The dead Ghost-Faced Faceless Spider's body twitched on the cracked stone. Its severed abdomen still leaked faint venom, its eight legs stiff, fangs fractured. It should have stayed that way–just another corpse in the Illusory Arshland.
Instead, the air changed.
A low, guttural vibration echoed from somewhere beyond the illusion–far away, in the true mountain ranges of Arshland. It traveled like a heartbeat through the ground, through web, through the thin line of blood that tied parent to offspring.
In the real Arshland, high upon a jagged cliff, the Ghost Prison Hollow Face Spider opened its hidden eyes.
Its King Realm blood boiled.
The Evil King Bloodline awakened.
Power surged through the connection. The King Realm spider lowered its head and bit into the neck of its dead child, injecting a torrent of malachite-green venom mixed with its own demonic will. That venom followed the link that bound illusion and reality together and flooded into the illusory body.
On the Dragon-Tooth Tiger Boat, in the training chamber's Arshland replica, the corpse began to move.
The Ghost-Faced Faceless Spider's corpse jerked once, twice. Its abdomen bulged, then caved, as if something inside were shrugging off a skin too small. Webs shivered on the ruined ceiling. A suffocating pressure spread outward.
Kiaria felt it first through his bones, then his soul.
Beast realms flashed through his mind–from the lessons he'd heard in the Preceptor's mansion and in Dragon Emperor lectures.
Fetus Realm.
Qi-Soul Realm.
Nascent Soul Realm.
Marshal Realm.
Supernatural Realm.
Saint Realm.
Beast God Realm.
Transformation Realm.
Realm decided strength, but bloodline decided ceiling.
For ordinary beasts, those realms were just a climb.
For mythic and ancient bloodlines, realms were marks on a path they could crush underfoot.
Saint. King. Emperor.
Those three realms were not just stages but declarations of bloodline purity.
The thing forcing its way out of the corpse was King Realm.
Evil King Spider.
The pressure that came with the awakening Evil King Bloodline struck Kiaria like a mountain dropped onto his shoulders. The illusory sky dimmed. Air itself seemed to grow heavier. Even standing still felt like walking through syrup.
But he didn't kneel.
His will had already been tempered in the presence of the Dragon Emperors–true Emperor Bloodline beings one step away from Beast Transformation Realm. His bones remembered that weight. His heart had learned not to shatter beneath it.
So he stood.
He did not know, however, that what was coming… was no longer illusion.
The Evil King Bloodline's special ability bled through the channel and rooted into the training realm. The air vibrated in a way that made his skin crawl–like a spider weaving threads through every breath he took.
"The ability of Evil King Bloodline…" a distant voice from his memory echoed. "To conceal every technique with demonic or evil nature, within its domain. It doesn't simply block–it steals. It can devour and reuse those energies as its own. As long as a shred of that sealed region remains, even a remnant, the seal reforms twice as strong."
Kiaria had never been told this directly.
So he stood, unaware that every step into this domain chained his own strength against him.
The dead spider's skin split.
Its old chitin peeled away and fluttered down like blackened petals. From inside, something larger, bonier, and far more terrible unfolded–limb by limb.
The King Realm Ghost Prison Hollow Face Spider crawled free.
The thing's head looked less like a normal spider and more like a hollowed cage. Its facial structure was a cavity, shaped like a prison cell built from bone. There were no eyes, nose, or mouth in the usual sense–just bony bars crossing over a hollow pit.
No metal. Just hardened facial bone forming prison-like bars, sharp like the trap-teeth of a carnivorous plant.
Within that cavity, a deep dark-green flame burned without consuming its own host. Around the flame, shadows spun–black shades circling fast, each shade's front mold into a skull-like shape, their hollow eye sockets stretched in silent screams.
Every time one of those skull-shades brushed the bars, a soundless shockwave of malice spread.
The spider's body was wrong in every way.
From the cephalothorax down its legs, there was almost no muscle–only tight skin stretched sickly over dense bone. Its skin was malachite green, while patches of pitch-black ran along its upper and lower sides like polished armor. The legs were long and needle-pointed, made to pierce through anything, each step echoing with a razor-scratch sound.
But the most horrifying part was its abdomen.
Big and oval, obscenely swollen, yet not fat.
Trapped within the translucent, stretched skin of that abdomen were skulls.
Human skulls. Beast skulls. Skulls twisted beyond original shape, still faintly moving.
They weren't decorations.
They were prisoners.
Each skull held remnants of soul–fragments of fear, despair, pain. The spirits of everything the spider had eaten were sealed there, unable to dissolve or reincarnate. They kept their terror. They tried to escape, pushing against the stretched skin from the inside, making the surface bulge with warped faces and half-formed mouths.
The elastic skin kept them from breaking free.
Every time a trapped soul screamed, its silent voice shook the air. Just standing near the spider made the heart feel like it might curl in on itself.
Kiaria's heartbeat skipped.
He had seen a lot already–battlefields, demons, twisted beasts. But this thing was fashioned from nightmares.
He thought it blind at first. The prison bones hid everything. But as he stared, shivers ran through him–a dozen narrow slits of teal light flickered behind the bony grill, horizontal like strips of lamps. No lashes, no lids, no clean lines separating those eyes. Round pupils floated in the teal, but they didn't move in one direction; they wandered chaotically, some spinning in circles, some jerking from side to side. Red lines traced their edges, making them look bloodshot and unhinged.
"…Heh," Kiaria exhaled under his breath.
His courage dropped a fraction.
But the faces of Diala and Princess Lainsa flashed in his mind. Their bodies resting inside the relic, trusting him to face whatever remained.
Fear for them cut through the fear of the beast.
He steadied his grip.
Before he could think of a strategy, the spider moved.
One moment it stood on the cracked ground. The next, a King Realm body flashed forward like a streak of malachite lightning.
A pointed leg struck him across the chest.
The force exceeded Kiaria's current limits. His body flew backward, smashing through two ruined walls, then another, stone exploding around him in dusty bursts. He hit the ground hard, rolled, and dug a furrow in the dirt.
His ribs screamed. Blood tasted metallic in his mouth.
He hadn't even reacted yet when the air twisted again.
The Evil King Spider descended and opened its domain.
The sky turned a poisonous malachite green. Clouds spun overhead, circling in slow, ominous orbits like chains being wound. The ground beneath Kiaria's feet shifted, a thin layer of deep dark-green flame spreading across it like a curtain of death. Every breath felt thick and heavy.
Ghost Prison Domain.
The moment it descended, Kiaria felt his insight caged. His sixth sense, which had once flowed freely like water, now felt like it was being squeezed through a narrow crack. His reflexes slowed, halved by a weight he could not name.
He realized with a cold chill: it felt like he was standing inside a mouth.
Not a metaphor.
The domain folded like jaws.
His thoughts stuttered.
He tried to call on his insight–to see the threads of will, the lines of cause and effect–but fear had licked his heart. The will of life that insight came from stirred in panic, and the fear itself stained it, making the golden threads dim.
Insight sealed.
He reached for the Zhar Do Globe.
Nothing responded.
Zhar Do Globe, once drenched with blood of countless candidates in ancient trials, now resonated faintly with the domain. That past slaughter had imprinted evils into its shell–not enough to make it corrupt, but enough for the Evil King seal to mark it as "usable fuel". The Ghost Prison Domain seized it.
Zhar Do Globe sealed.
He thought of the Sacred Sword.
It did not move.
Celestial metal or not, its core essence had come from the fallen meteors–the origin of much demonic calamity in this world. Purified or not, its root bore a trace of the same "external evil" the domain fed upon.
Sacred Sword sealed.
Everything with a trace of evil or demonic nature, or anything connected to old massacres, was trapped.
What remained?
His Patron Shadow Ghost form. The crown. The misty-white cape. Crescent Loop Moon Blades revolving behind him like moons of judgment. And the Spiritual Spring Embryo's healing power–because water, in its neutral nature, did not belong to evil at all.
He healed a few fractures with the Embryo's mild glow, but the domain gave him no time.
The Spider King fell from above.
The thin layer of dark flames rippled like water when it landed, and black spikes erupted from the ground in a rolling wave. They thrust upward, skewering air and stone, cutting toward his legs.
Kiaria's reflexes were weakened, but not broken.
He stepped, twisted, and slipped between the spikes, moving like a thread weaving through needles. The wave passed under and around him.
The Spider King had wanted that.
His backward dodge created an opening.
A leg flashed again. This time it pierced, sliding through the scaly defensive layer of Kiaria's right thigh, scraping bone. Pain tore up his nerves. His body jerked from the impact and landed heavily, the wound spraying blood.
His blood was not normal.
Immortal Blood.
Drops spattered onto the domain flames.
The flame did not burn them away.
Instead, the black shades swirling around the Spider King flicked, turning sharply toward the falling scarlet. They dove like starving hounds, swarming over his spilled blood. The instant they touched it, their speed increased, their shapes sharpened.
His blood was sweeter than anything they had ever devoured.
And Kiaria's history was bait: demon heart once coiled in him, evil trials survived, resentment tasted and tempered. Even when his Heart Demon had shattered, its trace still colored his existence.
This was feast.
"But not for long…" Kiaria gritted his teeth, trying to push healing into the wound. The Spider King didn't let him.
It attacked again and again, forcing him into motion, denying him stillness. Each dodge left a smear of blood; each smear drew more shades, which lapped it greedily. The Spider watched, the skulls in its abdomen quivering with glee.
"Cry…" a voice rasped from the bone bars of its face.
"Scream… yes… like that…"
The sound shouldn't have existed. It had no tongue, no vocal cords. Yet the voice came from deep in its neck, air forced through bony grills in a rattling hiss that scraped the ears.
"You sinner… my son's cries… did he sound like you?" the Spider King mocked, voice fragmented. "Whether he cried or not, you… will cry for him…"
The shades surged upward.
They poured toward Kiaria in a tide of skull-faced shadows and slipped through the wound in his leg, forcing themselves into nerves and vessels. The pain multiplied–no longer simply physical, but crawling through every thread of sensation. His veins darkened beneath the skin, lines of shadow streaking outward.
It felt like something was eating him from the inside.
Then, from the depth of his heart–
A howl.
Blood Moon Wolf Bloodline stirred.
Blue spectral wolves, formed from Emperor bloodline echoes, raced through his vessels. They snapped at the invading shades, tearing their skull-faces apart, devouring them ruthlessly. Shadow after shadow shattered under their fangs, dissolving into nothing.
But the essence of the shades, the echo of that devoured malice, did not vanish completely.
It drifted.
Like dust… toward a familiar emptiness.
His Heart Demon.
In the sea of consciousness, the scattered existence of Heart Demon felt the call. It condensed, drawing in the dispersed fragments of itself, coiling into a singular shape again.
The Dragon Emperors sensed a presence and, thinking it Kiaria's core soul, rushed toward it.
"Kid!" the Azure Dragon shouted, relief palpable. "What are you doing here? Get out immediately! Use the token that person gave you. This is not an illusory world anymore–you are fighting the true one. Run!"
The figure in the center turned.
A crooked smile. Eyes like pits.
"Heh… hmhmhm…"
That laugh was not Kiaria's.
Bloodlust rolled from it like smoke.
"You–" Golden Dragon's eyes widened. "Not Kiaria. A heart demon…"
They did not dare to provoke it.
"You will save him… right?" Azure Dragon asked, tone turning oddly respectful in the space of a breath.
"Save?" the Heart Demon cocked its head. "Who… whom…?"
Its lips peeled back, drool glistening.
"I PREY… KILL… EAT."
The hunger in that voice was enough to make even ancient beings feel cold.
Without waiting, the Heart Demon turned away and rushed toward the sealed floating island at the center of Kiaria's inner world–the place where the Primordial Spirit resided.
It grabbed the shimmering shield that wrapped around the floating island and tore.
Cracks spidered through the barrier like fractures in glass. Light bled from the seams.
"He's playing with fire," the Golden Dragon muttered, old fear creeping into his ancient tone. "Is he mad? He'll be erased."
"You won't interfere," the Heart Demon snapped without looking back. "Rest assured… Hehehe…. Today I feast. I won't take over his body permanently. That's my promise. But you"–his tone dropped colder–"don't even think of staring too long. You dare?"
On the floating island, the Primordial Spirit sat at a low stone table, calm as ever. Cups and a jug of wine were set before him.
He flicked a droplet of wine into one of the cups. The cup itself formed from his essence, shimmering in midair. It floated toward the Heart Demon–a wordless contract.
Heart Demon caught it. Behind its mad grin, for a moment, a thin line of caution ran through its eyes.
It drank.
The torn shield mended itself instantly, whole once more.
Outside, Kiaria's scar burned.
From it, thick black smoke erupted–dense, suffocating, like ink poured into clear water. The smoke fell instead of rising, draping over the domain's flames. Wherever it touched, the deep green fire hissed and vanished. The skull-shades hiding in those flames tried to flee, only to be caught and devoured by the smoke's swirling jaws.
"Hmhmhm… hahahaha…" a low chuckle bled into Kiaria's throat.
"My little baby treasure… I'm here for you…"
His body straightened.
The color of his Shadow Ghost form and Patron regalia darkened. The misty-white cape turned pitch black. The crown above his head dimmed, then reformed in obsidian. The Crescent Loop Moon Blades behind him, once like pale moons, shifted to resemble eclipses–dark discs edged with a thin, hungry light.
His eyes gleamed with feral delight.
He vanished.
The Spider King jerked in confusion.
The next instant, a breath brushed its facial bars.
Heart Demon–Kiaria stood in front of its head, close enough to smell the venom.
He inhaled deeply.
"Hmmm… My treasure…" he whispered, tongue licking his lips. "Smells… good."
The Evil King Spider recoiled instinctively, pushing its massive body backward. Its legs stabbed into the ground, trying to put distance between them.
Every place it landed, Heart Demon was already there. Step, flicker, appear. No afterimages–just impossible repositioning, like reality had skipped frames.
"W–who… a–are you?" the Spider King asked. For the first time, its voice carried fear.
"My treasure asked me a question," Heart Demon replied, tone dripping with amusement. "How can I not answer properly?"
His grin widened, sharp and hungry.
"Tell me… how should I eat you? Raw… or cooked?"
The Spider King's prison-head trembled. The skulls in its abdomen chattered silently. The domain, once entirely under its control, suddenly felt… smaller.
"Whoever you are," it hissed, poison dripping faster, "leave… or die."
Both of them stilled.
Just a few meters apart.
Air itself tightened between them, stretching like a rope pulled at both ends. The flames on the ground flickered nervously, shadows leaning toward the center as if waiting.
The Evil King Bloodline pulsed in the spider's veins.
The Heart Demon's hunger surged in Kiaria's body.
Neither moved yet.
They watched one another.
Waiting to see who would commit to the first kill.