Chapter 37- The bonds of blood

Coran and Berith watched in horror as the thousands of transparent yellow spiderlings emerged from their shells.

"Those.... we're supposed to defeat all those?", Coran muttered, completely shocked.

They no longer looked like the innocent little creatures that Coran and Berith had stabbed while they were still asleep within their eggs.

They had eight eyes- four more than Coran and Berith did, and their mouths were filled with horrifying teeth that gave off disturbing smiles. Drool dripped from each of their rabid mouths and their eyes were red with bloodlust.

Coran no longer felt like he had killed his siblings.

These were mindless beings of chaos.

Coran and Berith were considered to be freaks of nature. If this was the usual product of nature, Coran didn't want anything to do with it. He was glad to be a freak.

They grit their teeth together and laughed with high pitched voices as they crawled out of their shells.... and began to slaughter one another.

"heee heee heee heee heee!!!"

The laughter filled the minds of both Coran and Berith.

It was disturbing, to say the least.

It was enough to make them completely forget about the monsters in the crater for just a moment.

The spiderlings began stabbing one another, and then consuming each other.

As they did so, they would grow just a bit larger.

A few stragglers who hatched close to the alcove where Berith and Coran were hiding crawled over to the cave and Coran rushed in front of Berith to protect her.

He glared his fangs at the spiderlings, and two of them jumped at him, one onto his upper body and the other grabbing his legs and attempting to take a bite out of it.

"Agh! Get off me!"

Coran took his upper two spider arms and stabbed them into the head of the spiderling on his torso.

Below him, his sister had also thrust her pointed arm into the brain of the spiderling who had been biting at his legs.

"Coran! You're bleeding!"

"Don't worry about me... we just need to wait things out in here and survive until there are only a few left..."

Coran stood proud in front of his sister, defending her.

If he was going to die here, that would be the right way to go out.

He no longer saw these spiderlings as his siblings.

He was fully prepared to kill as many as he needed.

He was fully prepared to become even more of a monster than those beings who fell from the sky.

Coran smiled.

Berith saw this, and relaxed.

"It's good to see that you've grown, brother."

Berith smiled, baring her fangs. She too seemed ready to kill her brethren off to survive.

The two prepared themselves for an onslaught.

However, only a few spiders came towards them.

They were mostly focused on killing each other.

That was when Coran and Berith saw it.

Spiderlings were rushing into the crater where the monsters were.

These things.... they didn't have any fear of the strong. However, with such a large number, perhaps even those horrifying beings in the crater would be killed.

However, a huge barrier erected itself above the crater after a large number of spiderlings had entered the crater.

And what Coran saw next, was something that left his jaw gaping.

A huge flame from inside the crater burned the entire hole to a crisp.

Were the beings inside strong enough to survive such heat!? How terrifying.

After that, no spiderlings entered the crater asides from the ones pushed off the edge while they fought each other.

And so, time passed.

Once in a while, a spiderling would straggle off and Coran and Berith would take care of it, but eventually they were both left exhausted.

What was originally 10,000 spiderlings had now been cut down to about 100, however they were larger now.

Each of them was now around the size of an adult human- that is, the same size as Berith and Coran were.

They were getting stronger as the herd was culled.

Berith and Coran hid at this point. If even one of those things found them and attacked, it would all be over. They were relatively weak as humanoid spiders, and so they wouldn't be able to beat an empowered wild spider like that.

Something happened then, though.

The monsters who were in the crater crawled out of the hole.

It wasn't exactly graceful. They clawed their way out of the hole and eventually grasped their way out. Could such ungraceful creatures have so much power? No, that wasn't strange. It was common for ungraceful brutes to possess unchallenged strength.

One of them fell on the way out. The others seemed to be laughing at it. They must be truly strong to be so carefree at a moment like this.

However, what happened next blew away all expectations that Coran had.