Chapter 130
Without hesitation, the colossal Vipersteel Basilisk lunged downward, its metallic scales grinding like blades, its enormous fangs glinting in the fractured light of the forest. The ground quaked beneath its descent, the air itself shrieking from the pressure.
Nox had already moved. His body tensed in perfect coordination. With a flick of his wrist, Webcutter materialized, glimmering faintly in his hand.
He muttered under his breath, voice calm despite the overwhelming pressure pressing down on him.
“This may be the last fight between us… so let’s make the world sing with the glory of our victory.”
The moment the Basilisk struck, Nox swung upward to meet it. His movement was fluid, every muscle, ligament, and tendon working in unison.
The collision was cataclysmic.
The force of impact sent a violent shockwave rippling outward, uprooting trees and splitting the earth. Nox was blasted backward, feet digging furrows into the dirt as he struggled to stay grounded. His heels struck deep, the soil beneath him fracturing into web-like cracks that spidered across the terrain.
The vibration coursed through his entire body. His bones screamed. His arms felt like they might tear apart from the recoil.
But he endured.
Raw power isn’t going to cut it, he thought, exhaling through clenched teeth. I can’t match it head-on… but maybe technique can close the gap.
He let the Sutra circulate through his meridians, refining the pain into focus. His muscles steadied, his breathing evened, and his senses sharpened. The air, the vibrations, the glint of each metallic scale — everything slowed into perfect clarity through his ocular skill.
He leapt back, rolling across the ground to recover his footing, Webcutter still gripped tight. The Basilisk’s eyes tracked him, molten light swirling in its pupils. It hissed — a deafening metallic rasp — before its tail swung like a massive steel whip.
The air detonated from the speed of it.
Nox barely had time to cross his arms before it hit.
For all its size, the Vipersteel Basilisk moved with terrifying speed—its tail blurred through the air, cutting a clean line through the forest as though space itself bent to its command.
But Nox was faster.
The instant his ocular skill activated, his vision filled with distortions—hundreds of overlapping disruptions converging into a single catastrophic impact point. His instincts screamed. That premonition alone told him exactly what would’ve happened had he hesitated: his body flattened into the earth, his bones splintered, his organs liquefied.
He moved before the thought fully formed.
The tail slammed into the ground where he’d been standing, detonating the terrain in a burst of debris and shockwaves. Dirt and rock fountained skyward as the impact crater spread wide enough to swallow a house.
Nox landed in a crouch several meters away, sweat trickling down his temple. A single glance at the crater sent a chill crawling down his spine. If that hit me… He didn’t finish the thought.
Then he noticed something else—something that made him grin.
Across the Basilisk’s massive form, countless thin threads shimmered faintly under the light. The lines were nearly invisible, anchored across its scales like a spider’s trap. At each connection point, faint wisps of smoke rose as his webbing slowly ate through the metal. The corrosion wasn’t dramatic—nothing like when he’d melted lesser creatures—but it was there. It was working.
“Good,” he muttered under his breath.
The Basilisk hissed, clearly agitated. Its metallic body shifted, releasing a grinding shriek that reverberated through the air. Then—without warning—Nox’s entire body seized.
His vision flickered. His aether plummeted.
“—What the hell!?”
The sheer scale of the disruptions he sensed overwhelmed him. His meridians spasmed; his reserves bottomed out so abruptly his entire body felt hollow, like his soul had been sucked dry. Had the drain continued, his status screen would’ve shown his aether balance dipping into terrifying, negative digits—a death spiral no one could return from.
He pulled out multiple Aether Potions and downing them all in one go. The surge hit him like fire in his veins. His pulse steadied just as he sensed the next threat.
Above him, steel began to form out of condensed aether—constructs of the Basilisk's scales. The scales hovered, gleaming ominously before aligning their points toward him.
“...Oh, that’s new.”
They fired.
The Basilisk’s skill unleashed a storm of metal, raining death across the clearing.
Nox’s eyes darted, tracing every disturbance, every lethal trajectory.
He extended his hands. Dozens of non-poisonous webs shot outward, anchoring across the terrain. Unlike his corrosive silk, these had elastic resilience, a trait he’d refined from his training. His body could interact with them freely, without sticking.
Using that web network, he moved.
Each strand acted like a slingshot, propelling him from one anchor point to another in sharp bursts of speed. He weaved between the oncoming scales, his movements fluid, unpredictable—like a spider dancing between raindrops.
Steel crashed against the ground behind him, explosions echoing through the forest as the metallic rain continued.
“Man…” he muttered between breaths, flipping off one strand to another as a massive scale barely missed his leg, “what kind of creature is this thing? Makes dungeon bosses look like jokes.”
He launched himself higher, flipping midair as more scales tore through the trees below. The Basilisk’s roar followed, metallic and furious, as Nox’s grin widened.
“Guess I’m the unlucky one who gets to test it.”
This fight had gone far beyond what Nox anticipated—but there was no turning back.
The Vipersteel Basilisk wasn’t just another monster. It was an apex of nature’s cruelty, a being that made everything he’d fought before seem like warm-ups.
And yet, a quiet part of him refused to see it as impossible.
A whisper in his mind kept repeating: If you want to grow, you have to face it.
The thought anchored him—until another, far more familiar voice interrupted.
“You managed to actually last this long against such a creature? Not too bad,” the voice drawled.
Nox’s expression didn’t change, even as he sidestepped another strike. His eyes narrowed.
“…What do you want?”
It was the same voice that had spoken to him when he first obtained the ancient scroll—the one that contained the Reversal Meridian Sutra.
“Nothing much, really,” the voice replied lazily. “Just thought I’d check in. Quite the interesting day, don’t you think? Though, I must say… you’ve barely made any progress with the Sutra. Quite disappointing”
“Progress is progress,” Nox grunted, ducking beneath a sweep of the Basilisk’s tail and slashing upward with Webcutter. Sparks flew as his blade scraped against steel scales. “Besides, it’s written in a language I don’t even understand. I can only use what I learned from your vague hints.”
“That’s true,” the voice admitted. “Still, even small steps in mastering that Sutra are impressive. It’s not something most mortals could handle. So… why are you fighting this snake?”
“It came at me. What choice do I have?”
The voice went silent for a moment, watching through him as Nox weaved between the Basilisk’s strikes. The creature’s tail slammed down again, shaking the earth, but Nox was already gone—his body a blur of motion guided by instinct.
Finally, the voice spoke again, its tone lighter.
“Want some help?”
Nox’s lips twitched. “You’re going to tell me to use the Sutra, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much,” the voice said, sounding far too amused. “It really is a wondrous thing. People would kill for it—and for your body too.”
Nox rolled his eyes, dodging another tail strike that shattered a tree behind him. “You’re really not selling it.”
The voice chuckled, low and almost teasing. “Then think about this—remember the components you used the first time you successfully circulated the Sutra.”
Nox paused mid-motion, the words catching in his mind. The components…
A slow grin spread across his face. “Hah. That might actually work.”
The Basilisk lunged, jaws snapping open wide enough to swallow him whole. Its fangs glinted, dripping with venom.
Nox didn’t retreat this time. His body was battered, his health and aether hanging dangerously low. His potion supply was nearly gone, and each breath burned his lungs. But in his eyes—there was a dangerous light.
He gripped Webcutter tightly, whispering to himself as the Sutra flared to life within his veins.
“Alright, let’s see what happens when I push this thing past its limit.”
In front of him, the ancient scroll unfurled—its parchment glowing with intricate, shifting runes. The air trembled, and the Sutra’s script shimmered like liquid gold. The moment the Basilisk’s massive head lunged forward, it slammed directly into the scroll, the impact shaking its head.
The creature recoiled violently, its strike completely deflected. Sparks of condensed aether scattered in all directions. The Basilisk hissed furiously, slamming its tail into the ground in frustration, but the scroll held, radiating an authority far beyond anything mortal.
Nox exhaled sharply, sweat mixing with blood along his cheek. The unexpected reprieve gave him a precious few seconds to act.
He closed his eyes and circulated the Reversal Meridian Sutra at full capacity. His meridians ignited, glowing faintly beneath his skin as streams of aether surged like a tidal current through every channel. He recalled the original components—the foundation that had once awakened the Sutra’s power within him.
Ember-Ash Venom.
Frostbane Venom.
The two venoms that had once nearly killed him, had long since been refined by his Dual Extremis Body, transformed from deadly poisons into potent tonics that strengthened rather than destroyed. They had burned and frozen him from the inside out, pushing his limits beyond sanity, yet through sheer will and the guiding flow of the Sutra, his body had adapted. He’d survived.
But not all of the venom had been used.
The Reversal Meridian Sutra had kept a fragment of their essence sealed deep within his meridians—preserved and dormant, like a slumbering storm.
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Now, as the ancient scroll hovered before him, shielding him from the Basilisk’s furious barrage of strikes and metallic roars, he began to recite the Sutra.
He could feel the dormant venoms stirring inside him, responding to the call of the Sutra’s rhythm. Fire and frost. Burn and chill. Destruction and restoration. Their essences flared violently, the extremes threatening to consume him once again—but the Sutra’s structure guided them, balancing their chaos into usable strength.
“I may not understand a single line of this thing,” Nox muttered under his breath, his tone dry even as the world trembled around him, “but maybe I can use what’s left of my aether and hope it helps me decode this cryptic nonsense.”
As he spoke, webs began to form in his eyes—intricate, glimmering patterns that reflected his aether flow. Threads of light stretched outward from his pupils, connecting to the Sutra floating before him, bridging the gap between comprehension and instinct.
The voice chuckled softly in the back of his mind.
“Those Eyes of Webs turned out to be really beneficial for you, kid. Lucky brat.”
Nox ignored him, his focus deepening. The patterns within the Sutra began to shift—runes rearranging, lines overlapping in ways that mirrored the web-like structures his eyes perceived. Slowly, the meaning within the text began to align with the flow of his body.
“Hey, voice,” Nox said, his tone low but steady, “how do I control this body now that it’s activating again?”
The voice laughed lightly, almost fondly.
“It’s your body. Control it however you like. It’s naturally attuned to the idea of extremism—just let it flow. Push both sides until they stop fighting you.”
As he worked to decode the Sutra, Nox’s aether reserves dropped to almost nothing. His body felt hollow, his limbs faint, but his vision remained sharp.
Through his ocular skill, the webs in his eyes began to move.
They didn’t just trace the outside world this time. They traced him.
Threads of perception sank inward, sensing the disturbances in his meridians, in his comprehension of the Reversal Meridian Sutra itself. Every mistake, every misalignment in his circulation pattern, was reflected back to him in real time—just like when he’d used the same method to correct his posture and movements while forging.
This time, he wasn’t just refining his body.
He was refining his understanding.
Seeing his aether hovering at the edge of zero, Nox grit his teeth. “Let’s hope this works.”
And his body answered.
What should have been the final, flickering single digits of his aether were pushed to the very edge—then inverted. His near-empty reserves twisted, and flipped, turning depletion into surplus. The flow reversed. The negative became its opposite.
In the next instant, his aether bar shot upward.
From almost nothing to full.
His veins tingled, his meridians humming with a dense, refined aether as his Dual Body of Extremis responded to his intent—pushing his state to the absolute limit and then crossing over it.
The voice observed.
“Dual Body of Extremis,” it murmured, genuinely impressed. “If those fledgling Supreme Gods could get their hands on such a thing, they’d enter a league of their own.”
It paused.
“…Hm? That’s odd.”
Its perception stretched outward—past the First Expanse, past the surrounding realms—brushing against something else entirely.
“That title…?” it mused. “That phenomenon again. A wondrous little glitch in existence. No one ever figured out its true nature, even back in my iteration, ages ago. So why… would that appear here of all places?”
The thought barely had time to settle before something flared across a distant region of the cosmos.
The voice’s attention snapped toward it.
“Did someone just gain a new body?” it wondered aloud. “Mmm… that constitution isn’t bad at all. Almost comparable to the Dual Body of Extremis. But why is that kid panicking so much?”
Its awareness focused on a youth surrounded by attendants calling him Prince.
“Did that brat just say he’s no longer the God Spark of Wind?”
For the first time in a long while, the voice was genuinely taken aback.
“But that wind kid hasalways been the God Spark of Wind, no? Interesting. And seeing how that prince is losing his mind over it, I doubt he’s lying. So what happened? He lost his qualifications? To someone better?”
A low, amused laugh echoed in the void.
“I’ve seen God Sparks defeated before,” it mused, “but never actually stripped of their title. First time for everything, I suppose.”
It watched a moment longer, observing the aftermath with lazy curiosity.
“Still, that prince picked up quite the body from the fallout. Given time, he might still become a real talent. Shame, though… being a God Spark would’ve been far better for him.”
Then it clicked back to its original focus.
“Oh. Right. The little spider.”
While the voice had been lost in its own observations, Nox had never stopped.
He continued decoding the Sutra, his body pushed to extremes. His Dual Body of Extremis took his near-zero aether and relentlessly inverted it, turning absence into abundance, exhaustion into renewed circulation. Each cycle refined the venoms within him—stripping away crude toxicity, leaving behind purer and more responsive power.
Eventually, he broke through that layer.
He wasn’t just working with venoms anymore.
He pushed into something beyond—an aether that no longer behaved like simple poison, but like a higher-order toxin, one that could be shaped freely, inverted, refined, and repurposed as strength.
His Reversal Meridian Sutra hadn’t just been learned.
It had been forced to evolve him.
Quite interested, the voice stared on. What should look like an absolute calamity as the Basilisk displayed strength on a scale hardly seen on the Expanse.
“Relying on those eyes to correct the flaws in his comprehension of the Sutra… quite the idea,” the voice mused, its tone half-impressed, half-curious. “But the strain must be unbearable. He’s forcing his body to operate under extremes—endless cycles of depletion and restoration. To have your aether constantly drained and refilled like that… it’s no simple endurance. That kind of pressure would crush most beings outright.”
Still, a trace of amusement colored its tone.
“Yet it’s working. Painful, yes—but he’s using that agony to sharpen his understanding. His eyes are pushing his comprehension forward, however slightly.”
Outside the barrier, the Vipersteel Basilisk screamed—a grinding, metallic roar that tore through the forest. Its tail slammed down again, colliding with the Sutra’s golden light. Sparks erupted, dust swirling into a violent storm of molten fragments.
The scroll didn’t falter.
The voice chuckled faintly, its tone turning almost wistful.
“However much progress you manage to make…” it whispered, as the shockwaves rattled the world around Nox, “…is another question entirely.”
His breathing steadied. The ground beneath him hissed where droplets of his blood fell, steaming and freezing at the same time.
Back when Nox first received the Sutra, he’d noticed something else within it besides the poisons—it mentioned a catalyst, a potential source that could amplify the Sutra’s effect beyond simple toxin refinement.
“He said that butterfly produced impurities in a class of their own,” Nox muttered, recalling the ancient words that accompanied the Sutra. “And I managed to catch a few lines about using this technique to turn impurities into strength. If that’s the case…” His grin sharpened. “Let’s go all out.”
His aether flickered low, but his body—conditioned through the Dual Body of Extremis—refused to collapse. Every cycle of the Sutra drained him and then restored him just enough to keep going. His eyes, glowing faintly, continued decoding the Sutra’s structure, line by line. And in that moment of perfect clarity, the first technique revealed itself—a formula that demanded apower source.
And Nox had the perfect one.
“The impurities from the Godveil Butterfly…” he murmured. “Let’s see if you’re really as that voice claimed.”
From the void, the Voice stirred again, tone both curious and entertained.
“He unlocked it that quickly? Hah. Is he truly going to use the Godveil Butterfly’s impurities as his source? Bold… or insane. I should stop him, but…” it paused, the sound of amusement echoing faintly through the rift. “I kinda want to see what happens.”
The scroll that had contained the Reversal Meridian Sutra unfurled around Nox, its runes glowing. Protective, shielding his body as the impurities began to circulate.
Pain struck first—pure, searing agony that tore through every fiber of his being. His meridians flared, his skin shimmered with vapor, and his veins pulsed black. But still, he didn’t stop.
The Basilisk grew restless. Its metallic tail cracked through the air, smashing into the ground again and again. Its fangs split trees and tore through the terrain, but no matter what it did, it couldn’t pierce the veil of the Sutra’s protection.
The environment around them twisted beyond recognition—trees splintered, stone melted from the heat of raw force, and the air itself warped under the weight of their power.
But within that chaos, Nox endured.
Inside the cocoon of the Sutra’s light, the impurities of the Godveil Butterfly coursed through him—corrupt, powerful, and boundless. His scream never left his throat; the sound was swallowed by the barrier as his body began to adapt, every strand of venom, toxin, and impurity reforged into strength.
The Basilisk raged outside, yet could not touch him.
And within that storm, Nox smiled through clenched teeth.
“Impurities into strength,” he whispered. “Then let’s see how far that strength can go.”
Nox’s body pulsed violently. His veins glowed with alternating streaks of gold, blue, and soft pink hues as he absorbed as much as his body could bear. The rest was siphoned off by the scroll, sealed within its runic folds for later refinement.
Each pulse sent waves of pain through him, but beneath the agony, something began to stir.
From his back, faint outlines shimmered into view—ethereal wings, delicate and translucent like a butterfly’s, but unstable, flickering in and out of existence. They fluttered once, shedding faint motes of aetheric light before fading again.
From the void, the voice whistled softly.
“Oooh, that’s something. He actually used the first technique of the Sutra to encode the Godveil Butterfly’s traits.”
It paused, voice dripping with incredulity. “The lucky bastard even got the wings…”
Then, muttering under its breath, it added, “So what, I’m not jealous… hope that snake kills you.”
As the transformation continued, the changes began to reflect on his status screen. His stats flickered, recalibrating.
By constantly refining the poisonous nature of his webs—balancing between toxicity and harmless silk—hisIntelligence had begun to climb naturally. The mental strain of controlling both venom and purification at once trained his mind to a higher focus.
And with every cycle of aether drain and restoration, his mastery over aether manipulation deepened further still.
The sheer endurance required to withstand the pain of the Sutra’s refinement pushed hisConstitution upward as well. His body no longer buckled under pressure; instead, it adapted, hardened, evolved.
By the time the scroll’s barrier dimmed and the light faded, Nox stood still within a crater of shattered stone. His breath steadied as he lifted his gaze.
Above him, the Vipersteel Basilisk loomed—its form warped and monstrous. Its once sleek, metallic body had twisted in fury, scales cracking to reveal glowing veins of venom beneath. The creature’s rage had changed it, forcing an unnatural evolution born purely from hatred.
Nox exhaled slowly, feeling the subtle hum of his reborn body—the way his veins flowed smoother, the way his meridians no longer resisted the circulation of the Sutra. His senses sharpened beyond what they had ever been.
He stared up at the overgrown serpent, faint light glinting in his eyes.
“So…” he murmured, flexing his hand as residual aether rippled off his skin, “round two?”
Nox raised his hand, and in an instant, webs erupted from his palms—fast, and near invisible. They streaked through the air like silver lightning, connecting to the Vipersteel Basilisk.
The serpent didn’t bother to dodge. It didn’t need to—or so it believed.
That was a mistake.
A thunderous hiss split the air as the webs made contact. The Basilisk recoiled violently, its massive body twisting in pain as several of its scales sizzled and warped. A few melted clean off, steam and black smoke rising from the wounds. The air filled with the scent of scorched metal.
The Basilisk’s eyes snapped toward Nox, venomous fury gleaming in their molten depths—only to find him already in motion.
Nox blurred forward, closing the distance in a single breath. Webcutter gleamed in his grip, the blade now laced with layers of refined silk that shimmered with faint colorful light. He swung without hesitation, every ounce of his newfound strength behind it.
The sword struck—hard.
Rather than simply slicing, the web-coated blade melted through the Basilisk’s scales, the toxic energy corroding the metal upon contact. The cut wasn’t deep, but it burned, eating away at the edges like acid.
The Basilisk reared back, enraged beyond reason. Its head whipped forward like a cannon shell, the sheer pressure screaming through the air. Before Nox could fully pull back, its fangs sank deep into his torso.
The impact forced the air from his lungs. His health bar plummeted, crimson bleeding across his vision.
For a brief moment, death seemed absolute.
But the Basilisk was still a serpent—a creature born of venom. Its prideful toxins surged into Nox’s body, flooding his veins in a lethal tide.
And then, something went wrong.
The Basilisk froze.
Its venom—its deadliest weapon—wasn’t killing him. It was healing him.
Nox’s health, which had dropped to a sliver, began climbing rapidly. His veins glowed with faint light as the Reversal Meridian Sutra activated instinctively, converting the poison into raw vitality. The Basilisk’s venom, only accelerated the process.
“What—!?” The creature’s body convulsed, sensing something horribly wrong.
Nox’s expression didn’t change. He gritted his teeth, eyes burning with focus as he gathered his strength.
“Thanks for the refill,” he muttered.
Webs coiled around his fist. With a violent motion, he slammed his punch upward into the Basilisk’s head.
The impact echoed like thunder. Bone and metal clashed, the blow strong enough to jolt the serpent’s skull and dislodge its fangs from his body.
The Basilisk reeled back, hissing furiously, venom dripping from its jaws.
Nox exhaled sharply, blood still running down his torso but his stance steady. His breathing was ragged, but his eyes were sharp, glinting like shards of silver web.
“Hey, voice,” Nox said between breaths, his tone calm despite the chaos. “Judging from your jealousy earlier… I take it you’re just a much bigger spider?”
There was a long pause. Then a defensive scoff echoed faintly in his head.
“So what if I am? And I’m not jealous.”
Nox smirked, swiping through the system window that had just appeared before him. “Sure you’re not,” he said dryly. “I just want to show you what a mere human can do to outshine all those so-called special races.”
The list before him glowed with the light of a new achievement.
[Level Up Achieved: Lv. 10]
[Class Selection Available.]
The Reversal Meridian Sutra hadn’t just strengthened his body—it had accelerated his growth entirely. The constant circulation of refined aether and poison had given him the experience needed to reach the next threshold. His body and mind had evolved in tandem, and now the system recognized it.
He scrolled through the available options, eyes locking onto one that stood out—an elegant title glowing with faint green and violet hues.
[Class Unlocked: Godveil Spider.]
The voice went silent for a long moment, its tone unreadable when it finally spoke.
“Godveil Spider? As a human… to think you’d actually qualify for such an exalted class. I’m impressed.” A pause followed, and then a dismissive huff. “But it’s just that—not much in the grand scheme of things.”
Nox only smiled, unfazed.
The voice muttered on, half in thought, half in fascination.
“To think he actually unlocked his Constitution and Intelligence stats naturally… that’s what’s truly impressive. His Strength isn’t far behind either.” Its tone shifted, almost grudgingly respectful. “That Sutra really does produce Ardent level candidates…”
The air trembled as Nox confirmed his choice. The system’s light expanded, threads of aether swirling around him like woven silk. His veins pulsed with the glow of dual-colored energy— gold, blue, and soft pink hues from the Godveil Butterfly’s impurities and silver from his evolved poison.
The voice chuckled lowly, almost curious now.
“Godveil Spider, huh? Let’s see what you can really do.”