Man Made God 002

by Brandon Varnell

  “Oh, no. I do not think you should go anywhere,” a voice said that sounded like it came from all around them. The voice was female and oozed with a scintillating sensuality that he could only describe as deadly.

  Adam spun around, eyes darting to and fro as he tried to find the source of that voice. A chill ran down his spine. He could not see anything, but even so, Adam thought he heard scuttling somewhere to his left. When he turned to look in that direction, there was nothing.

  “In fact, I think you should all remain here. It has been so long… so long since I had any guests to entertain,” the voice continued. Where the heck was this voice coming from?!

  “Adam! Look up!” Titania shouted.

  Adam tilted his head, lifted the torch in his hand, and found himself stunned as he finally spotted what had been talking.

  The first thing he noticed was this creature had the body of a woman… a very large-breasted woman that didn’t believe in clothes, apparently. Her massive tits were jiggling for all to see. They complimented her thin waist. She had a very curvaceous figure, one that could make men everywhere submit to her.

  Adam had to wonder about her nudity. He had assumed this game would be rated for all ages, but this woman blew that idea right out of the water.

  Her face was just as beautiful as her body. Mature and well defined, surrounded by glossy white hair, her face made him think of a queen. She had ice cold features, but her smile was seductive and reminded him of a viper. Her red lips contrasted starkly against her light blue skin, and she also had glowing red eyes… six glowing red eyes.

  While that made him pause, there was something else about this woman that made him think twice.

  Her lower half.

  While the upper half of her body was that of a beautiful woman, the lower half was all spider. The bulbous carapace was shaped like an oval. A spinneret stuck out from her back end. She walked on eight spider legs with segmented joints. Unlike the [man eating spiders] that had attacked him in the cavern, this woman’s spider body was pure black, sleek, and glossy. The only part of color he could see on this woman’s carapace as she hung upside down was the red hourglass imprinted on her back.

  The symbol of a black widow.

  While he was staring at the woman… spider… spider woman in shock, Kureha leapt in front of Adam and began snarling at her. An amused chuckle escaped the spider woman as she lowered herself to the floor. Adam realized only now that she’d been hanging on a thread being projected out of her spinneret.

  Now that she was on the ground, Adam realized she wasn’t much bigger than him. Her spider body gave her maybe a couple of feet over him, but her human half looked around the same size as his torso. He’d say she was maybe nine or ten feet tall thanks to that carapace.

  “A human, a very tiny fairy, and a young fox yokai. My, but I do have some interesting company this time,” the woman said with a smile as she walked over to them with slow, meticulous steps. The clack, clack, clack of her spear-shaped legs created an ominous echo in the still room. “You do not know how boring it is here. Not only are my loyal Demon Spider Clan subordinates a complete bore, but I have not had anything good to eat in centuries. So how about it? Think you three can help a woman out? I promise it won’t hurt. You might even enjoy how it feels when I gobble you up.”

  Those words did not instill Adam with confidence. He shivered from head to toe as Kureha, perhaps sensing how dangerous this woman was, whimpered and moved back a little, though she still remained in front of Adam as though to protect him from harm. That made him a little touched. If for no other reason than this, he planned to make sure the fox made it out of this alive.

  While no one said anything, Titania did cast [scan] on this terrifyingly strange woman.

  Name: Spider Queen

  The queen of the Demon Spider Clan. She was born several hundred years after the first Spider Queen was killed by the Hero chosen by the Four Goddess.

  Class: 4-star

  Lvl: 90

  Health: 3,000,000,000/3,000,000,000

  MP: 1,000,000/1,000,000

  Physical Attack: +9,000

  Constitution: +10,000

  Dexterity: +5,000

  Intelligence: +5,000

  Speed: +2,000

  Skills:

  Deadly Venom: The Spider Queen releases a venomous mist from her mouth that causes incredible damage

  Damage = Intelligence + Physical Attack

  MP cost: 1,500

  Cooldown time: 30 seconds.

  Death by Embracing: When the Spider Queen gets a hold of her enemies, she never lets go and squeezes the life out of them

  Causes -9,000 damage for every one second she has you in her grasp

  MP cost: 2,500

  Cooldown time: 60 seconds

  Web Entrapment: The Spider Queen can shoot many webs from her spinneret

  They will always form an intricate pattern after striking a solid surface

  The web is incredibly strong and sticky

  Nothing can escape it

  MP cost: 10,000

  Cooldown time: 30 seconds

  Eight-Legged Slash: The Spider Queen uses all eight of her legs to hack her enemies to pieces

  Causes 9,000 damage for every leg you are struck with

  MP cost: 1,500

  Cooldown time: 10 seconds

  Seductive Delusions: The Spider Queen is a master of illusions and can trap every enemy within a ten yard radius

  Causes enemy to become trapped in an illusion depicting their wildest fantasies for 120 seconds

  MP cost: 30,000

  Cooldown time: 360 seconds

  Slash: The Spider Queen slashes at the enemy with one of her legs

  Damage = Physical Attack

  MP Cost: 50

  Cooldown Time: 0 seconds

  Call: The Spider Queen can secrete pheromones that calls her brethren to aid her

  Summons all spider clansmen within a 200 meter radius

  MP Cost: 10,000

  Cooldown Time: 120-seconds

  Special Limit: Can only be used when the Spider Queen’s health is less than 25%

  When Adam saw the stats this woman was boasting, her level, her class, and her title, he knew there was absolutely no way they could defeat her.

  Unless they could escape, they were absolutely fucked.

  Frantic Escape

  Adam was not the kind of person who panicked when the situation became hopeless. He’d been in plenty hopeless situations before. Back when Lucifer first began sending him on missions to kill important and powerful individuals, he had been pinned down by overwhelming opposition, injured to the point of being nearly crippled, and nearly lost his life so many times that the thought of death no longer phased him. He hadn’t panicked back then. He wouldn’t panic now.

  Still, the situation was not looking good.

  “So you’re the Spider Queen?” Adam asked, taking a long, slow look at her human body and making sure to keep his eyes away from her spider body. “Not exactly what I was expecting.”

  The Spider Queen smiled and placed a hand against her cheek. It was a very human gesture, but the hand, which was segmented with black obsidian armor and fingers shaped like claws, gave even that simple gesture an inhuman feeling.

  “Now aren’t you an interesting human.” She hummed and studied him just as he did her. The look in her vibrant pupils was like a spider looking at the butterfly trapped in its web. “Your breathing hasn’t changed since laying eyes on me, your heart rate is the same as before, and your expression remains unchanged as well. You are masking your fear very well. I’m impressed. A weak little critter with a level of only 11 has somehow managed to make his way down here, slipped past my children, and found this lair of mine. Most intriguing.”

  “So this is your home?” Adam made a big show of looking around as he scooped Kureha into his arms. “I can’t say I like what you’ve done with the place. Have you ever thought about redecorating?”

 
; “Ah ha ha ha! You’re quite the joker! Is that your way of disguising the terror you feel? I once heard humans possessed such coping mechanisms, but this is my first time seeing it.”

  The Spider Queen’s laugh probably would have been pleasant, but it was laced with a deadly coldness that sent chills down Adam’s spine and froze his veins. As he took a step back, she took several steps forward. Her smile widened with every passing second, until it was a full blown grin that peeled her lips back, revealing her ridiculously sharp teeth. Those things looked like they could tear the flesh and muscles right off a human’s bones.

  “Kureha,” Adam whispered. “Can you use [Firestorm] to burn all these cobwebs?”

  The little fox in his arms softly yipped. He didn’t know if that was an affirmative, but, well, he decided to take it as such. They were short on time.

  “Then on my signal, use [Firestorm] to burn everything here,” he continued as Titania landed on his head and grabbed his hair. She seemed to understand what he was up to. Perhaps the past few days of journeying with him had given her some sense of his tactics and personality, or maybe she just understood that there was realistically no way for them to defeat this monstrosity right now. Even Adam wasn’t reckless enough to go against a level 90 4-star monster.

  “What are you whispering about?” asked the Spider Queen. “You know that secrets do not make friends.”

  “You want to eat us, so it doesn’t really matter if we keep a few secrets from you,” Adam said in a sharp tone. “We aren’t friends to you. We’re just food.”

  “Oh, well, you do have a point.” The Spider Queen tapped an index finger against her cheek as she moved ever closer. “I guess I should come up with a new saying. I once heard that what I just said was a human saying, but maybe it only works among humans? Oh, well. I’ve never really cared for such human eccentricities. Anyway, I’ve grown bored of this, so I suppose it’s time for you to die now.”

  “Sorry, but not today. Now, Kureha!” Adam raised his voice in a shout.

  Kureha released a loud yip that sounded somewhat like a howl, then one of her two tails pointed straight into the air. A tiny ball of fire lit up above the tip. It was barely the size of his thumbnail, but then it quickly expanded, growing until it was nearly the size of an adult human.

  Adam began sweating as the heat from the flames seared his skin. He couldn’t feel any pain, like there was a program or something that prevented friendly fire, but he could feel the incredible heat washing over him. He could even see the air around him distorting with heat waves.

  “Gyaaa!” the Spider Queen shrieked and backed off. It seemed she didn’t like fire.

  Kureha launched the fireball into the sky, where it exploded and shot dozens of projectiles in every direction. Each projectile crashed into a spiderweb, igniting it and causing the fire to spread. A raging heat filled the room as the conflagration grew to cover almost the entire interior. It wasn’t long before smoke and flames filled Adam’s lungs, making him cough.

  “Damn you!!! Blasted human!” the Spider Queen screeched. It was a shrill sound filled with hatred and rage, a noise akin to needles being driven into his flesh.

  Adam did not pay anymore attention to the Spider Queen as he turned on his heels and ran. Sweat poured down his back as he covered his face with his shirt. The smoke was clogging his lungs, making him cough, burning his eyes, and causing his vision to distort. He could barely see where he was going. Also…

  -10; -10; -10; -10!

  It looked like he was suffering from the burn status effect. His health was dropping -10 points every second, which he guessed he should have expected, but he had really been hoping this wouldn’t happen. It seemed that even if Kureha’s attack didn’t damage him, the lingering effects as everything around them caught fire did.

  Because Adam didn’t want to go back up the way he came and deal with the Spider Queen’s children, he ran in the opposite direction and found another hallway. There were spider webs down this way as well. All of them were already burning. Many of the Spider Queen’s tiny offspring were scuttling around as they also caught fire and turned into living torches.

  -10; -10; -10; -10!

  Adam downed a [low-grade health potion]. He was about to give Titania one, but then she began singing a gentle song called [Song of Refreshing Rain]. This melody seemed more like a lullaby than a song. Soothing and sweet, soft and gentle, it made Adam feel like he was being embraced by a loving spouse. It made him feel like… yes, like Lexi and Aris were with him again.

  Magic like raindrops poured down from above. If it was real rain, it would have dispersed into steam upon coming into contact with the fire, but this was not real rain. It healed +30 of his, Titania’s, and Kureha’s HP every one second, which completely negated the effects from the burn damage.

  Adam had no idea how long he ran for, but he took several flights of stairs that led up, passed through numerous corridors, and eventually realized that the area they were in contained no spiderwebs. Did that mean the Spider Queen had yet to make this part of the temple her home? He didn’t know if that was the reason, or if there was another reason, but he decided not to think about it.

  “Haaah… haaah… haaah… okay… I think we’re safe for now,” Adam said as he pressed his back against a wall and slid down until he was sitting on his bottom. Sweat poured from his forehead, neck, and back in thick rivulets. It was so disgustingly real that he decided to take a shower the moment he exited the game.

  “That was some pretty impressive thinking back there,” Titania said. “Very reckless and completely stupid, but it also managed to get us out of a dangerous situation. Who could have possibly imagined we would run into one of the Lords of Chaos here of all places?”

  Adam shook his head, but he didn’t answer Titania as he closed his eyes and tried to relax. He was so tired.

  Kureha climbed out of his embrace and hopped onto the floor. She sniffed the air a little bit, looked back the way they had come, and then looked at the other end. There didn’t seem to be anything down that way except for more corridors. After another moment, she yipped and turned to him.

  “What’s up, Kureha?” asked Adam. “Is something down there?”

  Kureha yipped some more and nodded. She then gestured with her paw as though pointing deeper into the hallway.

  “Fox yokai are highly intelligent creatures,” Titania explained. “Not only can they understand the human tongue and learn how to speak it when they gain a human form, but they have very keen senses. Their sense of smell is particularly good, though they also have amazing hearing.”

  “That so?” Adam stood to his feet. “So she can sense something up ahead?”

  “Probably,” Titania said.

  “Guess we’ve got no choice,” he mumbled as he picked up his spear. “We can’t stay here anyway, so we just gotta keep moving forward.”

  The sound of Adam’s footsteps resounded off the stone walls as they pressed on. A slight chill caused him to shiver. There was no wind or anything blowing through this corridor, but he’d been sweating so much that without the heat from the searing flames to keep him warm, it felt like the temperature had dropped several dozen degrees.

  Adam soon came to realize that the lair where the Spider Queen was staying only consisted of a small portion of this dungeon. Not only did this place contain numerous rooms, but many of them appeared to be several times larger than the one belonging to the Spider Queen. One particular room he ended up in looked a lot like a temple of worship. It contained more statues of the goddess from before. Each statue sat against the wall, probably a dozen times taller than him. There were also several other statues present that were not of the goddess.

  Stopping in front of one statue in particular, Adam could not help but be reminded of those creepy suits of armor he sometimes saw in horror movies, the ones that moved and attacked people when you least expected them too. Aris hated those movies. It was enough to make him wonder why she kept watching
them, but then he imagined she’d done so as an excuse to cling onto him.

  Not that either of them really needed an excuse.

  “I feel like this thing is going to come to life and attack us,” Adam said.

  “It probably will,” Titania agreed. “After all, this is a [guardian statue].”

  “What is that?”

  “Rather than tell you, it would be better if I showed you.”

  With that, Titania cast [scan] to display this statue's stats.

  Name: Guardian Statue

  Description: This statue is a golem that was created in ancient times to guard temples from enemies. Once activated, it will attack anyone it deems an enemy.

  Class: None

  Lvl: 20

  Health: 25,000/25,000

  MP: 2,000/2,000

  Physical Attack: +900

  Constitution: +1,000

  Dexterity: +50

  Intelligence: +10

  Speed: +30

  Skills:

  Swing: The guardian statue swings its massive limbs to swat its enemies away

  Damage = 900 * 2

  MP cost: 100

  Cooldown time: 0 seconds

  Crush: The guardian statue raises its hands above its head and uses its incredible power to crush its enemies

  Damage = 900 * 3

  50% chance of Instant Death

  MP cost: 150

  Cooldown time: 0 seconds

  “Oh, that looks much more manageable than those [man eating spiders] and the [Spider Queen],” Adam said. “I can actually beat this.”

  Titania gave him a dry look. “The mere fact that you can defeat an enemy that is nine levels higher than you is ridiculous.”

  “Must be my plot armor.”

  “Your what?”