10 十

The distance between Feather and the spider is close enough that even Feather can shoot the spider, but her pea is too weak for the spider.

She tries to absorb as much sunlight as she can and to taunt the spider.

All these plants were planted by her, and now they are torn up by the spider.

Feather rattles at the spider.

She succeeds and the spider goes after her now. It moves its eight legs chasing toward her, and its mouth opens and closes, making a cracking sound. Its saliva is dripping and corroding the soil. White smoke is rising from the corroded soil.

Ro is busy with other spiders and cannot help. The Snow Pea cannot spare her attention either.

A thread of cobweb shoots from its mouth and the Tall-Nut shields Feather, being pulled and grabbed by the spider.

The crispy chewing sound of the spider eating the Tall-Nut makes her hate herself for being useless.

'This is my duty as a Tall-Nut.' The cowardly Mr. Tall-Nut tries to comfort her with a smile. Feather cries and shoots peas at the spider.

From her voice, she is still a kid.

Her future path will be longer than his.

If he had worked out at the gym in the past and not become a fat middle-aged man, he would have been a useful shooter in the game.

"Puff—Puff—"

Every time when a main character has reached an extreme emotional stage, that character will somehow advance. This theory also applies to Feather and she puffs out a fire pea.

The fire peas carry the heat of sunlight and a long string of fire peas hit hard on the spider.

Half of the Tall-Nut has gone.

What bleeds out is not nut chunks but human blood.

'Sorry, sorry, I transformed too late...'

Feather keeps apologizing and tries to melt her sunlight into the Tall-Nut's body.

'You must go back to the living world safely...' The Tall-Nut speaks gently and he turns into a pile of mud even before he could finish his words.

The spider that is chasing Feather collapses on the soil. Its body is on fire and its limbs are shaking.

Feather puffs more fire peas out and uses her shovel to hit the spider until it stops moving and is absorbed by nearby plants. Then she sobs and begins to puff at the spiders in the air.

All cobwebs attached to the ground are burned and broken by Feather's fire peas. Feather is helping Ro a lot.

'Shoot at it!'

Ro suddenly pushes the Snow Pea away and Feather puffs her fire peas at the Snow Pea.

"Dumb humans, you have annoyed m—"

The Snow Pea's body bursts and a giant black armored spider crawls out. It swiftly evades Feather's fire peas and destroys the sunflowers.

"The Pretender has gone wild. Good luck!"

The progress bar suddenly moves forward and now it is at 66%.

Ro has absorbed enough sunlight and advances to a Threegatlingpeater.

When he targets with Feather, they can kill one spider instantly.

"Sunder armor talisman paper—"

Facing against the devouring black armored spider Pretender, Ro finally uses his own method.

"This is against the rule—"

The invincible Pretender is furious and roars his last words of complaining.

'Ha.'

Ro scoffs. How to be stronger without paying? I buy to win.

Feather fights alongside Ro at the limited edition of cute spiders. They combine their targets and clear the wave quickly.

Although the plants are half dead now, they replenish their health by absorbing the spider corpses.

Most Fume-Shrooms are fragile and are one-shot by the spiders. A lot of the Chompers are snapped as well. More than half of the sunflowers are gone.

The rest of the Chompers have advanced along the game and grow their mouth sharper. Sunflowers grow to have two disks, supplying the sunlight to Ro and Feather.

The Fume-Shrooms don't have any more advancement to go. They seem to be powerful but they will stop puffing when the spiders get close to them.

Feather's throat is in pain as if a fire just burned her throat. She couldn't talk much.

'Sorry.'

Ro regrets that he didn't save the Tall-Nut on time.

Feather shakes her head.

"The ultimate spider king is coming—"

"Are you ready?"

"3—"

"2-"

"1"

The bgm is fancy at this time and greatly boosts the power of Ro and Feather.

A thick spider leg comes out of the hole in the ceiling. Its body is too big to go through the hole.

In fact, it tries and is stuck in the hole.

It doesn't look like a spider.

Its whole body is made of metal full of reflective thorns. It stretches its thorns and the hole collapses. Lots of metal chunks fall from the ceiling and smash the ground causing bumps and hollows.

It slides down lazily along its bucket-thick cobweb.

It is just too big.

Ro and Feather together aren't even bigger than a thorn on its legs.

Shooting peas might break a thorn or two.

Compared to the first wave, the advancing difficulty is like when your teacher taught you how to make arrows and the next day he asked you to shoot down a satellite.

Feather is stunned at how big the king spider is.

A drop of its saliva drips in front of her and corrodes a hole on the soil which is large enough to put three Feathers in it.

Ro begins to search for useful tools in his space storage.

Black dog blood, pass.

Costume pack, pass.

Chinese medicines, pass.

...

These might be useful here. Lava bursting talisman paper, Sunder armor talisman paper, Thunders of night skies talisman paper (not recommended)...

'Go dig a hole and bury yourself.'

Feather's mind has lost the ability to think and she just does what Ro tells her to do.

'Sir, I dug one hole for you as well. We can lie together.'

Ro will not die easily.

'You go first. Dig it deeper.'

Feather jumps in the hole and digs it more.

Digging for Feather is an easy job. She has dug so many holes on the ground in the previous waves. Now, Fea•prairie dog•ther is digging an underground tunnel.

The king spider has slowly landed.

It is so big that it moves in a delay from Ro's perspective.

Ro pastes a total of more than 10 of Lava bursting talisman paper and Sunder armor talisman paper on it.

I should have bought more of these attack talisman papers. My speed talisman paper and stealth talisman paper are useless here.

Thunders of nine skies talisman paper has a thunder of the void sealed in it. It has a burst and AOE damage. Most users cannot get out from its range fast enough.

Even if Feather digs an underground tunnel, she cannot evade the aftershock. Ro as a ghost will receive more damage from thunder than Feather.

Such a talisman paper is a total party kill for all.

Ro decides to use it because Feather has the purple crystal necklace still. She probably will not die instantly. Ro can bring her back to life as long as she doesn't die at once.

He pinches a stack of guardian talisman papers in his pocket and hopes these will save his life from the thunder.

'Go!'

Ro casts the talisman paper paste on the king spider. It is causing sparkling fire on the king spider. It roars angrily and the space is shaking. Feather underground is buried by the falling mud.

Luckily that a pea will not get suffocated underground, but the shadow of death is still hanging over her. She cannot calm herself at all.

Mr. Clown hasn't got into the tunnel yet. She doesn't want to die alone.

Of course, if he came down, she didn't want to die either.

The king spider is smoking but the previous talisman paper didn't hurt it. Its eight large eyes are staring at Ro.

'Do you want to know the truth of life?'

Ro pretends to be calm.

The king spider approaches him and opens its mouth. It is very willing to let this Threegatlingpeater demonstrate what the truth of life is in its stomach.

A Thunder of nine skies talisman paper is tucked into its mouth. It swallows it without a second thought.

'...'

It coughs out white smokes and all its eyes begin to roll.

Its body is glinting purple thunder lights.

The king spider begins to convulse.

Ro catches this chance and jumps into the tunnel, trying to run deep as fast as he can.

"Bang—"

The sound of an explosion comes from above as if something is breaking the earth and the sky. Ro quickly uses all his Guardian talisman papers and they become a thick golden shield around him. The outer layer is broken by the purple thunder. The middle layer is fighting against the thunder. The inner layer remains safe.

Amitabha, the boundless Buddha, wish me great luck.

Ro thanks the Guardian talisman paper sincerely.

Feather closes her eyes.

The purple crystal cross necklace on her neck shines prettily and protects her.

When the second wave of aftershock comes, the purple crystal has a fissure inside. Feather is still safe.

She opens her eyes and looks at the purple aura around her as she clenches the cross on her neck.

Please hear my words. I am willing to sacrifice all I have for your pity on Mr. Clown...

All the Guardian talisman papers have broken.

Ro feels the electricity going through his whole body. This body is going to go bad soon anyway; the thunder is just accelerating the process.

Everything is finally set. Feather is not hurt.

She hears nothing from outside and begins to dig up. She is afraid that Ro died in the battle against the king spider.

'Sir?'

Ro is covered by mud and he convulses as if he had Parkinsons.

'Sir, are you okay?' She tries to pull Ro but the electricity flows to her and she trembles and withdraws her hands immediately.

'It is just the leftover electricity in my body.'

Ro tries to look cool as he crawls out trembling.

Feather thinks she should stay serious but she really wants to laugh at Ro right now.

An afro style head and black face ThreegatlingPeater is trying to dig himself out from the ground.

Ro as a clown finally amuses the audience.

They stand on the ground and look at the desolation.

Cracks are everywhere.

King spider no wonder is a king spider. Its body didn't get turned into ash by the thunder. There is some leftover on the ground. The eight large eyeballs are there.

Ro puts them in his space storage. Feather also picks some broken bones and a seed on the ground. It should be a drop from the king spider. The seed sparkles thunder light and Ro is shocked by the electricity of it but still he manages to tuck it in his small and almost full, space storage.

They wait for a while and nothing happens. Ro decides to climb up along the wall with Feather. They are both peas and not suitable for climbing that they sometimes slide down out of their will.

They see a large empty room on the top with piles of skeletons and human-shape cocoons. The stomach area of the cocoons bulges.

The remaining spiders in the room are all shocked to black corpses. Some cocoons are broken, and there are some little spider corpses lying on the stomach area. Feather moves her eyes away from the scene.

They continue to climb and finally manage to climb out of the doll catcher machine. They transform back to human figures and fall in front of the machine.

The reverse side of the ticket has become 8/10.

The glass windows of the doll catcher machine have turned dark. There is no doll left in the machine. A label taped on the windows says: "Under maintenance. Not operating."