Jade walked out of the portal into the energy zone of the Champion Arachni. Its children were away hunting monsters so it was alone in its territory that had changed greatly due to the fact that it was now an Authority Level 5 King.

The entire area of FCT was filled with spider webs that hung from building to building. There were tall pillars made entirely of web at different locations that held the structure up.

The webs were intricately placed so when any intruder entered, the webs would alert the Champion Arachni with a psychic message as it could conduct psychic energy and various traps would be activated to capture or kill the intruder depending on the psychic order of the Champion Arachni. The Champion Arachni could also control the webs and eat them for nutrition; this construct was called a Web World.

Creating the Web World was not an easy feat, it required a lot of experimentation, study and practice but the Champion Arachni just assigned its most unmotivated child, Darol, to the task while it hunted. Darol was currently building Web Worlds for its other children.

Sadly the Darol had not envisaged a teleporting intruder. Jade had easily entered the palace of the Rank 22 Champion Arachni without so much as a body check.

The Champion Arachni was surprised by Jade’s intrusion and hastily readied itself for battle. Its IP gave it a notification that said: [Rank 11 (Superior) Primordial Human] [Freak Bounty: 3 Trillion Kill en-code].

The Champion Arachni knew that it was Jade when it saw his race and Rank but the bounty confused it. Jade’s current Kill en-code was 1,000 multiplied by 3 billion. 3 billion was the maximum kill en-code for a Rank 11.

The Champion Arachni sent a psychic message saying ‘Jade, long time, no see. It’s very foolish of you to come back here without even improving. Now you even have a bounty? It seems even the IPs consider you a criminal’.

The Champion Arachni was trying to buy time, it had sent a psychic message to its other children through the webs and it was waiting for them to come so that they could fight Jade together.

Why would it do this? This Champion Arachni was Fernandez, it knew that Jade was an enigma to humans, itself and its previous employer. And now Jade came to its home with a bounty showing that the system wanted to get rid of him, it didn’t for one second think that Jade wasn’t worth every single en-code that made up the 3 trillion en-codes in his bounty.

Unfortunately, Plot Armor blocked the psychic message so Jade just started attacking without listening to Fernandez. He lifted his hand and Deus Ex Machina (DEM) portals opened up in different directions surrounding Fernandez and blasted it with nuclear energy.

The Web World was instantly set on fire and the temperature and radiation in the area rose by many degrees. Fernandez, who barely dodged the blasts sustaining a few injuries on its carapace, ran for its life while blocking the space between itself and Jade with webs.

Jade expanded his energy zone and covered the Champion Arachni, with a simple mental gesture the distance between the Arachni and Jade warped. No matter how far Fernandez ran it always maintained the same distance from Jade.

Fernandez pulled all the stops as it used its full speed to escape from Jade. It didn’t want to feel such a despairing difference but alas, Jade was far beyond it in power, it had to run like a bitch. The space around it rippled as its speed increased to the point that space shifted for it.

Jade watched the phenomenon again with intrigue and found out the workings of it. Space didn’t ripple only because of the speed at which the spider was going, it rippled because of the speed that something of such a large mass was going at. Photons and electrons didn’t cause space to ripple because it was an extremely low mass particle so it could move at high speeds without affecting space.

Fernandez’s escape attempt bore fruit as its distance from Jade increased after it teleported. But space bent in extremely complex ways and it was teleported before Jade a moment later and he slashed vertically with Hack, releasing a plane of Void.

“VOOM!”

It sounded like a light saber had just made a slash as the 4 legs on the left side of Fernandez were separated from its body and the ground behind it was cleanly split for a few kilometers.

“KIIIIIIIIII!!!!”

Fernandez screeched in pain but Jade didn’t hold back and severed the other 4 legs from Fernandez’s body. Fernandez screeched again and pointed its scorpion stinger at Jade and spewed webs drenched in acid on him while its legs swiftly regenerated and grew back.

The webs landed on Jade but they slid off him like he was covered in grease due to Plot Armor. On seeing that Fernandez was regenerating, Jade cut its legs again. He knew it was calling for the other spiders, he saw them moving on his Soul Map, and he wanted them to come instead of running away when they noticed their parent’s death.

The torture continued but not for long as the first group of 8 Champion Arachnis arrived to aid Fernandez. They spewed acid soaked webs at Jade who dodged a few as he turned and made a arc shaped horizontal slash. A plane of Void extended from Hack and cut all the legs of both Fernandez and its children putting them in the torturous cycle of regeneration and amputation while Jade waited for the remaining 4 Champion Arachnis.

3 more Arachnis joined the torture circle some minutes after. Jade watched the last Champion Arachni on his Soul Map. Unlike the other children it was Rank 19 instead of Rank 21 and it also didn’t approach the Fernandez’s Web World to help it.

Jade smiled as he thought ‘It’s smart’. The Champion Arachnis were drowning in rage and frustration as they struggled to do anything to get Jade to break the cycle. Spewing poison gas from their mouths, spewing sticky webs form their tails, sending psychic messages, sending psychic attacks, controlling their webs to ensnare Jade, controlling the webs to form protective shields, trying to fly away with their force field, but nothing worked.

Jade burnt all their webs with DEM and severed legs ensuring that their legs were always in need of healing with Hack. When they tried to fly he used DEM and converted to Nuclear energy to Kinetic energy and used it to slam them down.

Their frustration turned to despair as Jade vertically split Fernandez in two, killing it. His IP said ‘You have killed a Rank 22 Champion Arachni’. Jade smiled and proceeded to kill the remaining Champion Arachnis the same way he killed Fernandez.

Jade smiled as he saw the lifeless corpses of the Champion Arachnis. After notifying him of all the deaths his IP said

‘You have completed the quest’

[Reach Rank 15 – reward: a job promotion or change opportunity – status: complete]

‘You can change to the Soul Hunter (Hunter) (Event Limited) job or promote to the Mercenary (Hunter + Soldier) job’