Lost David wanted to find that sculptor again, but the guy never showed up.
Just like the sculptor said, if it wasn't for business, he wouldn't appear...
Real principled, damn.
But David was a hunter, and hunters were best at tracking prey. He didn't believe he couldn't find that old guy with the lamp and bell...
Two hours later, reality slapped him hard in the face.
David Frank was a hunter, but he was just a rookie who'd only been a hunter for about a month. He didn't know jack about tracking prey.
To make things worse, while searching for that mysterious, creepy sculptor, he'd ended up even deeper in the sewers. This place was all twisted up, with passages both spacious and cramped that made his head spin and completely killed his sense of direction.
He had this weird feeling that the sewers were a whole separate world. A world made of sewage, pipes, and countless up-and-down passages, like it went on forever.
Not only that, he noticed the spider webs were getting thicker and thicker.
Quick-moving figures even appeared in the shadows—massive eight-legged monsters...
"Hmm... maybe these monsters snuck into the imperial capital sewers from outside? Following them might lead me to a way up."
David thought it over and decided to follow those figures skittering in the darkness.
He wasn't scared of anything anyway...
With my 600,000-plus health, how could monsters swallow me whole?
Turns out, when you lose your respect for the dark, the dark's definitely gonna swallow you up.
Those dog-sized spider monsters probably couldn't even break his skin, but the webs they spun were seriously weird.
As he went deeper, spider webs everywhere seemed to paint a huge mural on the sewer walls, showing dark shadowy figures that changed depending on the angle you looked from—but no matter how David looked, he couldn't make out what it actually was.
Spiders swarmed in groups, their fuzzy legs skittering on the walls with a "clack clack clack." They started rushing at David, trying to bury him in poisonous fangs and silk.
The Hand of Monster's claws tore through the webs, Heavy Hammer roared, and David dodged the spider attacks while pushing forward.
Pretty soon he figured out these smart monsters were trying to lead him somewhere, but by the time he wanted to back out, it was too late. More and more giant spiders from all directions, along with countless webs, had sealed off his escape route...
Between Heavy Hammer burning through blood bullets and the seemingly endless enemies, David realized for the first time that his 100,000 psychic energy might not be as much as he thought.
There were just too many giant spiders, and they kept getting bigger—from the original dog-sized ones to bull-sized spiders showing up.
The whole passage was practically stuffed with these monsters. Absolutely made your skin crawl...
What the hell was going on?
Why so many?
Where were they all coming from?
David drew his silver sword, gun and blade both up, the Hand of Monster on his back swinging like crazy. Heavy Hammer's barrel had turned red-hot from continuous firing, and the Hand of Monster's claws were leaving afterimages.
The powerful bullets easily smashed the giant spiders' bodies...
The claws and silver sword could dismember any legs that came at him...
But they just kept coming, one died and countless more surged forward, almost drowning him.
And the dead monsters didn't give him any life energy—they didn't seem to really exist.
Gradually, he felt like he was stepping into the darkness. The webs covering the entire sewer seemed to turn black, woven by the spiders into a three-dimensional "darkness."
Void energy leaked out from it. The black web seemed to become a net-shaped crack, and through the gaps, you could glimpse some terrifying figures.
David finally realized...
This was a ritual big enough to summon something from the void!
The impact from the void made his consciousness go fuzzy. The silver sword fell from his hand, Heavy Hammer stopped firing, even the Hand of Monster got completely wrapped up in the black web.
Countless spider legs blocked his vision, dragging him into the darkness.
Dimly, he seemed to see a massive figure...
It was incredibly huge, coiled in the wide darkness like a god that "blocked out the sky."
Endless spiders poured out from beneath it, like soldiers marching in a hurry.
David's web-wrapped body got carried along by this flood. They seemed to have some purpose, and he was just a tiny pebble in their path as an intruder.
That huge being didn't seem to notice David. He had to feel grateful for that. At his current level, he couldn't understand it, wasn't qualified to interact with it, couldn't even look directly at it.
That being was eroding the world with its spider army, eroding the target at the end of the sewers, like darkness eroding light.
Its human-shaped upper body reached out a hand that crossed the sky, like it was picking stars from the darkness. Next moment, a dazzling light burst from its fingertips.
A blazing sea of fire suddenly ignited the other end of the sewers. Huge roars and metal clashing sounds rang out, intense steam bursting, heavy impacts...
The thunderous noise flooded David's ears, clearing his nearly lost consciousness a bit.
Then he found himself wrapped in high heat. The flames burned through the webs on his body, breaking the restraints.
David gritted his teeth, grabbed this random chance at life, and tore through the web with all his strength, gulping in hot burning air.
The flames burning him snapped him fully awake. What he saw was countless spider corpses and a tall knight...
A giant metal knight shooting flames!
Spiders rushing forward one after another were like moths to a flame, swallowed by the sea of fire in a blink. Some huge spider monsters tried to bite through its metal shell despite the flames, but got smashed to pieces by spikes that suddenly shot out from the knight's thick arms!
David stared in shock. That kind of extreme destructive power released by high temperature and pressure could shake anyone's soul. Every heavy step the knight took made the sewer floor tremble under the weight.
It stood like a god of war in the sea of fire...
Yeah, David could tell that metal knight couldn't be human. Its massive five-meter-tall body and powerful metal shell were completely driven by some mysterious steam power technology.
David could even hear the gears turning inside it when it swung its fists.
This was a giant construct, made by those ancient alchemists. In today's Goliath Empire, this was a legendary creation.
It was called a "steam knight."
But David hadn't forgotten that god-like being he'd just seen.
The steam knight was guarding something in front of a big door at the end of the sewers. He figured those spiders sent by the god were going after whatever was behind that door.
This was a battle between a god and a legendary creation...
Thinking this, David suddenly turned and burst out from the edge of the sea of fire, ducking into another passage from the side, escaping the spider flood.
What surprised him a bit was when he looked back, he didn't see any huge being coiled in the darkness.
That black shadow seemed like just a hallucination he'd seen while his consciousness was fuzzy.
But the steam knight and spiders were totally real. That legendary creation's endless firepower even suppressed the countless spiders, clearing out an entire spider army with efficiency way beyond David's imagination!
It stomped heavily into the tunnel corner, its unicorn-horned helmet creaked as it turned, countless red dots of light lit up in its eye sockets, locking onto David in the distance...