## Chapter 109: The White Nightmare Army
Following her ascension, Shiro's soul had officially crossed over into the divine realm, undergoing a fundamental transformation.
It was during this transition that she discovered a strange layer of foreign matter attached to the outside of her soul. This material completely enveloped her original core, acting as the very foundation of her current identity. That wrapping was none other than the stolen memories of Hiiro Wakaba.
From that exact moment, she knew the truth. She was merely an entirely separate, unknown entity that happened to be packaged with Hiiro Wakaba's memories.
In that instant of sudden realization, the countless anomalies that had plagued her mind since the beginning finally made perfect sense.
She understood why she was the only reincarnator who didn't have a proper name at birth; while the others retained their past identities, she had entered this world as nothing more than a nameless, ordinary spider. Even her pathetically low initial stats became perfectly logical. Her original soul had simply been incredibly weak, which explained why her starting pool of skill points was a mere one hundred.
Furthermore, her childhood memories contained absolutely zero record of her parents. Culturally speaking, she should have had them, yet the recollection was so blurred that she couldn't even visualize their faces. Every single piece of existential confusion had finally found its explanation.
At the same time, she successfully deduced her true identity. She was simply that bottom-of-the-barrel, tiny house spider that had desperately struggled to survive in the corner of the classroom, universally detested by almost everyone.
Only two specific individuals had ever treated her with genuine kindness, bringing a beautiful ray of light into her otherwise grim and miserable existence.
That evening, three visually identical girls slept tightly curled up together in the dark room.
Shiro's mouth twitched slightly in the dark. *Staying over for the night is one thing, but why on earth do we all have to share the exact same bed?*
To her left lay the cat-eared girl, and to her right was the black-haired girl, the two of them sandwiching Shiro tightly between their bodies. For some unexplainable reason, everyone seemed to have an absolute obsession with snuggling up against her; it was a phenomenon she had long since grown accustomed to.
Except—she couldn't shake the persistent feeling that this cat-eared girl felt incredibly familiar.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the dimensional rift.
Shirazawa had just used long-range teleportation to bring little Leest straight into the Elroe Labyrinth. The exact moment he materialized, he ran right into an unexpected acquaintance.
"Gyurie?" Shirazawa blinked. "What on earth are you doing here?"
Güriedistodiez frowned, a deeply complex expression flitting across his face. "If I hadn't intervened, this entire labyrinth would have been thoroughly reduced to ash by now."
To streamline their travel, Shirazawa had transferred directly into the Lower Stratum of the labyrinth.
The normally pitch-black cavern was currently completely submerged under a colossal, writhing white tide. An absolute infinity of pristine white spiders crawled densely across every square inch of the rock walls, with massive battalions of advanced spider monsters organized into clean formations, marching deeper into the subterranean world.
These were the physical clones spawned by the Parallel Minds—an entity collectively known as the Vestiges of the Nightmare. Their numbers were astronomically massive, their ranks seemingly endless, and their individual combat efficiency was entirely off the charts.
Under normal circumstances, a horde of white spiders wouldn't pose even a microscopic threat to a true god like Gyurie. However, the exact moment the white spider army slipped out of centralized control, they had begun frantically laying eggs and reproducing on autopilot, mass-producing diverse strains of advanced spider variants.
Then, using the highly efficient, assembly-line structure of the "Shiro-style Training Protocol," they began aggressively grinding their own stats at a terrifying pace.
The Upper Stratum had been completely overrun by the spider vanguard weeks ago. The moment the local food supply hit a critical deficit, the army collectively triggered a large-scale teleportation matrix, dropping themselves directly into the Lower Stratum.
This terrifying white wave had directly engaged and obliterated the three guardian dragons: Earth Dragon Kagna, Earth Dragon Gehre, and the other one whose name slipped the mind. Even though those three fought as a cohesive unit that easily rivaled the legendary Earth Dragon Alaba, they were ruthlessly worn down and choked to death by the sheer weight of the white tide.
After thoroughly cleaning out the three brothers guarding the entrance to the Lower Stratum, the white army advanced like a broken bamboo stalk, initiating a frantic, unhinged hunting campaign across the entire layer. Even the high-tier organisms that naturally rivaled Myth-tier monsters found themselves plunged into a brutal, never-ending war of attrition the exact second they were targeted by the horde, ultimately dropping dead from sheer physical exhaustion.
Throughout this entire period of unhinged expansion, the baseline ecosystem of the Great Elroe Labyrinth had suffered an unprecedented level of total destruction. Toward the final stretch, the horde had even launched an aggressive raid straight into the nesting grounds where the Earth Dragons preserved their eggs, clearly intending to completely wipe out the next generation in a single sweep.
The poor Gakia had led the entirety of his clan's warriors to desperately stall the Demon Lord on the outside, only to return and find his descendants a hair's breadth from being entirely wiped out by the remnants of the Nightmare. If Gyurie hadn't suddenly noticed the unnatural drop in the global Earth Dragon population data and rushed over to intervene, the labyrinth's Earth Dragon lineage would have been genuinely pushed into total extinction.
Listening to Gyurie's breakdown of the catastrophe, Shirazawa remained silent for a brief moment before lowering his head in a sincere apology. "I am incredibly sorry! This is entirely my oversight."
He honestly hadn't anticipated that these little creatures would be this incredibly aggressive. If he hadn't arrived to manually terminate their programming today, they might have unironically breached the deepest chambers of the labyrinth to chew right into the central system core. Just visualizing that scenario gave him a massive headache.
"Sigh..." Gyurie let out a deeply exhausted, weary sigh. He, too, hadn't expected the situation to escalate into such a massive disaster.
Shirazawa let out a couple of awkward, self-deprecating chuckles before unleashing his divine pressure across the cavern, manually issuing a centralized recall order to the spider army. Since these creatures were the direct descendants spawned by the Parallel Minds' clones, they fell squarely under his control.
As for the faction belonging strictly to Shiro's lineage, he lacked the administrative access to override their programming; she would have to manually reclaim those units herself when she returned.
Accompanied by a thunderous tremor that rattled the foundations of the cave, the massive white wave came cascading back toward their position. Little Leest was so utterly terrified by the visual spectacle that she instantly fainted on the spot. The scenario was simply too overwhelming for her tiny mind; even the absolute weakest spider monster in that vanguard radiated an aura dozens of times more terrifying than her own parameters.
Shirazawa opened a massive spatial rift right before his position, commanding the white army to file inside in an orderly, structured fashion. Just logging and reclaiming his half of the forces consumed three full days of non-stop work.
Based on his internal metrics, the total volume of his personalized army sat at roughly 600,000 units. Among them, 400,000 were classified as Small Taratect variants, while 150,000 operated as Poison Taratect strains.
The remaining 50,000 units were the genuine elite vanguard, primarily comprised of Greater Taratect models boasting average stats floating around the 4,000 mark. Tucked within that elite core were five specific Myth-tier monsters whose individual combat efficiency cracked the 15,000 threshold. These units possessed a significantly smaller physical build, having chosen the evolutionary path of the Zoa Ele strain, rendering them exceptionally lethal in the domain of high-tier magic.
The Elroe Labyrinth truly was a phenomenal training ground, having quietly cultivated such a terrifyingly powerful white army for him out of nowhere. And the craziest part? This represented a mere fifty percent of their collective military assets, as Shiro's personalized faction hadn't even been factored into the calculation yet.
Furthermore, throughout their year-long journey across the continent, both he and Shiro had been quietly cultivating entirely separate, brand-new spider clone armies within their respective personal spatial domains. Once all these factions converged, their collective military weight wouldn't fall short of the Demon Lord's regular army by any metric.
If the two of them ever desired it, they could effortlessly split the workload—one systematically dismantling the demon sectors while the other completely purged the human domains, executing a total cleansing of the planet. But that was far too cruel and unnecessary. They much preferred to simply lounge around and enjoy a lazy lifestyle, leaving those stressful structural problems entirely for Ariel to figure out.
Surveying the remaining white nightmares still lingering inside the cavern, Gyurie suggested that Shirazawa should summon Shiro immediately to clean out the rest of the spider units. Otherwise, it wouldn't be long before the labyrinth's ecosystem fell right back into the exact same chaotic loop.
Faced with the request, Shirazawa merely held out his hands in a casual shrug. "Apologies, but she is currently absent from this world. If my calculations are correct, she likely traveled across dimensions to have a heart-to-heart chat with D. Once she returns, we will completely finalize the cleanup operations."
Gyurie: "..."
*Why on earth would that child willingly choose to throw her life away just to have a conversation with a monstrous entity like D? Wouldn't it be infinitely safer to just stay home and focus on her regular training?* He couldn't shake the nagging feeling that Shiro might simply never return from that trip.
"Fine. I shall hold you to that promise." Now that he possessed a formal guarantee from Shirazawa, Gyurie chose not to linger on the issue. Tossing the remaining cleanup details squarely onto Shirazawa's shoulders, he stepped through a spatial distortion and vanished from the layer.
"Tsk~ what's the best way to clean up this mess then?" Shirazawa stared at the thoroughly ruined, battle-scarred landscape of the Great Elroe Labyrinth, feeling a massive headache coming on.
With a massive population of rogue spider monsters still running wild across the sectors, the only logical move was to construct a series of high-tier spatial barriers, isolating and protecting the core zones of the labyrinth. For instance, areas like the Dragon Nests—which served as the primary spawning grounds for the local monsters—needed to be strictly secured to ensure the native fauna didn't go completely extinct.
As long as the high-tier base species remained operational, they could eventually migrate back up to the Upper Stratum to deposit a fresh generation of eggs, exactly like the Mother Taratect had done in the past. Given enough time, the ecosystem would inevitably stabilize itself.
"Alright, time to focus on the little one's leveling routine."
Shirazawa glanced down at the poor little goblin girl, who was currently clutching tightly to his trouser leg, trembling like a leaf. A distinctly mischievous, playful smirk curled along the edge of his lips. "Little Leest, I am truly looking forward to seeing what your human form looks like."
"(╥╯^╰╥) Sob sob sob... Leest is scared..."
"Don't worry about it. Just grit your teeth and it'll be over before you know it." Shirazawa gently patted the little loli's head, his gaze shifting into something deeply nostalgic. "I wonder if any members of the Elroe Frog or Elroe Snail lineages managed to survive the purge..."
Lifting Leest into his arms, he began making his way up toward the Upper Stratum.
This specific layer was the exact location where their grand dream had originally begun. It truly brought back a flood of memories...
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