The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 480: Venomous Combat

I look around the spider girl’s house. She ran off out of nowhere, saying I smell like grease. It leaves me unsettled and makes my skin crawl—after all, it’s like saying I smell like food here in the Abyss.

’I should get out of here. What if that girl is thinking about eating me...’ I know I must be far more nutritious than the normal beings of the Abyss, so I probably look like good eating. I just don’t know how much tastier I am from an Abyssal being’s perspective.

I get up from the chair and start walking to leave. I’m not staying in this place any longer, risking becoming that spider girl’s meal. If we’re going to fight, I at least want to fight in an open area.

I try to leave silently, but when I reach the edge of the tunnel, the spider girl appears. She stares at me and seems to realize I was about to run.

”Where were you going? Didn’t you want to know more about the Abyss Goddess? Leaving seems a bit counterintuitive on your part, don’t you think? I can still teach you many things,” she asks as she approaches.

”I don’t care about that anymore. I need to go now. We can talk more outside some other time. That should be enough, don’t you agree? I’ll still be in the city for a good while. You can always find me there again,” I say, trying to see if I’ll be attacked.

”Hmmm, I see. I can’t let you leave,” she says while coming toward me with calm steps—not as a threat, but as a warning that she won’t let me go outside.

”And you think you can keep me trapped here? I’m leaving right now,” I say confidently. After all, I need to seem as confident as possible.

”Oh, really? So what do you intend to do by going outside right now? Aren’t you liking my current hospitality? Or is something wrong? If something’s wrong, you can tell me. I’ll solve the problem...” she says insistently.

”...”

’The soil of the Abyss is very resistant. I couldn’t just break through the ceiling to escape from here because I’m still too weak in this place...’ Our conversation isn’t getting anywhere, so I attack her with a strong punch.

She blocks it with one of her legs, which easily withstands my blow. I feel the hardness of the impact as if I’d hit an ultra-resistant shield or armor.

The vibration of the strike comes right back at me, making my body tremble and my bones vibrate.

”It seems our conversation is over,” she murmurs and tries to hit me with her legs while I jump back, retreating into the room, which has more space than the tunnel so I can move.

”...Stay still. I don’t want to hurt you too much. And if you move too much, I might end up injuring you more than necessary,” she says as if it’s an absolute certainty that I can’t handle her.

”That’s very bold of you. What guarantees I won’t blow up your house here and now?” I ask while she looks around and gives a bizarre smile.

”Worth the risk. And if you haven’t done it yet, it’s because you can’t, don’t you think? And even if you could, I just need to stop you before that,” she attacks with logic. And really, if I could break everything here, I would have already done it to get out, since fighting in her house seems disadvantageous for me in many ways.

”...” Before I can react, she appears behind me with an absurdly fast movement. I’m hit in the back, on my right arm, but when she does it, I let out a cry of pain and feel a horrible sensation.

The feeling of one of her legs piercing my shoulder and digging deep into the flesh, while her magic wreaks havoc on my mana pathway.

”I noticed your mana pathway was damaged. Seems I was right. It’s quite painful to have someone affecting a wound like that, don’t you think?” she says while I move away from her and see the hole her leg opened in my shoulder.

”...” My Mana leaks from the wound, but it doesn’t matter much since I couldn’t use most spells anyway, so I guess it’s not that big of a problem. Although losing my mana is nothing pleasant and will slowly make me weaker, so I try to force my body to stop gushing mana.

I dodge several strikes from her sharp legs while punching back when she lunges at me, but her carapace is so tough, and she’s strangely fast despite her bulky body.

I slide under her, slipping across the floor and going behind her. I quickly strike her with several rapid punches, trying to destabilize her, but my punches barely do anything and don’t even push her back.

”You know, you’re quite strong, but I’m level 9 million.” When she says that, I hesitate and jump back as she turns to face me.

’9 million?! I’m level 750 thousand...’ Is there really any chance I can beat her in this situation? I think about fleeing, but she immediately shoots webs, completely sealing off the exit tunnel.

She starts shooting webs at me while I barely dodge most of them, jumping from side to side as the floor starts filling with webs. She seems to be trying to trap me.

I jump at her with a kick while she defends with her leg as if it were a shield. I try to bite since, regardless of her resistance, my Devourer passive should be able to handle it.

But before I can bite, she spins and strikes me with one of her legs. I try to slip into the shadows, but she appears behind me and lands a strong blow to my back that throws me against a wall.

She shoots webs while I dodge by jumping up and narrowly evading, but she uses some kind of earth magic that makes the ceiling slam me down. I perform a mid-air acrobatic move to dodge more webs.

Soon I see I’ll run out of space to dodge, so I try to use Creation Essence. However, when I try to do something, I’m blasted and thrown against a wall.

With a pained groan, I see that what exploded was the mana in my right arm. I always knew this arm would cause me problems in a life-or-death fight, but the timing couldn’t be worse for it to malfunction, right?

’That bitch damaged precisely the only vulnerable part of my body... all because of those shitty heroes who made this wound...’ I kick the table and use it as a shield while getting up.

I see my foot stuck to a web. I try to pull free, but before I can move, she’s practically above me and starts hitting me with several powerful strikes I can’t properly defend against.

”...” I realize that’s not the only problem. I feel weaker. I think I’ve been poisoned, and it’s a potent poison. Probably when I was hit by her leg in my shoulder.

”...H-Hahaha, you’re so crazy!!! You plan to blow yourself up and try to survive on luck!!” She notices and starts attacking even more violently. Each blow is like mountains being thrown on top of me.

But for some reason, she avoids injuring me too severely. However, the more I try to use mana to blow up everything around us, the more exhausted I become and the more mana leaks from my right arm.

’Damn it...’ The mana leaking from my right arm, instead of merging with the environment, is eliminated by the density of the Abyss. And with that, the mana expenditure is devastating to my reserves.

It’s like they opened a huge hole in my body that’s leaking. She didn’t enlarge the wound, just made it start ”bleeding” mana again.

Normally, I’d stop this using magic or something similar to fight, but most spells destroy themselves before I can even begin.

Instead of using mana to try to defend, I go on the offensive. I let one of her legs hit me, then use darkness to generate a drill and attack upward. She dodges upward and tries to defend, but the drill, which starts spinning, pierces her leg and begins boring a hole in her natural shield.

”Ghmmm.” I let out a pained sound as my vision blurs. I’ve always had great immunity to almost all poisons because of my adaptation, but strangely, her poison is very effective.

I feel my strength draining away, and she notices it too, giving a sickeningly wide smile before striking my stomach with a charge, using her immense body to push me against a wall, crushing me against it.

”What impressive resistance. Most of my prey faint from my poison in seconds. Yet you, even though weaker, held out for so long,” she says with false sweetness while starting to strike with the sides of her arachnid legs.

Each blow is powerful, using the wall to keep me in place while she tries to make me lose consciousness. But if there’s one thing that’s difficult, it’s making me faint.

”...” And paralysis occurs before fainting. My limbs stiffen from the poison and stop moving as I collapse on the floor, still awake but breathing with difficulty and with my limbs paralyzed.

”Tsk, still awake? Did I go too light on the dose?” She pierces my back with her leg. She seems to be injecting more poison into me and does so for the next 10 minutes until I truly pass out.

It shows how immense my poison resistance is, since I endured so long against the poison of a level 9 million being—more than 10 times my power.