Chapter 37 - 37: Choice

"Run, everyone run!"

Those who were still left in the neighborhood all jumped to their houses to retrieve their most prized possessions before completely running away from the Yellow Portal.

Van was also deliberating on whether he should run away. His heart was beating so fast that it might leap off from his body. Portal creatures, monsters were about to come out of the Portal. He had only unlocked his System, trying to fight the creatures from the Portal would be tantamount to suicide.

...Should he run?

But as soon as he saw the children that were left behind by their parents, their faces, covered in mud as they tripped on the grimy ground because their legs were not allowing them to run as fast…

...Van immediately had his choice.

He was now a System Holder. Its meaning may have been devalued for Van due to people like Gerald, but for these children, Van was their only hope. And so, with several deep breaths, he tried to calm himself down. Trying to drown out the screams of the people with the sound of his breaths.

And soon, the rumbling of the air stopped, and a leg of an insect quickly revealed itself from the portal. The leg was almost as long as Van's arms, filled with tiny disheveled hairs protruding out from its black limbs.

And with a slight chitter, the leg moved forward, revealing its set.

"A… giant spider?", Van could not help but gulp as he slightly backed away from the creature that was crawling its way out of the Portal. And soon, all the hairs in Van's skin stood up as the spider completely revealed itself.

"What… the…", were the only words that came out of Van's mouth as he stared at the face of the spider. A face that it shouldn't have in the first place-- the face of a human baby.

The creatures of the Portals… looked like this? Van has seen a number of them from the Deadzone, but only from a mile away and only as a silhouette or as a shadow. He had seen one from books and scriptures, but never a live one, not this close… and definitely not one that looked like this.

Come to think of it, the skewers that Harvey bought numerous times from the market were from the meat of the creatures from the Portal. Was one of the skewers… from this spider?

Van quickly shook his head, this was not the time to be thinking of unnecessary things. Even though he almost wanted to puke from the thought, he tried his best to calm himself down as he looked for a weapon he can use. It seemed that it hadn't noticed him yet, so this was his best chance to find one.

The spider-human baby in front of him was big, almost half his size. But still, as long as it was not bigger than him, then he still had a chance of squashing it into pieces.

And so, Van quickly looked around. And instantly, his eyes laid on where the gryphons used to be.

'This… did it get loose due to the panic earlier?', Van quickly picked up some sort of curved pointed steel on the ground, 'A gryphon's gaff?'

A gryphon's gaff is a bracelet with a curved, sharp spike. They attach it on a gryphon's toes to be used as their weapon, mostly in illegal cockfights. Van was very familiar with this as this is one of his father's past times.

He could not help but click his tongue as he was reminded of his father in the most peculiar moment.

"Better than nothing", he whispered as he tried to wrap the brace around his left arm, "...Oh", and surprisingly enough, due to his small arms, it fitted perfectly.

And without any more delay, he activated his [Time Perception] skill as he rushed towards the distracted spider-human baby thing. And although there was a bit of resistance, his newly found weapon completely penetrated the spider's body as he punched through it with his speed.

Van made sure to avoid its face, as it did not really feel right for him to… pierce its baby human-looking face.

Three strikes. Van pierced the spider-human baby's body three times from different angles before he retreated a few meters and cancelled his skills.

Van's heart was beating erratically as he stared at the unmoving spider. "Is it dead?", he muttered, his breathing almost as uncontrollable as the beating of his heart.

"!!!"

But then, Van could not help but flinch as the spider suddenly rushed towards him without warning. Due to the sudden movement, Van could not help but trip backward, his buttocks hitting the cold hard ground.

"Oh f--", Van was about to activate his [Time Perception] skill again, but the spider-human baby suddenly shrieked as it dropped to the ground, sliding its body all the way in front of Van's feet.

"This…", even with 3 holes in its body, it was still able to momentarily move. Van couldn't imagine what would happen if a swarm of them came rushing out of the Portal. A thought that probably should not have surfaced in his mind, because as soon as it did, another spider crawled its way out of the Yellow Portal.

Like Explorers, Portals also had ranks. With each color representing different ranks. Van heard in some of the lectures that the ranks were classified in letters, from Rank F to Rank S. He was still busy trying his best to learn how to read back then so he couldn't really remember what the colors corresponded to. But there was one thing he knew, as long as no one goes inside the Portal, the creatures won't stop coming out of it.

They were like a plug to a punctured barrel, as the instructor worded it.

As for Van, the only word that could come out from his mouth right now was,

"...f*ck"

And so, without a second thought, Van activated his [Time Perception] once more and rushed towards the spider and punched a hole through its body multiple times. This time, however, Van did not retreat back. Instead, he ran towards the Portal.

"Grah!"

Van screamed his lungs out as his foot passed through the portal. He did not know what awaited him inside, but still…

...He ran.

[Labour: Defeat the Arachnaea]