Sokram crossed 16 kilometers in less than five minutes, teleporting and gliding through the air.

  Now only a kilometer away from his first destination, he decided to go on foot, using the opportunity to replenish his mana pool.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sokram reached the area where the cave’s entrance was, but it was hidden in a thick gelid forest.

  If he hadn’t been there before, he would’ve missed it. And feigning the role of an unsuspecting hunter, he pretended to miss it.

  He made a show of opening the map and searching for landmarks until he spotted one of the Arachnes that came out to hunt.

  The Arachne had an upper humanoid body and was as tall as a human mounted on a horse. Its lower arachnid body was broader than the ice spiders.

  Sleek black hair cascaded down, a curtain hiding the horror beneath. When it shifted, eight unblinking eyes and a noseless, flat visage were revealed in the gloom.

  Its mouth was huge, with each corner reaching close to its human-like ears, and full of razor-sharp teeth.

  A sight that would cause nightmares to most, but Sokram had seen more terrifying monsters.

  At Sokram’s current Level of Existence and Tier, they posed no threat unless there was a Brood Mother laying eggs inside the cave.

  But as long as he cleared the common and uncommon Arachnes first, the Brood Mother alone would be an easy kill.

  The worst-case scenario would be what he faced in his previous timeline.

  Still, that would be only a few years in the future, an Arachne Queen, a Tier 10 Reformed Existence level Chaos Creature.

  Considering the risks of this mission, the memories of his previous timeline came rushing back.

  His team, led by Kazzah, had already cleared most of the cave and even dealt with two brood mothers.

  Then, she appeared.

  Her lower body and hair were white as snow, a hypnotic beauty, a freezing bloodlust in her gaze, as she muttered gibberish in a creepy, ghostly voice.

  They barely had time to run before half of their team was slaughtered.

  Only he and Kazzah had escaped from the cave. And Sokram's eyes were truly opened to the cowardice and lack of preparation Kazzah showed as a leader.

  Because in his desperation to escape, Kazzah pushed Sokram to his death.

  Sokram only escaped because he stumbled upon a secret passage in that cave, which only added more hatred toward the heir of the Silverfang.

  But not all tragedies are left unrewarded.

  And that secret passage led him to one of the biggest treasures he had ever found in his home world.

  But now Kazzah was dead and, hopefully, if he took care of this nest now, perhaps that thing wouldn’t be able to evolve to that extent.

  While reminiscing about his past timeline, Sokram watched the arachne from the shadows.

  It took a few hours for it to find its prey. It picked a Strong-Arm Bear. The bear was four meters tall and two and a half meters broad, from shoulder to shoulder.

  A bear that could rip off a large tree in one swing of its claws, but it wasn’t fast enough to withstand the vicious and poisonous attacks of the arachne.

  The Arachne danced around it, jumping and shooting its steel silk, until the bear was tired. From the arachne’s humanoid arms, two bony blades dripping with venom sealed the bear’s fate.

  The bear collapsed to the ground, its chest hitching as it dragged in ragged breaths. Its body convulsed once, claws scraping uselessly against the steel-silk surrounding its body, before it froze and released a final, low growl that died in its throat.

  Soon, its body was fully warped around a thick layer of steel silk as it was dragged through the forest.

  Sokram followed closely.

  Seamlessly merged into the shadows of the gelid forest, he stalked the unaware monster back to its nest.

  As soon as the arachne revealed the entrance to him, he threw a needle.

  The sound of something cutting through the wind alerted the monster.

  Even before it could react, Draggonia’s dark blade flashed, reflecting the pale light of the gelid forest.

  The blade passed through its neck's cartilage with a wet slash. The head hit the stone with a heavy, meaty thud, followed a second later by the body collapsing like a puppet with cut strings.

  Sokram quickly merged back into the shadows after storing both the arachne and bear.

  ‘Heh, no way I’m refusing such a welcome gift just because of a little poison,’ Sokram humored himself as he walked from shadow to shadow into the cave.

  With his Night Vision, the cave’s darkness was only an advantage.

  Something he couldn’t enjoy the first time he was there, but he still remembered the overall layout of the cave.

  While navigating the cave tunnels, Sokram delighted himself using the Shadow Wing Art, which was enhanced by the Shadow Merge gift of his Moon Aefhery Bloodline.

  The world turned colorless and cold.

  Gravity felt like a suggestion rather than a law.

  The cave floor above him rippled like dark water, and the sounds of the physical world were muffled, as if heard from the bottom of a deep lake.

  Moving was like walking underwater, but inverted. As if the surface of the water had become the ground beneath Sokram's feet.

  And in the outer world, only a shadow would be seen moving, but in the cave’s darkness, Sokram was undetectable.

  But in the inverted shadow realm, he also avoided the air that grew thick and oily with every step into the depths of the cave, coating the back of his throat.

  The reeking of spread carcasses, the scent of decay, old blood, fermented entrails, and the sharp stench of arachnid waste.

  It didn’t take long for Sokram to find more arachnes wandering through the caves.

  A few meters ahead of him, there was a group of three that appeared to be feeding from a carcass of what resembled another Strong-Arm Bear.

  Sokram passed by them unnoticed.

  He looked far into the cave and around, making sure the three Arachnes were the only ones around, and he decided to dispose of them.

  Sokram looked for the perfect angle where his needle could travel unhindered, passing close to their upper bodies.

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  Once he threw the needle, the arachnes were alerted by the whistling sound of the needle cutting through the air.

  "Swiiiss~"

  The sound was barely a whisper, a thin noise slicing through the heavy silence of the cave.

  Yet to the arachnes' sensitive ears, it must have sounded like a thunderclap.

  Still, their reactions lacked speed.

  Using his Hyper Cognition and Precognition, Sokram observed the needle flying between the trio.

  Just as it passed by the first arachne, Sokram teleported but didn't touch the needle, letting it continue on its trajectory.

  Meanwhile, with a quick draw, Sokram beheaded the arachne before she could even sense his presence.

  And just as the needle passed the second arachne, Sokram repeated the same maneuver, teleporting and beheading it, and again with the third one.

  The three arachne died without even realizing what killed them.

  None were fast enough to react as Sokram teleported in rapid succession along the needle's path as it flew between them.

  This was among other moves Sokram had been practicing this week by merging the Killing Blade Art, the Black Lotus War Art, and his Shadow Wing Art.

  Sokram quickly stored the three bodies, and with a flick of his wrist, his needle was back in his hand as he swiftly merged back into the shadows.

  The next time Sokram spotted a group of arachnes, he wasn’t lucky enough to find them in a position where he could kill them in quick succession as he had previously.

  But that didn’t mean it would be a lot harder to do.

  There were five arachnes spread in different points of a small gallery in the cave.

  Sokram threw a needle, aiming behind one of them so it would pass close to its back.

  Teleporting behind the arachne at that precise moment, without his feet even touching the monster’s arachnid lower half, he beheaded it.

  And in the next moment, he teleported to where the needle had landed.

  Picking up the needle while merging back into the darkness, he threw it at his next target.

  By the time the third arachne had lost its head, the remaining two were in full alert, and Sokram didn’t have an angle for a sure kill.

  So instead of aiming for them, he created a distraction.

  He threw a needle aimed to pass by one of the bodies on the floor, and teleported, storing the fallen arachne into his Void Gloves.

  But the action was lightning fast.

  The body of the fallen arachne disappeared in a flash, and Sokram teleported back to the needle that had already reached the other end of the cave.

  And as he merged back into the cave's darkness, he threw the needle toward the next body.

  This was enough to frighten the arachnes into moving, not just moving, they ran.

  They were intelligent enough to fear for their lives.

  Yet turning their back on Sokram wasn’t the wisest decision.

  A rippleless flash of movement and two sword lights later, Sokram was storing their bodies as well.

  Sokram continued to slaughter the arachnes employing the same stealth killing move as he explored the cave system.

  And Sokram didn’t waste much mana, as the needle teleportation for such a short distance used a minimal amount of mana.

  All Sokram needed was to activate the spell engraved in the needle. Once active, the mithril would absorb the necessary mana from the ambient to make spacetime reach Sokram on the other end.

  As for Shadow Merge, it was a gift from one of his bloodlines. Thus, its energy consumption was also minimal.

  That didn’t mean it was costless. Sokram still had to stop and meditate using mana-breathing.

  But the confusion of the arachnes seeing their kin being beheaded, and disappearing without a trace, began to cause an uproar inside the cave.

  When below the True Existence level, arachnes weren’t highly intelligent, and Sokram was having an easy time killing arachnes left and right as he advanced into the cave.

  Until he spotted her, the Arachne Queen.

  The queen, in contrast with most arachnes, had a white arachnid lower body and the upper body of a naked woman.

  From the waist up, she was a goddess carved from jade, flawless pale skin, delicate features, and hair like straight white silk, and a face so beautiful that it could match Savannah’s and Moira’s.

  But below, the nightmare began: a bulbous, chitinous abdomen supported by legs that ended in cruel, scythe-like points.

  From the shadows, Sokram watched as her gaze moved between her kin, lingering just long enough on each one to assess them.

  Her eyes didn’t dart in panic; they tracked, measured, counted. She shifted her attention toward the injured first, noting wounds with brief, precise glances before moving on.

  A subtle motion of her hand followed.

  Not frantic, but deliberate.

  And her kin responded, breaking apart and reforming into tighter groups.

  No sound passed between them, yet they moved with coordination, as if responding to commands Sokram couldn’t hear, let alone decipher.

  Judging by the intensity of her presence and the black marking pattern on the lower half of her body, Sokram could tell she was close to evolving into a Reformed Existence.

  Thankfully, he wasn’t too late to stop her from reaching that level.

  Because after she did, every arachne born from her would be born into the True Existence level, gaining her more territory, which would allow her to evolve further until she became a Continental Calamity.

  But Sokram couldn’t fight alone while her kin and loyal protectors surrounded her.

  Instead, he began employing hit-and-run tactics, knowing the queen wouldn’t venture far away from the eggs she and any other possible brood mother had laid hidden at the very end of the cave.

  But he also used that as an excuse for him to explore the cave in search of the secret passage he had found in his previous timeline.

  He began luring groups of arachnes, one after the other.

  The monsters huddled together, their chittering frantic and uneven.

  They slashed at empty air, their legs twitching at every falling rock, eyes darting wildly in search of a ghost that was causing their kin to disappear one after the other.

  Even with their eight eyes and some degree of night vision, they couldn’t do anything but get slaughtered by that invisible threat.

  Then, Sokram saw it.

  Amidst the rough, natural stone, a section of wall stood out with unfamiliar architecture.

  Blocks cut by humanoid hands, guarding a secret passage with a silent pressure plate.

  ‘So it was here, hm? I’ll come back later.’ Sokram decided.

  Dealing with the queen was a more pressing matter.

  But to do so, Sokram played the long game.

  Sometimes he would leave the cave to recover and confuse the arachne.

  And when he returned, the monsters would panic again as he slaughtered them one group at a time.

  By the time he had killed over two hundred arachnes, he heard the queen screaming.

  The scream tore through the cavern, a sound so piercing it vibrated in his marrow.

  Old scars on his psyche momentaneously ached. The terror of his past timeline blinked in his mind for a second, but he was stronger now. He wasn’t afraid anymore.

  Seeing her rage showed him that even the Arachne Queen's cold intellect had its limits, but still she couldn’t stop him, much less find Sokram.

  He knew enraging her was unwise, but fighting against her and other arachnes would be suicidal.

  The Arachne Queen gathered the remaining 23 of her kin close to her in a gigantic gallery inside the cave.

  The open space in that gallery would certainly make things more difficult.

  But Sokram wasn’t in a rush, so whenever she got distracted, the whistling of a needle would echo from one end to the other in the spacious cave gallery.

  Whenever that occurred, an arachne would fall and disappear right after.

  And the more of her kin that disappeared, the more maddening her screams became.

  By the time there were only three arachnes left, Sokram's mana began to deplete, and he withdrew from the cave once again.

  He hid at the top of a tree and meditated using his Mana Breathing to replenish his mana pool faster.

  He didn’t want to give that monster a single chance to evolve, and as soon as he had recovered, he ventured back into the cave.

  But when Sokram arrived at the gallery, the queen was nowhere to be found.

  ‘Smart, very smart...’

  Sokram knew she was hiding somewhere, watching and waiting to ambush whoever had decimated her kin.

  But instead of rushing into her trap like a fool, Sokram went back outside and quickly cast three Mud Golem Clones.

  He gave two of them a needle, a runestone, and a pair of sealed scrolls, and left them waiting just outside the gallery.

  He stepped into it, still waking in the shadows, hid in a vantage point, and focused, observing.

  ‘Enter running,’ He commanded one of the Golems, and if he hadn’t been paying close attention, he wouldn’t have been able to see the queen coming out of a hole in the ceiling.

  She was fast, faster than he was, even using his lightning spells.

  She didn't dash; she flickered.

  One moment, she was on the ceiling, the next she was a white blur descending on the golem.

  The air cracked with the displacement of her mass, a sonic boom in the confined space.

  A white flash of doom meant for Sokram fell onto his golem.

  Her bony blades scythed through the hardened mud like it was water. The golem exploded into clods of wet earth, spraying the gallery walls with debris before it could even raise a fist.

  But the distraction the golem caused opened a window for Sokram to strike.

  This time, he took the lives of two arachnes in one slash, but didn’t have the time to pick their bodies or to kill the last one before needing to merge with the shadows again.

  “AAAAAHHHGGG!!”

  A terrifying and almost deafening scream filled the gallery, so loud that it even caused trepidation.

  But into the shadows, it was like it happened from the other side of a thick wall, and Sokram remained unaffected.

  The queen began shielding the remaining Arachne, protecting it like a mother protects a child from a predator.

  But then Sokram saw something that made him hesitate.

  The Arachne Queen cradled the smaller arachne's head against her chest, rocking back and forth.

  A low, grieving wail escaped her lips.

  A sound uncomfortably sapient, filled with a sorrow that any species would recognize.

  ‘Empathy? At this level? It should be impossible. But if she is a new species… No, I can’t hesitate, she will only bring destruction.’

  Sokram tried to firm his resolve, but suddenly, fire erupted at the base of his neck.

  It wasn't just heat. The Mark of the Judgment didn't just burn.

  It seared a command directly into his soul with absolute authority.

  The pain radiated from the Mark, locking his muscles.

  Then Nhiria's will flooded through his mind with a single, overwhelming desire:

  This child of Natura must be guided to Awakening. To kill her now would be to sever a thread of Evolution.

  And the Mark of the Judgement, ruling over his Oath to Evolution and Nhiria, punished the very thought.

  ‘The Oath of Evolution? Now? FUCK! Alright, I get it! I’ll tame her instead. Fuck!’

  Friday 13.... O_O

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