Chapter 160: Conditional webs?

Without many other options and racing against time, Kai pushed his brain to its limit, performing incredibly complex calculations at an almost impossible speed. At that moment, he conjured three new swords in the air, which quickly aligned together as if they were forming a sandwich. Kai then shouted in an urgent tone.

“Railgun!”

With the two outer swords acting as a ‘cannon’, the center sword was launched at hypersonic speed, leaving behind a trail of purple electricity and a powerful sonic boom, arriving almost instantly in front of the black spider. It struck the front of its head head-on and passed completely through it, while the sword itself shattered and was destroyed by the brutal impact, causing even more damage.

Because Kai had done the necessary calculations, the brutal impact barely affected the child standing behind it, allowing the blue-eyed boy to sigh in relief as the webs imprisoning him disappeared into the air. Though his expression showed a tinge of bitterness.

(Shit, Railgun is too expensive…)

While Kai thought to himself, analyzing how much aura he had left, he quickly reached Oliver. At that moment, he used his sword to cut the webs that imprisoned him, allowing him to see the boy for the first time. The child wore a simple jute outfit that exposed various bruises.

In a quick motion, Kai lifted the unconscious boy off the ground and used his aura to study his condition, immediately noticing that he had several broken ribs, a femur fractured in three places, as well as multiple tears and internal bleeding. He was in an incredibly precarious state, though still salvageable, prompting Kai to let out a sigh of relief.

While using his Mystical Palm to heal Oliver’s most serious and troublesome wounds, Kai surveyed the surroundings with his Observation Haki, realizing that practically a tide of spiders was closing in on his position in an orderly, consistent fashion. The sight inevitably plunged Kai into his thoughts.

(They definitely have a commander, but I don’t sense anything similar to a human nearby… Could I be wrong, and there’s no secret organization behind them? If these are just intelligent, super-powerful spiders that are ignorant of what’s outside this ‘Island’, a lot of things start to make sense.

(It’s not that they’ve managed to stay hidden all this time because they’re super capable and have connections in high places. Maybe, until now, they’ve never left this place. And the fact that the ‘wild tribe’ has such a strange language, born from the fusion of multiple languages, might be proof of how long they’ve been isolated.

(Therefore, it’s possible that their attack on the “scientists' island” was their first attempt to explore the outside world, perhaps triggered by some major change here on this island, or maybe Eva’s arrival—clearly someone from the outside—gave them the idea to ‘explore the unknown’. The question is, what will they do after this?

(…I can’t imagine. Nor do I understand why they wanted Oliver alive so badly. I don’t see anything special about him; he doesn’t seem particularly impressive, and his quirk is about super strength due to his quirk factor, something I doubt they need… Could it be they realized that as long as they held him alive, I’d try to get him back without considering escape?

(If that’s the case, these spiders are pretty terrifying, able to make incredibly precise judgments very quickly, with a thorough understanding of the enemy’s mentality, while simultaneously organizing themselves to attack like a trained army. That’s something very few experienced human commanders could do so efficiently…

(...How many countries would be able to hold them off if they emerged in large numbers? That thing that hit me could stand up to Prime All Might for a while, and though it would eventually lose. The fact that it can teleport, combined with that strange blow capable of injuring my organs, makes it even more terrifying than All Might himself. It could cause incalculable damage.…)

As he conjured the Shadow Cloak card again between the fingers of the hand holding Oliver, since the other was still healing him, Kai trembled a bit upon realizing the predicament he was in. His expression turned incredibly solemn, but he quickly shook his head and activated the card after murmuring to himself.

“For now, let’s focus on getting them out of here. Everything else comes later… [Shadow Cloak] On!!”

Upon activating the card, a jet of light engulfed Kai and Oliver, rapidly transforming into a black cloak that covered them entirely. Kai immediately began running toward Sage, all the while carefully observing the tide of spiders trying to encircle him with his Observation Haki.

(…It looks like they haven’t noticed anything; they’re not showing any apparent change and continue trying to surround the place where I was. Then how did the black spider detect me? Something like that never happened before…

(Could it be that I somehow made it suspicious of my presence? I don’t think that’s the case, or the cloak would have deactivated before the webs appeared. But it was the other way around—the webs appeared first, and then the cloak deactivated.

(Which only indicates it discovered my presence through the webs, which were also extremely strange. Even to my perception, they appeared out of nowhere and instantly, and even with my future vision, I couldn’t avoid them—somewhat similar to my [Conqueror’s Shackles]. Could it function in a similar way, with pacts or conditions?

(It’s possible. I’ve read and heard about some quirks that are just as bizarre and powerful, operating under very specific conditions. So, even though Shadow Cloak is quite handy and powerful, I have to be extremely careful using it from now on, since there could be quirks out there that act as a perfect countermeasure against it…

(Wait a second! Is it possible those webs always work with conditions? If so, could they do even crazier things? After all, the black spider managed to melt a good portion of my skin with them, but earlier I saw it building an underwater tunnel, so it’s quite likely.

(When building the tunnel, it might have imposed conditions like ‘retain breathable air and repel water’ or something along those lines, while for the attack, it might have imposed the condition ‘whoever touches my web melts’.

(That would make it an extremely versatile and terrifying quirk, no worse than my own aura. Maybe even how they move around, as if teleporting has something to do with that!!)

Arriving at such a terrifying hypothesis, Kai couldn’t help but take a sharp breath, while his expression darkened considerably. But he quickly calmed himself and refocused, as he had reached the spiders’ ‘barricade’, where hundreds of spiders of all kinds of shapes and sizes were clustered. Fortunately, only two appeared to have a power level comparable to the original five, which was a relief; it meant that level of power wasn’t widespread.

They were still terrifying, though, because that implied, there were at least around a dozen ‘weakened All Mights’ and, at minimum, one comparable to Prime All Might—an incredibly frightening power that could raze entire countries to the ground, leaving only the world powers with the capacity to confront them.

Moving as quickly as he could without drawing attention to his presence, and still healing Oliver’s most severe wounds, Kai analyzed the crowd of spiders. Although they weren’t arranged in a standard formation, they still gave the impression of being organized in some kind of military formation, covering the ground and key positions by climbing trees or perching on massive webs. Then he focused on the two most dangerous ones.

One of them, about a meter long, was dark blue in color and had curious pink patterns on its huge abdomen, while its legs appeared extremely sharp and sturdy, emitting a sort of ominous pink mist from its massive abdomen.

The other, by contrast, had an almost metallic appearance, as though it were made of some dark gray metal. Tiny droplets of a colorless liquid dripped from its exposed fangs, giving Kai a sense of danger. He quickly activated Gyo in his eyes to scan the surroundings, as his Haki sensed strange lines covering the area.

Just as he suspected, Gyo revealed several ghostly looking webs covering the place, intertwining among the trees to create a sort of cage. Those webs appeared to be connected to the legs of the two strongest spiders, piquing Kai’s curiosity.

(Are these ghostly webs different from the black spider’s webs? It seems so because they connect to the legs, and now I’ve seen four spiders doing something similar: one of the spider bodyguards, the fire spider, and now these two. So it might be an innate ability for all the spiders, or something only the stronger ones share. But if that’s the case, do they also have multiple quirks like the Nomu…?)

Though confused, Kai quickly extended a small amount of aura across the ground from his feet, sending it up the trees, then created several aura threads in [In] state, since he couldn’t kick the air to fly without making noise. He jumped onto the nearest threads and began leaping between them, avoiding both the spiders and the ghostly webs, all while staying as silent as possible.

As he moved along the invisible aura strands and kept healing Oliver without pause, Kai remained on high alert, with two swords flying by his sides, ready to protect the boy and counterattack the moment those webs caught him. Thankfully, he soon managed to get past the spider barricade without incident, landing on the ground a few meters beyond.

(Was the black spider the only one with those ‘conditional webs’…?)

Standing behind the densely packed swarm of spiders, Kai wondered to himself in confusion, watching the spiders’ backs with a penetrating gaze. He considered launching an attack with the swords floating beside him, but after a few seconds he shook his head and dashed toward Sage.

(It’s not the time. Right now, the most important thing is getting Eva and Oliver out of here.)

As he drew closer to Sage’s position, Kai felt violent tremors in the ground. Powerful gusts of wind hampered his advance, accompanied by furious crashing sounds and various shrieks—ranging from high-pitched to a low rumble that shook his body.

(The low-pitched one must be from the thing that hit me…)

Exercising extreme caution, Kai ran in Sage’s direction, soon able to see the pandemonium unfolding there. A gigantic Drider, half spider and half humanoid, was smashing the walls of Absolute Fortress with what looked like an especially long club, moving at such an astonishing speed that it left hundreds of residual images behind. It created powerful shockwaves accompanied by small tornadoes, as if All Might himself were attacking.

Thanks to the furious onslaught, the place was in ruins. All the nearby trees were reduced to splinters, while human and spider corpses alike were thrown into the air in pieces before being carried off into the distance by the tornadoes. The woven root floor had long since disappeared, revealing black soil underneath, stained with blood.

Meanwhile, almost as if surrounding the area, there were several dozen large spiders, between two and five meters in size, all impressively strong. Fortunately, none of them reached the power level of the original five, which further confirmed his hypothesis that such a level of power was rare among spiders.

(Even with all this chaos, two of the five originals haven’t moved. If I recall correctly, their quirks were [Electrification] and [Biological Warehouse]. Are they doing something important…?)

Kai wondered to himself as he focused on the positions of the last two spiders, quickly realizing they were quite close to each other, giving him a terrible foreboding. After all, even that giant monster had come out, so whatever those two were doing had to be something significant. But knowing it wasn’t the right time, he quickly reorganized his thoughts and communicated with his dependable assistant.

[Sage, get ready. I’ll leave Oliver where I am now, and I’ll distract the spiders.]

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