"Huh… you're no fun," Heart Demon tilted Kiaria's head, neck cracking slowly from side to side as he stared at the Ghost Prison Hollow Face Spider King. "Standing sooo long. Come–attack."
His tone was playful, almost lazy, but every word coiled with hunger.
The Spider King's legs twitched. The skulls sealed in its abdomen shivered. For a moment its many sliding pupils dimmed, then narrowed.
"I am not interested," it rasped, voice scraping out between bone bars. "Petty fight. Not worth this king's time. Goodbye."
It turned, body tensing to retreat.
"OWWW?" Heart Demon's laugh broke into a childish, high-note mockery. "You want to go? No… no… no…"
His grin stretched wide, eyes glowing with insane delight.
"You stay. Play with me. If you want, I can help you break through… before we play. After that–" his teeth bared, "you must play."
The offer fell on the Spider King like both a thrown rope and a blade.
A chance to advance. A threat of worse if refused.
The Ghost Prison Hollow Face Spider went still, hiding the fear in the twist of its skull-packed abdomen.
"Ha… hahaha…" it forced out, mandibles ticking. "You asked for this. Don't regret it later."
"I accept," Heart Demon answered instantly. "That's my treasure."
He pricked his own finger.
Black blood flowed.
With casual precision he drew an inscription in the air. The lines shimmered, forming strange, angular characters that smelled of iron and ashes. Another droplet of black blood flicked from his fingertip and shot straight into one of the Spider King's skull-eye hollows.
The effect was immediate.
Heart Demon's blood carried pure, concentrated evil. It touched the King Realm spider's veins and every dormant malice inside its bloodline roared awake.
The inscription pattern on Heart Demon's palm lit up, threads of black weaving outward like roots.
The Spider King's body trembled. Malachite skin darkened. The evil nature of the Evil King Bloodline stirred like a beast in chains–and those chains snapped.
Evil King Bloodline surged upward.
Evil Emperor Bloodline.
The change didn't stay in the illusory body alone. The awakened bloodline seized the remaining body of the Ghost Prison Hollow Face Spider in the real Arshland and dragged more of its essence fully into the illusion. The illusionary framework thickened, becoming something half-real. Every step it took shook both realms.
The transformation did not stop at Emperor.
The spider's bones cracked. Its joints dislocated with sickening pops. The skulls trapped under its abdomen skin began to bite and claw at the interior. Flesh tore. Hard skin split.
Dozens of soul-trapped skulls forced themselves halfway out, eyes glowing with desperate terror as they tried to escape the prison of flesh.
They didn't get far.
Evil Emperor blood seeped out of every tear like thick black threads–hair made of blood. Those threads shot out like snakes, winding around each protruding skull, dragging them back. They pulled the skulls under the skin again, crushing and condensing them.
White bone turned deeper, harder. Fivefold density. The skulls became reinforced clamps of fear, sealed once more beneath the stretched skin.
All the while, the deep dark-green flame in the spider's prison-face cavity remained unchanged, burning calmly as though nothing around it mattered. The shades swirling around that flame accelerated, skull-fronts distorting in silent wails as they spun.
The disjointed body began to reassemble.
Bones rotated, realigning. Legs reattached, longer and thicker than before. Skin slithered over frame, fusing with a sound like wet cloth pressed to stone. The abdomen swelled, now packed tighter with skulls that stared outward in layered rows.
Everything about it grew more stable, more savage.
Its speed sharpened.
Its webs thickened.
Its domain deepened.
Bloodline rose again, one last time.
Myth Bloodline Awakening.
A mythic-level predator. A bloodline that could claim complete authority inside Ghost Prison Domain, twisting space and law however it wished.
"Ha… ha… HAHAHA!" the spider's warped voice shook the air. "Interesting. You are really interesting. Now–you can die."
Heart Demon's stomach actually growled.
"YES…" he hissed, eyes glittering. "This is how it should be. My prey… you smell too delicious."
No… this is wrong. The spider's thoughts ran wild beneath its bony shell. Too strange. Too mad. I must escape. I must–
"Escape?" Heart Demon's head tilted. "Where?"
The spider froze. Its countless eyes jittered in unison.
"You–" it choked. "You hear–my thoughts."
"Then," Heart Demon smiled, all teeth, "fight to death."
The Spider King didn't waste another breath.
It flashed forward. A needle-point leg swung like a hammer.
The impact struck Heart Demon squarely in the chest, sending his body flying. He streaked across the ghostly sky, smashed through a series of ruined towers and crumbling stone arches, and crashed into the ground. Dirt and stone exploded outward in a cloud.
"Good power," Heart Demon laughed, half-cough, half-cackle.
He had barely pushed himself up when the next attack landed.
Another leg. Another collision. Poison dust followed each strike, serrated bone and crushing force combining into a relentless tempo. The spider came at him again and again, eight legs like eight spears.
Heart Demon took the hits.
His body bent, bones creaked, but every time he smashed into the ground or a wall, he rolled back to his feet, blood on his lips, laughter in his throat.
"More," he urged. "More."
The Mythical Spider's bloodline responded to the battle.
Each time Ghost Prison shook, the domain recalibrated, growing thicker, darker. Its interior laws reinforced. The Evil Emperor bloodline–now myth-tier–synced with the domain. Skill patterns engraved deeper into its being.
Prison Spike.
Throttle Piercer.
Black Alphil Combined Poison slashes.
Every technique that belonged to its line refined and evolved under pressure. Its motion grew smoother, faster, more deadly. With each strike, its killing intent deepened.
Heart Demon only fed it.
He deliberately shattered patches of Ghost Prison Domain with raw force. The fractured domain collapsed, then immediately reformed, twice stronger each time. He repeated the pattern–break, reform, break, reform–until the domain's density and the spider's strength had risen to the peak the environment could support.
Half-step away from Beast God Realm.
The Spider King's steps became blurs. Wherever its feet touched, web spread–thin, tensile strands that covered the ground like an invisible net. Every landing marked a point of awareness. Every shift of weight on the web was a signal.
Now, no matter where Heart Demon moved, the spider felt it.
He became a ping of disturbance on an ocean of web.
Each slight footfall triggered a counterstrike. A leg flashed toward his spine, another toward his side, poison mist sweeping in arcs.
To anyone else, it would have been a death cage.
For a while, even Heart Demon was knocked around like a ball beneath a child's foot.
Then one strike landed clean.
Prison Spike surged from below, a dense cluster of bone-javelins ripping toward him. Throttle Piercer caught his midsection, Black Alphil Poison riding the blow. The impact sent him tumbling. He coughed, a spray of dark blood misting the air.
The Spider King froze, then shook with sharp, twitching excitement.
Blood.
Its attack had truly hurt him.
"Good… good…" Heart Demon spat blood onto the domain's flaming ground and grinned wider, as if delighted. "That was really fun. Come again."
His voice was hoarse but jubilant.
Spider's confidence surged. Its attacks became faster, messier, more frenzied. Prison Spike, Throttle Piercer, Black Alphil Slash fell like a storm of blades. The air filled with bone, dust, and poison.
Heart Demon's body cracked.
Ribs broke. Arms twisted. Skin tore. Blood streamed down his limbs and dripped from his fingers. At last, the Spider King webbed him, taking advantage of a moment when his body hit the ground harder than before.
Thick strands shot from its abdomen and locked around his wrists and ankles, dragging him upward. Webs stretched and snapped until Heart Demon hung wide in the sky like an insect on a frame.
The bone prison face tilted up.
The trap-jaw bars spread apart, opening into a gaping cage. Inside, the green flame flared, skull-shades whipping like a storm.
One inch.
Just one inch separated Heart Demon's throat from being bitten clean off and sealed into that skull prison.
The spider lunged.
But–
The webs snapped.
Both upper and lower bone jaws stopped mid-closure, caught in Heart Demon's bare hands.
His fingers dug into the bony bars. With a twist and a roar of effort that sounded disturbingly like laughter, he tore.
The top half of the prison face ripped away.
The bottom half followed, wrenched off its hinges and thrown aside like discarded scrap. Shards of bone flew.
The Spider King screamed–a ragged, broken sound produced by air wheezing through a half-destroyed frame.
"You dropped something," Heart Demon said lightly. "Allow me–"
He didn't reattach anything.
Instead, he let the bones fall.
The domain shuddered.
Heart Demon's form blurred.
They clashed again.
The spider slashed, but Heart Demon dodged with increasing ease, his movements smoothing out as if pain had become a background note. Spider legs cut through afterimages and bad angles. Fangs snapped at shadows.
Somewhere between one exchange and the next, all the wounds that had littered Heart Demon's body vanished.
No blood.
No cracks.
His flesh looked untouched–as if everything earlier had been smoke.
The Spider King didn't notice. It only knew that its attacks felt less and less like they were landing.
One of its legs whipped from behind toward Heart Demon's torso.
Heart Demon didn't dodge.
He raised one finger.
The leg stopped.
One finger held that massive, force-loaded limb in midair.
A sly smile crawled across his face.
"Now… it begins."
He slid his hand along the leg, fingers scraping off smeared poison. He brought the blackened fingertip to his mouth and licked.
His eyes closed briefly.
"Mmmm…" he sighed. "Sour… bitter… I like it."
Something in the Spider King's abdomen tightened.
It tried to retreat.
It took one step back–
And slammed straight into Heart Demon's chest.
He was already there.
His foot rose.
He kicked, not to kill but to break.
The blow crashed into the spider's back, sending its giant body skidding across the domain. It plowed trenches into the ground, trailing flailing legs and shards of broken web.
Pain made it shriek. Blood splattered far across the flame-covered floor.
Heart Demon didn't pause.
He chased, appearing in front of its face.
His hand swung.
The slap was huge, disproportionate to his seemingly slender arm. Bone exploded from the impact point, fragments spinning away. A chunk of the prison face collapsed inward, leaving a jagged cavity where form had once been.
The Spider King staggered backward, legs tangling.
Heart Demon didn't give it space.
Again. And again. And again.
Each slap cracked more of the facial bone cage.
Bone chunks fell like hail. The green flame in its cavity guttered, exposed. Shades shrieked silently as their 'bars' shattered around them.
The Spider turned in panicked circles, spitting thread, lashing out blindly with its legs.
Heart Demon simply wasn't there when the attacks landed.
He kept reappearing where another piece of bone remained intact.
A slap.
A crack.
Another slap. Another break.
Finally, the entire prison face crumbled.
Tooth-like bars scattered in pieces across the floor.
Heart Demon rushed to the fallen shards like a starving predator descending on meat. He scooped them into his hands and devoured them–crunching bone as if it were brittle candy, eyes half-lidded in obscene satisfaction.
His lips and teeth stained darker, yet his aura only grew more oppressive.
The Ghost Prison Hollow Face Spider trembled.
This domain… my cage… It tried to speak, but without its bone teeth, the vibrations of its voice misaligned. What should have been a clear incantation became garbled moans. The mispronounced recitation jammed the process of collapsing its own domain.
It could not remove Ghost Prison Domain.
Its own skill failed it.
It cursed itself in terror, wishing desperately for a tongue, a throat, a proper mouth. Anything to scream the right command.
Instead it staggered, legs slipping. The domain that had been its greatest weapon wrapped around it like chains.
Heart Demon wasn't done.
He vanished again.
This time he reappeared on top of the spider's abdomen.
One hand plunged straight through the stretched skin with a wet tear.
His fingers closed around one struggling skull inside.
He wrenched it out.
The skull, still packed with soul and terror, snapped at him with spectral teeth.
He opened his mouth wider.
He bit.
The soul screamed as he devoured it.
The other skulls, though they hadn't directly felt his hand yet, shuddered with a newfound horror. Their remnant consciousnesses sensed the predator more terrifying than the spider that had enslaved them. Fear of Heart Demon drowned their fear of their old jailer.
They tried to escape, pushing through the broken hole in the abdomen skin.
Heart Demon sat squarely over the wound.
One foot pressed down to block their path. His other hand caught those who got close, one by one, and stuffed them into his mouth. Bone crunched. Soul-voices fractured.
He ate until only one skull remained, trapped half-in, half-out beneath his foot.
He pressed down.
The skull cracked.
The spider's entire body convulsed.
It ran, shrieking, legs flailing. It spat webs wildly, trying to dislodge him, stringing the domain with sticky barriers, but Heart Demon rode its back easily, anchored by his arm embedded in its flesh and the delight in his eyes.
He only got off when nothing inside the abdomen remained but a hollow of echoes.
The Spider King bolted into a thick cluster of webs and buried itself, wrapping multiple tight cocoons around its body. Desperation shook its limbs. It spun decoys–dozens of similar web mounds all around, hoping to hide its true position and buy time, any time, to think of escape.
The pain made its legs tremble. The terror made the web clumps quiver.
Heart Demon laughed softly and walked.
He knew exactly where it hid. He did not go directly there.
Instead, he tore through one cluster at a time.
Webs exploded in sticky shreds. Empty. Next cluster. Empty.
With each destroyed mound, the Spider's panic grew. It watched through tiny gaps, each time seeing Heart Demon come closer, each time hoping he'd pick the wrong one next–and each time being disappointed.
Finally, Heart Demon stopped before the real cocoon.
"My treasure…" he crooned. "Where are you? I'm coming…"
His hand plunged into the web.
His fingers closed around the spider's neck and yanked.
The massive body flew out of the hiding place. As it sailed through the air, Heart Demon's form blurred in behind it. His hand, thrust forward, pierced deep into its side, fingers closing around something pulsing and hot.
He pulled.
A heart – black-green, veined with ghostly skull-lines – came free. He wrapped it instantly in a cocoon of black smoke, sealing its beat.
The spider crashed to the floor.
Heart Demon devoured its dying body as though afraid it might vanish. Flesh. Bone. Leftover flame. The last faint skull-screams. All taken in.
Only the heart remained.
He raised it, studying its frantic beating.
Black smoke swirled around it, then folded inward.
His own body began to change.
From that beating core, flesh and bone grew once more–this time echoing the spider's form. Extra limbs. Hard plates. Hollow cavities. Skulls and flames reconstructed. In moments, a terrifying arachnid shape stood where Heart Demon had just been–a perfect mirror of the Mythical Spider, yet radiating a different, deeper malice.
The heart integrated fully.
The new beast shuddered once–then straightened.
The fear still lingered in the original spider's soul. But now it no longer ran.
"I like your style," Heart Demon said, voice overlaying the spider's new growl. "From now on, you serve me."
The Mythical Spider trembled. Its joints clicked.
There was no room left for defiance.
"Master," it replied, voice low, stripped of earlier arrogance.
Satisfied, Heart Demon exhaled.
Black smoke rolled from Kiaria's scar and dispersed into the Ghost Prison Domain.
The Heart Demon's presence faded, peeling away from flesh and consciousness alike.
In the sea of consciousness, Kiaria floated.
He snapped awake as if dragged from deep water.
The Dragon Emperors loomed nearby. Relief and unease battled in their ancient eyes.
"Child," the Golden Dragon said slowly. "Your gift is outside."
Kiaria blinked. "Gift…?"
They gestured.
His awareness lifted, returning fully to his body.
He woke in the illusory Arshland.
The domain was still, its malachite sky thinning back toward dim gray. The flames receded. The oppressive pressure had weakened but not vanished entirely.
In front of him stood the spider.
Not the same as before.
Its body was larger, aura heavier. The skulls on its abdomen were calmer, their expressions less twisted. The dark-green flame in its facial cavity burned steady, without that rabid frenzy. There was no killing intent directed at him–only submission.
"Master," the Mythical Spider bowed its front half low. "I submit to you wholeheartedly."
Kiaria froze.
In one breath, he sensed strength far beyond the earlier Saint Moth and the Ghost-Faced Faceless Spider. Yet… no malice aimed at him.
…Heart Demon.
He remembered the last thing before collapse, the desperate call, the offered hand from Ye Cain, the plunge into the domain.
And now this.
He narrowed his eyes.
The Dragon Emperors would not call something a "gift" lightly.
He exhaled.
"Fine," he said quietly. "If you dare lie, it will be your loss. You've become a Mythical Beast… are you willing to serve as Guardian Beast of the Empire?"
The spider's many eyes gleamed.
"I will, Master," it answered without hesitation.
"Good."
With a thought, Kiaria summoned the relic. The treasure box appeared before him, spinning once before opening its inner world.
"Come," he ordered.
The spider shrank as it walked, compressing its massive body down, joints tightening inward. By the time it reached the relic's entrance, it had reduced to a size that could squeeze through, still monstrous but no longer mountain-large. It slipped inside, the box swallowing it into the inner realm.
Kiaria stepped in after.
The inner space of the relic greeted him with that familiar vastness–green water pool, islands of land, the faint glow of relic light. Diala and Princess Lainsa were already awake, though still recovering. Uskilen hovered near them, calmly monitoring their conditions.
When the spider appeared behind Kiaria, everyone except Uskilen stiffened.
Diala's pupils shrank. Princess instinctively reached for her weapon.
Even the beasts tensed.
Kiaria raised a hand. "Calm down. It's… with us."
"Master," the spider said respectfully, then obeyed Kiaria's next thought–it shrank further, compressing into the form of a palm-sized spider with a simple, patterned back and dulled aura. It scuttled to a shadowed corner and stayed there, still and quiet.
Everyone exhaled.
Diala tugged on Kiaria's sleeve. "Kia… why is it here? You subdued it?"
Kiaria scratched his cheek, slightly embarrassed. "No, Dia… Dragon Emperors did. Evil Spider agreed to become Guardian Beast of the Sword Manor Valley. You can officially become a sect disciple with proper guardian watching over the valley."
Diala's eyes brightened. "That's great!"
She almost bounced, but winced at a faint ache in her muscles, settling for a glowing smile instead.
From behind her, a familiar teasing voice cut in.
"You two are hiding something again from me, aren't you?"
Princess Lainsa folded her arms, eyebrow raised, watching them.
"Big Sister!" Diala jumped, then quickly shook her hands. "You misunderstood. Nothing secret. I'll explain everything on the way."
She curled a strand of hair around her finger, guilty habit blooming.
Princess laughed softly. "Heh… we'll see."
Kiaria, Diala, and Princess Lainsa left the relic together shortly after. Their injuries were mostly healed; the worst of the mental pressure had passed. Uskilen remained inside, managing the inner world and settling the new guardian beast into its temporary corner of the relic realm.
Outside, the Illusory Arshland's wind had grown quieter.
The three cloaked figures stepped forward across the cracked, ancient soil, moving deeper into the trial world–together again.
Somewhere beneath Kiaria's ribs, the faint echo of Heart Demon's laughter was gone.
But the path ahead had already been altered by the shadow that fought in his place.