Chapter 39 Please Keep Your Hands Inside

Yu-ra cut the descending mouth in half.

The broken jaws struck the stone beside her. White light opened a smoking wound across the creature's underside.

It recoiled, screamed and drew its legs inward.

Yu-ra ducked one hooked tip. Her blade took another at the joint, sending it spinning into the fallen ventilation frame.

Ko staggered beneath the impact.

“Little help!”

She turned her sword flat and drove it through the frame's lowest crossbar.

The cut section folded away.

Jin hauled Seo through the opening while she dragged Ko's belt. The shield came free with a metallic boom.

Above them, the loomjaw moved.

Its remaining four legs scissored along the ceiling. Threads ran behind it, turning loose armor toward the little gap Rhee was using to carry Jun out.

A second breastplate jerked upright there.

Then a greave.

Rhee stopped.

The creature had put a moving wall between him and the exit.

“Seo!” Yu-ra called.

The crossbow answered. Frost blossomed over a thread; Ko smashed the dangling plate away before it could swing back.

Rhee squeezed between the plates with Jun, one shoulder scraping the stone.

Jin looked up.

Four spools sat along the loomjaw's back, two on either side. The threads feeding the armor slid through them. Each pull made a spool turn.

Yu-ra could reach the belly. The working machinery stayed pressed against the ceiling.

Jin caught a torn bracket above Ko's shield with an iron hook.

“Lift.”

Ko looked at him.

“Me?”

“The shield.”

“Oh. Sensible. Briefly.”

Jin put one foot on the raised metal, caught the bracket with both hands and pulled himself onto the wall ledge beside it.

He left that hook hanging from the bracket.

The loomjaw turned.

He jumped before the hooked leg reached him.

His chest struck the shell. Breath left him in a grunt. One hand found the lip of a spool housing; the other jammed an iron hook beneath it.

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His feet kicked over open air.

The creature tore itself off the ceiling.

Jin went with it.

They struck the floor hard enough to bounce his teeth together. He still had the hook. His knee found a ridge between two plates.

The shell rolled beneath him.

“Oh, absolutely,” Jin wheezed. “Perfect timing.”

He flattened himself against its back as a leg swept overhead.

“Welcome! This animal has four spools!”

Yu-ra looked up at him.

“Jin?”

“They pull the strings! Fascinating! Please do not touch them with your face!”

The loomjaw drove toward the narrow passage. Its shell scraped the overhead stone, forcing Jin's head sideways.

Beyond it, Jun's boots had nearly disappeared through the opening.

Rhee couldn't turn around with him there.

Jin jammed his free hook into a slit beside the turning spool and hung his weight from it.

The spool shuddered. A strand of armor bucked against Ko's shield instead of crossing the exit.

Rhee shoved Jun another foot into the passage.

Then the creature slammed sideways into the wall.

His hip hit stone. He bit his tongue, tasted blood and clung harder.

Ko raised his shield over his head.

“Is he teaching us?”

Seo shot a thread that was tightening behind the B-rank's neck.

“I'm trying to listen!”

Jin saw one spool stop when the frost reached it. The creature changed direction, dragging the frozen strand around its own leg to snap it.

“The front pair feeds the armor! The rear pair—”

A hook stabbed down beside his thigh.

He yanked his knee clear and almost lost his grip.

“—does THAT. Keep your children on the other side of the railing!”

The hooked legs scrabbled against the stone. The creature was trying to roll onto him.

Yu-ra drove her blade under its raised side.

“Stay flat!”

Sunlight flashed past Jin's cheek.

The loomjaw jerked away from it, abandoning the roll. He heard stone split under the force of her strike.

His hands had begun to open.

Ten seconds couldn't possibly be this long.

A thread whipped across his shoulder. Fabric tore. A hot line opened beneath it.

“Third feature!” he shouted. “It is extremely—”

The back arched.

His chest left the shell.

He pulled on the hook with everything he had and slammed himself down before the gap opened under his palms.

“—unfriendly!”

Nothing.

Of course that wasn't a feature.

“The leg joints bend inward! Inward! Now please exit through the gift shop!”

He spent the twenty: eight Strength, eight Agility, four Endurance.

Heat tore down his arms. His failing grip closed again.

The cut on his shoulder still burned. Blood made one palm slippery, but his fingers could hold the ridge without folding open now.

Beneath his right hand, the spool housing creaked.

Jin looked at it.

Then at the live threads stretching toward Rhee's exit.

He put his second hand beside the first.

“Ko!”

“Listening!”

“Hit the armor when I pull!”

The loomjaw's forelegs braced against the floor.

Jin planted his feet against the shell and hauled the housing sideways.

Yu-ra's earlier cut had scorched a seam beneath the thin upper plate. It whitened under the strain.

Something beneath it cracked.