The Spider Queen

(Hydra Star System- Floren Sector)

(Planet Corpeola- Capitol City Underground Sewers)

I want to live.

Four simple words.

And yet… Sophie could hear them ringing out in her mind over and over again. She wanted to return safely from this place.

She wanted to see Cleo. She wanted to see her dad.

She wanted to see her friends.

Hell, she even missed her acquaintances and classmates from university.

There are very few people who truly desire death because no one can know what happens after.

Is there nothing? Are the afterlives real?

Would they be judged by nameless and faceless gods to spend eternity in another realm?

Sophie knew that her soul had fused with a being called Sui Meng from the ancient Earth era so who knows what would happen when she died.

Would their souls separate?

The hybrid girl chuckled softly as all the thoughts and panic running through her mind slowly faded away.

As she moved closer to the skeleton mage because of her feet that were no longer in her control, she could not help but think about the hunter goddess' words.

What an unreasonable deity.

Expecting a cultivator in the qi tide stage to somehow kill someone who was in the god stage. It was like sending a small child to fight a fully grown man.

The outcome was expected.

The child's fate was sealed.

No one would blame her for failing.

Except… Sophie had never been one to give up so easily.

There was still one card left to play.

The hybrid girl closed her eyes and took in a few deep breaths. This was an insane gamble, but she had nothing left to lose.

She could feel the remaining divine connection between herself and the hunter goddess and willed the dark power to enter her meridians.

When she reopened her eyes… they were bright pink.

The skeleton mage's hand was only a few metres away, but he froze for a brief moment as he sensed Sophie's new power.

Before he could mutter a spell to sever the connection… Sophie activated her gift.

Bright pink spots appeared along the skeleton mage's ribcage and several of his bones near his lower half.

Sophie's bright pink eyes flashed even brighter, and the mage started to moan as bursts of pleasure flooded his mind.

There were no nerve cells on his body to actually feel the overwhelming sensations that were running through his mind but…

He had memories.

Sophie used her gift to tap into the memories of the mage when he was a human and amplified his feelings of wanton lust and attraction.

The skeleton mage fell down on the ground and desperately began to rub his bony fingers against his naked crotch.

It was a futile effort and yet the skeleton mage's fingers kept grasping around his lower regions searching for an appendage that was no longer there.

"What… what… did you do to me?" the skeleton mage moaned loudly as he began to convulse on the ground with his hip thrusting ever so slightly outwards.

A twisted smile began to spread across Sophie's lips as she felt the strange pressure holding her body in place start to lift.

She wriggled her fingers and quietly strained against the invisible bonds until a loud snapping noise could be heard.

The skeleton mage desperately tried to stop his prey from escaping but every time he muttered the beginning words of a spell…

Another burst of pleasure would flood his mind.

Magic required concentration. One needed to command the mana in their pathways to flow in a particular pattern or shape.

What Sophie was doing was interrupting the mage's concentration by allowing him to experience ecstasy at a level that he had never experienced before.

But that was not the full extent of her gift.

Sophie stretched out her hand and pointed it at the mage. Immediately he froze in place and dark pink runes appeared on his body.

"Sister Helena… we can't… this is forbidden," the mage whispered hoarsely as he got up from the ground and grabbed an invisible person.

"You dirty minx… how could you seduce me in this holy place… I will punish you."

Sophie stepped back several metres and watched as the mage lost himself in an endless mental maze of illusions.

He would experience countless sexual encounters with every single person that he had ever found even remotely attractive.

The hybrid girl's eyes continued to glow, and Sophie felt a large headache coming on as her body wasn't used to using this ability.

Sophie reached into her storage bag to pull out another weapon but then stopped as she noticed something.

The cracks on the skeleton mage's body were beginning to widen and his cultivation aura was suddenly decreasing rapidly.

It seems that the cultivation boost that he got from his god was not unconditional and appeared to have a time limit.

In that case all she had to do was maintain the illusion and eventually the skeleton mage's body would fall apart.

Sophie leaned against a nearby wall and pulled a healing syringe out her pocket.

She jabbed the sharp metalloid needle into her arm and injected the solution into her body.

She felt a wave of relief as the deep cuts and nasty bruises that she had picked up during the fight with the undead began to heal.

This was not a particularly honourable way to win but Sophie didn't really care much for honour.

The skeleton bone mage continued to shout like a lunatic and contort his body into various sexual positions.

Finally, after ten long minutes that felt like an eternity… the cracks tore apart his right arm.

Then his other arm… then his legs… then his chest and eventually…

There was a large line in the middle of his skull that got so large that both halves fell away from each other.

In the brief moment before death, the skeleton mage seemed to have woken up from the illusions and realised what had happened.

"You… I… I…. cur…" the skeleton mage's final sentence was not finished as his skull finally came apart.

Sophie stumbled towards the corpse and cancelled her technique.

Her pinkish eyes soon returned to their normal golden hue, and she felt a wave of exhaustion hit her all at once.

She stumbled slightly and nearly crashed to the ground but barely managed to keep herself together.

The skeleton mage was now nothing more than a bundle of cracked up old bones that were slowly turning into ash.

Sophie's eyes caught a glimpse of something hidden inside the body and her hand darted forward to grab what appeared to be the remains of a dried-up heart.

"Hunter… goddess… I got it…" Sophie slurred her words as her body slightly swayed from side to side.

Her eyelids gradually closed as she fell towards the ground where she landed with a painful thump.

Sophie blissfully entered into a dreamless slumber while surrounded by the filth and nastiness of the underground sewers.

She did not see that the dried-up heart in her palm was grabbed by a slender hand that came from a ripple in space.

Nor did she remember how the hand paused for a moment and then gently stroked the side of her helmet before whispering the words,

"Well done my vessel."