All My Summons Become Divine Girls

Chapter 187: True Form

The pressure coming off the demon girl pinned Hajin to the cratered wall, making it impossible for him to even draw a full breath. The purple grain in the air thickened into a heavy fog, the ground beneath them splitting wider as the gate’s unstable dimension groaned under the weight.

"I told you," Cessy said, her voice cutting through the tearing sound of the dimension with perfect clarity, "you are not leaving me a choice here."

The spider did not wait for her to finish, her legs launching her massive body across the floor toward the girl. Cessy didn’t dodge this time, her right hand lifting to catch the descending weight of the ten-shard anomaly without so much as bending her knees.

A shockwave of displaced air blasted across the pit, throwing Hajin harder into the wall as the ground under Cessy’s feet disintegrated into fine dust.

’She caught it,’ Hajin thought, his eyes tracking the impossible stop of the spider’s momentum through the thick dust, ’she really caught a building-sized anomaly dropping its full weight on her with one hand.’

The spider thrashed against her grip, venom spraying from her mandibles as she tried to force her weight down onto the girl. Cessy just tilted her head, her smile widening into something entirely hollow, her claws digging deep into the spider’s hardened carapace.

"You should have just taken the deal, mommy," she said, her voice dropping into a cold resonance that rattled the remaining roots overhead.

Black mana flared from her hand, shooting up the spider’s leg in jagged lines, the corruption eating through the anomaly’s armor in seconds. The spider shrieked, a sound that pierced right through Hajin’s eardrums, her massive body convulsing as the demonic mana ripped into her core.

She tried to tear herself away, but Cessy’s grip held firm, pulling the monster down into a devastating backhand that shattered the side of the pit.

Hajin watched the ten-shard boss get thrown like a ragdoll, realizing the gap between him and this demon was wider than he could even measure.

The entire dimension violently shuddered right after the impact, the sky above them cracking open to reveal a void of swirling purple static.

[ Warning: Severe Dimensional Instability ]

[ Immediate Evacuation Recommended ]

The system warning flared bright red across his vision, but he couldn’t move his legs to run even if there was an exit to take. The gate was tearing itself apart under the sheer density of Cessy’s unleashed mana, the unstable pocket dimension unable to hold a full-power anomaly.

’She’s going to collapse the whole gate with us in it,’ he thought, forcing his head up to look at the widening tear in the sky. He tried to pull the chain up, intending to anchor himself to something solid, but his right arm refused to respond.

Cessy stepped over the rubble toward the twitching spider, her tail dragging a deep groove through the ground behind her.

The spider tried to rise, three of her legs bent at wrong angles, but she was already bleeding out from the corruption eating her core.

"I really liked your hunters," she said, stepping right up to the spider’s lowered face, "but you forgot who put you here in the first place."

She drove her hand straight into the spider’s chest, punching through the thick armor to close her claws around the monster’s core.

Before she could crush it, a violent surge of crimson mana erupted from the spider, blasting outward like a detonating bomb. The shockwave slammed into Cessy point-blank, throwing her violently backward while pushing Hajin even harder into the pit wall.

’What the hell was that,’ he thought, dragging a hand across his face to clear the dust from his eyes.

A low, rumbling sound started rolling through the crumbling pit, vibrating deep in Hajin’s chest before he realized it was laughter. The massive spider was laughing at them, the sound crawling over the ground as thick, boiling steam started pouring off her carapace.

"You arrogant little child," she said, her voice dropping its beast-like rumble for something far smoother and infinitely colder.

The steam hissed as it rapidly expanded, completely swallowing her building-sized body until nothing but a massive wall of white fog remained. The violent mana continued to surge from the center of the cloud, climbing higher with every second that passed.

"You thought you could walk into my domain and dictate terms to me," she went on, her voice projecting effortlessly through the boiling steam. "You forgot that I have been eating the souls of this world long before you ever crawled out of the dark."

Hajin pushed himself up against the wall, his Divine Eye screaming at him as he tracked the violent shift in the monster’s signature. The sprawling energy of her beast form was violently tearing itself apart, condensing rapidly into a terrifyingly small and impossibly dense point.

’This is bad,’ he thought, his stomach sinking as the crushing weight of that condensed mana threatened to buckle his knees.

The fog parted as a figure stepped out, leaving the steam rolling off her shoulders in slow waves. She was human-sized now, walking on two slender legs, her upper body draped in a sleek dress woven from dark crimson webs.

She still had four extra eyes spaced perfectly above her main ones, her long black hair drifting through the air like it was underwater.

The suffocating pressure radiating off her humanoid form was infinitely heavier than anything her massive beast body had managed to produce.

Hajin tightened his grip on the chain, staring at the true shape of the ten-shard boss across the pit. She had never been taking him seriously to begin with, treating their entire fight like a trivial game while staying in her most cumbersome form.

"You promised me a meal worth the trouble of growing here," she said, tilting her chin up as she looked down at Cessy. "I think the flesh of the little demon who brought me here will finally be enough to satisfy my hunger."

Cessy landed lightly on her feet a dozen yards away, wiping a streak of dark blood from her cheek with the back of her hand.

The bubbly smile was completely gone from her face, her eyes narrowing as her own purple mana flared up to meet the spider’s crimson aura.

"Well," she said, her voice dropping all of its warmth to match the crushing gravity of the collapsing pit, "this just got a lot more complicated."

The spider vanished from her spot, reappearing directly above the Cessy with a downward sweep of her claws. Cessy blurred out of the way just in time, the resulting impact shattering the ground where she had been standing.

’This is so annoying,’ Cessy thought, swaying around another blindingly fast strike that carved a trench into the ground. ’If I actually use my full strength here, this unstable pocket dimension is going to collapse instantly.’

She flipped backward to put some distance between them, clicking her tongue in irritation as she suppressed her surging purple mana. ’I will survive the collapse without a scratch, but Hajin is definitely going to die.’

’Dammit,’ she cursed silently, dodging a volley of razor-sharp webs that the boss sent flying across the pit.

She kept her hands carefully restrained, refusing to let the heavy demonic energy fully unleash even as the anomaly pressed the attack.

She parried another claw strike, letting the momentum carry her backward until she landed directly beside Hajin. The mana around her hands flickered, her breathing coming just a fraction faster than before as she looked down at him.

"Hey, big brother," she said, her eyes locking onto his as another explosion shook the pit behind her. "I’m going to need you to do me a massive favor and help me kill this thing, ok?"