It was a little past eleven at night, on the edge of Kuoh Town's industrial district.
The moon was smothered by heavy clouds, only occasionally leaking a few stingy strands of pallid light.
Abandoned factories and warehouses sprawled like the weathered skeletons of dead beasts, crouched in a darkness so thick it felt solid, their outlines blurred and warped.
The night wind threaded through rusted pipes and broken windows, letting out a low, keening whine that only deepened the place's eerie, ill-omened feel.
Genichi walked alone along a factory road pocked with potholes and stubborn weeds. He wore dark, practical clothes suited for movement, his steps light enough to make almost no sound.
The darkness didn't bother him in the slightest. After reincarnating as a devil, he had gained night vision. The scene in front of him looked as if a faint green filter had been laid over it. Not bright, but clear enough.
Night and day were no different to him now.
According to the intel Rias had provided, the Stray Devil responsible for several recent attacks around Kuoh Town had last been traced to the deepest part of this abandoned industrial zone, inside a large warehouse.
Eliminating that threat was the first live mission Rias had given him.
It was a test of his worth as a newly made servant, and the first step in hardening him through necessary experience.
The warehouse's massive iron doors were left slightly ajar. In the wind, the corroded hinges occasionally let out a faint, grating squeal that sounded like a dying man's sigh.
Genichi didn't hesitate. He pushed one door open just wide enough to slip through, then slid inside.
Beyond the threshold was even deeper darkness, and a wave of sickly sweet stench that hit him like a wall.
It was so strong it made him want to gag. Like spoiled honey mixed with thick blood, then tainted by the unmistakable rank of bodily fluids.
The smell was so sticky it might as well have been physical, clinging to his nose and the back of his throat. Genichi's stomach churned and his brows knotted tight.
"Hng…"
He forced down the reflexive nausea, holding his breath for a few seconds and letting his body adjust.
"So it really is here."
The moment that thought settled, his alertness snapped to its peak.
The warehouse was unnervingly empty.
The machinery and cargo were long gone, hauled away or rusted into useless wreckage. All that remained was a thick layer of dust on the floor, scattered industrial trash, and dark stains with shapes he didn't want to identify too closely.
Up near the ceiling, thick steel beams crisscrossed overhead, casting twisted, vicious shadows. The space was so open it was almost completely unobstructed.
Genichi's gaze swept across the ground, the walls, every corner, as if he were a precision scanner.
No target.
That wasn't surprising.
A Stray Devil capable of multiple attacks, and smart enough to hide, wasn't going to sprawl in the middle of the warehouse and wait.
If it wasn't on the ground…
A chill of warning cut through him. Genichi lifted his head, eyes snapping upward toward the space above.
Directly over the warehouse's central area, the beams weren't empty.
Countless strands of nearly transparent silk stretched and crossed, layered over one another, woven in an intricate, organized pattern into a massive three-dimensional web that covered a wide swath of the ceiling space.
And at the center of that web, a figure lay motionless, crouched, embedded in the network of threads.
It was a monster.
Its upper body still clung to the rough outline of a human woman, but everything below the waist had fused into a spider's body.
The skin on its upper half was an unhealthy blue-gray, streaked with dark red, warped lines like burst veins or cracked flesh.
Long black hair hung in filthy tangles like seaweed, hiding most of its face, but the sharp chin and the line of its throat suggested that once, it might have been beautiful.
Its arms still looked mostly human. Only the nails had changed, grown long and jet-black into sharp points. Its fingers twitched idly, plucking at the surrounding strands and making a faint, dry whisper of sound.
But from the waist down, the human shape ended abruptly.
In its place was a swollen, massive spider abdomen covered in glossy, hard chitin.
The shell gleamed with a sickening blend of dark violet and ink-green, patterned with markings that made Genichi's scalp prickle. Bristly black hairs sprouted thickly across it.
Eight thick, powerful legs, joints knotted and ridged with barbs, clung to the web's strands. They were curled slightly, like a bow drawn tight and ready to release.
Its eyes were closed. Its chest rose and fell slowly, as if it were asleep.
Genichi held his breath, lowering his body a fraction, compressing his presence as much as possible.
Charging straight in and trading blows would be the stupidest option.
His mind raced, coldly assessing the situation. His eyes darted across the floor and around the nest, searching for a weakness or terrain he could use.
Then, as if it had sensed the fresh devil aura below, the Stray Devil's closed eyes opened.
They weren't human eyes.
They were compound eyes, insect-like, glowing with a cold, eerie green, like two strange gemstones embedded in a blue-gray face.
Countless tiny facets rotated at once, capturing Genichi's figure with perfect accuracy. The gaze was icy and greedy, stripped of anything human, stripped of any rational devil's restraint. All that remained was a predator's pure killing intent.
"Shhh… hhk…"
A warped hiss, like a leaking bellows, crawled out from its mouthparts, where dense rows of fine, needlelike teeth glinted.
At the same time, its huge spider body began to move along the web.
Silent. Fast. Its legs slid across the strands so smoothly they barely caused a tremor.
It had spotted him.
Genichi didn't hesitate for even an instant. He snapped his left hand up.
Crimson light erupted, hot yet contained, and a ripple of demonic power surged outward.
The Boosted Gear covered his left hand and forearm in an instant, savage and imposing. The gem set into the gauntlet flared with a blood-red glow, like a dragon's eye opening.
"Boost!"
In that heartbeat, Genichi felt a roaring torrent of power flood out of the gauntlet and tear through his entire body.
Not just raw muscle. His nerves, reflex speed, dynamic vision, the flow of his demonic power, even his body's resilience. Everything, all at once, became unmistakably, brutally clear.
Doubled.
His cells brimmed with a fullness and strength he'd never felt before.
And almost the exact moment the boost completed, the attack came down.
The Stray Devil's swollen abdomen tightened. From its spinnerets, a strand of webbing as thick as a child's arm shot out at terrifying speed.
A nearly transparent, viscous bolt, like a pale spear of death, aimed straight for Genichi's face.
The webbing shimmered with a faint, unsettling green. Poison, or something worse. Corrosive.
Genichi's pupils tightened.
The boost-enhanced reaction time snapped into place like a switch being flipped.
He drove off the ground.
A dull boom sounded as his foot hit, kicking up a ring of dust.
Where he'd been standing, there was only drifting debris.
His body had already vanished, moving so fast it left the hint of an afterimage.
At the same time, the familiar tingling and tearing sensation spread across his shoulder blades. A pair of dark red devil wings burst out, spreading wide, then snapping down in a powerful beat.
The gust whipped dust and grit off the floor. Using the combined force of his leap and the lift from his wings, Genichi angled upward, narrowly slipping past the lethal webbing.
The strand slapped into a rusted steel pillar behind where he'd been standing, wrapping around it several times with a wet snap.
The sticky fluid immediately began eating into the metal.
Sizzle.
A faint hiss of smoke rose, tinted with pale green.
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