PROLOGUE
A hundred years ago, a war between exorcists and entities reshaped the history of the kingdom known as Entite.
While countless lives were sacrificed, the deities guarding both realms paid no mind. They had long since lost interest.
In the end, both parties agreed that no more lives would be sacrificed in the deities' games. With the power of a great barrier, a boundary was raised between the two realms—never to meet again.
That was how the story went. But in reality...
A faint vibration ran through the thin thread that connected me to my squadmate.
"Captain! The target is at two o'clock in your direction!"
I fired my web at a rope strung between two apartments, hauled myself up, and swung onto the rooftop. As I ran across it, I saw my teammates following the same route.
"Hey, Spidie! Bet you won't catch him this time." The wolf cub, in his human form, smirked.
"Dream on, puppy!" I snickered as I sprayed a web in his direction, causing him to lose his balance.
I jumped down and fired another web at the suspicious man, a mantis entity in human guise. The moment he sensed my killing intent, his arms twisted into gleaming blades, and he slashed my webs away.
Using my momentum as leverage, I ran along the alley wall and backflipped to catch his exposed back. He tried to fight back, but I drove my paralysis-tipped nails into his neck.
My human teammates gathered around me.
"As expected of Aranea, you never fail to meet my expectations," the eagle halfling said as she adjusted her eyeglasses.
I stiffened but managed to mask it with a fake smile.
Hearing my foster mother’s name used as my own still felt strange. But the Duke herself had insisted on it. She was determined to antagonize her ex-lover, the Death King.
"Why do you even wear glasses? Your eyesight is inhuman, you know?" The wolf cub slapped her hand away, and she glared at him.
"I didn’t expect children of nobility would be the ones to persecute me," the mantis muttered under his breath.
"Nobility?" the wolf cub asked.
"Captain, the cell prepared for the sinner is ready. You can teleport him anytime."
The man chuckled at my teammates' confusion. Timing it with the wolf cub's attack, I flicked my fingers and pretended I was about to hit the mantis, just as the teleportation activated.
"Fudge! We lost him again!" The wolf cub shoved me angrily.
"Does the profile say he has any spatial abilities?" I asked, looking at our leader.
"That's what confuses me, too. Do these monsters evolve in a crisis and gain unexpected abilities?" the eagle halfling said, anxious.
"Captain, the sinner has been transferred successfully," my squad leader's voice came through my web.
I couldn't help the small smirk that tugged at my lips when I heard the report. The wolf cub rushed at me, shoving me back and cornering me.
"You traitor! Where did you hide him?!" he accused.
"What are you talking about?"
I pretended to be in pain, even though a homunculus like me doesn't fear any wounds. Maybe if I flinched enough, I would seem no less human.
"Koah, stop it! Why do you always pick on Aranea? You're crushing her wrist!" the eagle halfling shouted, stopping him.
"She just scoffed, Libera. Didn't your sharp eyes see her?" he scowled.
"I'm only thinking about the possibility of us learning new abilities, too," I said, pushing him away.
"After all, those entities stole our identities for the lives their children are enjoying."
"Ha! Enough is enough. Let's head to HQ to report these abnormalities," the eagle said, taking off first. I was about to follow when the wolf cub spoke.
"I am watching you, Arachnid," he threatened before leaving.
After the boundary was created, a few escaped to the human world, stealing human bodies and living as if they were ordinary. In contrast, others were caught and executed in the kingdom’s undying sea of flames.
But the punishment didn't scare them at all. It made them desperate.
After the deities forsook us, monsters shaped like ink slime started to spread in the mountains of the Entite Kingdom.
Any entity touched by what we called conquerors began to show patches of sturdy black scales around the wound. With prolonged exposure, it would spread across the body and cause numbness until the victim fell into a coma and died from organ failure.
That’s why the mantis called us nobles. The eagles and wolves came from a count’s lineage, while the spiders served under the Duke of Linnea—Aranea Linnea, my foster mother.
That's why my clumsy mistress holds the second-highest authority and is next in line to the throne.
Lady Aranea stole my body for her child and sheltered my soul in a homunculus woven from her webs, allowing me to live on and pretend to be her daughter.
Despite all of this, I’d long since stopped resenting her. In fact, it was my own choice to work for her as a guide for those sinners in their eternal, scorched suffering.
