Chapter 456: New Prey

Vergil remained silent before the sleeping colossus.

The creature’s head—if it could be called a “head”—emerged partially from the sea of eggs, its eyes closed in multiple layers, forming overlapping arches of translucent chitin. Silk threads pulsed from the base of the skull to the living ceiling of the chamber, like umbilical cords connected to a divine and monstrous placenta. The Queen’s skin was the color of night under an eclipse—black, shiny, with metallic tones that sparkled in the light of the fire lance.

Vergil knelt with one knee on the organic bridge, leaning as if observing an ancient sculpture forgotten by gods and men. His pupils were dilated. The energy emanating from the gigantic body was dense as smoke, full of memory and pain.

“She is beautiful…” he murmured, almost like a lament. “So… monumental.”

Zuri trembled. “Vergil, this thing is not a being. It is a vestige. A mistake of creation.”

He didn’t respond immediately. He reached out a hand, almost touching a silk filament that dripped from the center of the creature’s skull, like a solid tear. When his fingers came close, the spider’s aura responded—not with hostility, but with something more primitive. A psychic whisper, an echo that pierced the layers of the world.

The head did not move.

The entire body slept.

But still, Vergil felt its weight on his mind. An overwhelming presence. A consciousness that did not think in words, but in cycles. In broods. In extinction.

He withdrew his hand.

“She’s not dead,” he said, in a low voice. “She’s… in suspension. As if her own body had been forced to stop breathing.”

Zuri uncurled slightly, her eyes fixed on the membranes surrounding the Queen’s chest.

“This is no ordinary hibernation. It doesn’t make sense. This is the Underworld. It’s not cold, there are no seasons. Everything rots or consumes. Whatever is forcing this thing to sleep is not natural.”

Vergil nodded.

“I agree. This energy around her… it’s contained. Sealed inside. As if there were a prison embedded in her own body. An organic seal.”

He walked around the black mass that was the creature’s abdomen. Its size was monstrous. Part of its body merged with the ground, like deformed roots that had spread over eons. Its long legs—thick as columns—were folded beneath it, entangled in magical threads that glimmered faintly. There were marks at the points of articulation, like inscriptions burned into the flesh.

“Someone did this,” he said, now frowning. “This is the work of enchantment. It’s not an arcane prison. It’s something more… visceral. Ritualistic. Someone or something imprisoned the Mother here. And used her as a source.”

Zuri stared at the ceiling, where small filaments rose toward glands, feeding the dome with constant energy.

“This entire cave… feeds on her. This is a forced symbiosis. This hive is not hers. It is a parasite. She has been taken over by her own creation.”

Vergil crossed his arms, his eyes still fixed on the creature’s face.

“The Spider Mother… has been tamed.”

He didn’t smile. There was no humor in it. Only understanding.

“But everything has an end. Even the forced sleep of a monster.”

Zuri frowned.

“Are you thinking of waking that thing up? Are you crazy? I thought we came here to destroy, not to play necromancer with giant arachnids.”

Vergil turned slowly to her, his gaze steady.

“I will destroy it.”

Zuri blinked, surprised.

“Then… why the contemplative look?!”

“Because what I see here is a real threat. Potential. A risk to the future of my territory. All of this…” — he turned slightly, pointing to the eggs, the corridors of flesh, the pulsating walls — “…this isn’t just a nest. It’s a dormant war machine. If this creature wakes up unchecked, the entire Underworld could collapse into a sea of hungry hatchlings.”

“Then why don’t we burn it all down now?”

Vergil took a deep breath.

“Because if I miss the attack, it wakes up. And then there won’t be enough fire.”

Vergil took a deep breath.

For a moment, the silence in the chamber became absolute. Not even the sound of the fire crackling at the tip of his spear, nor the rustling of the eggs moving slightly under some imperceptible current. Nothing. A vacuum. As if even the Underworld itself were holding its breath for what was about to happen.

Vergil closed his eyes.

The energy around him began to change.

The flame on the spear flickered—not as if it were about to go out, but as if it had been swallowed up inside him, pulled in by something denser, more primordial. The heat did not subside. On the contrary. The temperature rose. Slowly. Relentlessly. The dust hanging in the air began to sparkle like sparks.

Zuri instinctively backed away, her eyes wide.

“You’re… doing it.”

Vergil didn’t answer. His hands were now enveloped in a different flame — not just fire, but a demonic blaze, tinged dark blue at the edges, as if tempered with pain and fury. The marks on his arm lit up, red lines glowing beneath his skin like lava in veins.

The floor around him began to char.

Cracks slowly opened beneath his feet, expelling steam and embers.

A domain.

Vergil was shaping the space with his own will.

A Domain of Fire.

The chamber’s ceiling shook. The filaments connecting the Queen to her surroundings trembled like taut strings, trying to resist the scorching heat. The smell of burning flesh and magical resin mingled in the heavy air, creating a suffocating cloud of decay and purification.

Zuri cringed, impressed—not out of fear, but something close to awe. “Be careful…”

Vergil opened his eyes.

They burned like two miniature suns, consuming any doubt or hesitation.

“She is sleeping, but her creation woke up before her. That is unforgivable.”

He raised the spear above his head.

The fire concentrated on the blade like a miniature star, spinning at high speed, wrapped in demonic runes that vibrated with the force of an ancient curse.

The Queen’s aura finally reacted. A sudden oscillation, like the crack of a lung that no longer wanted to remain at rest. Her limbs moved, only millimeters, but enough to raise dust and fragments of the membrane from the floor. The eggs began to glow faintly. Echoes of a silent call crossed the hive.

Zuri shouted, “Now, Vergil! Before she really wakes up!”

And he obeyed.

With an ancestral roar, mixed with demonic language, Vergil brought down his spear with a devastating blow, straight to the creature’s head. The impact was not only physical. It was spiritual. Magical. Cosmic. A silent scream spread through the air, breaking the organic structures of the chamber, cracking the living walls like glass before thunder.

The energy of the Domain collapsed on the point of impact. Waves of flames spread like a virus through the Spider Mother’s body, following the veins of the ritual inscriptions like trails of gunpowder. The ancient runes, still active, reacted violently to the attack—they burned, shook, imploded.

The creature’s entire body gasped.

She did not scream.

She could not.

But every bone and tendon in the hive screamed for her. Each cocoon bursting into flames, each filament crackling with living fire. The air became so hot that the ground began to melt. The eggs exploded like boiling bubbles, releasing toxic steam and dying larvae.

Zuri covered her eyes with her wings, trying to protect herself from the heat.

“You… are breaking everything at once.”

“Exactly,” said Vergil, firmly, watching the creature’s head crack under his spear. “If she wakes up, let her wake up burning.”

The cracks spread across the Queen’s skull, revealing an incandescent purple light pulsing beneath the shell. It wasn’t just flesh. It was raw magic. A source. A core.

The spear penetrated deeper, until it reached the center of that light.

And then — a wave.

A wave of hellish energy expanded from the creature like a silent bomb, pushing Vergil back a few steps. The light went out immediately. The core collapsed in on itself. The energy that had once fueled the hive was sucked away like a vortex, undoing the living corridors, the mystical structures, the filament channels.

Everything began to crumble.

The ceiling shook, the living columns crumbling into dust and ashes. The Queen’s corpse was finally… dead.

Zuri let out a sigh of pure relief.

“You did it. You destroyed her. Completely.”

Vergil still stared at the smoking body. For a moment, he just watched his own reflection in the surrounding flames.

And with a gesture, everything went dark. Only the smell of burning remained.

The silence that followed the collapse of the Spider Queen was the kind that only exists after an apocalypse. A heavy, sepulchral silence, where even the dust seemed to hesitate before falling.

Vergil breathed slowly, feeling the hot air in his lungs, the smoke of destruction dancing around him like ritual veils. He lowered his spear, the fire now extinguished, and stared at the remains of the gigantic corpse before him—twisted black flesh, still crackling in places. A crater where once there had been a heart.

But then…

A sound.

Low.

Grave.

Moist.

A moan.

Zuri raised her head like lightning, her eyes wide. “Vergil… did you hear that?”

He nodded slowly, his muscles already tensing, like an animal sensing a predator.

The moan came again. Louder. A guttural, shapeless sound. It wasn’t a lament. It was a birth.

Then one of the walls—until then fused into raw flesh and hardened web—shook.

A crack appeared right in the center, spreading in irregular lines like veins about to burst. From the crack, an aura emerged. A dark, heavy vapor, dense as pitch, pure condensed demonic power.

Zuri staggered backward, her eyes widening in panic.

She gasped. Literally suffocated by the power emanating from there.

“No… it can’t be. This… this is…” She coughed, almost falling.

Vergil spun around, already raising his spear again, his eyes narrowed. The light in the room flickered, as if the cave itself rejected the existence of what was to come.

The crack exploded outward—flesh, stone, and silk flew in all directions, opening a hole from which something began to emerge.

First, a paw. Long, sharp, slender as a curved blade made of polished bone. Then another. And then, emerging from the shadows…

Her.

The figure that emerged from the wall was an impossible fusion of infernal beauty and arachnid nightmare. From the waist up, she had the appearance of a woman—or at least, something that had once tried to be one. Her long hair moved like living silk threads, her skin pale and gleaming with shades of poisoned ebony. Her eyes—eight of them—were arranged asymmetrically on her face, all lit with hatred, pain, and hunger, but well… her upper body was even sexy, with two big breasts that drew a lot of attention… but…

From the waist down, it was pure monstrosity: a spider abdomen dripping black poison; four pairs of arched legs, with inverted joints, dug into the ground with dry cracks. The structure was more compact than the Spider Queen, but much more lethal. Fast. Lethal. Intelligent.

Vergil said nothing.

He just watched.

The creature tilted its head. Its voice came out low, drawn out, as if its words were being forced out by millennia of sleep and rage.

“You… killed my mother.”

Vergil looked up and sighed, “I found what I wanted. I’m glad I didn’t attack the queen’s abdomen. In the end, there was a great prize inside.” Vergil smiled like a demon.