His eyes swept around the chamber, his mind processing the environment. Rotting barrels.
Thick pillars of webbing. The uneven floor. A plan formed—a risky, desperate gamble that relied on perfect timing.
He feinted to the left, drawing a stream of venom that cut off his path of retreat. Then he reversed direction, sprinting directly toward one of the massive, web-wrapped barrels. The queen, seeing him run, let out a triumphant hiss and charged, its heavy body thundering across the floor, certain it had him cornered.
This was the moment Aryan had been waiting for. As the queen closed the distance, he didn't try to dodge around the barrel. He planted his foot, lowered his shoulder, and slammed his full body weight into the old, rotting wood.
The barrel, weakened by decades of damp and decay, gave way with a loud 'crack,' spilling its rotted, non-existent contents. But Aryan's target wasn't the barrel itself. He used its height as a launchpad.
He sprang upward, his powerful legs propelling him into the air, his hand catching one of the thick, anchor-like strands of webbing attached to the ceiling.
He swung, his body arcing over the charging queen below. For a single moment, he was airborne, looking down at the creature's broad, armored back as it thundered past his previous position.
It was a perfect, exposed target. He knew a simple punch wouldn't be enough. He needed to focus all his power into a single, undeniable point. The principles of the Supreme Immortal Scripture, which taught the perfect control and flow of energy, flashed through his mind. He had no named technique for this, but he had the principles.
The scripture was a perfect blueprint for energy manipulation. His past life had taught him about pressure: force divided by area. A wide fist was inefficient. He needed to shrink the point of impact to maximize penetration.
He channeled almost all of his remaining Qi—a full thirty percent of his total reserves—not into his fist, but into the tips of two fingers on his right hand, the index and the middle.
He compressed the energy, molding it under immense mental pressure into a single, invisible, needle-like point of pure force.
His fingers, now glowing with a faint internal light, became a divine spear.
As he swung down from the web, he aimed for the weakest point he had identified: the fleshy, less-armored joint where the queen's head connected to its massive thorax.
He descended like a hawk, his two fingers leading the way.
"Void Piercer," he breathed, giving his desperation a name.
His fingers struck true. There was no dull 'thud' this time. There was a sickening, wet 'schlick' as his Qi-infused fingers, hard as diamond, bypassed the armor and sank deep into the creature's vital tissues. The compressed energy he had gathered erupted from his fingertips in a devastating internal explosion.
The queen's charge came to a jarring halt. All eight of its legs locked up. A sound issued from its fanged maw—not a hiss of rage, but a high, unearthly shriek of pure, mind-breaking agony.
The intelligent light in its eight eyes flickered and died, replaced by the blankness of primal pain. It began to convulse violently, its huge body thrashing and slamming against the basement floor, spraying yellow hemolymph and milky venom in all directions.
Its psychic connection to its children snapped. The smaller spiders, which had been watching with disciplined stillness, fell into utter chaos.
They began to scuttle aimlessly, crawling over each other, their unified purpose gone, replaced by instinctual panic.
Aryan landed lightly on his feet a few meters away, his body aching, his Qi reserves critically low. An excruciating pain, sharp as glass, shot up his arm. He glanced down at his hand; the two fingers that had delivered the blow were unnaturally pale, the Qi within them utterly spent, leaving the bones feeling brittle and hollow.
The technique had worked, but it had come at a cost, leaving him with a weapon he could not immediately use again. He stood, breathing heavily, and watched the queen's death throes.
With a final, shuddering spasm, the beast fell still. The chittering in the basement died down, replaced once again by a profound, final silence. The silence of the basement.
He had won. The cost was a body screaming in protest and a nearly empty Qi reserve, but the silence of the basement was the silence of victory.