章 84: Chapter 84: Pheneos' Turmoil

With 3 of its 8 legs out of commission, Kain had them launch another attack as soon as their stingers had regrown. He also reminded them to immediately change their locations this time after launching an attack.

This time all 5 shots managed to land, with 3 actually landing on its main body. However, its hard exoskeleton caused the shots to not go in as deeply as he'd expected. Although, it was clearly in great pain from the injuries, they were far from fatal.

Kain called out Queen next to him, ensuring that the figures of both of them were covered by the dense mist, he didn't want to risk her dying. Although she wasn't his main contract, he wasn't sure what the impact of her death would be on Eve as their lives are closely intertwined.

After she activated Royal Command to boost all of their stats, the guards launched another attack. By this point the spider was practically a sitting duck. He'd have felt bad for her if she didn't almost kill him previously and lose one of his guards now. It'd take at least a month for numbers of the guards to be restored to a full 12, with Queen only being able to lay one egg a week.

This time the attacks pierced much deeper into the spider and she dropped to the ground motionless not long after.

'How spiteful!' Kain would have walked over to examine the corpse by now and extracting parts if Bea had not relayed to him that she was not actually dead. Her performance was impeccable, and perfectly fooled him. She likely was playing dead in the hopes of launching a surprise attack on him in her last moments to go down together.

Once their stingers grew back, and with the boost from Queen still active, he had them launch 3 more rounds of attacks on the body before finally receiving confirmation from Bea that she had died.

Throughout the whole process the spider remained unmoving, completely committed to the act. Even if Kain had been cautious and launched a round of attacks at the corpse, without Bea he wouldn't have thought she could be so resilient and still hold and would have definitely went up to her after the first round of attacks.

*Ding. Host has killed one Orange-grade spiritual beast*

'Ah! That's right! I also have you System' Kain vowed to always wait for the notification in the future before moving to extract parts.

Kain was grateful that he now had a space ring of his own. Although not the largest space, he should be able to squeeze the entire body in. Especially once it is disassembled.

He began by carefully removing the exoskeleton, before moving onto the most valuable poison sac. He then removed the eyes, and fangs. Once all the parts of significant value were removed, only two-thirds of the space was actually taken up. Kain moved to leave the nest with a pile of valueless internal organs behind him when he spotted a cloudy pearl covered by webs.

'Aaahhh. That's why she stopped looking for me. She probably just decided to make a replacement'

The offspring of a silver-quality orange-grade spiritual beast would be quite valuable. Even if before it evolved it was only a bronze-quality Venom Spinner. The fact that it had a parent that successfully evolved, boded well for its level of talent and potential once it hatched.

If its pedigree could be proven, it'd probably fetch double the price of a random Venom Spinner egg in the wild.

However, since Kain could not put the egg into the space ring and he didn't want to cart around an egg for days in the wilderness, he decided to head back to the city.

For general parts, he'd usually sell them by the gate, but for the high-quality parts of a orange-grade spiritual creature, Kain felt as though he'd receive more from a blacksmith who'd have a tangible use for the parts. Thankfully, he was already very familiar with one.

He went back to the familiar shop and immediately saw Pheneos. He didn't look depressed so he assumed that he'd also passed his entrance exam. Kain, jovially went over prepared to congratulate him. "Can I assume that we'll both be students at a top 5 college this fall?"

Pheneos also grinned, "I assume you passed the Dark Moon exam then?"

Kain nodded, "How did the Starfire exam go? What was your mission?"

Pheneos' expression turned awkward, "It was an intelligence-gathering mission, rather than one that required fighting. Our team completed the mission, but unfortunately my individual performance wasn't strong enough to receive an admissions offer."

Kain was confused. Why did he nod when he had asked if they'd both be top 5 college students?

"So I rushed to take the Supernova College exam and barely scraped in at the 100th spot."

"Well the ranking doesn't matter," Kain comforted, "The important thing is that you got in."

Pheneos looked touched at his words, "Thanks. How was the Dark Moon exam?"

Now it was Kain's turn to look awkward. Seeing his expression, Pheneos misunderstood the reason and tried to comfort him. "As you said, the ranking isn't important don't be afraid to tell me. Whether rank 1 or 100 we're all students at the same top 5 college anyways."

Kain sighed in relief and shared, "I did pretty well and was lucky enough to finish in first place."

Pheneos, frozen in shock, looked as though he had turned into stone.

"Pheneos? Pheneos?" Kain waved his hand in front of his face.

Pheneos got up without another word and headed into the backroom to call his teacher. He refused to converse with Kain any longer. Every time they spoke he left with his pride crushed.

Shortly after, the owner of the shop walked out from the backroom looking awkward. "Pheneos, suddenly had urgent business to attend to so I'll be helping you instead."

'It must have been an emergency for him to walk off suddenly like that. I hope everything is okay.'

"That's okay. You were actually who I needed to speak with. I have some spiritual creature materials I want to dispose of and wanted to sell them to you."

"Okay, let me see what you've got." He didn't have high hopes. After all, Kain awoke just three months ago, the max level he could hunt was probably of red-grade.

Kain pulled out the exoskeleton of the White Widow and place it on the floor.

"Is this…"

Kain confirmed his doubts "It's the White Widow Spider from outside the city"

The max strength of the spiritual creatures around their city was the orange-level and they were all well-known by the beast-tamers of the city, so he was naturally surprised at its body being casually placed in front of him. This spider had lurked outside of the city for over a decade.

"And why is its body with you…?" He had a hunch but he couldn't believe it.

"Because I killed it…?" Kain was confused, how else would he have her body?

Crash

Pheneos eavesdropping on the other side of the door fell over in shock. 'That's it! I am staying far away from that monster from now on! My self-esteem can't take much more of this.'