Mountain Spider

In an abyss where mud and weightlessness intertwined, his senses were completely stripped away.

Lu Ping's consciousness seemed to have fallen into a boundless swamp.

His limbs no longer responded, and the sound of wind and the roar of cursed energy around him faded into the distance.

The eight green eyes floating in midair were like branding irons, forcibly searing a false illusion deep into his subconscious.

This was a pure mental-control cursed technique.

Its power was not great, but its humiliation factor was immense, and it was exceedingly difficult for a single person to break free from.

Within this enclosed sea of consciousness, an ordinary person might have already gone mad.

But Lu Ping's condition was entirely different. The Three Corpses lurking in the depths of the shadows let out piercing shrieks at that moment.

They were aberrations born from humanity's evil thoughts. Toward this foreign cursed energy forcibly imposed upon the mind, they displayed an unprecedented mixture of rejection and greed.

As though they had caught the scent of perfect bait, the Three Corpses began frantically gnawing at the alien energy invading his mind.

Through that instinctive agitation to protect their host, Lu Ping's muddled thoughts were forcibly torn open by a clear crack.

He still could not control his heavy body, but not a single ripple arose in his heart.

Faced with this life-threatening danger, the boy's emotions remained as calm as a dry well.

With the Three Corpses' extreme sensitivity to cursed energy, he surveyed the rapidly changing battle outside from an almost coldly detached perspective.

He sensed that Chitsubaki had instantly adjusted her tactical stance not far away.

This battle-hardened elite was no flower raised in a greenhouse.

During previous exorcism missions, she had not failed to kill powerful enemies possessing innate domains.

But the succession of monsters appearing tonight carried an unmistakably deliberate air.

This was absolutely not a naturally gathered calamity.

From the initial probing, to the Snake God forcibly deploying its domain, to the mysterious cursed spirit now hiding in the shadows and launching a surprise attack.

Every twist was like a prewritten script, opening with an impossible-to-guard-against "zero-frame opener."

Such meticulous troop deployment was practically like someone had carefully built a nest here specifically to hunt sorcerers.

The pain of losing companions in the past had long become a scar deep in Chitsubaki's heart.

She did not let the close-quarters battle in the distance distract her. Instead, she immediately noticed Lu Ping's rigid movements, which defied the laws of physics.

A pause without warning was tantamount to a death sentence in a life-or-death fight.

She rapidly compared possibilities in her mind. The eight compound eyes that had appeared so strangely perfectly matched an exceedingly rare illusion-type cursed spirit—

[Mountain Spider]

This legendary aberration possessed an extremely fragile true body, unable even to withstand a full-force strike from a low-grade sorcerer.

But its sole method of fighting enemies was exceptionally lethal.

Through the compound eyes on its abdomen, it could hypnotize any target whose gaze met its own.

The more of the target's eyes it watched, the stronger its mental control over the illusion it created became.

Although the cursed energy within high-level sorcerers could weaken the illusion's intrusion for a limited time, once they were caught, they would become fish on the chopping block.

Unless the victim's body suffered a direct external injury and the resulting agony jolted their nerves awake, ordinary people found it exceedingly difficult to break free of this mental shackle through willpower alone.

Using the information fed back by the Three Corpses, Lu Ping swiftly worked through the entire sequence of events.

No wonder.

Now it all made perfect sense.

Suguru Geto had died here?

Impossible. Absolutely impossible.

The condition for breaking Mountain Spider's technique seemed harsh, but in truth, it would collapse the moment its victim suffered any tangible attack.

But this control-type technique, with its extremely high margin for error, was simply not enough to completely erase that favored prodigy.

Therefore, the other party had to still be alive.

For some unknown reason, he was merely trapped for the moment in some hidden corner of the village.

The shape of the situation had become clear.

But the blade edge of this chained killing trap was now pressed squarely against Lu Ping's throat.

The Snake King Cursed Spirit, having completely lost its reason, sharply seized upon Lu Ping's opening. Dragging its enormous and heavy body, it stirred up a nauseatingly foul wind across the square.

Its metallic-sheened head rose high, and its enormous mouth dripping corrosive venom suddenly opened, biting straight toward the prey frozen in place.

The fierce wind struck his face, and Lu Ping could even smell the stench pouring from the monster's mouth.

Even with death so close at hand, his heartbeat did not falter in the slightest.

He could not escape, nor did he need to.

A familiar fluctuation of cursed energy surfaced in the distance.

Lu Ping trusted Kamo Chitsubaki, just as she had trusted that he would arrive to support her earlier.

For now, all he needed to do was silently count down the passage of time in his heart.

Three.

Two.

One.

An incomparably dazzling crimson beam streaked across the battlefield without warning.

Her battle-honed muscle memory made Chitsubaki instinctively choose the optimal response.

She had no time to adjust her defensive position. With a decisive force, she brought both hands together sharply before her chest.

[Crimson Blood Manipulation: Full-Power Piercing Blood]!

Under the extreme compression of cursed energy, scarlet blood transformed into a straight ray of death.

Accompanied by a sharp sonic boom capable of rupturing eardrums, it burst from her fingertips like a red spear sweeping across the field.

During the prolonged kiting battle earlier, the Snake King Cursed Spirit had already had too much of its cursed energy worn away by Lu Ping's evasive tactics.

Now it was in the state where its old momentum had been exhausted after throwing itself forward with full force. Faced with this thunderous supporting strike, it had no time to evade.

The red gleam swept through the air as easily as a hot knife through butter.

There was not the slightest sound of resistance.

The Snake King Cursed Spirit's head and body, covered in hard scales, smoothly split apart to either side along the beam's cutting path.

Its mountain-sized body lost all central control and collapsed with a thunderous crash under the inertia of its charge.

After smashing into the ground, it slowly dissolved into black ashes that scattered through the air.

One strike, complete exorcism.

Along with the violent roar of the massive creature hitting the ground, the surging storm of cursed energy and sharp fragments of stone slammed into Lu Ping's torso.

It was not a fatal injury, but the faint physical pain traveling through his nerve endings into his brain became the key to breaking the deadlock.

The illusory shackles wrapped around his consciousness finally cracked like parched earth.

Lu Ping opened his eyes again, and the Snake King Cursed Spirit's body, split in two, came into view.

However, at the brief instant when Chitsubaki had displayed her overwhelming might and her old strength had faded before new strength could rise, the situation changed once more.

In battles among the strong, the deadliest hunter often appeared in the guise of the most pitiful prey.

The Blood Bat Cursed Spirit, which had already been beaten black and blue and fallen to the ground, seemingly without any strength to resist, was nowhere near as weak as it appeared.

It had been lurking deep within the shadows of the collapsed houses, concealing every trace of its cursed energy.

Like a cold-blooded assassin with immense patience, waiting for a single fatal blow, it endured in silence.

This monster was not merely taking attacks. It was also using its opponent's strength to transform itself.

It had cleverly made use of a new ability it had concealed ever since its third molt.

A slender tail, originally hidden beneath its fleshy wings and ending in a hollow bone spike, now slithered silently along the cold ground like a venomous snake emerging from its hole.

This was a long-planned scheme, and its target was Chitsubaki, the greatest threat.

Its timing was exceptionally vicious, perfectly seizing the absolute gap in defense that inevitably followed Full-Power Piercing Blood.

Squelch.

An extremely faint sound of flesh being pierced rang out.

The sharp bone spike easily punctured her fair skin and sank deeply into the exposed right ankle of the girl.

Without the slightest pause or hesitation, the Blood Bat's shriveled body suddenly convulsed as it launched its fatal feeding.

A massive amount of incomparably pure sorcerer blood, containing immense energy, rushed madly into its body through that tubular tail.

To this monster, it was not merely the finest medicine for healing wounds. It also completely filled in the final missing fragment of energy on its path to advancement.

The sudden agony and rapid loss of blood made Chitsubaki let out an uncontrollable low groan.

Her body swayed slightly, and the cursed energy gathered at her fingertips instantly dispersed.

Having drunk its fill of blood, the Blood Bat Cursed Spirit completed its feeding and released an incomparably excited shriek.

The sound was unbearably piercing.

As its shriek intensified, the scarred old skin covering its body began cracking apart inch by inch like dried plaster, then peeled off in large sheets.

With every piece of old skin that fell away, a heart-pounding light shone through the gaps.

In the end, it was replaced by an entirely new body gleaming with a dark crimson luster, its muscles streamlined in shape.

Its wings spread wide, more than a size larger than before.

A terrifying pressure, like a materialized tsunami, instantly swept across the entire village.

After a long period of restraint and planning, the Blood Bat Cursed Spirit had finally crossed that chasm and become complete.

Its current rating was—

[Special Grade]