Chapter 214: The Weak Exit, and the Buff-Stacked Solar Spider-Man
Ethan stood at the center of it all, watching the Spider-Men converge on him from every angle. Their silhouettes moved through the shifting light with genuine conviction — he'd give them that. Whatever else Spider-Men were, they committed.
He took one breath and let himself settle into it.
The provocation hadn't been cruelty for its own sake. He'd had reasons, and they were practical ones.
First: a demonstration. Not a speech, not a resume — a demonstration. The Spider-Society ran on capability and credibility, and the fastest way to establish both simultaneously was to let them experience the gap directly. Win their trust by showing them what you can do, not by telling them.
Second, and more important: he needed to know what the Spider-Society actually was.
He'd seen the films. Most Spider-Man villains were Earth scientists gone wrong — gamma accidents, genetic modifications, industrial experiments. Rare was the Spider-Man who'd ever gone up against something that operated on a genuinely cosmic scale. The question wasn't whether these Spider-Men were heroes. The question was whether they could be useful against Kang-tier threats, or whether sending them in would just be a more elaborate way of getting them killed.
There was also the matter of what he'd observed in the films. Miguel had been the only one actually trying to catch Miles. Everyone else had been going through the motions — eating, doing therapy sessions, treating it like a routine patrol they didn't have their heart in. And Ethan had his theory about why.
They hadn't wanted to stop him. A Spider-Man trying to save his father — none of them could fully commit to preventing that. They'd been caught between not wanting to defy Miguel and not being able to bring themselves to stop someone doing the thing they'd all wished they could do. So they'd threaded the needle. Half-effort. Plausible deniability.
Which means the real ceiling might be significantly higher than what I'm seeing.
Or it might not. Some of them might genuinely be greener than Miles, who hadn't even fully figured out his own abilities yet.
Either way, Ethan wanted the real number.
He fought through them — countering, redirecting, measuring. Several variants surprised him. The Spider-Tank, a Peter Parker who apparently operated heavy machinery. The Western Cowboy variant, spurs and all. Spider-Cat, who moved nothing like a human and everything like a cat. Spider-Monkey, whose center of gravity made no conventional sense.
And then there was the Solar Spider-Man.
Oh, right. This one.
Ethan remembered reading about this variant before his transmigration — one of those deep-internet rabbit holes. An American-made Spider-Man who had somehow managed to simultaneously embody every progressive checkbox on the character design document: wheelchair-bound, plus the full identity flags, stacked so comprehensively that she'd become a kind of accidental meme in certain corners of the fandom. Ethan had found it funny at the time. Seeing her in person, he just... kept it moving.
She was still swinging in on a web line when Ethan made his decision.
"Weaker combatants, please exit the field."
He reached down and began working the joystick on the EVOL Driver with deliberate precision. The energy indicators across the belt began to pulse.
"Ready — go!"
Miguel saw the motion and his stomach dropped.
"Everyone — watch out! Don't let it—"
Too late.
Beneath the feet of every Spider-Man in the room, a massive white spiderweb materialized out of nothing — a ghost-image at first, then solid, expanding outward in a fraction of a second until it covered the entire floor of the operations hub.
Then Ethan moved.
At supersonic velocity, Killbus Spider became a red blur threading between every combatant in the room, trailing a filament behind each pass. In the span of a few seconds he had woven a three-dimensional net that encompassed the entire assembled group — Miguel included. The only Spider-Men left untouched were the ones he'd chosen to leave out: the visibly pregnant Spider-Woman, and Peter B. Parker with Mei still strapped to his chest.
From Miguel's perspective it had looked like a red smear and then suddenly there were silk lines everywhere.
Even the stronger variants — the ones who'd actually been able to track fragments of Ethan's movement — couldn't do more than register that something had happened before it was done.
Spider-Men were not, as a rule, accustomed to being caught in webbing. The irony was not lost on several of them simultaneously.
They struggled. It didn't help.
Ethan came to rest in the center of the room.
The mechanical voice returned.
"Killbus Spider — Finish!"
Four enormous crimson spear-lances materialized behind him, each one massive, each one aimed. They released simultaneously.
BOOM.
The floor of Spider-Society headquarters cracked. Smoke rolled outward in every direction.
Ethan stood in the settling dust and looked at what he'd made.
...Okay, that might have been slightly excessive.
He surveyed the room. The vast majority of Spider-Men were down — not dead, not seriously hurt, but definitively out of the fight. Scattered across cracked floor tiles, webbing still clinging to suits, the particular silence of people who had genuinely tried and genuinely lost.
A small group remained standing. Bruised, breathing hard, still on their feet.
There they are.
Those were the ones worth knowing about. The elite tier, self-selected by surviving a finishing attack from the Killbus Spider form.
Ethan noted each one.
He also noted, privately, that the Killbus Spider Rider Kick would have been significantly cooler. The numbers just hadn't cooperated for that particular finisher. Maybe next time.
He allowed himself one moment of genuine aesthetics appreciation.
Not bad. Right up there with Eternal. The cape on that form was something else, but this one has presence.
Then he let it go and looked at what was left standing.
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