Jade sent a psychic message saying “I know, right? How do you know me though?” The Arachni replied “Really? You’re not even going to ask me for my name? You see a friendly neighborhood spidey and you just get to be business?”

Jade chuckled and said “What’s your name?” The Arachni replied “Fernandez, at least that’s the name of the person I got all these memories from” Jake was taken aback and said “Were you reincarnated?”

The Arachni laughed and said “I guess it might look like that from another perspective. I got human memories when I killed Fernandez; I was just a regular dumb monster before that. That’s why I’m not like the others that just kill anything they see. I don’t mind a corporation between both of us. I’m a Conqueror by the way”

Jade was silent for a moment before saying “For a good corporation we have to set a ground of trust. I need to understand, many monsters have killed humans before and none of them have ever gotten memories. I understand that you’re trying to say you’re a special case but you could have just captured a person and gotten all this information from the person. You are a Rank 20 after all, you might be capable of things I deem impossible”

The Arachnid sighed and said “I guess you’re right. I don’t really understand much about how I got these memories but I do know that Fernandez was quite injured when I killed him but there were only corpses of all sorts of monsters around him. I just gave him the final blow and my IP said that I had completed a hidden quest and I got the title, Weed Killer. After that I got a bunch of memories that I assume are from the guy I killed”.

Jade thought ‘A hidden quest. IP what quest might that be?’

The moment Jade asked the Arachni jumped toward him, no, it was more like it teleported to where he was. Through Horus, Jade sensed the space around him rippling and in response he gave a mental command to his portal storage to send him back to his lab. Before the portal storage could activate its circuits and teleport Jade away, the head of the Arachni appeared before him, the mandibles open, ready to snap Jade in two.

Jade looked into the Arachni’s eyes and it showed the scene behind him. There were 12 identical Arachni heads around Jade, the heads were identical but there were subtle differences between their facial features. They all had their mandible open, ready to snap.

The mandibles of the Arachni were closing when something shot from its eye into Jade’s eye. The mandibles of the Arachni closed and the results were clear… it got nothing.

“KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!”The Arachni screeched in frustration.

…

Jade, back in his lab, breathed heavily as the scenes from a second ago replayed in his mind. His portal had teleported him away before the spider could touch him but he remembered the black beam that entered his eye and was worried.

‘Information on the Weed Killer quest can only be acquired at Rank 15 and above’ Jade’s IP said shocking him as he realized ‘The spider wasn’t lying? I thought it was just saying anything to get my guard down but it is actually the truth?’

Jade thought for a while and realized ‘Of course it wasn’t lying. The spider doesn’t know me, it doesn’t know if I would be able to see through its lies and run away so I chose to stall me with the truth. This just makes things weirder, why is it targeting me specifically? I’m far lower in Rank compared to it. Could it be that I’m a Weed? And if it killed me it would get an achievement? But I’m not a Weed, I don’t even know what a weed is. Is there a hidden quest that rewards Conquerors that kill hunters? Possible, wait’

Jade remembered the black beam again and thought ‘Could that have been its purpose? Is the beam some sort of tracker? It could teleport from what I’ve seen so maybe the beam is a sort of marker that can allow it reach this dimension’

Jade was immediately alerted and gathered various explosives around him. If the spider was going to fight him, he wouldn’t hesitate to put it at a disadvantage. The explosives would destroy the lab causing the oxygen to escape in to the vacuum of space in the Room. Jade didn’t know whether the spider needed oxygen to live but he would take all that he could get.

Jade waited patiently for hours wearing an oxygen mask on his face but his wait was pointless. The spider couldn’t get to the lab and the beam wasn’t even part of its plans, in fact the spider didn’t even notice the beam. As time passed Jade wondered whether the beam was just a figment of his imagination. As unlikely as it may seem Jade knew that fear played tricks on the mind when it was in control and since his mind had a higher maximum en-code than his senses it could probably deceive them,

But he was wrong.

As if pronouncing his death Jade’s IP said [You have been infected by a Rank 27 Soul Parasite] [Your Soul is being consumed]. Jade knelt on the floor, despair painted across his face as he said in a low voice “I’m fucked”.

A Rank 20 was manageable but Rank 27 was just impossible. The creature that gave him his biggest and most traumatizing experience was Rank 28. What was inside him was just one Rank below that.

Jade closed his eyes and entered his soul realm. Everything was fine but then he felt a difference. I the distance of the galaxy that was his soul he saw a rat. The rat was bigger than the palms he was staying between and it looked at him with greed and hunger.

The rat’s body seemed to be made of constellations and it opened its mouth and bit into a planet. An intense feeling of wrongness filled Jade’s consciousness and he screamed inaudibly.

The rat continued to eat planet after planet as Jade screamed. He left the soul realm and instantly did anything he could to rid himself of the wrongness. He teleported from place to place hoping that he could escape the Soul Parasite the same way he escaped the Infant Ocean Master but it was fruitless.

The feeling that filled Jade’s mind became clearer as time went on. It was as if he had forgotten something and was trying so hard to remember but it was just at the edge of his mind and he just couldn’t remember. Except this feeling was that but amplified by many magnitudes.

Jade teleported back to his lab and rolled on the floor, tears filled his eyes, snot ran from his nose and drool from his mouth as he screamed. He hit his head on the floor and walls multiple times and even started contemplating killing himself to be free from the torment but he realized something. He wouldn’t be free even if he died; the parasite was in his soul, not his body.

The feeling intensified continuously until after some hours, it stopped. Jade stopped thinking, closed his eyes and slept instantly.