Chapter 37: The Web of Cowards

During all this, Yoo Hobin’s party kept pretending they weren’t relying on Yoo Heero while still letting him carry them forward.

“Hey, what’s that hanging on your neck?”

While Yoo Heero took a brief moment to catch his breath, Yoo Hobin nudged him with false friendliness, pointing at the pendant around Heero’s neck—the one he received from Sung Jiwoo.

“It’s not a real jewel by the looks of it… what is it? Doesn’t suit you at all.”

Yoo Hobin kept probing him, desperate to seize control of this awkward excuse of a party. Beneath it all was a desire to belittle and crush Yoo Heero.

But Yoo Heero walked past him as if he hadn’t heard a thing. Except for Yoo Hobin and Park Junsu, the rest of the party already looked at Heero like he was some kind of monster. Yet they still clung to him like leeches, refusing to let go. Even just keeping up with his walking pace was a struggle.

“Damn it, why do you walk so annoyingly? Huh?”

Yoo Hobin picked a fight with the easiest target—Park Junsu. They wore the mask of friendship, but there was clearly a hierarchy. A pathetic one, at that.

“Haha, do I?”
Do you what? The others sneered internally. None of them felt sorry for Junsu. He had always acted like a fox riding on the back of a tiger. But all that ended now, because a dragon had appeared in the mountains where foxes and tigers fought.

The party members thought following Yoo Heero was a hundred times better than sticking with Yoo Hobin. Even Park Junsu, still catering to Hobin, was probably thinking the same.

They arrived at the 32nd floor, and Yoo Heero again opened the dungeon door without hesitation. Naturally, everyone followed.

“…What is that?”

A massive web awaited them—thick white strands as wide as a human torso tangled everywhere. The ground dropped off into a cliff, but the web stretched across to the opposite side.

In short: to cross, they needed to either use the web or fly. No one in their group could fly.

“What the hell is this?”

Yoo Hobin looked around with a stiff expression. If there was a web, then the monster had to be a spider. And since monsters inherited the traits of their origin species, the spider was almost guaranteed to have venom. And would most likely restrain victims with webs.

Yoo Hobin quietly stepped backward, not wanting to be the first victim.

Meanwhile, Yoo Heero stood at the cliff and examined the opposite side. The others didn’t know what he was thinking—they just desperately hoped he would solve this nightmare.

Heero lightly stepped on the sticky web clinging to the cliff’s edge. When he lifted his foot, thousands of thin strands stretched from his sole. The thick thread wasn’t a single thread—it was a tightly compressed mass of thousands. Not something you could break easily.

He scraped his shoe against the ground like someone trying to get rid of gum. Dirt clung to the sticky thread and fell off in clumps.

Swiish!

“Aahh!”

Suddenly, a strand shot from the darkness and snatched away one of the party members. People screamed and scrambled around. With the cliff behind them, they barely had space to panic without crashing into one another.

Yoo Hobin and Park Junsu pressed themselves against the closed exit door like bugs. They looked ready to cling to it if it would help them survive.

The kidnapped member was wrapped like a white cocoon and hung in the center of the web.

“Wh-what do we do…?”

One party member whimpered toward Yoo Heero.

Heero tested the floor with his shadow. The light came from the left, meaning he could use the shadow cast to the right to climb the wall.

Honestly, leaving them behind wasn’t a bad idea. They were useless deadweight, and their clinginess was getting annoying. As Heero stepped toward the right wall, someone cried out in panic.

“P-please save us…!”

They sensed he might abandon them. And if he didn’t help, they were guaranteed to die here.

The 32nd floor. A record they had never even dreamed of. Well—no, not a record yet, since they hadn’t cleared it. More like an overwhelming crisis.

“Please… please…”

Was crying over a kidnapped party member normal? Especially inside an X-Gate where life and death flipped in an instant?

Heero frowned at the tear-streaked face.

“H-he’s my friend. Please… I’m begging you.”

Heero looked down at the man clutching his clothes with an emotionless gaze.

They shouldn’t have followed him here in the first place.

If they had any sense, they would’ve known their limits and quit long ago. What were records or achievements worth? It was their stupidity that brought them here.

Clearing a gate took immense effort, but leaving a gate was easy.

There were countless chances to escape—exit points always existed in dungeon cracks. Unlike dungeons that sealed once you stepped in, gates kept exits open.

Challenge was brutally difficult, but quitting was absurdly easy. Hunters who reached higher floors often clung stubbornly to the cracks, unable to move forward yet unable to accept retreat.

Gates existed to show people their limits. To laugh at the insignificance of human ability. Their “open exits” were a warning:
Don’t challenge what you cannot handle.

“Aaargh! Let me go—!”

Another member was snatched away, now hanging like a giant cocoon on the right side of the web. A trembling party member grabbed Heero’s clothes with shaking hands.

“I-I won’t follow anymore. Just this once—please just let me leave alive…”

Seeing their one possible savior, the remaining members dropped to their knees and begged.

Swiish, swiish…

The spider’s eerie breathing echoed through the vast dungeon.

Scrrk, scrrk…

The horizontal mouthparts clacked open and shut.

The party members looked like they were seconds from fainting.

“We’re so sorry! We shouldn’t have followed… it won’t happen again…”

While they begged, another person got snatched. Someone even pulled out a ration chocolate bar and tried to bribe Heero—pathetically begging to survive alone.

Another party member exploded.

“What the hell? You said you didn’t have chocolate! When I asked at the last camp if we had anything left, you said no!”

“When did I say that? I said I didn’t have anything to share. I never said I didn’t have my own.”

Heero let out a hollow laugh. He genuinely wanted to ask Sung Jiwoo:

“Hyung… did you really want me to save people like this?”

Jiwoo’s ideology was impossible to understand.
Love the human community, have a heart of devotion…
For what?

A bitter scoff rose from deep within Heero. Yet he still didn’t want to break Jiwoo’s teachings.

Fwip.

“Heok! Damn it—I knew it… huh?”

One party member cursed when something snagged his waist—but froze when he realized it wasn’t a white spider thread.

It was a black tendril rising from Heero’s shadow.

He looked at Heero with tearful gratitude, bowing repeatedly while dangling upside down.

“Thank you… thank you so much! I’m going to survive!!”

Heero sighed deeply and pressed a finger to his lips.

But it was already too late.

Swiish!

A white thread shot toward him at terrifying speed, and Heero irritably threw the man he had saved. Fortunately—or unfortunately—he didn’t fall to his death. Instead he was caught by a white thread and hung like the others.

“…Tch.”

Four were left now. Two of them were still hiding at the entrance—Park Junsu and Yoo Hobin—believing that staying still would keep them unnoticed.

The monster hadn’t shown its body yet, only shooting webs, so they assumed they were safe.

But the spider was already hanging upside down from the ceiling, dozens of eyes glinting as it watched.

Heero had known exactly where it was since the moment he entered.

He glanced upward. One kneeling party member instinctively followed his gaze—

“…Hiiik.”

He didn’t even scream. His breath hitched in raw terror as he stared into dozens of spider eyes. Color drained from his face.

Heero raised an eyebrow:
Stay quiet unless you want to die like the others.

The terrified man immediately shut his mouth. His body trembled uncontrollably. Seeing the monster changed everything—he was terrified even to move a finger.

‘Please… save me.’

He mouthed silently. A tear slid down his cheek.