Inside a room in a high-end apartment building in Tokyo, the air was stagnant, filled with a mixed scent of instant seasoning packets and machine heat dissipation vents. The only light source in the room came from deep within the bedroom—a dozen monitors of varying sizes flickered faintly, their cold light reflecting off stacked computer cases and data cables coiled like snakes.
The furnishings in the living room were dominated by a 'high efficiency' aesthetic, completely devoid of any sign of life, and the only thing that made the room less lifeless was a brand-new coffee machine placed on a shelf.
The heavy blackout curtains completely fixed the time in the room at midnight.
Misumi Uika was curled up in a computer chair, a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her golden retriever ears drooping weakly, their tips trembling slightly, indicating the owner's exhaustion.
She had just barely escaped from a complete beast transformation, recovering part of her human form, but her spirit felt hollowed out. Traces of un-faded fur still clung to the back of her hands, and each keystroke felt unusually heavy.
"Fuuki-sama..." she murmured, a hint of worry in her voice.
The first thing the girl did after escaping her beast form was to try and contact him. But he seemed to be in an area with no signal, as if that region was enveloped by an invisible barrier.
Normally, with just a slight thought, the power awakened by Fuuki, which was a manifestation of her psychic energy, could easily penetrate obstacles and weave mental threads directly to him.
But now, she couldn't even form the rudimentary shape of this power; deep in her consciousness was a chaotic fatigue.
Helpless, Uika could only force her almost-collapsed body to move to the computer. The cold light of the screen stung her eyes, but she forced herself to focus, her fingers clumsily typing.
"I must gather information, the full picture of this 'beast transformation' incident that swept through Ikebukuro but then suddenly subsided!"
"Fuuki-sama has personally ventured into danger; I must quickly make thorough preparations, ready for his return at any moment!"
On the screen, countless windows refreshed in a waterfall-like cascade: chaotic social media distress calls, rapidly deleted fragments of live video, vague official announcements... Her claws moved the mouse with difficulty, trying to piece together the full scope of the disaster. Just then—
Beep! Beep!
A small window on one of the surveillance splits suddenly popped up an alert.
The image showed the empty corridor of the apartment building, with two unfamiliar figures rapidly approaching her door.
Uika's drooping dog ears suddenly perked up, her fatigue instantly replaced by cold alertness.
The newcomers wore blinding white hard hats, with large, hastily scrawled characters for 'Happiness' and 'Safety' on them. Both had their faces covered by masks and wore bulky dark work uniforms. One held a detector covered in rust and crooked antennas; the other carried a strange-looking tool, similar to a breaching device.
They meant no good!
Several thoughts flashed through her mind: Had her identity as the 'Spider' been exposed? Had the intelligence website she established, 'Spider Silk Monopoly,' been traced back? Or... was it simply because she was also affected by the 'beast transformation' incident, and was now being hunted down as part of some cover-up?
A sense of crisis instantly gripped her heart, but it wasn't born of fear for her own safety. What she worried about was her meticulously constructed intelligence node, built to serve Fuuki, being discovered and destroyed.
Even in her weakened state, unable to use her Stand, she was still the 'Spider.'
Her dwelling was, in itself, a deadly web.
She watched the surveillance footage coldly. The two stopped at the door; the one with the detector nodded to the person next to them after confirming some value, and the other person was pressing the strange tool against the door lock.
"Good, the first step into the trap."
Uika's finger hovered over an inconspicuous button on the side of the keyboard. As soon as the other party entered the room, the trap she had pre-set with her Stand would activate. Due to the special nature of her Stand, its ability could be preserved for a long time within electronic devices capable of transmitting signals, and would similarly be triggered by a special signal.
Just as her fingertip was about to fall—a figure swift as lightning suddenly leaped over the railing from the outside of the corridor, moving cleanly and decisively, with a wild abandon.
Although her appearance had changed significantly from what Misumi Uika had seen in the intelligence reports, she recognized the person instantly—Takagi Naoko.
Her newly dyed golden hair was strikingly bright in the sunlight, and her ill-fitting black trench coat flapped in the wind. Most striking was behind her—a roughly outlined, headless humanoid figure, condensed from bright blue vapor, appeared out of thin air.
That "humanoid" moved mechanically yet swiftly, its arms swinging like heavy hammers from side to side.
"Bang! Bang!" Two muffled thuds sounded almost simultaneously.
The two fully armed searchers outside the door didn't even grunt, but were slammed against the corridor wall like two heavy bags of garbage, then slid softly to the ground, their detector and breaching tool clattering as they flew far away.
Takagi Naoko landed gracefully, dramatically flicked her dazzling golden hair, and then meticulously brushed off non-existent dust from her trench coat.
She adjusted the huge black sunglasses that almost covered half her face, and facing the video intercom at Uika's door, she flashed a smile she believed to be utterly charming and triumphant.
"..."
In front of the surveillance screen, Uika's face was expressionless, but a vein clearly bulged on her temple.
Her hand moved away from the button and instead began typing on another keyboard at a dazzling speed. All the indicator lights of the connected surveillance cameras inside and outside the apartment building extinguished at the same instant, and subsequently, Takagi Naoko's foolish solo performance was completely erased from the surveillance records.
Click.
The apartment's heavy electronic door lock automatically opened.
Takagi Naoko's eyes lit up, and her heart swelled with joy!
"It worked!" She quickly bent down, one hand for each, laboriously dragging the unconscious 'trophies' from the ground, and excitedly stepped over the threshold, letting the door silently close behind her.
"My rescue was timely and spectacular!" She happily mused to herself, "The 'Spider,' who is highly valued by that adult, will surely be endlessly grateful to me! Then my status in this mysterious organization will be, hmph hmph..."
"Huh?!"
As she fully stepped into the dimness of the room, all her smug thoughts came to an abrupt halt.
A bone-chilling coldness suddenly shot up her spine to the top of her head without warning.
It wasn't a drop in temperature, but a primal fear—as if countless cold, sticky arthropods were crawling up her spine!
She looked up in horror—
In the dim apartment living room, the pristine white walls, smooth tabletops, cold floor... on all flat surfaces, countless distorted, writhing crimson characters instantly emerged.
They spread, converged, and multiplied wildly from all directions like a living swarm of insects, so fast that they instantly filled Takagi Naoko's entire field of vision.
Ceiling, walls, floor... everywhere she looked was dense, constantly twisting scarlet text—the air seemed to solidify, leaving only a scalp-prickling, silent "rustling" sound, as if billions of venomous insects were gathering simultaneously.
"Stand attack?!"
Takagi Naoko was horrified by the scene and instinctively tried to summon her Maximum The Hormone. But it was too late; the all-consuming torrent of blood characters gave her no time to react.
"Why?!" She was terrified, her mind blank, "I clearly saved her, I rendered a great service! Why—"
Her vision was completely engulfed by crimson, and the last thing that flooded her consciousness were two gigantic blood characters, converging and swelling on the wall, grotesquely protruding:
"Fool."
The eerie blue light of the computer screen illuminated Uika's unperturbed face. She watched Takagi Naoko's stiff figure at the entrance, swallowed by the blood-character illusion on the surveillance split screen, then indifferently shifted her gaze, lightly tapping the Enter key.
On the main screen, the final outcome of the Ikebukuro beast transformation disaster unfolded before her.
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