143, 2/2

The four of them reappeared in a flash of magenta light on the western side of the South Central Tribulations, and a bit more north than their previous latitude. The ground under their feet was an expansive, bare hillside, high up on the mountain, where trees had yet to encroach. But down in the valley, the trees were as large as the smaller ones in the Forest of Glaquin.

It was as though they had appeared on a rocky island amid a sea of green and darkness.

The wind blew with a gentle force, whistling on scattered boulders and sharp grasses. Odin, sitting upon Ezekiel’s shoulder, joined in the whistling as more and more of his bodies rejoined the team, to watch down from high above.

They were only a few kilometers from the start of the Blood Weaver nest, but they were already in the monster’s territory. Close enough that they needed to be on alert in case the monsters prowled this far, but they were in no danger of an imminent attack. And besides, Tiffany and Odin kept the best lookout that was possible for mortals and [Familiar]s to keep.

Tiffany sat down on a boulder. Paul joined her. Julia stood nearby, watching.

It was time for a small bit of magic making.

“Here’s how this one is supposed to go.” Erick discarded his magenta affectation as he held up his hands, projecting white light through them. “[Interception] on one hand. Blood Altering with Destruction in the other.” An Ophiel alighted onto the ground in front of Erick and sang one song, while another Ophiel sang a different one. Erick said, “[Conjure Force Elemental], and [Ward]. From there, it’s a matter of joining them all properly.”

He heard the sounds before him, and they were… strange.

“Ah.” Erick said, “There are some oddities here. There might need to be some adjustments to the plan.”

His audience watched as two more Ophiel came down and took over the sounds for [Interception] and Blood Altering—

He found two problems.

The first one was an easy problem to fix, but it would require certain bloody sacrifices that were easy enough to sacrifice. Looked like Erick was finally getting to use his Blood Mana Class Ability.

The other problem came from Destruction, so Erick focused on Destruction for Blood Magic, himself, while his four Ophiel took up the rest of the song. Soon, they were singing the sounds of a primordial life rushing to defend its creator from the worst kind of mutative magics; of surrounding the holder of the charm with absolute [Interception] of all harmful Blood Magic.

Blood pulsed in Erick’s ears as he listened to the sound of life.

The mana bade him raise his arm. He did.

He cast, molding songs into substance. Mana rushed out of him as blood slipped out from burst capillaries in his hand, and pushed through his skin, appearing like dew. The bloody dew detached. It floated upward.

Life gathered into a thumb-sized drop of bright red blood.

Erick’s arm stopped bleeding when enough blood had gathered. It barely hurt.

And then mana flickered through the floating plasma and red blood cells and otherwise, turning liquid life into something less real, and more Real at the same time. Magic crystallized into a perfect red sphere that was cracked inside like broken dreams. It was bright, and it was powerful.

Erick swept a [Cleanse] across his upheld hand, dispersing the bloody beginnings of his spell into so much thick air.

The glowing charm descended into his grip.

A blue box appeared.

He held the charm in his hand and watched as its crystalline form became liquid then twined around his hand, to slip around his wrist to hold there, becoming a red-ribbon bracelet with a central ruby. He held it up to the light and smiled as it glittered.

He sucked in a lungful of fresh air, barely registering that he had briefly stopped breathing. Eh! He was fine. Ezekiel looked to Paul, and said, “Finally found a use for Blood Mana!” He willed the blue boxes for his new spell to all of his party. “What do you think?”

“First: this.” Julia tapped him with a [Greater Treat Wounds], saying, “You stopped breathing for a moment there.” Then she read the box.

Ezekiel was pleasantly surprised that her healing spell still worked; if what Arilitilo had said was true, then [Greater Treat Wounds] was, if not Blood Magic, then at least adjacent to Blood Magic. [Sanguine Charm] seemed rather solidly against only the ‘harmful’ types of Blood Magic, though, so… Maybe there was a nuance between ‘harmful’ and ‘helpful’ that was more than just a matter of perspective? Or maybe [Greater Treat Wounds] was not actually Blood Magic, but instead merely attained through that discipline, sort of how he had Remade [Force Bolt] even though he had Remade it using his lightform, which was certainly not Force.

Something to ask Arilitilo about.

Paul finished reading the new spell. He said, “We should ignore the possibility that this spell will make the upcoming Primal Blood Weaver a simple affair, and you should kill them all from afar and not take the risk.”

Tiffany read the charm, saying, “Ohh! That’s pretty good. Reads almost the same as the Charmer at the guard station back home. A lot more duration, though.”

Julia read the box three times, then hummed, and looked to her father. “I think I need Blood Mana.”

Paul instantly said, “No you don’t.”

Ezekiel smirked as he conjured another [Sanguine Charm] to test the cost, now that the Script’s reductions kicked in. The initial creation of the spell took 1000 Mana and 1000 Health, but the next cast took 54 Mana and 63 Health.

… Huh.

Ezekiel cast another charm, and the cost was the same.

There was something odd going on, there.

Constitution reduced damage taken to Health by a diminishing return percentage. He currently had 81 Constitution. He also had 81 Intelligence, which reduced Mana costs by what appeared to be the same diminishing return percentage. … When [Defend] was active, though.

Ezekiel activated [Defend] and recast [Sanguine Charm].

Same costs.

The problem was that Dexterity was the New Stat which reduced Health costs by a diminishing return percentage, and he only had 71 of that. Which meant that his Health cost reduction was less than his Mana cost reduction, which is exactly what happened with the costs of [Sanguine Charm].

It made sense that Dexterity reduced that Health cost, because that is what it was created to do, but Ezekiel had thought that Constitution would have been the modifier, here. It was more intuitive for the reduction of damage to his body to be the modifier when it came to extracting damage from his body in order to fuel his magic.

But… Now that he considered a few other facts…

Namely, Dexterity was the ease at which the body could live and move and function. So, looking at it from that perspective…

Constitution just reduced damage taken, and he wasn’t inflicting damage on himself when he used Blood Mana. He was using the resources of his body to fuel magic costs.

Ah. Okay. That made sense.

Yes. Dexterity wasn’t exactly ‘Dexterity’, it was the ability for the body to function well.

Strength was more than physical strength, and though Strength had perfectly understood Health benefits, it gave rather undefined physical boosts. An orcol with 50 Strength was stronger than a human with 50 Strength, after all. For an orcol, their Vitality lets them regrow body parts. The same was not true for a human. Willpower wasn’t anything except for a measure of the mana a person could hold at any one time.

But why didn’t Constitution reduce damage taken to [Personal Ward]s, too, when armor and other defensive structures helped reduce damage to both Health and [Ward]? Dexterity had odd effects, too, now that Ezekiel reorganized his thinking on the subject. He was a lot more limber than he had ever been in his life, now that he had Dexterity.

Perception had odd effects, but numbers? It had none. All Stats were odd. All of them were abstractions.

Ezekiel’s minor detour into the workings of the New Stats and the Old ended almost as soon as it began, with barely a second passing. He returned to Julia’s comment about needing Blood Mana, and said, “I tried casting healing spells with it and it hurt like a fucker, so it likely won’t work how you think it will.”

Julia paused, thought a bit, then said, “There are a lot of different ways to work around that. I could still easily exploit Blood Mana to cast spells for an indefinitely long combat.”

“True. Healing yourself with regular, cost-effective mana, and then using that Health to make big spells. It’s a valid tactic.” Ezekiel said, “But Arilitilo’s books warn that a person would tax their body too much if they used too much Blood Mana, leading to systemic stress. But anyway—” He held out a hand, where his charms had stuck. Only one remained of the few he had cast. The charms beyond the first had tried to attach to the same spot and they had turned to red dust that spilled to the ground. “Can’t have more than one, it seems.” He conjured another one and put it on his other wrist. It turned to dust, too. “Yup.”

“I’d still take one,” Julia said.

Ezekiel handed out charms, saying, “One for everyone.”

Julia’s charm snapped around her wrist. Tiffany’s went around her thumb. Paul held his blood charm in his hand for a moment, then placed it against his wrist where it became a bracelet just like Ezekiel’s.

“So!” Julia said, “Thanks for the charm. Seems like it’ll protect me from the weavers, so I’ll hunt this horde on my own.”

A breeze passed through.

Ezekiel wasn’t sure he had heard that right.

He asked, “What?”

Julia said, “I’ll hunt this weaver on my own.”

Ezekiel felt his world crumble. He asked. “Please don’t do this to me. Not against Blood Weavers. Not against anything like this.”

Julia froze as the weight of Ezekiel’s displeasure fell upon her. She stared into his eyes for a moment, seeming soft for a long second. Then she turned hard, and said, “I can turn into liquid flame. Or metal. I have [Aura of Freedom]. Not only am I naturally immune to whatever Blood abilities they have, and I doubt I even need your charm, for I am capable of freeing myself from literally any binding spell they could possibly throw at me. [Blood Control] spells will not work on me. The only people in danger in this situation are you, Tiffany, and Paul.” She rapidly turned to Tiffany and Paul, saying, “No offense meant, but you don’t even have an Elemental Body.”

Tiffany stayed well clear of the conversation. Paul did too. Both pretended not to hear anything as they looked away.

Julia turned back to her father, and said, “I could have taken that Nacreous Weaver, too, if I didn’t have to watch out for you. I am much more competent in this arena than you think, and I do not appreciate this smothering.”

Ezekiel felt empty. Gutted.

Julia stared, unflinching.

A moment passed, while Ezekiel tried to put his own thoughts in order. She was right. She was wrong. But above all, Ezekiel had to let her do this. He had expected her to try this. He had expected to lose this argument, too.

Ezekiel said, “You’re right. But I’m sending an Odin with you, who will [Withering] them if needed.”

“… Acceptable.” Julia said, “Please keep Odin away from the actual fight. I will be going in, now.” She shifted to light and stepped ten meters away where she instantly immolated into liquid fire and splashed outward into a flowing pool of orange ooze. The red dot of her [Sanguine Charm] was a spot of red shadows in the billowing heat of her brilliant form. She spoke with [Prestidigitation], saying, “Thank you for watching over me.” Another twist of light turned her into a shooting star that took off toward the north, toward…

Toward what was likely certain death.

… For anyone else except for Jane.

Why was this so hard? It would never get any easier, either.

Erick watched. He waited. He could do nothing else, lest he drive away his daughter. He had learned that lesson long ago.

Besides… Jane could handle this fight.

– – – –

The world was cold and Jane was fi—

Julia was fire.

Ah. That talk with her father had gone less than great. But it had gone. And now it was in the past, and they’d talk about it when they all got back home, and everything would be fine.

Eventually.

Everything would be better if he would have let her go on this entire hunt on her own. She hadn’t spoken up when the plans were made to get the Nacreous Weaver, and that was on her, but there hadn’t been a ‘best moment’ to talk about it. If it had just been her attacking the monster, then no one would have gotten hurt at all.

She didn’t expect all that reflection, but if she wasn’t constrained to fight with her father nearby—

That wasn’t fair of her.

She could have gone oozey right away and flanked the monster while Tiffany struck from one side and everyone attacked from every angle. That had been her own plan, but then her father had lucked out and mesmerized the weaver.

Paul would have gotten hurt, though, for sure. He had strained to freeze the weaver for that single moment. He could have done it a few more times, maybe, but even once was a lot. Probably due to the reflection, again. Paul had frozen too when he froze that weaver.

Ezekiel had been almost useless, too, until he lucked out.

Eh. They all got lucky. [Force Weaver] was no joke. Even she didn’t expect that. She could deal.

Her Unicorn Form would have worked, too. [Beautification Aura] would have been an instant kill, with less chance of accidentally burning her own party. But Poi would have gotten hurt… Maybe. He could probably piggyback off of everyone else’s sights. Back during the Unicorn Hunt, Marric had been fine fighting the Unicorns, and he was a Mind Mage, too.

She could have done that fight so much better.

And she could have trusted them to fight beside her as a monster, too. Why hadn’t she tried that with them? Was it because her father didn’t like seeing her as a monster? He certainly didn’t like spiders.

Was she embarrassed?

Julia loved her father, and everyone else was pretty great, too. Tiffany was warming up to her, finally, but…

She had sunk a lot of that just now, hadn’t she? By demanding to fight on her own, she had basically said that they were all useless.

Dammit.

She was better off alone.

Or maybe, she just hadn’t found the right people yet. She needed people who actually wanted to war and destroy, who were capable of keeping up with her own desire to fight and tear a swath through the world, so that other people could come behind and fix it all up.

That’s all that was happening here.

She wanted to be on the front line.

Her father wanted to be on the backline, and his people were there on that backline with him.

There was nothing wrong with this. It’s just how it was.

Anyway. There’s the spiders.

Pretty nest.

The crevasse was a kilometer long and a dozen meters wide, like a crack in the world that ran from deep in the forested valley to halfway up the bare mountain.

The entire crevasse was filled with glittering red darkness that extended into the world above, the red threads spreading out like blood from a wound. It might have truly been a wound, too; a kilometer-long wound in the world caused by someone’s spell or strength, that then got infected with spiders.

Julia descended to the edge of the crevasse, partway up the mountain, where red thread touched bare rock. She was going to stay away from the forest if she could; the blood weavers were a known threat, but they had to feed on some other monstrous species, for sure.

Her lightform touched the threads, ten meters from the edge of the lair. She plucked threads with a dozen tendrils, and she waited. She did not wait long.

She couldn’t see them yet, but she could feel them. Oozes had [Vibration Sense], just like spiders, and in her lightform, her [Vibration Sense] covered a great deal of space. Oozes were fractionally better at this particular sense when it came to sensing threats that touched the same solid surface. But for threats in the air, spiders won that contest.

Chittering, plucking feet clamored up from deep below. The larger ones had to be a hundred meters away. Less for the smaller ones. Maybe only twenty meters down. They had been hidden in holes carved out of the side of the crevasse and layered over with blood thread, but now they sensed prey upon their nest, and they hunted.

The wound in the world boiled over with the first wave of crimson Blood Weavers. Each spider was the size of a head, with legs twice as long but thin as needles. They shimmered in the afternoon sun as they rushed Julia, who was an ooze, but still in lightform.

She dropped the lightform, becoming bright burning ooze.

The shift in temperature was a minor explosion. Wet threads burst into steam, flash-frying then burning. Heat heralded Julia’s assault as she oozed forward, burning away more threads. Dumb spiders were caught in the flames. They advanced for a moment more, to kill the thing that was killing them, but they never got close.

The vanguard burst into flames, five meters away. The second line overheated, boiling first, and then they too caught fire. The third line, still cresting the edge, wisely decided to rush in other directions, and then away from the threat. Every single one of them was between level 20 to 30, with most being in the lower range. Not many of them were monsters, either, it seemed. She didn’t have [Eyes of Magic] in this form, for that was the basic nature of Shadow Spider eyes, but she did have the All Ability of [Life Sight] of her Hidebound Sneakeye form. [Life Sight] showed none of the usual gathering of life around a core that a monster usually had.

Julia briefly checked her resources. Health? Check. Mana? Check.

Yup. She was fine.

For a brief moment she considered Intelligence again, and decided that maybe she would do it, later. Or maybe she’d pick that up after she saw how it affected those people at Star Song. Intelligence had changed her father, but not by much. Mostly, he just picked up everything she put down, and that was kinda nice.

He even remembered what ‘chuuni’ meant.

Discarding thoughts other than the fight ahead of her, Julia oozed closer to the edge, burning away everything that came close, charring a path to the crevasse. Spiders fled at her encroachment. She reached the edge, intercepting a weaver that was larger than most, almost as large as she was. Ah. This one was a monster. Certainly didn’t look like a ‘Primal’ anything, though. It was just a normal, monsterized Blood Weaver.

It screamed as it charged up, aiming for Julia.

Julia stepped back from the edge, taunting the beast to attack her at her level. Her heat flowed out and up, after all. It didn’t flow down.

The weaver crested the ridge and Julia slipped forward, directly underneath the spider while it stabbed down at her oozy form. It struck, yeah. Julia barely felt the attack, and barely took damage.

The weaver, though, standing above Julia, instantly caught fire and exploded from the expansion of gasses inside its body. A blue box appeared, and yup! Just a normal Blood Weaver. Level 40ish, if Julia’s guess was correct. Spider legs and body parts went everywhere, as they burned.

Some of those burning bits fell into the wound in the world.

Julia poked a bit of herself back over the edge. She didn’t see much, as the flaming wreckage went out of range. That was one bad thing about flame oozes; they didn’t have normal sight. Oozes had [Surround Sight], which was great in most situations, but not in this situation, where the enemy was some hundreds of meters down a dark, blood-soaked hole. [Surround Sight] ended after about a hundred meters, and it couldn’t see around corners like a proper mana sense.

Julia was still glad that she had taken it as her Hidden Monster Class Ability, though.

She sent a [Fireball] sailing down into that red darkness.

Ain’t no way she’d walk into that trap.

Fire exploded. Probably. Julia couldn’t see the damage, but there were vibrations, for sure. She sent more [Fireball]s down into the wound, hitting here and there and lighting a few things on fire. Heat billowed up the hole, and flame oozes were good at seeing heat in the world, so there was definitely some burning down below. She got damage notifications and kill notifications, too.

But not much more than that.

She waited. The ground melted under her presence. Small dribbles of burning rock slipped over the edge of the crevasse, tumbling down into the dark, rapidly cooling as they fell.

This was not comfortable, for multiple reasons. One, in particular, was worse than the rest.

As a flame ooze, Julia needed to exist within certain temperatures in order to feel comfortable. It was, quite frankly, frigid as a witch’s tit out here, in the bright sunshine in the heat of the afternoon. This was like being in the middle of a blizzard. She could deal; she had dealt with this level of awfulness before and she would continue to do so. But the cold was easier to deal with when there were more burnable supplies nearby, and she could start her own fires.

She turned partially to shadows, both to get a better look at what was happening down in the hole, and to escape the cold. It worked. She wasn’t cold anymore.

Julia sent a few shadows downward.

The enemy stood revealed.

Julia jiggled in the shadows, suddenly wary. The target had been waiting, just out of her [Surround Sight], but her shadow sight from her shadow form had revealed all.

Fires burned here and there, but they were small things already being smothered by the concerted efforts of smaller spiders. The true illumination of the monster was from Bright blood spells hovering to the sides of the beast; four spells in total, each spinning like red globes.

The Primal Blood Queen, for that was the only thing a monster of this size could be. It had a body the size of a truck and the legs to match, each the size of tree trunks. It was a tarantula-type, with dark crimson chitin and absolutely covered in bright red needle-hair that shimmered in the light of its own ruby-red spellwork. Two main eyes, lidless and red, watched Julia stand on the edge, while smaller eyes surrounded its head, allowing it to keep focus on its smaller kin.

It was absolutely beautiful. More beautiful than the Nacreous Weaver; Julia had no idea why her father had thought that spindly thing was pretty.

Now, this! This was power! This was beauty.

It was rather smart, too. It had dealt with oozes before; that much was obvious. It had likely dealt with a lot of odd threats before now, and oozes were massive threats. Even if most monsters attacked until they either died or they killed enough to survive everything they attacked, most monsters were still wary of oozes. Unicorns went after oozes first and foremost because they were the only natural monster that could kill a unicorn, and the unicorns knew that.

The Queen Blood Weaver seemed to know that Julia was beyond dangerous, too.

So the monster sat there on the side of the crevasse, perfectly motionless so [Vibration Sense] was useless, out of range of [Surround Sight], and even out of range of most spells. This monster had realized that this particular ooze had shot out [Fireball]s, and it was wary for other tricks. It didn’t sense the shadows moving below it, though, under the threads under its feet.

Julia left the shadows there, but only to watch. She did not attack through them. She could have, but then the corpse would fall down and likely break into dozens of pieces, or otherwise get lost in the nest. Instead, she poked over the edge again, showing her orange ooze self.

The weaver did not move, but its hovering blood globes pulsed with power, growing slightly larger.

The weaver’s one-sided staredown continued.

Some smaller weavers, which were only the size of Julia herself, blitzed out of the crevasse, and rushed her. These were the stupid ones. Sacrificial pawns, no doubt. Some of them held small floating orbs of blood, though, and those were slightly more dangerous than the rest.

Julia let the sacrifices get close. She barely fought back, pretending at more sluggishness than was real. She was feeling slow, for sure, but she hammed it up for the obvious audience. She even allowed herself to be wounded. When a spider carved a [Blood Beam] from a floating orb, aiming at Julia, Julia let the spell clip off a few kilograms of orange ooze before she flexed her fire and burned the beast under 800 degrees of heat, Celsius.

It wasn’t really Celsius, but that was easier than calling it Yols, since they were about the same measurement.

Hmm.

This wasn’t working.

Julia dispatched the wave of medium-sized threats.

The queen refused to move. Or attack. Or reposition. Or anything. She waited. She watched. She did not move.

… Julia looked over her recently created spells and picked the one appropriate for the situation.

She had made one of these spells for each of her primary Elements, but there had been no use for them until now.

She cast. A flaming ooze oozed out of Julia and rushed over the edge of the crevasse, burning a path down the stone, through the webs, aiming directly for the Queen Blood Weaver. Julia turned to shadow and vanished from sight.

The replica detached from the wall and fell directly toward the queen, who instantly obliterated it by telekinetically swiping a blood orb across the air, striking the replica, splashing fire in every direction as the queen moved in the other direction. She repositioned so that the bits of obliterated fire touched upon anything but her. One of those pieces splattered on the webs near her, catching the web on fire.

The queen splashed the web with thick blood spells from one of her hovering orbs, dousing the flames. The size of her orbs diminished as she cast, but she didn’t seem to care.

Julia watched from the shadows, motionless. Watching and waiting.

Moments passed. The queen remained motionless.

Eventually, the queen tested a step forward. When nothing happened, she took another. Then she walked across the side of her web, avoiding the smaller spiders as she moved. The larger ones got out of her way as fast as possible. Julia saw why the larger ones moved so quickly when one of them didn’t get out of the way fast enough.

That large spider became another blood orb. Julia barely saw how the queen did it. One second the smaller-than-her spider was living, the next it had churned into itself, becoming another orb of glowing red blood, and then the queen’s four orbs were each back up to full size.

… Julia had made the right decision in telling everyone else to stay away. She could handle this herself.

Now with four blood orbs around her head, the queen proceeded to stamp out every fire in the area, smushing her blood orbs against the fire until the fire went away. She moved slowly, but fast enough. One well-burned area had to be re-webbed. The queen took a blood orb and made wrist-thick cable-like thread from it, laying down structural threads. The smaller weavers took over from there, quickly filling in the gaps in the nest while the queen watched. After a minute, the queen must have deemed progress ‘good enough’, and moved on. When she went away, the smaller weavers stopped caring about being so thorough in wrapping up their web. They kept at it, but they slowed.

The entire colony had been quiet during Julia’s attack, but slowly they began to chitter and shake their abdomens, and twang the thread near them as they communicated with each other. The queen’s orbs went dark as she started to walk with purpose, shaking the world as she moved down, down, into the dark.

There was intelligence behind that spider’s many eyes.

How intelligent, though?

While she was under the shadows, Julia restored her body with [Greater Treat Wounds]. When that was done, she spoke from the shadows on the other side of the crevasse. “Yo yo yo.”

The entire colony went silent again.

The queen turned around. She began walking back up the crevasse again, slowly, silently, her great big eyes watching for any movement at all.

Julia asked, “Are you intelligent enough to speak?”

The queen froze. Her blood orbs spun back up, returning to brilliant red life.

Julia switched her languages, asking, “Do you speak Ancient Script? Do you speak Inferni? How about Karstar? How about Gargantual? How about good old Ecks?”

The queen had zeroed in on the spot where the sound was coming from. Julia would have been surprised if she hadn’t. But then she ignored that spot, and kept looking, scanning the world for the speaker. Yup; she was intelligent. Also a monster. The core in her body was a grand core, for sure.

The queen spoke, in Ecks, “Help me! I’m down here!”

The spiders around the crevasse began to prowl with a purpose. They poked at shadows, and poked at air. Julia didn’t react when a spider poked at her shadow. The spider was obviously looking for movement, and Julia didn’t give it the satisfaction.

A few other spiders, the medium-sized ones, echoed their queen.

“We’re down here!” “The spider trapped us!” “We’re in the webs!”

Julia felt a lot better about killing them, now. She had to be sure they were monsters, and they were. Plus, her father would appreciate checking, and this way, he wouldn’t have to worry himself over if his daughter was killing sapient beings. Odin was still up there, high in the sky, watching, after all.

Probably.

Julia decided it was best to ensure that he was watching and seeing.

She asked, “What’s 2 plus 2!”

The weavers responded, “Down here! Help us!” and “It hurts!”

The Queen said, “Four! Why the math!”

Ah. Shit.

… Now Julia just had to know. She asked, “Do people often fall for that trap? Or are you truly not that bad of a monster?”

“I’m not a monster! I’m a [Polymage]! This is my life now because I can’t transform back!” The queen scanned her surroundings, as she asked, “Did you come here for thread? I can sell you some! Just bring us monsters. The bigger the better!”

Okay. Well. Now the Queen was starting to sound like a person. And Julia, dammit, was starting to fall for it. She did not like that she was falling for it, but that’s how it was.

Julia had absolutely no problem killing a monster that preyed on people, but this one was too smart, and that was a problem. She was like the Unicorn Queen. In that same way, this Queen Blood Weaver spoke like a person and spawned monsters that followed in her footsteps to kill people, for sure. But Julia had no problem killing that Other Queen, either.

Julia lied, “I’m going to come out now, and talk to you.”

The queen tensed. “I await your arrival.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Shadows rose from the edge of the cliff face, high above; a purposeful usage of shadows created more by skill than any spell. Every weaver turned toward the figure. None of them moved. Julia remained off to the side. ‘Shadow Julia’ walked down the side of the crevasse, not caring for the spiders nearby. None of them attacked the illusion. Most weavers walked out of the way.

On a vertical battlefield, Shadow Julia walked down, toward the Spider Queen. They met in glowing red darkness, surrounded by the reflective red eyes of their audience.

A figment stood before a Queen ten times her size, and asked, “Are you truly a [Polymage] trapped in there?”

“I assure you, I am.”

“Prove it.”

“I cannot. How would I?”

“Cast [Cleanse]. Monsters cannot do that.”

The Queen said, “I cannot either, but that does not mean that—”

Orbs of blood turned into carving spells of death, ripping through Shadow Julia, and then the Queen moved. She covered two hundred meters in a flashing moment, coming to stand right above where the real Julia hid in the shadows, under the webs. Blood orbs soaked into the webs, turning a portion of the crevasse into blood spikes, killing a hundred smaller spiders in the process. Deaths fueled the return of the blood orbs.

But Julia suffered no injury. She was already on the other side of the crevasse.

The Queen directed her orbs into a different sort of soaking spell that went into the wrist-thick webbing of the crevasse and set the battlefield aglow. Light erupted. Shadows vanished.

Julia turned to light and ripped across the Queen, taking a leg at its joint, tearing it away, into the light. The Queen screamed as Julia dragged its body part up out of the crevasse, into the sun, making sure that her trail was highly visible.

The Queen followed, raging, and so did her horde.

Julia did not want to drag out the kill. Even monsters deserved this much respect.

But the Queen ate its young when it got injured, to restore lost legs and lost Health, and replenish its resources. And then there were the tricks. Three times the Queen managed to snare Julia, as an ooze, in an unburnable cage of solid thread, with neither light nor shadow allowing her escape. This was its most dangerous attack, but even that failed to matter, for Julia simply walked out of the space with a small application of [Aura of Freedom], acting as though the [Blood Web Cage], or whatever spell it was, didn’t even exist.

Somewhere in the fight, Julia figured out how the Queen had seen her when she was in the shadows. It was the [Sanguine Charm] Julia had kept inside her burning body. The charm didn’t burn away, for it was more magic than real, but it was a blood source, and that was enough for the Queen to notice where it was all the time.

Julia asked the Queen to stop fighting, twice, just so her father would see. Just so he would know this was a true monster. It refused. It killed its young in order to live longer. It attacked even when Julia stood still, and stayed away. Julia had survived worse attacks, and oozes could regenerate with just a bit of [Greater Treat Wounds], or, since Julia had [Shedding Form], she just re-[Polymorph]ed into a flame ooze again, for less mana cost.

Every time Julia emerged from her own sliced-down bit of goo as a fully large and in charge flaming ooze, the Queen chittered angrily.

In two minutes, well before Julia ran out of resources and would have been forced to retreat, the battlefield shifted. Julia had clipped off twenty legs and burned away countless crimson hair, burning through the Queen’s Health twenty-times over. The Queen could have kept going, except she had run out of medium-sized weavers to eat. She ran out of resources first.

Julia killed the Queen with a spear of shadows through its center mass. She would have physically gone into the monster and ripped its core out from its abdomen and ended the fight early, but the Queen’s heart was all around its core, and that action would have brought flame into the spider and destroyed the heart. That was an untenable solution. You needed the heart and the brain to get the Familiar Form, after all.

Upon the Queen’s death, Julia got a minor surprise. She had been calling the weaver a ‘Queen’ in her mind, but the kill notification box revealed the truth. The ‘Primal Blood Weaver’ truly was a ‘Queen Blood Weaver’. Not a ‘Primal Blood Weaver’.

Riri had been wrong, yet again.

Odd, that.

The horde went crazy with the death of the Queen, and then they calmed as normal mental functions came back. The Queen obviously had some sort of [Spider Mind] ability that allowed it to control lesser spiders; most magical spiders had that ability.

Freed from control, the animal spiders rushed to get away from Julia; there were no monstrous ones left since the Queen ate them all. The young weavers vanished down the crevasse. Julia considered burning them all away, but there might be a need for more blood weavers at some point in the future, and they were just animals.

Julia transformed into light. She came out of that light as a Shadow Spider that gleamed iridescent black in the afternoon sun. Briefly, she felt the minds of a few smaller, closer spiders like they were extensions of her own body. She discarded those minds, telling them to go back to whatever they were doing, but in fewer words than that.

And then she got to eating third lunch.

Halfway through, she sighed out a horrific chuckle as she got another surprise.

There were no notifications for gaining essence, except for when you gained a new ability, and then lastly when you gained the full Elemental Body. You could feel it when you absorbed essence, though. It was sort of like a piece of the universe revealing itself in the shade of a tree, or the sound of a brook. The Queen Blood Weaver had essence, for sure. Eating the monster felt like reveling in something bloody, which was not unexpected, but still… Kinda surprising. Was there ‘Blood Essence’? Maybe.

But then reality appeared, and the notification Julia got was:

She thanked her Class Ability Draconic Inoculation for the meal, and continued.

– – – –

Ezekiel watched as his daughter ate the Queen Blood Weaver.

He came back to himself.

Nothing had happened to them while they waited there, on that mountainside. Tiffany sat on her boulder. Paul sat on his smaller boulder. Odin chirped on Ezekiel’s shoulder. And nothing happened.

This was in stark contrast to what had happened to Julia. Spikes of worry seemed to slam into Ezekiel’s very soul, at least three times, as he watched the slaughter. Once, when Julia just looked over the edge while the Queen was there. Then again, when the Queen spoke. Then again, when it went straight for his daughter.

… There were a few more times there, for sure.

But.

Julia had it under control.

It was a one-sided slaughter.