’s daggers had made a clean, crimson cross on the back of its head, gouging out a couple of its eyes that were in their paths. The monster swung its arm, capable of breaking boulders into dust at the girl in retaliation, and immediately yelled as its hand felt a sharp blade digging into it. Again, the girl had disappeared, replaced by the knife which it had foolishly dove its arm right into afterward. At the same time, she appeared in the periphery of its front eyes, and then a few of those were cut in half as well. 

Screaming and staggering, the Cento-arachni dashed away from the girl. It was not afraid - an emotion it was simply not programmed to feel. Instead, it felt rage. As the king, it had never faced such humiliation before, having its prey slipping around like flies and its eyes cut off one by one. It felt angry, much angrier than the time it was left behind by its creator. Such unforeseen anger prompted it to go all out, to kill the human girl in the most brutal way possible. It no longer cared about the meal.

The Cento-arachni raised its arms over its head, then slammed down. The ground shook violently, and the girl staggered. Then the whole stone floor cracked, and water spurted out. In no time, it flooded the hall. 

The monster slammed its spider feet on the ground, and the water underneath it turned a shade of unhealthy green. The green then quickly spreaded across the floor, with the monster at the center. As it reached the bone piles scattered around the hall, it made a disconcerning sizzling sound, and the bones melted into foam. Anyone who saw that would immediately realize that the green substance was bad news, and the girl did too. She stabbed one of her daggers into the wall and jumped on it, using the blade’s handle as foothold.

“So you wanna play The floor is lava? I’ll show you how to play The floor is lava.” The girl said while cracking her knuckles. She then took the rest of her knives and threw them in all directions. The Cento-arachni, cautious to what she was trying to do, stared at her intensely, not wanting to let her get out of its sight.

Meanwhile, the knives had begun attacking it. Still keeping an eye on the girl, it used the remaining thirty (not counting the ones already cut by her) to track the knives and dodge them. Since they were slow (to the monster), it avoided them without problem. The only issue was the girl, who it worried would disappear again.

Then the girl started moving. She jumped forward at the Cento-arachni with her dagger in front of her face, its tip pointing at the monster. Already expecting this, it raised its spider legs up, hoping that the girl would crash into them and get poisoned.

But once again, she disappeared, and in her place was a knife which it thought had already been thrown along with the rest. But this time, since its numerous eyes were already on the lookout in all directions, it immediately discovered where the girl reappeared: on its left side, where one of the knives was supposedly at, and she was aiming for its left eyes.

The Cento-arachni quickly swung its arm at the girl. But just before it hit, the girl vanished again, leaving another knife, and it of course got stabbed. This time, she showed up on top of it, in place of a knife that was giving it decent trouble since it didn’t have a lot of eyes there, only about five. The monster lifted its head, pointing its mouth upward, and spitted a series of spider silks at the girl. It missed as the girl was gone by the time the silks reached, and the monster was showered by its own weapon as they fell back on it. 

Even if the Cento-arachni could see in all directions, it couldn’t predict where the girl would end up. It could be in place of any of the eight knives, at any moment, not to mention anywhere as the knives kept flying in and out of walls, as if physics didn’t apply to them. Was it left or was it right? Up or down, this spot or that spot? Seeing the girl vanish and reemerge in multiple places, its independently moving eyes couldn’t keep up, and each was essentially spinning within its socket like it was trying to be a fan.

Until, finally, it felt immense pain in one of its right eyes. The many eyes helped the Cento-arachni to see everywhere, but they were not without their shortcomings. Its gorilla brain was simply not equipped to deal with such an extensive amount of information, and so at some point during the fight, it stopped being able to process any more, and the monster vision blurred. Thus, it couldn’t see or avoid the next attack, and lost an eye as a result.

But that was not the end, because it was immediately assaulted from all directions. Left, right, up, down and center, its eyes were getting popped one by one like bubble wraps, and it could do nothing but scream and flail around wildly, to no avail. Finally, when all of its thirty-six eyes were gone, all it saw was darkness. And the more one could see, the more despair one would feel once it was taken away.

“ROARRRR!!!” The Cento-arachni screamed like the world had ended for it, its hands desperately clawed its own face in order to get a feel of its bloodied eyes. However, the incoming attacks still ruthlessly persisted, ignoring its wretched cries. This time, not stopping at the head, wounds began to form on its arms, legs and back. It felt like it was being cut by a thousand blades as it hopelessly flailed in the dark, its strength seemingly sucked away by them, its mind waned from terror and delirium. 

At last, as the Cento-arachni bled out the last drop of its blood, it staggered and slumped down, its mouth agape. There, a pathetic cry - the final of its life, was stuck in its throat. The king of the underground temple had perished, in a hall flooded with toxic water mixed with its own blood.

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The girl patiently waited, standing on the dagger she had stabbed in the wall earlier. After a while, the Cento-arachni’s body began to disperse, and from there appeared a rather large crystal ball with dark green smoke inside. Seeing that, the girl jumped forward, pulling the dagger out in the process. And before she could fall back down, she did a somersault in the air. In the middle of that as her hands were pointing down, she disappeared and reappeared in place of a knife that was hovering on top of the monster’s corpse. She quickly grabbed the crystal ball with her upside down arm without touching the water, and vanished again.

She reemerged, finishing her stunt outside the hall, behind the door she had come in from. Then with her hand juggling the ball, her mouth humming a tune the residents of this world were unfamiliar with, she walked away.

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