Becoming a Monster
Chapter 141: Stalling for Time

Chapter 141: Chapter 141: Stalling for Time

Noah laid on the ground, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath, blood dripping from the corner of his lip. The deadly presence above him was overwhelming, casting him in darkness. His vision blurred from the sudden, searing pain, allowing him to make sense of two powerful legs, thin yet muscular, that pinned him down. One of the legs’ sharp claws had pierced through his web-created armor, digging into the side of his stomach. Each movement sent a fresh wave of agony through him, but as he blinked away the haze, the towering figure above him slowly came into focus. What he saw made his blood run cold.

For the first time, Noah truly saw the creature that had bested him. It was an ant, but not just any ant, this one stood with a terrifying grace, its form both alien and horrifyingly familiar. It resembled a higher mutation of human and insect than anything he had ever encountered, more advanced even than the ant generals he had previously faced, and even more advanced than Arachne, who had undergone both a mutation and an evolution. This creature was something far beyond them, a twisted fusion that transcended the boundaries of both species.

Its chitin was an intense amber red, marked by bold black stripes that ran down its limbs and torso, adding a menacing contrast to its sleek, polished armor. The colors gleamed in the light more vibrantly than its minion soldiers, reflecting an eerie glow that seemed to pulse with its own dark energy.

The creature’s torso was humanoid in structure but encased in the hard, unyielding amber armor. Four long, powerful arms sprouted from its sides, each ending in talon-tipped fingers that moved with a chilling twitch. The upper pair hovered just above its chest, while the lower pair twitched with a barely restrained hunger, as if savoring the moment before the kill.

Noah’s gaze traveled upward to its face, his eyes slightly widened to its unsettling features. Its large, multifaceted eyes gleamed with cold, calculating intelligence, and its mandibles clicked together rhythmically, creating a sound that grated against Noah’s nerves. A jagged maw, lined with needle-like teeth, twisted into a cruel scowl.

Yet the most disconcerting feature was its wings. They unfurled from its back in a breathtaking display, a stark contrast to the rest of its monstrous form. The wings were delicate and translucent, shimmering with an array of colors; blues, reds, and purples; that seemed to move in the faint light. Each subtle movement sent waves of light rippling across their surface, creating a surreal, almost hypnotic effect.

For a moment, Noah was transfixed by their beauty, a strange contrast to the terror that radiated from the rest of the creature. But the illusion of its beauty shattered as Noah’s mind raced to make sense of what he was seeing.

’Was this some kind of queen?’ The thought lingered as her the ant’s claws dug deeper into his side, sending fresh waves of pain through his body.

Noah grimaced, no longer caring about the ant’s identity. His right hand reached out, preparing to shoot a manabolt despite the close proximities. He didn’t have time to fully charge the spell, so he released it quickly. The spell traveled with a burst of light, aimed directly at the creature’s face. As the manabolt struck, it only elicited a subtle flinch. Yet, the ant retaliated by piercing his arm with another leg, causing him to grunt in pain.

"My children! Die for killing my children!" Noah managed to understand the ant’s chittering clicks and guttural growls.

The ant’s cries revealed enough for Noah to infer the ants’ gender, the ant in question was their queen. What he didn’t know was that the queen had not only evolved, but had also undergone a mutation, sacrificing her ability to reproduce in exchange for the power she now possessed. Because of this sacrifice, she had chosen to co-exist with the other species of insects.

No longer capable of expanding her nest, so she used other insects to bolster the numbers of her army. She was hoping that, in time, one of her ant generals would be able to gain the strength to take on her former role as a breeder. Although she was enraged by the deaths of the insects of the three species, she was most livid by the loss of her three generals, into whom she had invested so many resources to ensure that one of the three would take on her previous role.

The queen’s rage was evident, fueling her every action. Her eyes burned with a fierce, vengeful fire. She wanted to kill Noah, to mutilate his body before personally consuming him. She had planned to take her time with his demise, but his attack stirred her to vent out her urges sooner than she intended. After the sudden surprise attack, she released a painful cry, expressing all of her frustrated feelings before two of her talon tipped arms rose, preparing to mutilate his face first.

But just as she was about to follow through, her attack froze. Her initial fury was replaced with shock. Noah was no longer there! Her frozen expression highlighted the processing in her eyes even more. Her head snapped in multiple directions, quickly scanning her surroundings in a 360 degree view, failing to find anything that hinted at where Noah could’ve gone. She was about to lift her feet to inspect the area more closely. Her sporadically moving antennas hinted that she was picking up something. Although she couldn’t see Noah’s body anymore, nor could she feel his flesh under her talons, she could still heavily smell his scent beneath her, making her scrutinize the area further.

The idea that Noah might still be there perplexed her, but her thirst to kill him made her act upon her peculiar instincts nonetheless. The leg she had used to pierce his stomach rose, preparing to stomp down on its previous location to see if her assumption was really just all in her head. At that moment, a black substance appeared out of nowhere, encasing her face, blinding her to everything around her.

Her first instinct was to remove the substance from her vision, allowing Noah to finally escape the death trap beneath her feet. There was an obvious truth that the ant queen was far outstriped in terms of power. However, instead of retreating to join his creatures, Noah chose to press on with the attack. Both of his arms outstretched, each palm was seen ejecting an incredible amount of his webs that moved as if they had their own consciousness.

Starting from head while moving downward, his webs wove an intricate pattern around the queen, aiming to immobilize her limbs and restrict her enough to return the favor. Noah was making the most use out of his spider skill, ’Monarch’s Armory’, giving him the ability to freely manipulate his webs to allow his webs to efficiently encircle and envelope the queen from a distance. He also utilized the second function of his newly mutated webs that were given the name of ’Dominion’s Webs’. At first, the queen frantically kept up with the pace of tearing off the extra layers of webs as they were being layered on, but suddenly, despite her full dedication to removing the threads enveloping her, all four of her arms limply dropped to her sides.

Through the use of Noah’s webs, he was able to assert his dominance on the creature under its entrapping, forcing the queen to halt her attempts to free herself. There was no time limit for how long the skill could last; its duration seemed to be entirely dependent on the strength of the prey entrapped under the skill, with the skill ending as soon as the creature completed the order given to it.

That small lapse of time was enough for Noah to fully encase the queen in a makeshift cocoon, one denser and sturdier than the armor made from his webs. However, this came at the cost of using an absurd amount of mana.

When Noah finished his skill, he could sense the queen’s struggles, and her barely audible clicks of rage could still be heard even though any sound within should have been muffled.

His mind raced for his next course of action. He could run to support Fenrir and Arachne in finishing their opponents so all three of them can gang up on the queen, or he could take his chances, believing in his strength to strike the queen down while still ensnared.

Yet, both options weren’t viable enough, each choice was fraught with danger. Even if he were to regroup with his companions, the queen’s earlier display of speed and power made him doubt that they could contend with her, even with the coordination of the three of them. The latter option was even more concerning. Noah’s sword was incredibly sharp, with an aura that further increased its lethality. But the question Noah had to ask himself was whether he had the capability of striking through his own webs? Considering his strength, it seemed meager compared to the webs’ durability, which was empowered by his strongest attribute. He had never tried it before, but he truly doubted that he could stab through the webs while also inflicting fatal harm.

After weighing both options, A third one came to mind, one that Noah was even more hesitant about, but the idea stuck with him the most. "It’s now or never," he muttered to himself, the resolve in his eyes shining vibrantly through his red gems.

His figure remained rooted just mere a few feet from the queen, who was seemingly beginning to gain ground in her escape. Her small talon-like nails slightly brush against the webs, slowly grinding against the material to cut herself loose as she simultaneously flexed every fiber of her being to forcibly rip through the encasement.

Noah exaggeratedly began to perform an action that closely resembled his usual ability. Two circulating masses of different variant shades of violet began to form. The skill still bore the same appearance as his typical skill ’Manabolt’. His actions up until now were identical to his usual routine. Even if he fully charged up both abilities and released them at point blank range, he would most likely inflict only minor injuries. What he needed was something more powerful, something deadlier than before. This realization meant that he needed to create a skill that was entirely his own for the first time.

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