"Spider, since when your threads are this durable?" His eyes shot with blood, and the veins all over his body bulged as his wounds closed. "I knew they were sharp, but I never heard of them not snapping under the weight of a slash."

She looked at him with a smile. "Did you really think I ever needed to fight? Mostly, my poison would be enough." She lifted one hand and pulled a fan out of nowhere. "I always only needed my threads to deliver the poison, not attack or endure hits."

As she brought the fan down, hundreds of near-invisible threads all flew forward, aiming directly at Han’s neck. He lifted his sword, and in the blink of an eye, brought crashing down at the first of the threads.

The entire arena shook and quaked, the loud groan of twisting still filled the air, and was then followed by a loud snap. The thread was slashed, but Han still had hundreds more to slash. In a second, he was swinging tens of times, using all of his might to cut the threads and keep his body safe, which quickly became too loud for anyone to listen to.

Each of Miani’s threads was so thin that it was barely visible, yet those threads were as durable as an inch-wide rod of steel, and with the speed she was hurling them at, they hit like a boulder.

She didn’t need to get close to him again; she could just keep blasting him with her threads and wait for him to fall, but she knew the crowd wasn’t going to like that. She needed to make a show. So, with a single step, she flew through her own threads and reached Han in the blink of an eye.

Han immediately reacted as if he was waiting for her to make the move, and his blade flew in a single smooth motion, burning due to the friction with the air and the durable threads. He aimed at her neck, wanting to end this fight as quickly as possible.

A fight with the Mother of Spiders had to be ended quickly for two reasons. Her threads didn’t cost her a lot of energy, and thus she could spam them, and the longer the fight lasts, the more her poison would weaken the opponent. Han knew that he would run out of stamina before she runs out of energy, and that his body isn’t immune to her poison, so the decision was clear.

Miana smiled, and with a swift swing of her fan, she deflected his sword upward, sacrificing that precious item. It was a clear thing; her fan might’ve been expensive and quite the powerful weapon, but it was nowhere near as durable as the legendary Demonic Sword Han used. That cursed blade was literally indestructible and unmatched.

Han growled as his attack was deflected upward and immediately tried to bring his blade back down at Miani’s head, but his arms froze in place. The spider threads had entangled his entire body, and he was now stuck in Miani’s web like a fly.

While Han wanted to finish the fight quickly because Miani was a bad matchup for him, she also wanted to finish it quickly so she could reserve her energy to fight Arad later on. She was the Mother of Spiders, and her eyes were always on the bigger prey.

Miani’s both arms were now free, and then, fingers sprouted from her armpits, growing into two more pairs of arms. She was a spider, and thus, Han should’ve expected that her technique would grant her extra limbs at some point.

Miani’s six arms came crashing down at Han’s face and torso, shattering his bones and tearing his skin in a barrage of punches that could only be possible by having six arms. With his body wounded and in contact with her poisonous nails, it was only a matter of seconds before the light disappeared from his eyes, and she finally stopped clubbing him down.

"Referee, he is unconscious, stuck in my threads, my poison already filled his veins, and here, I can rip his heart out if I want." She tapped on Han’s chest with a smile. "It is my win."

"The match is over! Miani wins, Han cannot keep fighting!" The referee shouted as she rushed in alongside the medical team.

Miani looked at the VIP room and saw Arad watching. A smile filled her face, and she then released the sharp threads tying Han down so the medics could get to him. She even reached into her pocket and handed them a pill. "Antidote, it should cleanse his body from my poison. Make sure to also make him drink a lot of water, since the poison would be expelled through urine."

"Thank you very much!" The referee thanked her as she forced the pill into Han’s mouth, and in a second, his complexion was already looking better. Miani gave the referee a smile and walked toward her gate victorious. With this, she was guaranteed to be Bloody Rose’s disciple, and facing Arad would just be the cherry on top.

But then, as she got closer to her gate, everything went south in the blink of an eye.

Han’s eyes twitched, his body got hotter, and the arm grabbing his demonic sword turned black. An eye burst on the demonic sword’s handle, and red veins spread from the blackened arm to Han’s entire body in a fraction of a second.

It all happened so fast that the referee and the medics working on him didn’t even have time to notice before he started moving, and what he did was leap toward Miani with a roaring swing almost five times more powerful than anything he had ever unleashed in his entire life.

By the time Miani sensed the change and turned around at full speed, Han was just a few meters away from her, and she didn’t have time to redeploy her threads or move. He was physically faster and stronger than her, and so, dodging or blocking this attack was nearly impossible.

The only way she could survive such a sneak attack was to conjure as many threads as she could around where his sword would hit her, and hope that would be enough to protect her, but even for that, she didn’t have time. She was certain that with such a slash, he could easily cut right through a couple of dozen of her threads with ease... so this might be her end.

But when the blade was near, Arad suddenly appeared, squatting between them, and took Han’s attack directly toward his unprotected neck. The entire arena shook, Bloody Rose’s barrier shattered from the shockwave, and the referee and the medics were blasted away. If not for Kali’s barrier, the spectators would’ve been killed, and the only way the medic and referee survived was because they were technically behind Han, not in front of him.

The impact was loud, blinding, and infused with enough demonic energy to cut cleanly through hundreds of Miani’s threads, yet Arad’s neck refused to give up or even react. The demonic blade groaned, and in the middle of all of that stress, the first to break was neither the sword nor Arad’s girthy neck. It was Han’s wrist.

The sword bounced off Arad’s neck and was sent flying into the air at blinding speed. Miani couldn’t believe her eyes, but she was too focused on Arad’s titanic back and neck to be able to look where the sword would’ve landed.

"CATCHED!" Kali jumped from the VIP window and easily caught the sword mid-air, and landed gracefully with it in the middle of the arena.

The entire crowd screamed as they finally could react, and the first thing they saw after the shattering impact was Kali standing in the middle of the dust-filled arena with the demonic blade in her tiny hands.

"What did happen!?" A man screamed and a woman cried at the top of her lungs. "LOOK! A child is in there, and she is carrying the demonic blade!"

But in a single second, all of their eyes froze solid as they couldn’t take their gaze away from Kali. It was that when even the mere mortals started to feel it, the terrifying demonic horror standing in front of them.

From her tiny bare feet, burning pink eyes, pale skin that seemed to faintly glow, and the tattered clothes, which still somehow felt far more expensive and precious than any noble dress they ever saw. Each move, each breath, and each subtle glare of her childish eyes were all sending alarm signals in the mind of whoever saw her.

Kali slowly lifted the sword to look at it, and that single, obvious, and non-threatening move felt to the crowd like she had just sent a meteor flying toward them. Tens of people just screamed and jumped down, some shat themselves, and many passed out from the sheer fear that she would kill them.

"I was going to permit your existence... but you’re one nasty blade." Kali grabbed the sword’s sharp edge between her tiny fingers, and with a simple push, she started snapping it piece by piece. It didn’t matter if the sword was indestructible or not, she was the Demonic Goddess of Demons and Destruction.

And what did she do with those pieces? She ate them, crunching on them like they were hard candy, and she looked to enjoy it. It didn’t take her more than a minute to eat the entire sword while taking her time, and through all of that, no one dared move beside Arad, who laid Han down on the ground.

While everyone was terrified to the bone just by sensing a fraction of Kali’s demonic presence, Miani was the one freaking out the most inside her head. This little girl must be the one her daughter talked about, and how come... she feels far more terrifying than even Arad.

"Will he live?" Arad asked, and Kali took a single step, appearing right beside Han’s body. "He will. The demonic blade only took over his body for a fraction of a second." She then jumped and landed with both feet on Han’s chest, forcing him to puke a flood of black blood and wriggling maggots.

"But... he will suffer for a while." She then jumped down, approached Arad, and looked at Miani in the back. "Disarming defeated opponents is something you must never forget, little girl."

Before Miani knew it, she was already prostrating herself at Kali’s feet, sweating like a hog. "Yes, Great Elder."