The carriage rolled down the main highway away from the capital in dead silence. The woman in red sat near the window and watched the scenery pass by, holding her posture stiff and straight despite the long ride.

’Does he believe some nameless commoner can stand up to us,’ she drummed a single finger against the armrest as she turned the King’s threat over in her mind.

The King had dropped the weight of a twenty-shard core on all of them, reminding everyone who held the peak of power. He had done it not to force them into line, but to goad them into throwing their swords at his new pet project.

’Can the boy even tame that broken stretch of land,’ she looked out the window, a slow smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

The unowned region had sat empty for decades because the anomalies there bred faster than any single house could clear them out. Sending a lone commoner into that meat grinder was either a death sentence, or a calculated test of something terrifying to come.

Whatever the King was playing at, she found the whole situation far more amusing than the usual court politics. The other patriarchs were drafting marching orders for a territory war, all eager to crush the insult before it could take root.

’I think I would like to meet this Hajin boy,’ she leaned back against the seat, listening to the horses outside.

If he died on the ground like the rest of the fools, he was not worth remembering in the first place. But if he managed to survive the first wave of Great House knights, things were going to get entertaining.

Deep inside the corrupted gate, Hajin walked back through the trees until he reached the edge of the pit where his team waited. Vella stood over Juna on a broken root, the glow of healing mana fading out to nothing.

"You took your time," Juna muttered, wiping a streak of blood off her chin, "did the bird give you trouble?"

"Not even a little bit," Hajin dropped down off the ledge, his boots crunching into the ruined floor, "I just got sidetracked."

Loccy chewed on a ration bar, ignoring both of them as she sat on a piece of rubble twice her size. Over by the far wall, Cassie and her two party members looked like they had aged ten years in the last ten minutes.

"You just killed two eight-shard monsters," Cassie stared at the massive crater, her voice flat and dead, "we are not getting paid enough for this."

"I told you this was good training," he walked past her, his eyes tracking the serious damage that tore the pit apart.

The crater where the rabbit died ran halfway across the floor, leaving a clean gap punched straight through the thick root wall.

"Just what in hell kind of move did you pull to cause such massive damage," he asked, gesturing toward the ruined wall behind Juna.

"I might have done something a bit different," Juna muttered, avoiding his gaze as she picked at a scratch on her armor.

"Something different, huh," he repeated, looking at the massive crater before bringing his focus back to her.

"Yeah," she said, still refusing to meet his eyes, "just a sharper angle."

He let out a short breath, watching the way she kept her face turned toward the ground.

The stream chat unrolled in the corner of his vision, a flood of laughing emotes scrolling past in seconds.

[ ashley (Mod): ] OMG she is totally hiding her true power from him 😭

[ ShadowMage44: ] the worst liar in the kingdom lmao

[ Voxa: ] bro look at that crater, there is no way that was just a swing. she has to have some kind of hidden form

He looked away from the chat and swept his gaze across the ruined pit one more time, taking in the sheer scale of the crater.

’A hidden form huh,’ he turned the thought over in his mind, ’yeah, that makes a lot of sense.’ If she wanted to keep it a secret from him, he had no intention of pushing her for answers.

"Good job," he said, giving her a small smile as he dismissed the stream panel from his vision.

Juna let out a slow breath, the rigid posture she had been holding finally relaxing as she gave him a nod.

"We are not done yet," Vella cut in, her eyes tracking the dense line of trees on the far side of the pit. "Whatever is coming through that forest feels a lot heavier than the two you just killed," she said, a rare frown pulling at her face.

"I was starting to hope so," Hajin summoned his chain in a flash of gold, the metal wrapping around his forearm.

The trees on the far edge of the clearing did not just rustle, they snapped and splintered as something massive pushed its way through. Hajin pushed a thread of mana into his eyes, his vision shifting as he scanned the dense network of corrupted energy moving toward them.

’It seems the last one decided to come to us,’ he pulled the chain taut between his hands, ’good, I did not want to waste energy hunting it down.’

But whatever was tearing its way through the forest was massive, far too massive for anything they had fought so far. A cold shiver ran down his spine, his grip tightening on the chain just as a blaring red system panel ripped open across his vision.

[ WARNING: 10-Shard Anomaly Detected ]

[ Recommended Action: Run ]

’Oh, so this thing was the reason for the gate warning,’ he let the panel fade, his muscles pulling tight against the chill.

Before he could open his mouth, a crushing wave of dark mana washed out from the treeline and slammed into the clearing. The sheer pressure of it drove all four of them down onto their knees, the floor cracking under the unnatural weight.

Back near the pit, Cassie and her two party members collapsed to the ground, the overwhelming aura knocking them out cold in an instant.

A single, massive spider leg tore through the treeline and slammed into the ground, the sharp tip sinking deep into the rock.

"You have got to be shitting me," Vella muttered, bracing one hand against the ground to fight the crushing gravity.

The Spider-Woman dragged herself out from the shadows of the forest, whatever form she had used to hide deep in the gate nowhere in sight.

She was a towering monstrosity the size of a large building, her dark carapace blotting out the sky as she loomed over the clearing.

Eight glowing eyes focused on the tiny figures kneeling in the clearing, her jagged jaws parting as she looked down at the group.

"You killed my hunters," her voice rumbled across the forest, the sound vibrating right through the ground, "but your flesh will still feed my children."