Four soldiers. One hero with no mana. One exhausted human.
The only advantages I could count were the Urskra and the Cockatrice — and that feeling disappeared the moment the last tree fell.
The creature that emerged could be many things at once.
Horrifying, colossal, imposing and beautiful. Unlike the other spiders, which were grotesque in the technical sense of the word — bodies with a slimy and chitinous coating that communicated function before anything else — this one seemed to belong to an entirely different species. White bristles extended centimeters covering the creature in pure white ivory with golden markings. The legs were disproportionately long in relation to the body, and even so the creature preferred to almost drag itself along the ground rather than rise — with the posture of something that had learned that height wasn't necessary to be threatening. The eyes were large and moist in a dark crimson, and from the fangs dripped a liquid that upon touching the ground hissed with acidity before stopping because it had consumed what it had found.
The size was that of a blue whale on dry land. The legs disappeared from sight. It was a creature that had clearly reached its apex — with the scars on the body communicating that it had gotten there through something, not despite something.
"Lord… What now? What do we do?"
Livina was frightened. That made sense.
The creature had appeared exactly when the rain had begun — which meant it knew what fire's greatest weakness was as surely as it knew anything. That intelligence wasn't instinct. It was accumulated experience. Her colossal body advanced out of the clearing, but stopped before coming out completely, the eyes tracing the bodies of the dead males with the slowness of something arriving at conclusions before deciding what to do with them.
"Now we wait." — I said. — "I still have the Greek fire. She doesn't know that."
My calm tone clearly frightened Livina more than the creature did. But there was logic: that queen's intelligence was close to the Griffin's — showing fear was showing there was no way out. I needed her to be cautious. It was in calm that there would be a way to win, not in chaos. I needed to observe that colossus's steps before deciding my own.
The scream that came when she finished processing the bodies of the males made me quickly understand where we were headed.
It wouldn't be through dialogue.
"Get ready. Soldiers — line formation."
✦
With four soldiers, the options were few. I preferred to keep them at the front as a barrier — a line that would at least give room to retreat if something went wrong.
While I showed what I had, the queen studied. My theory was that she was still calculating whether she would be enough alone or would need her children — and I preferred direct confrontation. Without the queen, the nest's structure would collapse. That was the real objective.
When she realized there would be no more surprises, she arrived at a conclusion.
The body that had been almost flush with the ground began to rise.
Slowly. With the deliberation of something that had learned that revealing size was communication before threat.
The legs extended completely. The abdomen and head rose above the treetops. Twenty meters, perhaps more.
"Holy hell." — Livina said. — "How are we going to deal damage to that?"
She was right.
The queen didn't give us time to think. From up there, she spat.
The blue slime arrived like a projectile — not like a spit, like a shot, with the speed that made analysis impossible before the decision. I pulled the Urskra sideways, Pegasus dodged alongside me. Livina went to the opposite side.
The soldiers stood still. It was my last command, and they followed it.
The slime consumed them in seconds — twice as acidic as what had destroyed the shields. In less than one blow, she had eliminated everything I had built as a front line.
It became clear what that fight would be like. The queen was too intelligent to get close — to put her eyes or abdomen within reach of what had killed the males. She would stay at height. She would spit. And we would receive it.
Which also meant her body was probably as fragile as the males' — or more so. Height was the protection. Acid was the weapon. And the problem was simple:
How to force her down.
✦
"We split up. Each one attacks a leg."
It wasn't a complex plan — there was no complex plan available. What there was was the logic that attacking the structure would force some kind of reaction, and splitting the target would force the queen to choose where to focus, giving the rest freedom of movement.
Livina advanced toward the left leg. Pegasus and I on top of the Urskra went for the right.
"Urskra — run as fast as you can. Pegasus — try to climb. I'll give you an opening."
I created a nearly three-meter lance with the Mark and charged at full speed mounted on the Urskra. The queen ignored me — for her, Livina was the priority. The summoning capability had communicated threat in a way that a lance didn't, and the queen had made the correct read: eliminate the summoner first. While she focused on destroying Livina, I got close enough to the leg.
Getting close I realized that the queen's legs, even appearing thin relative to the body, still had the thickness of an ancient trunk.
"AHHHHHHHHHHH—"
I charged with everything I had. The lance met the leg and I met the ground — thrown from the Urskra by the rebound of something that had refused to yield.
"Ow. How can something be that hard?"
It felt like metal. Not common metal — something denser, with the quality of material that had been built specifically not to be penetrated. The Codex had described Yokai queens as creatures that needed the nest to become dangerous. If I survived, I would personally punch whoever had written that. That queen clearly needed nobody.
I got up from the ground. She looked at me with the expression — if a spider had an expression — of something that had calculated my effort and arrived at a value. Laughable.
The rage boiled.
Livina, who was the focus of the spider's spitting attacks, was struggling. The structure of that creature was frightening since it seemed to have been built to compensate for every deficiency it had — the legs were the hardest structure it possessed, offered to enemies with the confidence of something that knew the enemy couldn't pierce them. It was perfect passive strategy: protect the body by exposing what was impenetrable.
"Pegasus. Can you do something?"
The Cockatrice felt challenged by the question. Jumped at the leg, beak and muscles working with everything it had. The most it managed was a few millimeters — like a needle trying to pass through steel.
"DAMN. How do I get you down from there? Wait…"
✦
The idea wasn't new.
It had been maturing since the conversation with Zaridan — not as a plan, but as a seed. Something that had been planted while I dealt with other problems and had continued growing without my attention until the right moment appeared to harvest it.
Since I had begun using the Mark, I had focused on creating weapons the Oasis knew — weapons that belonged to the vocabulary of that world. Swords, spears, tools the system recognized and that I had built it to respond to. But there was an entire other vocabulary I had set aside. And the problem in front of me was exactly the kind that known vocabulary didn't resolve.
The Mark limited the range of action to my body — which prevented creating something that left it. It was a limitation that had blinded possibilities I had stopped seeing by having discarded them too early. But here I was with a target that was static and large enough not to miss. The distance limitation became irrelevant when I could simply press the weapon against the target.
The question wasn't distance. It was penetration — and that was where the idea came.
For the relevant calculations:
A conventional bow reached between fifty and seventy-five joules — force sufficient to pass through a human body with margin, insufficient for what I needed. Morgana's crossbow reached between one hundred and one hundred and sixty joules — enough for leather and chain mail, which had worked against every creature until then. But that queen's leg was not chain mail. If I were to compare it to something I knew, I would say steel plate.
What I needed went far beyond a conventional crossbow.
Modern crossbows — designed with technology that world had never seen — on the other hand reached two hundred joules with ease. With the tension the Mark could create in the limbs, without the material limitations that would break any conventional machine under that pressure, I could double that or perhaps even triple it.
Four hundred joules.
The equivalent of a low-caliber pistol. Of course the bolt would need to be made from the Mark, since I had no metal bolts with me, so the bolt would be limited to the crossbow's range — penetration of forty to fifty centimeters. But I didn't need distance. I needed force. And force was what I had.
"Urskra — attack the other leg. Pegasus — together. Livina — hold on a little longer."
"I'm trying. If you have an idea you'd better do it fast."
The tattoo began to move.
✦
The stock came first — solid, textured, fitting into the palm as though it had always belonged there.
Then the central rail, long and precise, with the almost imperceptible sound of cooling metal.
The limbs opened to the sides like wings, tense and curved in the tension they promised. The cams aligned. The cables stretched and vibrated with a low hum I felt in my teeth.
Last, the bolt — fitted into the rail with the naturalness of a final piece, holding the stretched cable at maximum tension. The bolt appeared on the rail ready to use, forty-five centimeters long, with the tip that had been built to penetrate before any other consideration.
The modern crossbow was complete. It looked like a rifle with the bow at the tip. Any conventional machine would have broken under that tension.
I trusted the Mark would be different.
"Now you just need to work."
✦
The idea was simple: allow a clean Greek fire shot at the creature's body. Not the legs — which she would sacrifice without hesitation if necessary. The body. For that, she needed to come down. And to come down, she needed to understand that staying up was no longer the safe option.
The crossbow in my hands was the answer to that problem.
One shot at a time.
I advanced toward the leg and pressed the weapon directly against the surface — eliminating the projectile's distance, using the crossbow as a pneumatic pistol that would drive the bolt into the flesh not by air pressure but by cable traction. No distance, no dispersion, no margin of error.
All of that process had cost just over a minute — during which Livina, the Urskra and Pegasus had given everything they had without knowing where it was going. They continued. For me.
All or nothing.
I aimed. Pulled the trigger.
The impact in the hand was absorbed by the Mark's structure — unlike any crossbow that existed, with the quality of contained impact before being transmitted.
The queen's guttural scream arrived a second later.
I had managed to penetrate.
Now came the hard part: doing it enough for her to come down.
I clung to the leg while she desperately tried to remove me from it.
The bolt wasn't thick — but it was clear the tip caused enough damage for pain to be a clear response to each penetration. She shook the leg with the urgency of something that had found a problem it couldn't resolve with force, that had tried force and had discovered that force wasn't the relevant data. I remained there.
"Livina. Get ready. She's coming down."
I doubted she would use her own acid against herself. The most sensible way to remove me was to come fetch me personally — to descend from the heights where she had been safe and enter the reach of what had killed the males. It was the calculation I had bet she would make.
Five bolts. No more than that.
Each one drew a different scream from the previous — angrier, more urgent, with the growing quality of something that had tried to ignore and had discovered that ignoring wasn't an option. When she finally understood I wasn't leaving, she descended.
"NOW."
Livina took advantage of the descent with the precision of someone who had waited for that moment — and who had trained for it. When the creature was close enough, the Greek fire flask shattered directly in her face. I released the leg at the same instant.
It wasn't enough to avoid the blow.
She threw me meters before fully understanding what was happening to her own face. I landed rolling — and the pain that arrived when I stopped rolling clearly communicated that some ribs had decided they no longer wanted to be where they were.
I didn't care.
A giant enemy was struggling desperately a few meters from me. That meant I was alive to see it.
"LET'S GET OUT OF HERE."
Livina grabbed me while I screamed in pain. The Urskra and the Cockatrice ran. We followed.
✦
"She's going back to the nest." — Livina said. — "What now?"
"Leave her." — I said, without taking my eyes off the creature retreating into the forest. — "She's dead. With luck, she thinks she still has a chance to get out alive. We go in when the screams stop."
The screams chilled the blood.
The queen had entered a few meters into the forest, but was still visible from a distance — knocking down trees while she struggled, the body in flames communicating every movement in orange and black against the darkness of the undergrowth. What was possible to see was difficult to look at without feeling something that wasn't exactly victory.
Other spiders threw themselves at her trying to extinguish the fire, only to catch fire themselves — forming a spiral of bodies consuming themselves around the largest. First the workers. Then the soldiers. Then the males I hadn't seen or that had arrived too late, drawn by what they had come to find and finding only fire.
The queen had become a beacon. And everything that approached died with her.
The smell of burning flesh penetrated the air as though standing beside me.
"How can she still be alive?" — Livina asked, nearly two hours later.
It was a good question. The moans had grown faint — but the Greek fire hadn't relented, and the queen who had once been ivory and gold was now grey over grey, the outlines of what had been still recognizable, the beauty still identifiable in the structure of what had been destroyed. The moans that had once been of rage and despair had changed in quality — they were no longer from a creature that was fighting. They were from a creature that was waiting.
I felt anguish in my chest without having asked to feel it.
I had entered her territory. Had killed her children. Had set fire to her home. And now I stood outside listening while she died alone in what remained of it. For that creature that had once been magnificent, I was indisputably the villain of her story.
There was no way to argue against that.
"I think the moment has come." — I said, after five more minutes of silence that wasn't silence.
✦
The plain that had been forest was now grey in every direction.
The rain had stopped nearly an hour ago — and fire was still visible at points I didn't want to risk. I applied the baking soda to myself and Livina before advancing. The Urskra and the Cockatrice stayed behind.
The pain still hit me with every step — there wasn't enough healing for what I had received, and I hadn't had time to use what I had. But there was something that needed to be finished.
I advanced through what remained of the forest. The little fire that still existed touched the skin only to be immediately extinguished by the absence of oxygen the baking soda created — a halo of extinction that walked with me.
Until I reached her.
What remained of the queen was completely destroyed. Most of the legs had been consumed by fire until what remained was fragments. Only three of the eight eyes were still intact — and even those had lost what had made them large and moist. The ivory had become grey. The gold had become nothing.
And then I heard it.
Low. Very low. Almost imperceptible.
"Uhh… Uhh…"
It wasn't the scream that had chilled the blood hours before. It was something else entirely — with the quality of sound that comes from something that had exhausted everything and still continued, that had lost the strength to scream but still produced what it could produce. It was the sound of a child that had cried to exhaustion and still hadn't completely stopped.
My heart constricted before I decided it should.
I reached my hands out without knowing exactly why — until touching the spider's giant head. She tried to pull away with what remained of movement. The three eyes that still existed found mine — and from the corner of them ran something I hadn't expected to find.
Tears.
My hand felt the body trembling beneath it. Not from rage. Not from pain.
Dread.
Simple, pure fear, with nothing else alongside it. The kind that has no strategy or calculation, that exists before anything else the creature had learned to feel.
Some creatures in the Oasis were intelligent enough to feel rage and fury — but also to feel fear and sadness. Sadness for the family. For what had been lost. There was no malice in those eyes. There was nothing left that resembled hatred.
Only grief in its simplest state.
I loathed that world and everything it represented. I preferred the clean and easy hatred of an enemy that deserved to be hated. But here I was, standing before what I had done, with nowhere to put the weight of it except inside myself.
"I'm sorry."
The word came out too small for what it had cost to say it.
"Lord." — Livina said, with the tone of someone who was looking at the same thing and had arrived at the same conclusion. — "She's suffering. We should…"
"I know."
Before I moved, the queen moved first.
She turned a few centimeters with the visible effort of something that had lost almost everything and was using what remained for one specific thing. One of the last black legs — carbonized, fragile — reached something that had been beneath the body. The leg detached from the body with the movement, drawing a scream that was the last scream with enough volume to be a scream.
What fell before me was not an object. Not a book. Not a weapon.
It was a silk sack. White and golden — as beautiful as that spider had once been, preserved in the only place the fire hadn't reached, kept with the specific care of something that had been considered more important than anything else.
A cocoon.
It clicked before I finished processing.
"I understand." — I said, with the voice that came out differently from how I had planned. — "May you be reborn in a place where there is no one like me."
I stood up.
She was still looking at the cocoon — the three remaining eyes fixed on what had been handed over, with the expression of something that had done everything it could do and was now ready for whatever came next.
I pointed the crossbow at the center of her forehead.
Pulled the trigger.
The shot was clean — with the precision of something that had been made to finish what had been started and had finished it.
The pain filling my chest wasn't from the ribs.
✦
[ CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE KILLED THE QUEEN OF THE NORTHERN YOKAI QUEENS. ] [ THE LAST OF HER KIND. ] [ YOU ARE THE FIRST — AND THE LAST — TO ACHIEVE SUCH A FEAT. ]
There was no happiness.
There was victory — with all the laurels that victory should bring, with the recognition of the system that had registered what had happened and had classified it as achievement. But the throat was dry and there was something bitter in the mouth that wasn't physical, that wouldn't be resolved with water or with enough time.
I looked at the cocoon in my hands.
White and golden.