Chapter 61: Spider Web (2)
Translator: bjgoofy
Although her heart was full of anxiety about what might happen next, since she had followed her sis, Namgoong Eun moved as instructed by her sis and the young hero to search for traces.
There was now only one way to escape her father’s punishment.
As her sis had said, finding out the truth by uncovering whether it was a ghost or whatever was the only way to avoid their father's wrath.
If they did that, he might even reward them instead of punishing them.
So Namgoong Eun looked around as diligently as she could to find traces or whatever it might be.
Since there were rumors of a ghost, she tried not to stray far from her sis.
Somehow the forest interior was too dark, and she had a chilling sensation down her spine.
Just like that, she kept checking on her nearby sis as she moved her steps for a moment.
It was when she raised her eyesight and looked around to find something.
She felt as if the darkness around her was thickening, and by the time she realized what it was, the area was already filled with such dense fog that she couldn’t see even a step ahead.
“Sis?”
Her heart pounded at the realization she was alone.
In the ears of Namgoong Eun, seized by fear, all she could hear was the sound of her own pounding heart.
-Thump thump.
Feeling like making a loud noise would reveal her location, she couldn’t even raise her voice and drew her sword out of fear.
-Sreureung.
She had drawn the sword thinking it might ease her nerves if she held onto it, but something felt strange.
At first, she thought it was because of fear, but the more time passed, the more her heart started to pound wildly.
Something was definitely wrong.
She realized something was strange because she was sweating from her body without noticing it herself.
Even though she hadn’t reached the state of cold-heat immunity, at Namgoong Eun’s level, it made no sense for sweat to appear just because she was scared.
And somehow, it felt like she had drunk alcohol, with a sweet scent perceived in every breath in and out.
Each time she inhaled the fog, she felt her heart race even faster, strangely.
And then, Wei Soryong’s face came to mind, her sis’s partner, whom she thought was handsome even though he was young.
A feeling similar to when she recalled Blade Dragon, whom she had briefly admired in her childhood, seized Namgoong Eun.
‘Wha-what is this?’
Amid fear and confusion, she held a sword in one hand and wiped the sweat trickling down from the side of her head with the other.
Just then, the fog seemed to clear slightly, and something began to appear faintly in front of her.
As she focused her eyesight, the blurry shape of a person became visible.
And then she sensed a presence.
-Rustle.
“Is that you, sis? Seol sis?”
The figure’s build resembled her sis’s, and the outline she saw from a distance gave her the feeling it was her sis.
As she raised her sword and slowly walked toward the figure, the wind seemed to blow away some of the fog and clouds above, revealing the person’s face.
It was the figure of her sis standing in front of the overgrown bush.
For some reason, her sis had a finger pressed to her lips, seemingly signaling her to be quiet. As her sis looked at Namgoong Eun, she gestured silently for her to come quickly.
A feeling of relief upon seeing her sis’s gesture and face.
Namgoong Eun quickly sheathed her sword and covered her mouth, then ran toward her sis.
[Sis, what is it? Whew... I was scared to death. By the way, Wei Soryong and Hwa-eun...]
As she clung to her sis, rambling on in relief for having found her, it happened.
A hand rose to Namgoong Eun’s shoulder, as if to comfort her.
Namgoong Eun, feeling relief once again, quickly placed her hand on the back of her sis’s hand.
But what she felt when she placed her hand there was not relief but a sense of incongruity.
Wondering why she felt such unease, a sudden thought came to mind.
Her sis’s hand was unusually cold.
‘What is this? Why does sis’s hand feel so cold? Like a dead person's... huh!?’
The moment she thought her sis’s hand was as cold as that of a corpse, she felt the hairs on her entire body stand on end.
Namgoong Eun dared not meet her sis’s eyes and, seized with fear, slowly lowered her gaze.
If it wasn’t really her sis, if it was something else pretending to be her, she felt like she wouldn’t be able to meet its eyes.
However, Namgoong Eun’s choice turned out to be worse than simply looking it in the eyes.
What entered Namgoong Eun’s lowered gaze was her sis’s bare feet.
What was even more shocking was that her sis’s feet were floating slightly above the ground.
-Aaahhhh!
Namgoong Eun was startled so badly that she screamed without realizing it and staggered back.
But her sis’s hand was still clutching her shoulder.
Then, as something glittered between her sis’s legs, a sharp sting struck her thigh, and strength drained from her whole body.
Namgoong Eun’s body collapsed like a log.
–Thud.
Her thigh ached, her mind was clear, and yet her body wouldn’t move.
She wanted to scream from within, a scream that felt like it would tear through her, but though she could blink, not a single word would come out of her mouth.
It felt as if everything below her nose was paralyzed.
What revealed that Namgoong Eun was seized by an extreme sense of terror wasn’t a scream from her mouth. It was the sweat pouring from her entire body.
–Swish.
A gaze looking down at fallen Namgoong Eun, something that had taken her sis’s appearance.
Something bright red slowly protruded from behind her sis’s back and picked up the collapsed Namgoong Eun as she was.
‘Th-this is!?’
Namgoong Eun was seized by something like a bright red leg.
From between the slightly spread legs of her sis, threads as white as snow sprayed over Namgoong Eun’s body, and her vision began to spin round and round.
It felt like she had become roast suckling pig for her family’s festive day.
As Namgoong Eun’s body was roughly wrapped in white threads, it shot up into the air with a whoosh.
She soared straight up and ended up hanging from the top of a tree about three stories high.
Looking down from midair, the true identity of the being that had taken her sis’s form became clear under the moonlight.
‘A-a spider!?’
Yes, the one taking her sis’s form was a gigantic spider.
A spider so big, she had neither heard of nor seen anything like it.
A spider larger than a human body, and on top of its head, a human torso was attached.
She had no idea why it had her sis’s form, but it was likely the true culprit behind everything that had happened so far.
Once again, the hairs on her entire body stood on end, and her heart pounded madly like a drum.
Having confirmed the real culprit behind this incident, she was now seized by a fear greater than any she had felt so far.
So, overwhelmed by fear, Namgoong Eun looked around frantically from atop the tree.
She desperately hoped that someone might come to save her.
As she looked in all directions, she realized something, the strange fog was shaped like a ring surrounding the spider, and beyond the fog in the distance, she could see her sis wielding her sword, trying to disperse the mist.
Hwa-eun sis was also near the fog, sitting cross-legged, trying hard to expel something.
It seemed hopeless to expect the two to come rescue her anytime soon, and just when fear that the creature might do something terrible to her started to turn into despair, something was tearing through the fog from that direction no, it looked more like the fog was splitting open as Wei Soryong came running.
Straight toward where she was.
‘W-Wei Soryong!’
She had thought he was a frivolous person who easily fell for her sis’s request, but now he was running unhesitatingly toward where she was.
Though he was young, she felt like she could fall for him just watching his fearless actions.
It made her think, ‘Maybe that’s why Hwa-eun sis is so into him.’
When she had asked how the two met, it really seemed like Hwa-eun sis was completely smitten.
The look in Hwa-eun sis’s eyes as she gazed at the young hero had been as if she were entirely captivated by him.
But that hope lasted only a moment.
Below, the sly spider, just as it had tricked her earlier, hid most of its form in the bushes, then revealed her shoulders again, taking on Seol sis’s appearance.
She bared her shoulders so much that even the upper part of her chest was slightly exposed.
It seemed the reason the people who had gone missing knew about the mole on sis’s upper chest was probably because of something like this.
‘Th-that wicked wench!’
But Wei Soryong was someone who had Tang Hwa-eun, his betrothed.
No matter how pretty her sis was, Namgoong Eun hoped that he would not fall for it easily and would realize the identity of that wretched spider.
However, the closer Wei Soryong got, the stronger the sweet scent became.
With that scent, her chest felt hotter, and she realized that wretched spider was doing something.
Even as a woman, her heart was fluttering like this, if it were a man, he surely wouldn’t be able to resist.
Soon, Namgoong Eun’s prediction proved right.
When the young hero reached the spot similar to where she had first encountered her sis, he saw her and began to approach slowly, with dazed eyes.
His eyes were half-lost in focus, it seemed he had fallen completely for sis’s seductive appearance.
Even though he was young, he had still fallen for sis’s beauty like a man.
Eventually, Wei Soryong slowly approached and buried his face in sis’s chest.
No, in the chest of the spider that wore her sis’s face.
Seeing that, Namgoong Eun looked to her side.
Because in her mind, she had a feeling that Wei Soryong might soon be hanging beside her too.
***
-Aaahhhh!
A woman’s scream ripped through the darkness and echoed from the mist.
It definitely wasn’t his nunim’s voice, so it had to be either Namgoong Eun or Namgoong Seol.
I unwrapped Bin from his left hand and Hyang from his waist and asked,
“Bin, Hyang, can you find your mother?”
I asked, hoping they might be able to sense the aura of their mother, and the little creatures twitched their antennae as if nodding.
“Then go find your mom and protect her, alright?”
–Tsurur.
As if understanding, Hyang and Bin glanced back at him once before quickly disappearing into the mist.
He couldn’t leave his nunim alone in this kind of scene that looked straight out of a horror movie, and at the same time, he couldn’t send Hyang or Bin alone through this unknown, dark place, so he sent them both.
His own body could be protected by Cho, and he had placed a safeguard on Nunim as well, so now it was time to move.
He moved quickly in the direction the sound had come from.
Even while running toward the source of the sound, what filled his head wasn’t concern for Namgoong Eun or Namgoong Seol, it was the spiderweb.
Why on earth had there been such a spiderweb there?
That thought filled his mind.
‘What could it be?’
Because spiders are broadly divided into sedentary and wandering types.
Sedentary means they build a home in one place and live there, while wandering means they roam about, but laying threads all over the ground like that was hard to understand.
Ground spiders dig holes and spin webs inside, but they don’t spread thread like that on the surface, which made it difficult to grasp.
He was thinking that as he headed toward the direction of the noise.
Then, for a moment, the moonlight broke through the clouds, and as the darkness and mist lifted, a fantastic sight came into view.
‘What is this!?’
All around the ground beneath his feet, he saw glistening spiderwebs, heavy with dew due to the fog. The sight flashed before him for a moment before the moon went back behind the clouds and the scene disappeared.
It was like threads of light had flickered on once, then gone out.
As the image of the spiderweb imprinted in his mind still lingered, he saw Namgoong Seol standing in what seemed to be the center of the web, giving him a peculiar smile.
'So that's it!'
A giant spider.
And it was a kind of ground spider he had never seen before.
It was definitely spinning threads like a tree-dwelling spider, but the fact that it was doing so on the ground rather than in the air meant it was indeed a new species!
Now, he could finally understand the general nature of everything that had happened so far.
What was tempting him now in the form of Namgoong Seol was probably the spider’s mimetic pedipalp.
Pedipalp, in Korean, means antenna leg, and though it resembles a spider’s leg, it is a specialized organ used for sensing, mating, or hunting prey.
It couldn’t exactly be called a leg, because it was attached to the head.
A scorpion’s pincers, too, are not precisely legs but pedipalps attached to the head.
It was revealing even its shoulders to seduce him, exuding seductive charm, but that was probably the result of evolution to lure male prey.
And though it was showing a seductive smile to tempt him, honestly, it didn’t need to do all that.
He was already quite captivated.
If it had revealed its main body instead of the pedipalp, he might have been even more fascinated.
Suppressing the excitement pounding in his chest, he put on a blank expression and approached the creature.
And as he got closer to it, between the legs mimicking Namgoong Seol, he saw the creature’s glittering eyes and a hint of its red legs peeking out from the underbrush.
Feigning ignorance, he stepped right up to the pedipalp mimicking Namgoong Seol and embraced it tightly.
As though mesmerized or rather, exactly as the creature had intended.
Then he shouted toward Cho.
“Cho, bite!”
*****
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