Law of The Web - Volume 1 Chapter 0 - Prologue

The smell of blood hit my nose, my body drenched in it.

Some of it was mine, but much of it belonged to others, proof of which lay before me in the form of a monstrous red wolf’s bisected corpse, alongside the headless body of a teenage girl who had tried, and failed, to kill me.

Now she paid the ultimate price for taking me on the way she did.

My form was feeble as I trembled in the muck and grime below, the filth born of the constant rain that soaked these lands most of the time. The cold, damp air of the night dew clung to me relentlessly.

I lay there bare, my left arm broken and my right leg missing. The pain was unbearable, yet no tear left my eye, much less a scream.

Time and time again, I am forced to face the harshness of this world.

It has been this way for nine months. A short span of time to be bragging about anything substantial…yet in that span, I have achieved more than most would dare attempt, despite my current condition.

And I will keep achieving more still.

Big words, coming from a man at death’s door once again, as a massive great sword pierces my small body. Its jagged edges bite deep into flesh, tearing through my spine, punching through my lower intestine, and pinning me to the ground. The blade juts out just above my navel as I lie on my belly.

The pain is unrelenting, a burning sensation too intense to put into words.

Yet I can’t give up here. My current checkpoint is unfavorable, but the reason for my resolve is clear.

“My teacher is watching, she is betting everything on me. This battle will decide if am worthy of promotion.”

My eyes lift toward a familiar female figure watching me from the highest podium of the Night Arena.

“Finish him! Finish him! Finish him!”

The crowd roars for my death in this battle, every one of them either an outer or inner disciple of the Black Moon Clan.

Each is leagues above me. I am nothing but a maggot-rank disciple, the lowest of the low. A lowborn slave to the clan that forced me into this hell.

“Nero… lyxxx…

I try to speak, but my voice doesn’t reach her. Still, her cold gaze fixes on me. To those who don’t know her, it might seem she is indifferent to my suffering. But I know the truth, her silence is a kind of motivation.

She is the one who saved my life. Because of her, I am here today.

I owe her a great ordeal.

‘Get up… I need to get up…

‘If I… No, I can’t lose here. I have one shot. That bastard knows I can manipulate time to some degree. He is trying to put me in a checkmate unlike any before. But he doesn’t know the full extent of my ability. I won’t bow to him, not even if he paired me against the one opponent my powers can’t seem to touch properly.’

He is a boy with blue skin and a single purple horn protruding from his forehead. Four-foot-four, slim frame, and is wearing long leather pants, and shoe’s, with basically chainmail around his groin area.

Thiro Grall is the lad name.

Unlike me, who cultivates the Count-Class Law Beast alongside my unique, nameless Law Beast, this bastard cultivates a Parasite-Class beast. His <Black Brain Worm> is honed to a frightening degree.

A third-step Tamer.

His powers are vastly different from mine, but they counter me almost perfectly. No matter how many times I slash or stab, nothing seem’s to work on him.

Every time I land a blow, he treats the wound as an infection, transferring it to someone else, healing himself in the process. Every strike I give him is stolen away, inflicted on another.

“How the hell am I supposed to beat a monster like this?”

I asked myself the question, but no answer came.

He looked at me once, then past me, to the man above who sat right beside my teacher, smiling, deceit written all over his face. As he gives a subtle nod to the boy beside him, like they had just agreed to demise simontainusly.

Thiro stepped forward.

In the center of each of his palms gaped a mouth, black and wet. From its depths, pus-like oil spewed, thick and foul-smelling, pooling at his feet.

Hundreds of pale worms, long, slick, and crowned with writhing tentacle-legs, spilled from the maws, swimming through the sludge.

He worked the parasites like a craftsman at his forge. The oil clung and coiled, hardening into the shape of a hammer…massive, ugly, and dripping with venom. He lifted it, letting the weight loom over my skull.

“Ughraaaa!”

A sound slipped out of me, a loud groaned. The pain I was feeling was a vivid thing, but the blade holding me down bit deep into me, to the point I could not resist.

Thiro stared at me, his eyes dead but burning with something deeper than just mere rage. And that was hate, this person hates me.

I know why, but I don’t regret what I have done, in the end, I was only trying to survive.

If he was in my shoes at the time, he would have done the same.

“I hate you.”

He said.

I could see it all in his face.

His eyes showing a level of silent hatred so profound, it was beyond words, a hate so deep only action can truly show it for what it was.

“Because of you, Tanna had to die. I’ve trained for months, waiting for this day. Today, I’ll take revenge for my sister. Now… die, and join her in the Mond you Motherless bastard.”

That was it.

No more words escape his mouth.

He had made his peace.

The hammer hummed with venom and power as he raised it high, ready to bring it down.

I let out a bitter laugh in my head. This is it. Another restart. And that bastard above? He would just twist the story again.

His power to see the future, and my power to change it will clash once more.

Still as an elder, he constantly put’s me in various situation where he changes the board, I don’t get it, why does this guy want to kill me so badly. Thiro I understand but why me, what the hell have I ever done to this crazy fuck.

God, I was tired.

I didn’t want to restart.

I didn’t want to fight again.

I just wanted it all to stop.

Dying sucks… There is absolutely nothing poetic or noble about it.

There is no gentle fade into light, no glorious last stand.

It is just an ugly experience above all else. Just as it is extremely painful. It us a nightmare that never ends.

And still, as I lay there in the mud, waiting for another end, I couldn’t help but think.

‘How the hell did it come to this?’

‘Why was I dragged into this world?’

‘Who brought me here… and why?’

‘I just want to go home.’

Those were my last thoughts, right before Thiro’s hammer came down. It crushed my skull in like a rotten fruit, bursting bone, brain, and blood in a wet explosion. Warm gore splattered across the dirt, mixing with the rain-soaked earth beneath me.

And just like that, I was dead.

Again.

But death… never lasts long for me.

Like every time before, I’ll just wake up, and respawn somewhere I have been earlier in the timeline.

This moment, like all the others, will fade into yet another nightmare I’ll be forced to live through.

Over and over.

Again and again.

And to think all of this all started from a spider bite. The memory of that day as clear as daytime haunt’s me in this oblivion.

‘Next time I will win for sure.’