Just as Bas closed his eyes and waited for death, a rustling sound arose.
His body trembled, his legs could no longer support him, and he collapsed onto the ground. Yet the scene he had imagined, being devoured by a swarm of spiders, never came.
Carefully opening his eyes and glancing around, he realized the rustling sound was the spiders retreating from the wooden cabin.
His mind filled with questions. After sitting on the ground to rest for quite a while, he finally mustered the courage to approach the window. He pushed it open slightly and peered outside.
Under the crimson moonlight, the spiders covering the ground seemed to have encountered a natural enemy. Like a receding tide flowing backward, they rapidly withdrew and burrowed back into the earth. Gradually, the ground was left with only layers of white spider silk, forming a silvery-white world.
Amid this fantastical scene, he saw a figure standing in the distant farmland, back facing him. The figure shone brilliantly, not only with the glow of the crimson moon, but also with the radiance of the stars.
Those spiders had fled in panic precisely because they feared his presence.
Once all the spiders had retreated, that figure also left.
Bas hid inside the cabin, eyes wide open, his entire body burning as if on fire. He was so excited he could not sleep. What happened tonight would be enough to serve as a story for the rest of his life.
…
On the small hill, the cave once again opened beneath the crimson moon.
This time, Hastur did not choose to observe from outside. His gaze was like a torch, piercing through layers of darkness and spider silk to clearly see everything within.
He stepped forward, his body dropping straight down. Before the surrounding spider silk could entangle him, it turned into black threads and shattered.
Upon landing, Hastur followed the path carved out by the spiders, gradually venturing deeper. In this world formed by white spider silk, the ceiling above was covered with white cocoons, at least a thousand of them.
These were all sacrifices the town had offered each year to the so-called Goddess of Spring, including unlucky souls like the mayor.
Intimidated by the aura emanating from Hastur, the cocoons trembled slightly, yet not a single spider dared to break out.
Passing through the cocoon chamber, Hastur finally saw the main figure of the night, a giant spider with a human face, three stories tall.
Its upper body was that of a bloated human, while its lower half was a spider's abdomen with long, black, hairy legs.
The features on its face were smoothed out, as if they had been corroded by some kind of strong acid.
Facing Hastur's arrival, the human-faced spider showed no fear. Instead, it circled along the surrounding webs, observing him back and forth, as if confirming something.
At last, it stopped. From its abdomen came a familiar voice: "I said I had a premonition, we would meet again soon."
It was the same voice Hastur had heard when he entered Old Jeff's daughter's dream that night.
Back then, he had already found it strange, why that girl was unaffected by nightmare abilities.
Only now did he realize that the one speaking to him at the time had been this very human-faced spider.
"Madam, your premonition was indeed accurate. But what I find curious is, how are you still able to remain conscious? Shouldn't you have fallen into chaos and madness?"
Hastur had already pieced together most of the cause and effect. The owner of this voice was the first girl to be sacrificed, and the object of that sacrifice had been this very spider.
In the eyes of many, spiders spinning silk and producing offspring symbolize reproduction, especially in small places where people tend to be more superstitious about such beliefs.
Yet what no one expected was that this girl had not been completely devoured by the spider. Instead, she had fused and entangled with it, ultimately becoming this horrifying being.
Not only had she survived, but she retained a clear mind, and even used her abilities to alter the tradition of sacrificing priestesses, turning it instead into sacrifices of couples.
"If you want to know all the answers, you can enter my dream. I know you have that ability, and I've always longed to share my story with someone."
Her soft voice carried a hint of temptation.
A mocking smile curved at Hastur's lips. "So I enter your dream, and then you swallow me whole, chewing me up until not even bones remain, is that it?"
A thousand-year-old fox pretending to be innocent, did she really think that would work on him?
He certainly didn't believe that the massive, bloated body before him was the result of living on dew for all these years.
After a moment of silence, the voice spoke again: "So you judge by appearances as well? I thought you might be different from them."
"Indeed, I'm different. I judge by appearances even more than they do."
"…"
At last, the human-faced spider grew enraged. Its eight legs moved swiftly across the web as it climbed to the ceiling and hung upside down, looking down at Hastur. Then it spat out a stream of silk, like a cascading white waterfall.
"Chaos!"
"Misfortune!"
"Fear!"
"Blasphemy!"
Hastur easily evaded such an attack. Word by word, he unleashed entirely different Beyonder abilities, blending them together, instantly reducing the human-faced spider to a sieve, its body shattered into more than a dozen pieces.
In the face of absolute strength, the human-faced spider was nothing more than a slightly larger spider. If it couldn't be crushed between fingers, then it could be stomped to death.
From the ruptured abdomen of the human-faced spider, a faintly pulsating red cocoon appeared, beating like a heart.
Behind Hastur, a Chain of Order extended and lashed out. The red cocoon split open, and thick crimson fluid spilled across the ground.
A complete human face appeared there, its delicate features forming a stark contrast with the grotesque body.
"Outsider, thank you for saving me." A relieved smile appeared on that face, then it dissipated like a wisp of smoke.
Within that drifting smoke, Hastur saw the girl's entire life.
She truly had possessed a fearless spirit of sacrifice, willingly offering herself in place of other chosen girls to the so-called deity.
During the entanglement and fusion, her humanity had remained intact. Instead, she gradually transformed the man-eating spider into the form of a human-faced spider.
Moreover, she had genuinely protected the harvests of this land.
Yet humanity would inevitably be affected by chaos and madness. The annual sacrifices during the Grain Festival were meant to satisfy the beastly craving for human flesh.
As that craving grew stronger, the number of sacrifices required each year also increased.
The turning point came when an external force heavily influenced her, eroding her humanity and nurturing her beastly desires.
The source of that external force was a gaze cast down from the starry sky.
As that gaze reappeared, the already shattered corpse of the human-faced spider suddenly gathered and warped.
Nearby, countless small spiders swarmed out, all willingly becoming part of it.
What emerged was an indescribably massive monstrosity. Its bloated body could contain over a hundred limbs. Spider legs on its back stabbed out at random. Its swollen flesh split open into gaping mouths. From its lower abdomen sprouted tentacles covered in gnashing mouthparts, each marked with patterns of despair from countless dying people.
Disgusting. Nauseating.
That was the first thought that arose in Hastur's mind.
"The Mother Goddess of Depravity."
Hastur's expression grew much more solemn. The gaze that had influenced the human-faced spider's mutation came from the Mother Goddess of Depravity beyond the stars.
Just a single gaze had destroyed thousands of years of that girl's perseverance in maintaining her humanity, causing her to fall once more into a monster, forcing him to personally grant her release.
"Finally found you!"
It was unclear which mouth the voice came from, or if every mouth was repeating the same sentence, making one's skin crawl.
"Found me? And then what?"
Hastur gave the Mother Goddess of Depravity no chance to speak further. He first concealed everything here with the authority of secrecy, then shattered the grotesque creature before him once again.
It was only a remnant gaze left behind in history. Even with the body of the human-faced spider as a vessel, the Mother Goddess of Depravity could exert only limited power and influence.
This body, a vessel of the stars, had been tempered by the power of the stars and possessed combat strength comparable to Sequence 2, more than enough to easily crush it.
To prevent the area from being further tainted by the Mother Goddess of Depravity's power, Hastur shattered the dome above and drew down the radiance of the stars.
Starlight poured down, igniting into flames that rapidly swept through the entire cavern.
The flames of the stars cleansed all filth.
Standing outside the cave, Hastur watched the underground cavern being devoured by fire, ensuring no further accidents occurred.
As for the words spoken earlier by the Mother Goddess of Depravity, Hastur didn't pay them much mind.
This body was merely a vessel for the descent of the stars, not his true form. Even if the Mother Goddess of Depravity had noticed him, it was nothing serious.
Moreover, for a being so distant beyond the stars to target an angel on earth was no simple matter.
Unless She withdrew her power from contending with the Mother Tree of Desire and Lilith for the authority of the Moon, and ceased suppressing Mr. Door and Roselle to focus entirely on him.
That was almost impossible.
The Supernova Dominator once gave an accurate evaluation of the Mother Goddess of Depravity: She wants everything, yet in the end often gains nothing.
After the flames below burned everything clean, Hastur drew over a massive boulder from afar. After a moment's thought, he carved a line of words onto it:
"Unwavering protection, peace and harvest, the Goddess of Spring."
With a light stomp of his right foot, the underground cavern collapsed, and the massive boulder settled firmly atop it.
....
The first person to discover the boulder was Bas, who had survived by sheer luck.
On the second day after its appearance, as if guided by something unseen, he unconsciously made his way to the mountaintop and saw the boulder that had suddenly appeared there.
He had long tended fields nearby and had visited the mountaintop many times. He was certain, this boulder had never been there before!
The boulder required five strong men with outstretched arms to encircle it and stood over three meters tall. Unless it was a miracle, it could not have appeared overnight.
As the news spread, members of the mayor's family arrived. Upon seeing the boulder and the inscription, they immediately declared it a divine response from the Goddess of Spring, a miracle sent to bless the town with abundant harvests.
More and more people believed it. A pavilion was soon built at the site to protect the sacred stone from wind and rain, and many came from afar to worship and offer sacrifices.
The wrinkles on Old Jeff's face seemed to have smoothed away. People said that it was this year's priestess who had successfully pleased the Deity, prompting the descent of this miracle to protect the town's people.
The newly selected mayor even proposed that Old Jeff's daughter become a permanent priestess, responsible for the annual Grain Festival rituals every year.
Proud and flattered, Old Jeff also felt relieved, fortunately, that outsider had not agreed to marry his daughter.
Yet when he thought of the outsider's handsome appearance and extraordinary wealth, he couldn't help but feel a little regret that such a man had not become his son-in-law.