I Became a Tentacle Monster Blooming in the Academy Garden 129

## Chapter 129 – I Don’t Want to Go Up

The entrance to the tunnel, now blocked as if it had never existed, left behind only thick smoke.

Pina’s expression, as she stared at it, was turning to despair.

Having lost her last hope, the only thing she could possibly rely on, her mind was filled with bewilderment, and she seemed incapable of even normal thought.

“What do I do… what do I do…”

She had lost even her makeshift shelter, and someone who heard the tunnel collapsing might come this way.

Beside Rea, who was anxiously embracing the children, Rea was staring at the collapsed tunnel entrance with a gloomy expression.

There were no more chances.

Whatever she ended up doing, the time for the choice she had been putting off had arrived.

“There’s nothing else we can do…
You should go and hide…”

“But…”

The way back was blocked.

There was no longer any option of returning.

The only choice left was to carry out what she had been thinking about.

“What’s going on…?”

“I heard a loud noise?”

As the sound of people chattering grew closer, Rea slowly lowered her eyes and gently raised her hand in front of her.

Sharp claws, pulled out with a rustle, reflected the sunlight, dazzling her own eyes with iridescent light.

‘This will be enough…’

It would be a painful method, but this would finally be the end.

She wouldn’t have to worry or feel heartache anymore; she could go to her friend who was waiting for her.

She brought the tip of her trembling claw to her neck, and only then could she manage a small smile.

The sensation of sharp claws pressing firmly against the soft skin of her neck.

And the feeling of tiny droplets of blood beading on her skin.

Still, she didn’t want to suffer for a long time before leaving.

Rea gently closed her trembling eyelids and was about to quickly slash her neck when she was stopped by the sound of small, plaintive cries coming from beside her.

“Hic… what do we do…?
Are we going to get caught…?”

“N-no… it’s okay… it’s not…
We’ll be alright…
So stop… I’m okay… hic…”

“What do we do… I don’t want to, Unni…!!
I’m scared…!! If we get caught this time… this time…!!”

Rea, who had unconsciously opened her eyes and looked down at Pina, who was embracing the two children trembling with anxiety, eventually dropped her hand from her neck with an indescribable feeling.

They should be irrelevant to her now.

Even if they were related, they were just prey.

Was it because she had seen her past in them, even if only for a moment?

“Get up.”

“Rea…”

“If it’s the end anyway…
There’s no harm in trying…”

Pina’s face, as she looked up at Rea with tearful eyes, surprised by her change of heart, was filling with relief.

Rea, tearing off the spiderweb cloth on her chest and starting to spin thread, was quickly twisting it into something familiar.

“What is this…”

“There’s not much time… I’ll explain later…
More importantly, if we can get out of here…
Can you live on?”

“Yes… y-yes…!!”

“Then that’s enough.”

Pina answered with a dazed expression to Rea’s question, who had finished something and gently placed it on Pina’s shoulder in no time at all.

Something long and rolled up on her shoulder.

It didn’t take long for her to realize that it was a thin but very long rope.

“Could it be…!! Rea!!”

“You’ll have to figure out how to get down…
Come here. You can hold onto me.”

Rea, who had tied the children together roughly with spiderwebs and put them on her back, turned to look at Pina, who was looking at her with a vacant expression.

“Didn’t I say I would save the children?
So you need to pull yourself together…”

“We can… go together…”

“If possible.”

Rea eventually snatched Pina’s hand and pulled her onto her back, connecting Pina’s body with spiderwebs as well, and slowly began to approach the wall.

A hard wall made of special alloy that even strong attacks couldn’t easily scratch.

Rea eventually poked the wall once with her leg and, finding that the wall was still without a scratch, took a small breath and placed her palm on the wall.

Not only was it hard, but it was also slippery.

‘It might not… come off easily…’

But for a cunning hunter, there was no option of giving up like this.

If she didn’t have claws, she would use her fingers.

If she didn’t have teeth, she would use her gums.

She had lived her life achieving her goals.

Rea, placing her hand on her chest and quietly spinning spiderwebs, gently rubbed the sticky spiderwebs on her hands on her front feet.

And those front feet were placed on the wall and rubbed, acting as temporary footholds on the wall.

As she took one foot off the ground and stepped into the air, a faint scream began to be heard from behind her.

“Kyaa!!”

“Haa… this isn’t a pleasure trip…”

Rea, who turned around to look at the children who were unable to control their laughter even while crying, as if they were enjoying the feeling of flying in the air, let out a grumble.

But she soon turned her head forward again and carefully climbed the wall, repeating the process.

‘I didn’t think this would really… work…’

Attaching spiderwebs to the wall and using them as footholds.

Of course, it might be natural for someone who lives on spiderwebs, but this was the first time she had used spiderwebs in this way.

She was concentrating all her nerves on the sensation felt at the end of her legs, which were firmly fixed on the footholds as much as possible, and preparing for the next step.

But at that moment.

“What’s that!!”

“It’s a monster!! It’s… climbing the wall…?”

“Hiiiiek!!”

As she climbed the wall to some extent, she escaped the height of the few trees that had been hiding her, and her appearance was finally exposed.

As shouts of people discovering her erupted around her, Rea gritted her teeth and continued to climb the wall.

Now that she had been discovered, they didn’t have much time left.

Considering the process of climbing up as quickly as possible and then going back down to the other side, time was extremely tight.

Her mind was becoming increasingly anxious, and she was spinning spiderwebs from her chest as quickly as possible to create the next foothold.

But haste always leads to mistakes.

One of the spiderweb clumps supporting her hind legs fell off, perhaps because of insufficient adhesion, and her body, having lost its support, was tilting precariously.

Her body was already heavy enough for its size.

Losing its balance was nothing short of a dangerous situation.

As her other legs also lost their stability in a chain reaction, and her body staggered and tilted,

She unconsciously reached out her hand and pulled out her claws, and before her body completely lost its balance, she plunged her sharp claws into the wall.

“Ugh….!!”

But the fortress wall, which was not even scratched by heavy and sharp legs, could not possibly be damaged by mere claws, and Rea had to grit her teeth and endure the tingling pain that echoed from the tips of her fingers through her claws.

Fortunately, perhaps due to the remnants of the fortress wall construction, she found that the tip of her claw was caught in a tiny gap, and Rea breathed a sigh of relief and continued her movement.

But had the sky abandoned her?

She felt a sudden dizziness as she brought her hand to her chest, and hurriedly pressed her forehead against the wall and struggled to regain her balance by hunching over.

‘Ah… thread……’

Come to think of it, making spiderwebs also required nutrients.

How many days had it been since she arrived at the end of the tunnel and then starved?

She had even made a long rope just now, and the amount of spiderwebs she had made while climbing up until now was also considerable, so her vision was turning white as she looked down at her chest, where no more thread was coming out.

Was it a disaster brought about by her choice to give all the scraps that Pina had painstakingly obtained to the children and simply wait for her death?

Rea, unable to move her body to the next foothold and enduring the burden of one leg dangling in the air with her numb arm, bit her lip until it bled.

And in the midst of all this, as she began to hear the sound of something flying in from around her and hitting the wall, her mind was filling with urgency.

‘At this rate… ah……’

“Catch it!! Knock it down!!”

“Kill the monster!!”

After missing several times, it seemed that the trajectory correction had been done properly, and the sound of objects or weapons thrown by people hitting and falling quite close was heard.

Every time such a sound was heard, Pina hugged the children tightly, protecting them from being hit, while also expressing her fear by flinching.

She was only halfway there, and going back down would be suicidal.

‘There’s no other choice…’

“Pina.”

“Hic!! Hic!! Rea…”

“I can’t go any further now.
Only you guys have to go.”

“What do you mean…?
We were going to go together…!!”

“You go first.
And catch the children.”

“Huh…? What…?
Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!!”

A strength that could only be described as overwhelming.

Rea, wielding Pina with one hand with the power to easily tear humans apart, released her hand and watched Pina, screaming, fly vertically along the fortress wall.

‘Maybe it was a little high…’

But it was better than not enough.

It would have been better than falling down there.

“You guys hug each other tightly.
I can’t recalculate the weight…
That girl will definitely catch you…”

“Unniiii……”

“Th-thank… hic…”

“Just try to stay alive.
Yeah… if you lived…
That would have been nice……”

Rea was lost in thought as she looked down at the two girls who were hugging each other tightly as she had told them to.

‘Back then, there were two girls hugging each other like that.’

It would have been nice if you had lived too.

‘You who hugged me so tightly…’

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

As she took another deep breath and threw the children upwards, they flew through the air with screams and eventually disappeared over the fortress wall.

And soon after, as black dots looking down at her from above were seen, Rea could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

“Rea!! Come up!! Hurry!!”

“Spider Unniiii!! Come up!!”

“Hang in there!! You can do it…!!”

Rea gently closed her eyes at the voices calling her from above.

She could no longer feel anything from the one hand that was barely holding on with the tip of her claw.

No matter how strong she was, her heavy body was heavier than the weight that her arm could bear.

It was just that, perhaps because of the unbearable shock when she threw Pina and the children just now, blood was flowing from the root of her cracked claw.

No more spiderwebs were coming out, and one hand was now beyond recovery.

But what was this feeling?

Mere prey was cheering her on.

“It’s not like they’re complaining to be eaten quickly…
Then… should I just go and eat them up…”

I want to go up.

To that high place where Yunmei is.

But I also want to go up to where they are.

To where they are crying as they look at me.

It was a difficult path that she might or might not regret, no matter which way she went.

‘Not yet… I don’t want to go up.’

To where you are, I don’t want to go up yet.

Even if only for a moment, I want to climb up to where they are.

I want to see how they live, next to them.

‘Sorry, Yunmei.’

Just for now, I have to get over this wall and bite those noisy and crying brats one by one.

While attaching spiderwebs to her legs, Rea, who found clumps of spiderwebs attached to the free fingers of her other hand, slowly rubbed them against the wall.

Perhaps because it was spiderwebs, she felt her hand sticking to the wall, and as she tried to pull her arm and lift her body,

“Haa……”

Her mind went blank as she felt something piercing her back, and her body tilted backwards and began to fall downwards.

Even as she fell towards the ground like an arrow, Rea smiled faintly as she saw the desperate expressions of those who were looking down at her as if in slow motion.

‘They have so much compassion…
How are they going to survive out there…’

A tearing child’s scream echoed, and soon after, a huge monster with the body of a giant spider fell with a heavy sound, raising dust.

Arachne, despite falling from a considerable height, did not faint, and even after being surrounded by humans, she frantically struggled and resisted with her impaired body, but eventually became quiet at some point.

Pina, who was hugging the children tightly to prevent them from seeing the sight from the fortress wall, buried her face in the rope that had been placed on her shoulder and burst into tears.

Out of regret, gratitude, and the compassion of the predator.

Pina, who had tied the last memento left by her, who had given her life for them, to a pillar on the fortress wall, could not bring herself to take a step for a long time, hugging the children tightly.