Chapter 123 :

Episode 26 : What One Yearns For (5)

Eve, who was on a cloud watching over everyone, placed her glance on the sleeping child in the center of the field.

[To think that teenager didn't faint when facing a bunch of pests. Impressive. Too bad for the child though, she's wholly asleep.]

Eve mumbled soundlessly to herself without letting the participants hear her. Unknowing to herself, her gaze was soon laid upon Mirai who was doing brilliantly in this phase.

[An insect humanoid. I thought she would hesitate a little while fighting those pests, but I guess not.]

Smiling while enjoying this fantastic show, Eve couldn't believe that she got to witness all of this in person instead of the others that were watching this on a screen.

Eve murmured again. [Then again, she's an arachne. So she wouldn't have any trouble murdering them.]

[But.. isn't this phase too easy for there to be only two people to participate in this?] Slightly discontented, Eve sighed while gazing at Mya.

Even though Eve didn't feel satisfied with this phase, she still couldn't do anything to alter this phase when it was Adam's job to do so.

[I hope Phase 3 will be fun.]

[Anyways, since this child is already sleeping, let's give her a good dream, shall I?]

Moving her hands with grace, Eve shaped a tiny piece of the cloud into a flower which coincidentally seemed to be a poppy.

After getting the poppy to look flawless, Eve gave it a blow to send it off to Mya.

During a short time of its floating down, the poppy finally landed onto Mya's nose, it was then absorbed when Mya was breathing, blessing her with a dream that would be spectacular.

[Now.. let's just enjoy this show.]

———

Mya, the child who should have had a nightmare a moment ago, was now having a remarkable dream because of Eve.

Although Mya didn't know that, she was aware of the fact that the dream changed oddly enough.

"..? Mom..?" Terrified for a few seconds after experiencing her previous nightmare, Mya said while glancing into the distance.

Until then, Mya found her mother laying on the grass, resting there with no care in the world.

"Mom??"

Afterwards, Mya ran over to her mother's side before realizing that Annabelle looked so beautiful while sleeping. Unlike her previous nightmare where her mother got turned into a rotten mess, this time, Annabelle appeared so much more attractive.

‘I want to talk to her, but mom is asleep..’ Mya thought while sitting herself beside Annabelle.

Carefully, Mya held her mother's hand tightly, trying not to wake her up. Mya then rested Annabelle's hand onto her neck wherever amulet was.

Despite not wanting to wake her mom up by talking, Mya's lips just moved on its own as she began to say what she had deep in her heart.

"I miss you, mom.." Mya almost closed to bursting out her tears, held it all in.

"I don't know what to do.. I have so many friends, but I don't want to disappoint them by bringing you back."

"...But what am I supposed to do if I miss you so much, mama!?"

Mya's tears soon formed onto her eyes, drizzling onto her mother's pretty hand as she muttered. "I miss mama.. Papa.. and my sisters too.."

"Am I selfish for wishing you back, mama? ..a-am I?"

Sniffling her heart out, Mya's hands touching Annabelle's hand were faintly shaking from sobbing too much.

"I don't know.. what is the right choice..! I am.. just a hopeless child..!" Mya cried out with quivering lips.

"I.. want to save uncle JoonChul! But.. I also want you, mother!"

"I can't let go of a c-chance to revive you..mama… N-Not when it's right in front of me.."

After a short period of silence from Mya, she kept herself quiet, sniffling away her tears while embracing her mom's arm.

"...I need your advice.. mama.." Lips with her tears, Mya spoke in a disheartened tone.

In spite of the noises Mya made by crying and talking, Annabelle didn't wake up at all nor did she seem like she was moving an inch.

"..?"

But then, out of the unexpected, Mya felt a warm touch from the top of her head, ruffling her hair with such gentleness.

After that, Mya shifted her eyes to her mother until she saw Annabelle's soft grin.

"Mama!" Blissful, Mya hopped toward Annabelle without a moment's notice as she nuzzled her wholeheartedly.

———

In the meantime..

Mirai, who was facing a great amount of pests in every corner of her point of view, was riding on top of her spider puppet in the middle of the crowds of pests.

‘Is this karma for talking bad to Mya?’ Mirai pondered while keeping her eyes on every pest.

Without warning, Mirai perceived a vibration from the bottom which led to her jumping off of her puppet.

And it seemed the reason for the ground to stumble like that, was because a large caterpillar had popped out of the earth, launching itself inside Mirai's spider puppet entirely.

Not only that, it appeared that the spider was brutally getting eaten alive by the caterpillar, almost as if the caterpillar was leisurely swallowing leaves.

"Zasshu." A little furious because her puppet was gone so easily, Mirai uttered while glancing her eyes at the pest ahead of her.

* ( "Zasshu" Japanese → English "Mongrel” )

Although standing in front of such a monster, Mirai was as calm as ever as she used her skill, ‘Ballooning’ to get out of the crowded area.

Creating a cobweb behind her and using it like a parachute, Mirai was blown along with the wind around her.

In addition to being on the air for a bit, Mirai showered down all her strings to the pests underneath her, but it turned out that the pests learned about Mirai's strings being manipulative by watching the spider puppet earlier..

Tiny bit astounded, Mirai uttered. "Nani..? When did these guys get smart all of the sudden?"

With the pests retreating further away from Mirai's threads by going underground and in the sky, Mirai had to send back her threads when she noticed how none of the pests weren't now on the ground, but instead, some of them were currently within the air with her.

Since her silk parachute would wander with the wind aimlessly, she had to remove the parachute from her before she could sway further away from the area.

"Why can't things be easy?" Mirai pouted angrily, still looking cute.

Moreover, Mirai proceeded to shoot her strings onto one of the pests above her. By using that pest and her thread, Mirai managed to lengthen her duration in the sky by swinging herself to and fro.

"Captain once said that I am like spider-man. I don't know who that is but I wonder if he's strong like me." Mirai mumbled while swinging across the sky with her threads.

Naturally, there were some pests who were quick to notice Mirai's intentions, which was why the flying pests were now setting a long distance between Mirai and themselves.

Forcing Mirai to have no more ways to keep herself in the sky, she already knew this would happen.

"Naruhodo. Fufu.. I dislike this."

* ( "Naruhodo" Japanese → English "I see" )

From the situation right now, it looked like Mirai was on the losing side, but that was until a moment ago. When the pests who got touched by the threads, were now dying and falling back down to the ground.

Mirai giggled. "Poison is the best~"

Just as soon as Mirai spotted the first dead pest, she had dragged herself onto its body by using her strings. From there, Mirai continued on jumping from one dead pest to another, while doing so, she knew that the sky wasn't the only threat to her right now.

"They sure love to hide, don't they?" Mirai huffed a bit.

As though speaking of the devil, Mirai in the middle of leaping to another pest noticed something coming from the ground beneath her.

This time, it wasn't a caterpillar that jumped out of nowhere, but a worm that slithered out of the ground with its might, along with the vast majority of the ground bugs.

"This is bad.."

And in this moment, the worm was ascending toward Mirai at a speedy pace, including the other pests around her, they had charged in on her to give her no escape routes.

Despite being in a predicament, Mirai felt calm and collected as she surveyed her surroundings. On the surface she may looked like that, but she was actually concealing her bewildered expression underneath her composure look.

‘What would Captain do if he were me?’

Mirai asked herself when she suddenly recalled what JoonChul told her in the past.

「 Be your true self if you wish to feel more accomplished. 」

‘I might have remembered that wrong. But now, I know what to do, Captain!’ Mirai smiled acrimoniously.

A large worm below her while a group of flying and ground bugs blocked every exit not to let her escape, in addition to that, Mirai surprisingly allowed herself to get cornered by her enemies.

SCREEECHH!!!!

Whether that was an unreasonable thing to do or not, the worm had already knocked into Mirai's body as the pests around her were flying in to nibble her body.

...Or could they?

Surprise, surprise. Mirai was nowhere to be seen in the middle of those packs of pests. Even the pests were astonished to see their prey disappearing right in front of them.

As if their confused expressions were wondering where Mirai was at, a massive cocoon was imprisoning all around the pests, leaving them nowhere to run away just like what they did to Mirai.

Ear-piercing bumps, scratching and a couple more sounds were produced when the cocoon was undergoing the pests' attempt in trying to barge out of the cocoon.

Of course, it was useless when the cocoon was created out of Mirai's silk.

"Hmph. Baka ga~."

The reason that Mirai was able to escape from the pests was because she had changed into her tiny spider form to get away from the crowd.

And using that as an advantage, Mirai managed to capture all of the pests around her while they were all looking stupidly dumbfounded.

"Baka, baka. Heheh." Mirai giggled as she was standing on top of her cocoon which was currently falling down to the earth.

CRASH!

Upon the cocoon impacted to the ground, Mirai injected enormous venom into the cocoon to kill the entirety of the pests that hadn't died from the fall.

"Take that! Take this! Hmp!"

Not only that, Mirai was also stabbing her strings into the ground to eliminate the remaining ground pests that were hiding underneath the soil.

And without a doubt, Mirai sensed the ground shaking when her injection was over. As she found out that the remaining bugs below her, were getting out of the soil, Mirai leapt in to deal the final blow to these lowlives.

"Uso!" Mirai gasped and was surprised by these bugs.

Nonetheless, it wasn't a piece of cake when she discovered a few of the pests had survived her venom because of her limitations.

..Now Mirai had to fight them head on while being in her spider form. It wouldn't be easy since the bugs were very huge, not considering that, Mirai was deemed tiny by these pests as they seemed like they were laughing at Mirai's petty size.

..Until someone came in to give them a rough beating.

The bugs which should have fought with Mirai, were now decapitated into slices by a person.

Undoubtedly, Mirai knew who it was that was helping her. So she called out to that person. "Alaine, you were supposed to defend the flowers, weren't you?"

"Hey, give me a thank you for saving you the trouble of dealing with these disgusting pests."

After saying that, Alaine chuckled as she was sliding off the wings of a cockroach and landing in front of Mirai.

Even though Mirai didn't ask for Alaine's help, she was thankful for the fact that she didn't have to fight the pests in her spider form.

"Arigato, Alaine-chan." Mirai expressed her gratitude toward Alaine while climbing onto Alaine's legs.

"U-Uh, yeah! De rien!"

* ( "De rien" French → English "No problem" )

Alaine scratched her head as though she felt somewhat shyness or embarrassment from hearing Mirai's thank you. Or mostly the fact that a spider was walking onto Alaine's body that gave her the creeps.

‘This.. I don't like this!!’ Alaine cried out in her mind, perceiving Mirai's spider legs touching the former's body. ‘Yeeeeeee!!!’