Chapter 21: How I met your mother

Unfamiliar feelings of deep affection swelled up in Sophie’s heart as she saw the duke swinging her around the room as if she were a little kid. During the hug, one of his hands brushed against the spider legs beneath her cloak.

A strange look crossed the duke’s face and he put down his daughter with a quiet storm raging in his heart. He looked carefully at her body figure hidden by the cloak. Sophie trusted her father, so she unclasped the buttons on her cloak and revealed her new appendages.

“As you can see father….my body grew these freaking spider legs in one day!” Sophie hurriedly spoke.

The duke was silent for a moment before hesitantly approaching his daughter and ran his fingers along the length of the spider legs.

“Ouch!” he hissed.

His finger had a small line of blood when he touched the bladed end of the appendage which dripped slowly down to the floor.

“Are you okay?” Sophie panicked with a fluster.

“Don’t worry, your father is a tough old cultivator,” her dad hurriedly reassured her.

The calm exterior projected outside did little to hide the emotions swelling up in his heart. He was a god stage cultivator and yet was injured slightly by a body stage.

This was impossible!

Ordinary blades should simply shatter against his hardened skin, but her spider leg had still sliced a slim cut across his thumb.

It crashed through his defenses just like the deadly style of fighting her mother possessed. Even after many months of sparring… no matter what defensive cultivation technique he circulated, she would always cut through his body like it was soft tofu.

It appeared her daughter inherited her natural weapons.

Lost in thought, he failed to notice Sophie trying to get his attention until she grabbed his hand and then spoke loudly.

“Dad… I think it is time I learnt the truth. What happened to you in the Insectoid Empire? Who is my mom?”

“And why is there no record of her race on the database?”

The duke looked at his pleading daughter and a pained look flashed across his face. He always wanted to protect her from the truth. It was not a problem that she did not have cultivation talent.

He feared that she would.

“I…I…” the duke stuttered for several minutes trying to work up the courage to explain to Sophie her true origin.

Sophie just patiently waited as her instincts told her that this would be a difficult story for her father to tell.

“I can tell you up to a certain amount of information but for your own safety I cannot tell you everything,” he warned.

“I understand father,” Sophie nodded in acknowledgement.

Eventually with a deep sigh, her father began to tell the story of how he met the devilish woman who would later become his wife.

(Many years earlier)

It was little over three years since Rokan had been hurled into the heart of the Insectoid Empire and like many hot-blooded youths, the constant victories in battle had left him arrogant and conceited.

He had just escaped an ambush set by the Preyaeth tribe of low-level insectoids and visited a small exoplanet to rest. The planet was about half the size of an average moon and was covered in lush forests.

Having received some injuries, he spent the day resting and healing using qi circulation techniques. It would be foolish to underestimate the regenerative ability of god stage cultivators as most could have a complete recovery from any injury as long as it wasn’t fatal.

Rokan could still the recall the moment he had restored his physical body to its peak, that a soft voice whispered out from the bushes behind him.

“Are you well rested now human?”

“It would be too boring to play with prey that is half dead.”

He quickly lunged backwards and unsheathed his blade in an unhurried motion while he anxiously scanned the surrounding trees. Why did he not detect a presence?

Mocking laughter echoed around him and a woman walked slowly out of the shadows with an air of confidence.

Rokan had seen many different species and beauties in his time as a solider… but never to this extent.

The woman was roughly six feet tall with long slender legs and beautiful golden eyes that shone brightly in the darkness. Her plump kissable lips and a seductive figure with two twin peaks could distract any person who witnessed them.

She would be an instant model in the Earth Federation were it not for the six spider legs jutting out from her back and razer sharp fangs sparkling in the light.

“Do you like what you see human? Why don’t you come and play with me for a bit?”

“I have not seen your species in person… is it true that you bleed red?”

The strange woman spoke in a gentle tone but there was a dangerous glint in her eyes as she slowly approached the wary young man.

Rokan gripped his sword firmly and chanted a heart clearing meditation to prevent himself from succumbing to her wiles.

“Blizzard yin slash!” he roared.

The temperature immediately dropped drastically, and tiny snowflakes surrounded his blade which started to emit a chilly air. The woman simply cocked an eyebrow in amusement and waited for him to attack.

Anger welled in his chest at the thought of being looked down on and Rokan dashed forward and pierced directly at her heart.

There was no way she could survive the direct attack of a god stage cultivator!

He felt his sword pierce through something and glanced up with a confident grin on his face.

“Are you finished? “came a suppressed laughter from the insectoid.

His sword was embedded deep within her chest and yet she spoke as though it were just a minor inconvenience. She had not circulated any type of defensive art and simply absorbed the blow with her body.

Rokan pulled out the blade and leapt backwards with a cautious expression surfacing for the first time in years.

No blood had gushed out of the wound and before his very eyes, the flesh wriggled and knitted back together as if the injury had never happened in the first place.

“It is impossible that she did not get hurt,” he muttered to himself. There must be a cost to that level of regeneration… how could a creature shrug off an attack by a god stage cultivator?

Rokan sliced open his palm with the sword and used his trump card to boost his strength and speed drastically.

Blood Sacrifice Art!

He ruptured several of his minor meridians to direct the flow of qi to only certain acupuncture points in his dantian. It was an incredibly dangerous method as the backlash would leave him crippled for a couple of weeks.

Overwhelming power flowed into his body and he let out a sharp cry of pain as the unfamiliar strength filled his mind with a sense of calm.

He gazed at the spider woman but the expression on her face was that of a hunter watching the struggling death throes of her prey.

Rokan swore in his heart,

“I will personally send you to hell!”