The monster’s forelimbs slammed directly into Ryan Quinn’s chest.
At the very last second, Ryan Quinn crossed his arms over his chest.
Black biomass surged instinctively, coalescing into small bucklers on his forearms—the quantum patterns on the ashen armor plates flickered wildly, attempting to absorb the impact.
But the force was too immense.
It was the raw, unrefined power of dozens of consumed people, devoid of technique or angle, just a relentless, forward-driving mass.
The arm shields shattered.
Ashen fragments flew in all directions, dissolving into clouds of black biomass in mid-air before inertia flung them behind him.
The remaining force slammed into his breastplate.
There was no redirection, no mitigation.
It was a solid, square hit.
His entire body was sent flying.
*CRASH—* His back smashed through the auditorium wall, sending bricks and mortar flying as dust filled the air.
He tumbled through the wall and rolled into a pitch-black space, the thunderous sound of collapsing bookshelves exploding in his ears.
The library.
He had been knocked into the school library.
He crushed two rows of bookshelves, books scattering everywhere as dust danced in the moonlight.
Ryan Quinn lay amidst the wreckage of fallen shelves and scattered books, staring at the ceiling for two seconds.
“…That really hurt.” Then, he sluggishly rolled over and stood up.
The carapace on his left arm had completely shattered, and the black biomass was slowly repairing it.
The shields were gone and needed to be reformed.
But there was no time—no, actually, there was, he just couldn’t be bothered to hurry.
Karl King squeezed through the hole in the wall.
His eight limbs seemed cramped in the library’s narrow aisles, but his strength remained undiminished.
His compound eyes scanned the darkness, searching for Ryan Quinn.
“You can’t run,” his voice echoed in the empty library.
“There are no exits here.
Nowhere to hide.” Between the bookshelves, there was only silence.
His eyes swept from row after row of shelves to overturned desks and chairs, then across the books carpeting the floor.
But the figure in the ashen combat suit had vanished.
Even his scent was gone.
“Hiding?” Impatience crept into his voice.
“You think hiding will save you?” He crawled forward a few steps, his forelimb shoving a row of shelves aside.
The shelf collapsed with a boom.
Right as it fell, one of his single eyes caught a figure—in the corner, a bald man was curled up, hands over his head, trembling violently.
Karl King’s compound eyes narrowed slightly.
He didn’t recognize him.
A bald head, ordinary clothes, huddled in the corner without moving.
A school staff member, a parent attending the dance, or just some unlucky passerby.
He didn’t care.
“Hey.” His voice squeezed through the cracks of his maw, condescending.
“Did you see a guy in armor and a hood?” The bald man looked up.
His lips were trembling, his teeth chattered, and there were even tears welling in his eyes.
He looked at Karl King’s hideous spider face, let out a whimper, and buried his head back in his arms.
“Useless trash,” Carl King muttered under his breath, withdrawing his gaze.
His compound eyes turned elsewhere, and his eight limbs began to move as he prepared to continue his search from the other side of the library.
He turned his back.
His rear was left completely exposed to the bald man.
In that very instant.
The bald man moved.
His right arm shot out, moving with a speed no human could achieve.
His fingers snapped together; in less than a tenth of a second, black biomass surged over his skin, hardening layer upon layer until it formed a black blade over a meter long.
*Puchi.* The hand-blade accurately pierced Carl King’s back—sliding perfectly between the gaps in the carapace.
The blade sliced through armor, muscle, and vessels, skewering the heart.
The tip of the blade protruded from his chest.
Dark purple liquid flowed down the blade, dripping onto the library floor with a hissing, corrosive sound.
Carl King’s body froze.
All eight of his limbs stopped mid-air, perfectly still.
His compound eyes went wide, and every single one of his eyes focused on his own chest—on that black blade sticking out, its tip still dripping blood.
He turned his head with great difficulty.
The bald man had already stood up.
His face was clean, devoid of any expression.
His body was transforming—his skin tone shifted, his skeletal structure reshaped, and his ordinary clothes dissolved into black biomass that retracted into his body, replaced by a white carapace.
The bald head vanished.
In its place was a mask.
It was white, with cold lines and hollowed eye sockets that glowed with a faint, dark red light from the depths.
The hood was pulled up.
Ryan Quinn stood behind Carl King, his right arm still impaling the monster’s body.
“You—!” The voice was squeezed out, catching in his throat.
Carl King’s compound eyes stared at the mask, at those two pools of dark red light in the hollow sockets.
Finally, he understood—that bald man, the “trash” huddled in the corner trembling, the bystander he hadn’t even bothered to look at twice— That was the prey he had been hunting.
“You changed—you turned into—” “Well,” Ryan Quinn’s voice drifted lazily from behind the mask, “playing the victim to catch the predator…
it’s a cliché, but it works.” His right arm began to change—countless tiny, black-red tendrils erupted from the blade’s surface, burrowing into the wound, winding through vessels and muscle, tunneling deep into the bone until they latched onto the heart.
Carl King’s body began to shake violently.
Something was being pulled out of him, bit by bit.
“You’re…
eating me…” His voice grew faint.
“You’re eating my body…” The tendrils spread frantically inside him, devouring and absorbing as they went.
The countless tiny spiders that made up Carl King’s body were defenseless against the tendrils; they were wrapped, compressed, and decomposed into raw biomass, flowing back into Ryan Quinn through the tendrils.
On a conscious level, the tiny spiders let out piercing shrieks that echoed within Ryan Quinn.
Carl King’s body began to shrink, rapidly and visibly withering away.
“You’ll—you’ll regret this—!” His voice grew weaker, coming in staccato bursts.
“My power—my ability—you won’t be able to use it—you’ll be…
eaten by yourself—” Ryan Quinn let out a yawn.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it.
Noted.” He shoved his right arm forward with a sudden burst of force.
The blade pierced deeper.
Tendrils erupted from the chest and back simultaneously, covering the shoulders and abdomen, weaving a dense web across the entire body.
“URGAAAAAAAH—!!!!!” A wretched scream tore through the cracks of the monster’s face, a raspy howl of agony.
The body began to collapse—the carapace shattered into powder, the limbs snapped into fragments, and the remaining tiny spiders exploded into a fine mist of blood.
*Fwoosh—* The body imploded.
A mist of dark purple and black-red blood exploded in the center of the library.
The mist slowly dissipated.
Nothing was left on the floor.
It was completely clean.
Only Ryan Quinn stood there, on the floor stained dark red by the mist.
His right hand hung at his side, dark purple liquid still dripping from his fingertips.
He stood there for a long time.
He didn’t feel like moving.
“Ah…
so tired.” Ryan Quinn’s shoulders slumped; he could barely keep himself upright.
“Job’s done…
time to go home and sleep.” But inside his body, a violent change was occurring.
A surge of power was roiling within him, coming on so strongly that his vessels and bones ached.
Carl King had eaten over twenty people, and he had eaten the spiders—the descendants of the ones that had bitten Gwen.
All the genes and abilities of those spiders had merged into Carl King, and now they were flooding into Ryan Quinn all at once.
Ryan Quinn looked down at his hand and clenched his fist.
His knuckles let out a series of crisp cracks.
A surge of dark red energy moved through his palm, its texture dense and constantly writhing.
“Spiders…” Ryan Quinn muttered.
“What a troublesome ability.” But deep in his consciousness, fragments of Carl King’s memories came flooding in—the faces of the people he had eaten, scenes of hunting vagrants in dark alleys.
And the memories of those spiders.
Ryan Quinn yawned.
He had zero interest in Carl King’s tragic childhood or his cult-worshipping family.
His consciousness automatically filtered out the junk data, heading straight for the core— How the ability originated, how to use it, and where its limits were.
“I see.” The ability Carl King had gained after devouring those spiders was multiplication.
His entire body could split into countless tiny spiders, each carrying a backup of his consciousness.
In other words, those tiny spiders crawling in and out of his body—each one was Carl King himself.
To completely destroy him, one had to eliminate every single spider at once.
Missing even one wouldn’t do.
Even if a single spider remained, it could regrow into a complete Carl King.
“Tsk, tsk…” Ryan Quinn clicked his tongue.
“So this guy was basically a backup freak.
How annoying.
However—” “Are there any runaways?” Ryan Quinn held his hand out, palm up.
Dark red energy surged in his palm, and the tiny, writhing movements began to coalesce under his will.
A moment later, a tiny black spider appeared in his hand.
It was tiny, no bigger than a grain of rice.
It was pitch black, a deep and heavy dark, with dark red markings on its back.
Eight legs paddled gently against his palm, and its tiny compound eyes reflected a faint red light.
Ryan Quinn looked at it.
It looked back at him.
It possessed Ryan Quinn’s consciousness and thoughts.
Because after devouring Carl King, the Blacklight Virus had read the genetic code, integrating the total spider-transformation and multiplication abilities into Ryan Quinn’s own genetic sequence.
Now he could do the same as Carl King—in the face of danger, he could split his entire body into countless spiders.
Unless every single spider was killed, he would never truly die.
Ryan Quinn stared at the spider in his palm for three seconds.
“…So, does this mean I’ve eaten the spider version of a Natural-type Soot-Soot Fruit, or am I the spider version of the Demon King himself?” Ryan Quinn self-deprecatingly muttered, watching the little spider.
The tiny spider crawled in two circles on his palm and then obediently settled down.
“Fine then.” He closed his hand, and the little spider dissolved into dark red energy, flowing back into his body.
“Phasing + Logia + Demon King backup.
Survival skills: maxed out.”