OP Absorption
Chapter 90: Intruders

Chapter 90: Intruders

Scarlet flopped back onto the surprisingly comfortable bed. The room Arachne had shown her to was... functional. Clean lines, muted colors, no frills.

A far cry from the opulent chambers she’d sometimes glimpsed in Castle Varn, but infinitely better than the sterile holding cells or rough field camps she was more accustomed to.

Honestly, after getting shot full of holes, a soft bed and four solid walls felt like absolute luxury.

She stared up at the ceiling, which seemed to be made of the same smooth, dark stone as the throne room. This whole place was weird.

Fin’s personal dimension? ’How does a kid stumble into owning something like this?’ He was strong, sure.

That display back there, that power, the sheer pressure... S-rank? Definitely. Probably low-to-mid tier, if she had to guess. The way he healed her, that green energy felt different, not like the raw destructive power of the Mana Cell she sensed before.

’He’s got layers,’ she mused, rubbing her side where the worst wound had been. It barely twinged now. Impressive healing.

But still... Varn was Varn. Ancient, powerful, playing games on a scale Fin couldn’t even comprehend yet. Fin was strong, maybe even King-level potential like she sensed, but raw power wasn’t everything.

Varn had centuries of experience, influence, armies... Fin was just a kid who got lucky with an artifact and somehow manifested a domain.

’Yeah, definitely need to be careful around him. Interesting, maybe. Powerful, yes. But survivable? Long term? Jury’s still out.’ Sticking around felt like the least bad option for now, though.

Freedom was nice, but being hunted by both Varn and the Association sounded exhausting.

The door slid open without a sound, interrupting her thoughts. Arachne stood there, her expression tight, urgent.

Scarlet pushed herself up on her elbows, annoyance flickering. "Don’t you people knock?" she drawled.

Arachne ignored the sarcasm completely, her dark eyes fixed on her. "There is no time for pleasantries. We have intruders."

Scarlet blinked. "Intruders? Here? In... whatever this place is?" That seemed unlikely. This dimension felt sealed, personal.

"Domain raid," she stated flatly, the words dropping like stones into the quiet room.

Scarlet froze. The casual annoyance vanished, replaced by a sudden, sharp chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.

’Domain raid?’ Oh, she knew that term. Not because Varn’s fortress had ever been successfully raided – gods, no. But because she’d been on raids. Part of Varn’s elite teams, punching through the weaker pocket dimensions of lesser lords, tearing them apart, claiming resources, subjugating survivors.

It was brutal, efficient, and terrifyingly effective. And it only happened when the attacker was confident they could overwhelm the owner.

Weak domains are easy targets.

’Shit,’ she thought, scrambling off the bed, her earlier injuries momentarily forgotten in the face of this new, potentially far greater threat. ’Someone found this place already? And they think they can take it?’

"Where’s Fin?" she demanded, instinctively looking for the powerhouse who owned this bizarre dimension. He handled those Association suits easily enough.

Arachne moved, a blur, eerily reminiscent of her earlier threat. She stopped inches from Scarlet, one hand raised slightly, fingers subtly curled. Not claws this time, but the implicit danger was just as clear. Intense, protective fury flared in her eyes.

"Watch your mouth when you address His Highness," she hissed, her voice low and dangerous.

Scarlet instinctively recoiled, scoffing to cover her surprise at the ferocity of the reaction. ’Gods, she’s really drunk the Kool-Aid, hasn’t she? Brainwashed servant type.’

"My Lord is resting," she continued, lowering her hand but keeping her glare fixed on Scarlet. "He has expended considerable energy. He will not be disturbed." The finality in her tone was absolute. "We will deal with this."

"We?" Scarlet echoed incredulously. "You and me? Against whoever is strong enough to try and raid a domain?" This was insane.

Fin was their only chance!

"His Highness requires recovery," she stated, unwavering. "His safety is paramount. We are his shield. We will suffice."

Scarlet wanted to argue, wanted to run, but... where? You couldn’t just walk out of a domain. Only the owner, the Dominus, could create stable exits. Without Fin, they were trapped in here with whatever was coming.

Her stomach clenched. Trapped. Cornered. Fighting for her life alongside a possibly homicidal spider-girl servant against unknown, powerful intruders who thought they could take on an S-rank anomaly and his entire dimension.

’Well,’ she thought with a surge of bleak, fatalistic humour, ’at least it’s not boring.’

She forced a grin, cracking her knuckles. "Alright then, slave-girl. Lead the way. Let’s see who decided to crash the party." She had no choice but to fight. Again. Freedom was proving to be ridiculously complicated.

Arachne moved with silent efficiency, leading Scarlet down a corridor Scarlet hadn’t noticed before. It ended at a heavy, reinforced door that slid open at Arachne’s touch, revealing a room that smelled faintly of oil and whetstones.

A weapons room. ’Okay, guess even personal dimensions need an armoury,’ Scarlet thought wryly.

It wasn’t lavish like Varn’s vaults, filled with cursed blades and artifact weapons. This was more practical. Racks held simple swords, sturdy axes, bows, and various utilitarian combat tools. Nothing glowed with ominous power, but everything looked sharp, well-maintained. Functional.

Arachne bypassed the larger weapons, heading straight for a display case holding an assortment of knives and daggers. Her fingers, nimble even in their human guise, selected a matched pair of wickedly curved short knives.

Their dark metal seemed to absorb the light. She tucked them into hidden sheaths strapped to her thighs with practiced ease.

’Short blades. Assassin style,’ Scarlet observed. ’Figures.’ Despite the human appearance, the core of the spider-killer remained. Scarlet almost wished she hadn’t tossed her own gun away so carelessly earlier.

Her backup daggers felt inadequate now.

Before leaving the relative safety of the castle, Arachne paused outside another door, listening intently for a moment. She cracked it open silently, peering inside. Meg lay curled on her side in a simple bed, fast asleep, her breathing soft and even.

The bruises on her face stood out starkly against her pale skin. Arachne watched her for a second, her expression unreadable, then quietly closed the door.

"She sleeps," she stated softly, turning back to Scarlet. "Let us move."

They exited the structure through a side door, stepping out not into empty void, but into... a forest? Towering trees with dark, gnarled bark loomed over them, their leaves forming a thick canopy that blotted out the nebula-sky visible from the castle windows. T

he air felt cool, damp, carrying the scent of earth and something else... a faint, electric tang of wrongness. The mana leak.

Arachne set off immediately, moving silently through the undergrowth, her senses clearly focused. Scarlet followed, limping only slightly now, her enhanced constitution aided by Fin’s healing doing its work.

Still, she felt exposed. This forest felt quiet, unnervingly quiet. No birdsong, no rustling animals, just the soft pad of their footsteps on mossy ground and the distant, almost subliminal thrum of the domain’s power.

’This whole place feels weird,’ She thought, scanning the dense shadows between the trees. ’Like it’s holding its breath.’ Her instincts screamed at her to be alert. They were walking away from the center of power, towards a breach. Towards danger.

And Fin, their ace-in-the-hole, was sleeping soundly miles away. ’Great plan, Scar. Really top-notch survival instincts kicking in.’

They walked deeper and deeper into the woods, the feeling of wrongness growing stronger, the air becoming heavier, charged. The mana leak wasn’t just a scent anymore; it was a pressure against the skin, a dissonant chord vibrating in the otherwise stable harmony of the domain.

Finally, Arachne stopped abruptly in a small clearing. Ahead, the air shimmered strangely. It looked like a pane of glass had shattered mid-air, the fragments hanging suspended, outlining a jagged, vertical crack about six feet high.

Through the distorted fissure, Scarlet couldn’t see clearly, just warped shapes and a faint, sickly greenish light spilling out. The source of the intrusion.

"They came through here," Arachne murmured, her voice low. She crouched down, placing a hand flat on the mossy ground near the base of the crack, closing her eyes, likely trying to sense traces, numbers, anything.

Scarlet watched her, scanning the surrounding trees, every nerve ending on high alert. This felt too exposed. Too quiet. ’It’s an ambush, you idiot,’ her training screamed silently. ’They know someone’s coming.’

Just as the thought solidified, Arachne’s head snapped up. A flicker of movement from the treeline opposite the crack – something dark whistled through the air, aimed straight at her face.

Fast. Lethal.

She reacted with impossible speed, twisting her body sideways, the dark projectile – a crudely made throwing knife – slicing through the air where her head had been a fraction of a second before. It thudded harmlessly into the trunk of a tree behind her. Her reflexes, honed over countless hunts, were still razor sharp.

Before Scarlet could even curse, figures erupted from the dense shadows surrounding the clearing. Not humans.

Five of them.

Tall, heavily muscled, covered in thick, dark fur. Snarling muzzles filled with sharp teeth, pointed ears twitching, glowing yellow eyes fixing on them with predatory hunger. Claws extended from their powerful hands.

Werewolves. Or something damn close.

’Oh, you have got to be kidding me,’ Scarlet thought, instinctively dropping into a fighting stance, her own daggers flashing into her hands.

Five hostiles. Big ones. And she was stuck playing bodyguard with a possibly homicidal assassin girl against a pack of werewolves who’d just tried to shank her new partner.

Her day just kept getting better and better.

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