’Good. The preparations were done.’

Neo crouched high among wet branches and watched the church through leaves heavy with the last of the night’s rain. Dawn had already come, though the jungle never gave light freely. It leaked through the canopy in thin pale shafts, enough to turn the old stone walls gray and show him the silk spread across them from arch to arch.

He had not touched the inside.

That part was non-negotiable. The moment he set a foot in there, that thing would know. A nest like this did not need sight alone. It felt vibration, shifts in air, the smallest disturbance through web and stone. Walking in blind would be the same as placing his throat in its mouth and hoping it felt polite.

So he worked from outside.

Dead branches scavenged from under thick roots where the rain had not reached them properly. Dry bark peeled from the inside of fallen wood. Strips of vine. Clumps of old leaves he had found beneath rock overhangs, brittle enough to take a spark. He had carried everything over in small loads, slow enough not to shake the church awake, and placed it in the three best openings he could reach from outside: the broken stained-glass window above, a collapsed section near the side wall, and the main entrance where webbing ran thickest between the ruined doors.

The fire would not need much help once it bit into the silk.

That was the part he liked.

His clothes had found new uses too. The shirt he had soaked in lemon and sweat the day before hung from a branch near the side wall. One boot dangled from a root farther off. A strip torn from old cloth rested by another opening. Citrus, human scent, damp fabric. Enough to foul the air around the church and muddy the trail if the spider tried to sort prey from smoke.

Neo worked a spark into the first nest of bark with patient hands, shielding it from the wet morning air until the ember caught and began chewing inward. The second took longer. The third lit faster than the others, and soon each of them held a hungry orange glow.

He fed the flames just enough.

They did the rest on their own.

Webbing caught like dry thread dipped in oil. Fire ran up the wall in thin lines first, glowing through the silk, beautiful in a vicious sort of way. It crossed the stone, climbed into the windows, and found the thicker layers deeper in. The broken side of the church filled with a faint orange pulse that brightened by the breath.

Neo climbed the vine again and hauled himself toward the shattered stained-glass window.

From there he could see enough.

Alice remained suspended from the ceiling in her cocoon, head tilted to one side, still out cold. The two cocoons beside her hung empty now. That detail hit harder in daylight. Torn silk. Wet streaks below. Nothing human left inside.

Too late for them.

The giant spider had not moved yet, but the nest had started glowing around it. Fire licked through the webs spread across the pews and crept into the higher silk overhead. At the center aisle hung the chandelier he had noticed earlier, huge and blackened, hanging lower than it should have from a single old rope and some cobwebs.

The chains that once held it had snapped long ago. They still dangled from the ceiling around it, broken and useless, while the rope carried all the weight by itself.

Fire had already found the web wrapped around that rope.

Neo narrowed his gaze and watched it.

There.

The fibers were darkening.

He dropped back to the ground and moved for the front of the church.

By the time he reached the broken entrance, the inside had changed completely. Smoke crawled up the stone. Silk shrank into curling black strings. Eggs hissed where heat reached them, some splitting open with wet cracks and spilling pale things that writhed only long enough to catch fire.

That was when the spider woke.

The sound it made dragged across the church like metal being torn in half.

It surged up from its nest with all sixteen eyes bright in the dim firelight, four pincers opening and closing while it searched for what had dared touch its brood. Its size felt even worse now that it was moving. It took half the aisle in a single shift, legs driving into stone, abdomen dragging over the floor while green fluid glimmered beneath the transparent sections.

Neo did not go in.

He grabbed a stone, wrapped in one of the citrus-soaked cloth strips, and threw it through the side gap.

The spider twisted toward the sound and scent at once, furious but uncertain, and lunged the wrong way through smoke. That gave Neo the first opening he needed.

He stepped through the ruined entrance with his sword already in hand.

At once the spider found him.

The whole body turned, giant and hateful, and he saw the exact second it chose him over the fire. Neo did not waste that second on fear. He moved down the center aisle, keeping just far enough ahead that it committed to the chase, and every step he took sharpened one thought in his head.

Not yet.

Its legs struck stone in brutal rhythm behind him. Fire spread along the side walls. Silk fell burning from the rafters in scattered strands. Heat rose fast enough to dry the inside of his throat.

He reached the space beneath the chandelier and stopped dead.

The spider stopped too.

It rose there in front of him, towering over the aisle, body lifted, mouth opening wide enough to swallow his head, pincers spread as if deciding where to take the first bite. The fire had painted everything around it in orange and black. For one breath the whole church seemed to tighten around that single point.

Neo’s attention flicked up.

The rope had turned almost fully black.

A spray of sparks ran along the last unburned twist.

The spider gathered itself to lunge.

The rope gave way.

The chandelier fell.

Metal screamed through smoke and heat, dropped like judgment, and smashed into the spider with a force that shook the floor under Neo’s feet. The impact crushed it down into the aisle in a burst of green blood, shattered crystal, bent iron, and one hideous shriek that cut short under the weight.

Neo was already moving.

He sprinted past the wreckage before the spider could recover, vaulted a collapsed pew, and slashed upward into the silk holding Alice. The cocoon tore open under the blade and dropped into his arms in a heavy white bundle. He nearly lost his footing under the sudden weight, cursed, caught himself, and hacked away more of the web until he could get at her properly.

She was breathing.

Good.

He glanced to the side.

The other two cocoons had been emptied completely. One hung ripped open from the middle, its inside slick and red. The other had collapsed inward around scraps and bone already stripped clean enough to show white.

Neo’s jaw tightened.

’Their classes are gone.’

Whatever Soul Cores they had carried had disappeared into that thing’s stomach hours ago.

The second thought followed close behind.

’I could’ve helped them if I had found this place earlier. Or I also could kill them and use they’re classes... too late I guess.’

He had arrived while the church was already turning into a grave. Alice had been the only one left to pull out of it.

Something cracked behind him.

Neo shifted Alice over one shoulder and turned just enough to see the spider thrashing under the chandelier,

iron legs jammed through its body while fire spread across the wreck and the eggs around it continued bursting in the heat.

Good enough.

He ran.

The moment he crossed the threshold with Alice in his arms, the Soul Window exploded across his vision.

[Soul-Window]

[You have slain Glassbrood Spider - Heart Core.]

[You have slain Glassbrood Spider - Heart Core.]

[You have slain Glassbrood Spider - Heart Core.]

[You have slain Glassbrood Spider - Heart Core.]

[You have slain Glassbrood Spider - Heart Core.]

More windows followed before the first had time to fade.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Line after line after line, filling his sight so fast they almost blurred together. More than fifty. The eggs, the hatchlings, the brood burning alive inside that webbed church all counted, and the realization hit him so hard a grin started forming before he bothered to stop it.

He reached the roots beyond the church and lowered Alice to the ground.

The web around her came apart under quick cuts of the sword. Once enough of it peeled away, he saw skin and abruptly froze.

Her clothes were gone.

Whatever the spider’s venom, the silk, or the time inside the cocoon had done, fabric had not survived it. Alice lay there pale and unconscious, stripped bare under the torn web, and Neo felt heat rush into his face so fast he nearly cursed himself out loud.

"Right. Great."

He yanked his shirt off at once and draped it over her without letting himself linger a second longer than necessary.

"I’m not looking," he muttered, far more for his own sake than hers. "You can stop trying to murder me later."

Rain began again before he could finish clearing the last strands from her arms.

It came hard and sudden, exactly the way it had the day before, hammering through the jungle canopy and falling over the church in sheets. Fire hissed. Smoke thickened, thinned, and bent low under the downpour. Within minutes the blaze lost its teeth.

Neo waited with his sword in hand, standing over Alice while the rain soaked both of them.

When enough time had passed and no massive shadow came bursting out through the ruined doors, he went back.

The inside of the church looked worse in rain.

Steam rose from blackened webbing. Burned eggs split across the floor in collapsed mounds. Melted crystal from the chandelier lay mixed with soot and green blood across the center aisle. Under the weight of twisted iron and half-burned wreckage, the giant spider had finally stopped moving.

Dead.

Properly this time.

Neo stepped farther in, and when he saw what remained scattered around the hall, the grin that had touched his mouth outside widened into something far less restrained.

Soul Cores.

Dozens of them.

More than fifty yellowed crystal orbs lay among ash, silk, and broken shell, each holding that weak trapped gleam he had already learned to love. Some rested near the ruined eggs. Others had rolled beneath the pews. Several clustered around the spider’s corpse itself.

All of them were his.

A laugh almost escaped him.

Instead he stood there in the wet, shirtless, soot on his skin, rain running from his hair, and let the sight of that devastated church burn itself into his memory.

Now this was worth getting up for.