"You still seem to recognize me?"
Emerald Sparrow lowered her voice, and once again raised her dagger, "Good, now there's one more thing you need to explain, I hope the answer to this question will also satisfy me."
"It's not strange that I recognize you, Missy, you seem to have a little misunderstanding about your own notoriety."
The spider slightly raised his eyes, "But I am surprised, that the Investigation Bureau actually let you come to look into this matter, and you even found your way here so quickly, this was indeed beyond my expectation."
"I'll say it again, cut the crap." Emerald Sparrow pressed the dagger against his lower jaw.
"But I'm not talking nonsense, what I'm saying is the truth."
The spider suddenly made eye contact with Emerald Sparrow, seriously looking into her eyes: "I just want to tell you, you were not my target originally."
Emerald Sparrow unflinchingly met his gaze, her icy stare burning with intense fire, as if she was ready to incinerate the person before her.
She didn't speak again, but instead forcefully pushed the dagger upwards.
But this time, the dagger failed to pierce the spider's skin.
"...You see, I told you I wasn't talking nonsense."
Some color returned to the spider's exceedingly pale face from blood loss, he once again grinned, but this time there was a cold edge to it: "It's you who's been spouting too much nonsense, Missy."
"—Emerald Sparrow senpai!"
The next instant, a shout of alarm came from above.
Almost at the same moment she heard the voice, Emerald Sparrow felt a prickling sense of crisis and immediately released her dagger. Her magic armor transformed in a flash into a square protective shell, completely shielding her within.
Then, a surge of purple-black magic power came from above, and flesh-and-blood tendrils that seemed to emerge from nowhere twisted down from the sky, tightly entangling Emerald Sparrow's magic armor protective shell.
A white spider, several meters tall, dangling from a thread, descended slowly beside the spider, then lifted its limb, placing the spider onto its back.
The spider, seated on the back of the white spider, suddenly looked up at the sky, murmuring to himself, "It's enough, your mission is completed."
As his voice fell, the chrysalis stage Remnant Beasts that had been hanging from the giant web, engaged in combat with the lantern, let out a mournful cry. Its body, already riddled with holes, went limp in an instant and crashed into the web it had spun.
The man known as the spider stood up from the white spider's back, reaching for his neck, but the spell technique of the Magic-Sealing Arts violently repelled his hand, causing a trace of discomfort on his face.
However, he quickly set this slight displeasure aside and, looking at Emerald Sparrow trapped within the magic armor, spoke again:
"You see, I really wasn't talking nonsense, just as I said, the orders of high-tier Remnant Beasts are absolute to the lower-tier ones."
These words made Emerald Sparrow, who had been about to change her magic armor's form to slice through the tendrils around her, pause in her actions.
"High-tier Remnant Beasts..." Realizing something, she looked up at the spider, "I was wondering why this lair didn't seem at all like a chrysalis's from the very beginning."
"Your intuition is really sharp."
The spider, sitting on the white spider's back, gently stroked the Remnant Beast beneath him: "If a chrysalis stage Remnant Beast can command the Inchworm and eggs gathered in its lair, then why couldn't the chrysalis itself be commanded?"
As if responding to his words, the spider Remnant Beast beneath him raised its head and let out another cry towards the sky. Then, the giant spider that had been on the web trembled all over, and after a spasm, went completely still.
"That Remnant Beast was not the real criminal behind this incident, it was merely a tool."
Emerald Sparrow looked up, and then back at the spider, "You just controlled it, borrowed its lair, and turned it into your tool for hunting."
The spider gave a slight smile.
"You've been asking me where that group of foolish Magical Girls went."
As he spoke, he twisted a piece of purple-black flesh from the back of the white spider Remnant Beast amidst its screeches.
That piece of purple-black flesh continued to pulsate even after being separated from the Remnant Beast. The spider looked at it with a fascinated expression, then slowly pressed it against his own chest:
"The answer to that, you shall witness for yourself."
"This is the time for rooting out traitors and subduing rebellion."