Under kitchen cabinets, in the disorder some call a room, there lives a fragile ecosystem where insects invade in search of the source of delicious scents wafting from overly sweet and processed foods. There live a complex mix of tiny creatures hiding in dark crevices waiting for the next life-sustaining morsel to come tumbling down from a bedside table. While human inattention lasts, well before "spring cleaning," when the filth is at its most disgusting, and a "new year, new me" mentality still hasn't started its week-long life cycle. This time is where a veritable insect kingdom thrives.
In one particular crevice, several residents are about to encounter a terrifying hunter. Peering into this dingy area, catching sight of several small roaches cleaning up the remains of one brand of snack cake or another, unaware of the dangerous predator preparing to pounce. In this environment, the laziness of humans becomes the most beneficial grace given to insects in the cold, cruel world, and to new life gripping a firm hold of and exploiting one of the few relatively safe environments can mean the difference between eating and being eaten.
All eight unsettling eyes are glaring hungrily toward their prey. It has been three weeks since any unlucky insect has blundered into this particular orb weaver's web, and hunting now seems to be its only option, that or starve. The abdomen of this arachnid is less than a centimeter wide. While the length of the legs provides a more imposing visage, its actual weight and mass are not much, but more than enough to take down a few roaches. Still, many other insects had to be avoided by the spider in this artificial insect paradise and would be a tall order to take down with its size.
Arranging its legs using the combination of hydraulic pressure and internal musculature, it prepares to leap onto an unsuspecting roach. Feeling how little energy it has, the spider hopes for a quick hunt punctuated by dragging a delectable insect back to its nest for a safer eating experience.
The spider leaps, and before the roaches have time to process the new audio stimuli, it is set upon by an enemy more than twice its size, even if not much heavier than it. Spider fangs, while relatively harmless without injecting venom for humans or larger mammals, prove a deadly tool in the hands of a seasoned hunter on this foray. They were securely penetrating the lower prothorax, the area right above the attachment of the wings, which the spider skillfully smothers to prevent any form of attempted escape.
Scuttling sounds immediately ensued as the roach's companions left him to die. The spider was simultaneously annoyed it failed to catch all of its prey and satisfied, knowing that at least it captured tonight's dinner. Making the long journey to its web, the spider has already begun injecting venom and liquifying the insides of its prey to make it easier to digest.
Returning to the safety of its territory, it begins to feast. The surrounding webbing still does not afford absolute protection in the wild. Even while enjoying a long-awaited meal, the beady eyes of our intrepid arachnid shoot out into the darkness, searching for an imaginary foe. Suddenly, a bright object appears in its vision, and while unsure of what or who it is, instinct kicks in, and the spider postures itself and hisses toward the unwelcome intruder. While it begins to bare its fangs towards the unknown entity, it feels a lack of control in its limbs which quickly spreads, sending it unsure and scared into a deep torpor.
As it wakes it finds its consciousness bombarded with a new understanding of its world. The world once was just a collection of it, prey, and predators has become something with a myriad of definitions and differing situations the simple instincts given to an arachnid could never express. The colossal creature moving in the open expanse outside of its dreary corner, once thought to be a predator who would kill and eat it at a moment's notice, has now been labeled a "human." With this label, upon pondering its meaning, a general understanding of humans occupied his mind, noting several strange words that escaped its newly dextrous mental capabilities. Once again, considering these words rewarded a broad knowledge of concepts such as culture, nations, and greed, the latter of which is all too familiar but packaged in a brief literary term that is new and alien to it.
It now understands this glowing entity is an "interface." it notes several "headers," namely Character, Skills, Inventory, Equipment, and Map. Mentally selecting the first of these headers, it is momentarily surprised to see a table appear, as the shock abates it begins poring over the contents before itself.
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*No Name* Sex: Female Race: Marbled Orb Weaver Spider Str: 8 Dex: 12 Con: 8 (Current apparent constitution is 6, -2 for starvation) Int: 14 Wis 7 Cha: 12 (stats are not based on race but as a standard unit to measure prowess in a specific field. Similar-sized creatures of equal strength will be similar in dragging, lifting, throwing, or carrying weight regardless of how the weight is manipulated etc.) Skills: Web construction, Line control, Bite, Intimidate, Danger sense Abilities: Web production, Spider climb, Venom production, Arachnid language (Orb Weaver) ================================================================ Female. A word meant to describe one half of the dimorphic evolution of a species and one that brings with it more language used to address members of said group. It guesses she should call herself "she" now. It will take getting used to, but a welcome change. These words amuse her; the ability of one word to alter perceptions and change connotation is much like how she builds her nest, a line small and inconsequential alone, but together creates a near inescapable net when brought together. It is a shame the lack of communicative partners are lacking, or she would love to practice weaving these words together. ================================================================ *you have gained skill [Eloquence] Lv. 0* ================================================================ A mental jolt, along with a line of text slowly floating out of view, brings her out of her reverie, and she focuses her attention on the now glowing second header, skills. This time a drop-down menu opens; she can mentally operate it and scroll up or down. She currently has six highlighted skills: ================================================================ Web Construction - use thread to weave together a net used as a dwelling or trap, +4% web construction speed, +4% web concealment - Lv.2, Exp. 53/100 Line control - manipulate a part of a thread, rope, etc., to make another part of a said object move in a way you desire, +2% maneuverability, -2% fatigue when manipulating line-like objects - Lv.1, Exp. 88/100 -Special- Bite - Use fangs, teeth, or a beak to inflict physical damage to a target (piercing, slashing, or blunt damage all affected,) +6% bite force, +3% crit chance (increases intuition on when to attack at the perfect time securing a strike on a vulnerable area) - Lv.3, Exp. 4/100 Intimidate - increase visible volume to the targets, flail dangerous limbs, and bare fangs to lower the target's morale, and decrease the chance of being attacked, may induce fear status, causing the target to be paralyzed or flee +1% chance target is afflicted with fear, -2% chance to be attacked by target - Lv.1, Exp. 32/100, Danger sense - the instinctual feeling when a dangerous entity or disaster is imminent +8% chance to feel a deadly threat incoming, +4% chance to predict wide-ranged harmful effects - Lv.4, Exp. 2/100 Eloquence - using clever wordplay can confuse (temporarily lower targets intelligence, and ability to understand complex topics,) persuade, or increase the target's opinion of yourself +0% chance target is afflicted with confusion, +0% chance to influence the target successfully - Lv.0, Exp. 0/100 ================================================================ Looking towards the bottom of this menu, there are several vague sentences that she can't seem to make out, but can be relatively sure those are other skills that can't be accessed yet. After that is a scale; she feels she can offer energy gained from food to transfer into "skill points." These points are different than experience. If experience measures her current knowledge of a subject, which can increase through practice, a skill point is a token she can trade in for tutoring to teach her what she's currently missing; she can use these points to instantly upgrade a skill by spending an amount equal to the skill level. If only she had a surplus of food. When looking at the scale, she had the intuition that each point she exchanged would cost a tenth of what would fill her up, and currently, she's only about half full and needs to digest this energy to recover from the last few weeks of starvation. She thinks back to those roaches that escaped earlier and hoped they had returned to where she ambushed them earlier. If so, she may be able to exchange points in the morning at the latest. She moved as silently towards her recent hunting grounds as she could and, after drawing near, began to hear scratching. Looking forward through the dim light coming from above, she saw three roaches, one of which was mature and rivaled her, legs included, in size, and was about one and a half times her weight. She froze immediately. Before, she knew that roaches were relatively easy to scare, but now through the info recently learned, she knows they have hairs on their body that will alert them to air movements in the vicinity. She ever so slowly moved towards the smaller roaches' side; by the time she was within distance to leap, they had already eaten about a tenth of the food left in this area. As she assumed a familiar jumping stance, she realized that picking out any issues with the stance her instincts suggested was almost impossible, even with her increased intelligence. Even the slightest difference would reduce the speed, distance, or explosiveness. ================================================================ *you have gained skill [Athletics] Lv.0* *Skill [Athletics] has leveled up!* *Skill [Athletics] has leveled up!* *you have accessed knowledge recorded in your bloodline and increased a skills level, [Athletics] is now at Lv.2* ================================================================ Despite this very distracting onslaught in her head, the eight eyes never wavered or moved from her prey, waiting for the perfect time to leap. Soon she had it. The two small roaches began squabbling over a particularly fragrant crumb; with her newfound knowledge, she knew that it was stained with some sort of gravy, and thanks to this, the roaches were distracted, making them a step too late to react. They only managed to disentangle themselves being landed on, and at that point, it was too late. Using her legs to clinch them together, extending her chelicerae. She injected her venom into one until it stopped struggling, staring down the mature roach who was currently gorging himself. Once the cockroach realized his companions had been captured, the first roach had expired, and the second pierced. Perhaps the mature one didn't understand its situation as it proceeded to walk toward a dangerous predator equipped with venom-filled fangs. She had initially assumed this mature roach must have been more intelligent to have survived long enough to grow so large; evidently, she was wrong. Maybe this place is far safer than she initially thought. Looking towards the second of her smaller prey and noting its imminent death, she released it, only for it to lightly twitch its legs, attempting to escape but quickly found it did not have the strength left to overcome the friction of its underbelly scraping the ground. Wheeling around on herself, as she splays her legs out and raises her forelimbs, attempting to make herself seem more significant than she is, she tries to intimidate this jumbo roach. The roach noting her display seems far more hesitant in walking forward but ultimately moves forward. Capitalizing on the insect's trepidation, she takes the initiative to make several successive leaps toward it, causing the roach to stop approaching and make defensive gestures. Looking at its gestures, she compares them to her own, realizing that if she had lifted her abdomen more, it might have looked even more prominent, and her intimidation might have succeeded immediately. She also logs the effectiveness of the short, aggressive leaps and their ability to demonstrate aggression and danger. ================================================================ *Skill [Intimidate] has leveled up* *you have rationally assessed yourself and your enemy and increased a skills level, [Intimidate] is now at Lv.2* ================================================================ The giant roach seems to take the lack of continued aggression from the dangerous predator in front of it as amnesty and quickly shuttles into the darkness. While not blind, an orb weaver spider lacks such acute vision as its cousin, the jumping spider, so she quickly loses sight of the creature and begins the trek back to her nest. During the struggle with the smaller roaches and the confrontation with the larger variant, she managed to digest a large portion of the earlier meal and, upon reaching her web, promptly digs into the new addition to her food stores while waiting on the food to properly liquefy. It seems a good time to look into the [Athletics] skill. ================================================================ -Special- Athletics- allows for more significant acceleration and explosiveness in physical actions (does not affect the top speed or maximum lift, merely allows one to hit top speed, and move weight faster, also increases endurance when doing physically strenuous tasks) +4% acceleration, and +10% physical stamina - Lv.2, Exp. 12/100 ================================================================ While on the skill page, she also noted that the chance to inflict fear and to make an enemy cease aggression from intimidating has doubled, 2% and 4%, respectively. Reading all this info really makes a girl thirsty, she thinks as she bites into her meal. As she does so, a cursory glance on her stats page shows the constitution has returned to its regular value of eight. The only blemish left on the stat screen is the lack of a name. What should she name herself? Thinking on this issue while finishing off the second roach, she again looked upon the scale in her skills tab with the knowledge that a full stomach can last her for several weeks. She decided to transfer all the excess from her newest harvest. Armed with five new skill points and no concept of money management, she promptly looks to her skills panel. ================================================================ -Common- Web Construction - +4% web construction speed, +4% web concealment - Lv.2, Exp. 53/100 Line control - +2% line maneuverability, -2% fatigue - Lv.1, Exp. 88/100 -Special- Bite - +6% bite force, +3% crit chance - Lv.3, Exp. 6/100 Intimidate - +2% chance target is afflicted with fear, -4% chance to be attacked by target - Lv.1, Exp. 32/100, Danger sense - +8% chance to feel a deadly threat incoming, +4% chance to predict wide-ranged harmful effects - Lv.4, Exp. 2/100 Eloquence - +0% chance target is afflicted with confusion, +0% chance to influence the target successfully - Lv.0, Exp. 0/100 Athletics- +4% acceleration, and +10% physical stamina - Lv.2, Exp. 12/100 ================================================================ Looking at the increasing list of highlighted skills and seeing the growth since just a few hours ago fills her with an intense sense of accomplishment, but as she scrolls down to the bottom of the page, she notes that several of the hazy words at the bottom have clear substantially, looking through them and seeing her inference was correct that they were locked skills, devoting several minutes scrolling through and picking ones most suited to her, even with a large number of skills able to be seen now the skills below seem endless, feeling as if her current amount hasn't even scratched the surface, she looks through the ones most suited to her ================================================================-common- Territory marking - leaving traces of activity on the edges of your habitat to ward off other predators and declare dominance over an area +0% intimidation effect in the marked area, +0% chance to deter predators from entering marked area-Lv.0, Exp. -/100, Cost: 1 SP to unlock Linguist - while listening to a language, have a chance to learn said language +0% chance to learn a language per minute of listening, +0% chance to discern sophistry and harmful rhetoric - Lv.0, Exp. -/100, Cost: 1 SP to unlock -Special- Parasitic Authority - infect other creatures of similar or lower total mental stats (int, wis, cha) and gradually cement your control over them +0% chance to progressively charm (force target to view you as a close friend and confidante unless directly attacked) a creature, +0% chance to open telepathic bond - Lv.0, Exp. -/100, Cost: 10 SP to unlock ================================================================ Figuring that more points will be easy to come by now that she is full and won't need any more food, she quickly picks up both new common skills and upgrades [Bite] instead of saving for a special skill. Poring over the new knowledge, she determines that skulking near some roaches and listening in until she learns their language may be helpful. They are so numerous they have to know the distribution of predators around here. Slinking around near her nest, existential thoughts of "who am I?" long forgotten, now all that exists is the thrill of the hunt, even knowing that the stalking will be the bulk of today's venture, the promise of food at the end is still a powerful driving force. An even more tantalizing Idea is that she may use some of her intelligence and guile to trick creatures with their own language! Making her way through her land, she makes use of her new skill, leaving silk with a peculiar scent around important resources. She avoids putting it directly near food sources for prey so as not to scare prey away from her clutches. Still, near enough, the keen senses of a predator should be able to pick it up and steer clear of her land. Slowly scouring the areas, she had noticed groups of insects before, until eventually, she heard a group of roaches scuttling about on a pizza crust. During the time she spent marking her territory, the sun had risen above the horizon. The room was slowly brightening, meaning she probably had less than an hour before all the roaches went into hiding during the day. The increasing visibility not only does it increase the efficiency of spotting prey but also allows her to survey her surroundings with a fresh set of eyes. She realizes that the area she inhabits is the space between a bed and the floor. It has become a complex maze of wrappers, bottles, and boxes of junk food from the human's poor life choices. Looking towards her web, it dominates the corner of this space, leaving fewer possible directions for enemies to attack her. This setup also reduces the flow of prey through her area. Maybe bringing back not only her food but fragrant crumbs to weave into her web would attract more prey? Taking action upon this idea, after finding a shaded corner inside a crumpled box, she begins to weave a pouch, anchoring it upon her back. She weaves together both threads made for their strength and durability to ensure the bag won't rupture unexpectedly, as well as sticky threads along the inner wall to ensure during leaps, or climbing, her items won't tumble out, forcing her to collect them all over again. ================================================================ *Inventory unlocked* *you have gained skill [Packing] Lv.0* ================================================================ Looking towards the header at the top of her vision, the Inventory icon is glowing brightly. Clicking into it, she sees a three-dimensional icon of her new bag. She can mentally arrange items inside it, tearing a piece of cardboard from her temporary shelter and imagining it inside her bag; she notes it disappearing from the ground in front of her and appearing in her vision inside the bag, along with a feeling of weight on her back. Removing the debris from her pack, she begins prowling once more, scavenging for suitable bait to bring back to her web. Maneuvering closer to the edge of the mattress, where crumbs are far more likely to fall, she quickly spots a large pile of decomposing food and a group of insects, including a beetle. Many of the insects give the more significant beetle the right of way. During this feast, it monopolized all the most attractive food. Listening in from behind a wrapper to obscure herself from any of the more skittish insects ahead, she noticed a distinct lack of vocalizations from the roaches. Just as she thought her plans to learn their language were a bust, she caught a whiff of a peculiar smell. While she may not be the intended recipient, her new skill filled her in on its meaning; this is a pheromone telling rival roaches that this food has been claimed. Peering slightly outward from the wrapper, she noticed that one of the roaches looked familiar. The mature cockroach she had let escape earlier sat on a prominent pile of food. The most potent pheromones seemed to be coming from him. The other insects seemed to avoid his surroundings and sift among the other morsels nearby, letting out similar scents. The only seemingly indifferent creature, the beetle, was currently tackling a solidified string of once melted cheese that dripped down from the mattress above and did not deign to bother itself with the king-like behavior of the roach a quarter of its size. While her [Linguist] skill will eventually decrypt their language on its own, based on previous experience, actively learning and understanding something related to skills will give a massive boost in Exp, so soon she begins sending out pheromones as well, occasionally a few roaches near her will stop eating for a second or two and twitch their antennae when receiving the jumbled mess of signals she produced, but eventually she can express simple meanings, well enough that she begins directing roaches that followed the scent of food towards unoccupied sections to scavenge, after a few attempts she can even competently send two separate cockroaches off towards different areas at the same time ================================================================ *you have gained the skill [Logistics] Lv.0* *through your experimentation, your [Logistics] skill has increased to Lv. 1* ================================================================ After her experiments proved successful, she began to guide newcomers, shuffling out of the darkness looking for food, towards her nest. After celebrating the success of her plan, she realized it was a tad too soon. Soon after she began gloating, the roach she had just sent off turned back around. After about 10 seconds of heading in the direction it had received, it neither smelled nor saw anything delicious and decided to save the journey and returned. Realizing this may be more challenging than she expected, she redoubled her efforts, choosing a smaller roach that had been repeatedly muscled out of several food piles by more mature, more aggressive juvenile insects. Weaving a story about exceptionally delicious food that could also significantly increase the speed of the insect's growth, she sent the little roach off into the darkness. While it is difficult for her to tell apart the facial expressions of insects, she could certainly see from the rate of action that the roach was very eager to find said food. Still, although it took three times as long, a little bit over half a minute, the cockroach again gave up on its quest. This roach even had the gall to head towards her, releasing aggressive pheromones and looking to fight with her for tricking it! Waiting around the edge of the wrapper poised to strike, she listens intently to the scrabbling of the roach's legs, all while ignorant of what's to come. The second it turns the corner, she swears she saw it shiver, and while it is still difficult to tell, it's a pretty good assumption the current expression on its face means surprise and fear. Clasping her forelimbs around the insect's torso and delivering a bite into the back of its neck, the roach hardly managed to struggle more than once before succumbing to the venom. Considering that eating this small roach would be quick and allow her to upgrade her skills to try and make her pheromones more convincing, she began to dig in while carefully eyeing her surroundings and listening for any sign of movement. taking the time to transfer four skill points and leveling up her [Eloquence] skill to level three, looking at the skill in her interface, Eloquence - using clever wordplay can confuse (temporarily lower targets intelligence, and ability to understand complex topics,) persuade, or increase the target's opinion of yourself +3% chance target is afflicted with confusion, +6% chance to influence the target successfully - Lv.3, Exp. 0/100 Returning her gaze to the group of insects, she began mixing a cloud of pheromones. Although the numerical value seems underwhelming, the wealth of knowledge on how to phrase her requests and blend pheromones more seamlessly gives her an exceptional increase in persuasiveness, so much so that she believes she could outtalk four or five of her previous selves alone! She no longer only sent pheromones towards singular roaches but towards all the bugs on this half of the food pile. After that distance, the pheromones got diluted in the air and were far less effective. She once again told of glorious magical food with growth-enhancing attributes. She stressed that it was plentiful enough for all to partake, that those most patient and dedicated would be blessed with all the food they could eat, and that any hardship overcome would be returned tenfold with its reward. Immediately she noticed that many insects froze, some even halfway through biting into food. They stood still, processing for several seconds before swarming towards her nest. Some soon became hesitant to continue and wanted to return. They were forced forward or trampled by those behind. She counted at least seventeen small to medium-sized roaches, all smaller than her and two comparable to her size, one of which she had a run-in with earlier and had faced off with her briefly, satisfied with her haul. She began to follow along, all the while releasing promising pheromones extolling the virtues of patience and promising very lucrative rewards. Using asynchronous information to trick those more foolish than her was gratifying. She liked this method of hunting. It suited her far more than dirtying her hands out in the field. Tricking others was so addicting that she began to crave the next opportunity to flex her verbal might. Looking toward the group of fools marching right into her trap, she felt that opportunity would come very soon. She began to release pheromones as fast as possible to dilute the threatening scent from her [Territory marking] skill. It seems to have mostly succeeded, at least where it mattered. As the band of insects traversed a slightly complex piece of terrain, made up of several crushed boxes leaning on one another, they were finally entering her territory. Those upfront seemed to have noticed a hint of danger; still, those behind, being closer to her, marched on, forcing those at the head of the group to continue despite the risks or be used as a walkway by several of their kind. The two largest roaches positioned comfortably in the center of the pack; perhaps the larger ones were marginally more intelligent, she mused, as they innately found the safest position. No matter what danger comes out of the darkness, it would have to traverse a living wall of smaller roaches to approach them. Unfortunately, the threat they faced wasn't approaching them; they were approaching it. Positioning herself ahead of the group while leaving a trail of pheromones for them to follow, she extolled the virtue of perseverance, claiming that those who wished to step into the hallowed ground must pass several trials. The roaches noticeably slowed, but coming out into a barren corner with next to no food made them reluctant to leave without getting the promised reward. As they stepped forward, more and more webbing came into view. In preparation for this plan, she laid out a large amount of webbing in the surrounding that is very sturdy but not sticky, maneuvering around them and laying down sticky thread interconnected in preparation for any cowards running away. Once again, slinking deeper into the nest, she is greeted by a beautiful sight. A third of the way towards the core of the nest, she finds several roaches trapped in the sparse sticky webbing she laid out to thin the herd; taking the time to bite them and inject venom in preparation, she heads forward and begins the final piece of her trick. Once more getting within the pheromone range, she tells the group that they must fight one another and that those who perform exceptionally well will receive miraculous abilities. This whipped the insects into a frenzy. She didn't even need to entice them to start; several had already turned on their previous traveling companions and even viciously used their mandibles to rip their compatriots' forelimbs off, immediately seizing the advantage. The two large roaches seemed to have decided to clear the weaker competitors before solving each other. They tacitly moved to opposite sides of the skirmish and began brutally eliminating the smaller roaches. Seeing her plan come to fruition, she made her way back to those roaches scattered along the path toward the heart of her web. She began savoring her spoils, taking the initiative to finally purchase [Parasitic authority] and even taking the time to level it all the way up to level five! ================================================================ * Benchmark hit: Prestige or specialize?* ================================================================ Stifling the knee-jerk reaction to pick one and see what it does, she ponders what each of these would do; while focusing on the prompt, more relevant info appears. ================================================================ *when leveling skills, each multiple of five is a benchmark, prestiging resets the skill to 1 and enhances the tier of skill as well as overall effectiveness, specializing gives a unique effect, but does not affect skill level or tier, at level 25 even if prestige is never selected skills progress to the next tier keeping all specialist bonuses, specialist bonuses are fixed after prestiging, it is recommended to specialize mainstay skills and prestige skills with little use value* ================================================================ The info this prompt explicitly stated was exciting enough; even more so is the idea that skills don't stop progressing in teirs after being specialized! Immediately choosing to specialize, her vision momentarily goes dim and time seems to come infinitely close to stopping; she is brought within her mind and intuitively understands that she must use her own understanding to shape her specialization; luckily, she has been taking things relatively easy recently and is in peak mental condition. She promptly begins to probe her skill and attempts to shape it in the desired direction. The reason she picked this skill is to cultivate her own followers. While previously she felt that as long as they were loyal, it didn't matter who or what she enthralled, given the opportunity, she, of course, wanted to shape her subjects in her image. Initially; this skill would allow her to modify her venom to reduce its outright toxicity but make it more concealed in the targets body and selective of when and where to attack, targeting the brain of the creature and altering what it sees as friendly, making looking at and speaking with her almost addictive via enhancing the good feeling about her several-fold. Not only is the venom gland affected, but her spinneret has also started to change as well, now gaining the ability to weave webs with a mutagenic effect, allowing her to shape those she cocoons into a more spider-like form, albeit currently, the change she can create is minor. After cementing the change in her skill, her perception of time returns to normal, and she finds herself back to her normal perspective, looking towards the center of her web. She thinks it's time to "reward" the victor of the bloodbath. No longer hiding her figure, she marches directly onto the scene of the carnage. She finds roughly thirty percent of the insects have been mutilated to varying degrees, making it impossible for them to lift themselves off the ground, let alone resist if anything attempted to attack them. The other sixty percent has ripped into pieces. In the center, surrounded on all sides by the blood and guts of its opponent, is one of the two giant roaches, now coated in the guts of its companions, and seems to be about ten percent larger, but surely that can't be right. Releasing pheromones expressing her dominance over this land, even in the face of the insect not only bigger, but heftier than her. She begins to unleash her pheromones as potently as possible, utilizing all the knowledge learned from her previous upgrade of the eloquence skill while simultaneously attempting to look as vicious and dangerous as possible. She demands the insect submit and receive its prize. Even assuming the roach was in its right mind, it is very likely it would resist an offer from such a lackluster looking creature, both more diminutive and weaker than it. Now is an even worse time to propose a civil conclusion, it wanted, no, NEEDED blood. This creature has just single-handedly waded through the guts and viscera of its kind and personally contributed to this pile of body parts by at least half, the pain from its wounds screaming in its consciousness. This roach was not willing to listen to the words of the weakling in front of it. Watching this creature coated in body fluids and scars all along its carapace stepping towards her, aside from how delectable it smells, she realizes this presents her with a beautiful chance to test the combat functions of her two most benign skills. [Web construction] and [Line control] allow her to weave a web even from a distance with absolute control. Stepping up along the webbing, making a pseudo canopy above the battlefield, she begins to secrete webbing along the path underneath her. She is currently lining the floor in the webbing to create a framework to connect other webs to more easily bind her prey. The roach beneath has to climb over all the corpses, quickly falling behind, unable to keep up with her pace. Before crossing a quarter of the distance towards her, she constructed an arena specifically to deal with her pursuer. Utilizing the remaining time to coat the ground between the original strands with several zigzagging lines, thicker than standard webbing but several times stickier, she manages to fill the path towards the center of her trap as the roach finally reaches the periphery. Seeing it take its first steps into her webbing and immediately having a leg caught brings something as close as her arachnid face can express to a smile. One which immediately froze on her face as the tip of its legs gleamed for a second, the webbing sliced in two freeing its leg. The roach appears fed up with her kiting tactics, and before she can respond, the creature almost begins to glow. Little, however, gets through its shell. Immediately after she pieces it together, something similar to it cutting her webbing is happening as it launches itself at her. Completing a jump that far exceeds its actual muscular strength and achieving a speed far outstripping its previous running, overshooting her slightly, it lands in the area with only the skeletal webbing and no preventative measures. Moving into the prepared site, she begins spinning webbing into a more robust, nonsticky cord with a small amount of highly sticky and durable length at the end, she coils the sticky end around one of her forelimbs and makes herself a whip, capable of being useds without apposable thumbs, congratulating herself on her intellect she begins whipping towards the encroaching assailant who has been taking the time to rip apart the sticky threads along the floor trying to get to her, its luster that bursts out at the tip of its leg each time seems to be dimming and going from off white to pale yellow, seemingly becoming weaker and weaker over time, lashing over and over again on its durable carapace, the force of which disrupting its aim several times sending its prepared strike off course slightly and causing it to slam its foot into the floor, which causes a noticable change in expression, she believes to be pain, it seems to realize that continuing along this path will only cause it to be slowly weakened until it can no longer threaten the bug in front of it. Once again, the roach begins to glow this time, and even the carapace is included as it takes on a dark burnished gold hue. It barrels forward, ignoring the webbing on the ground. With it not being cut appropriately, each step connects to a new thread which, upon reaching the end of its leeway, is ripped up from the ground and connects with other threads congregating a large mass behind the insect. The original unreasonable burst of speed is quickly slowed by dragging the group of tangled lines from a sprint down to a jog. She takes this extra time to snap several times at its legs with her whip, realizing that if she can manage to trip it, all the webbing trailing after it will smother it, creating the best chance to cocoon it around him, trapping it and allowing her to repeatedly wrap it in thread until it runs out of whatever is allowing it to cut through her webbing. The roach didn't expect the shift in tactics, causing one of its legs to slip after altering its running rhythm to avoid the whip. Mirth so obvious even the berserker roach could detect it appeared in the depths of all eight eyes as they bounded out of its view, leaping forwards and landing on top of the fallen roach, her spinneret was already releasing webbing, as she quickly circled the legs in an attempt to prevent the creature from righting itself. After making one circle; the bug began straining against the rope, persuading her to rotate around the legs thrice more before starting the construction of a full-body cocoon. Upon restraining the bug, she starts her [Parasitic authority] ability, turning the originally off-white eggshell color of her webbing began to an almost toxic deep purple. She marveled at how the webbing reacted to its exoskeleton after she finished wrapping the insect. It started to emit smoke and adhere to the creature's surface before spreading into a film, merging with more purple webbing and dissolving all foreign objects present. Peculiarly including her other webbing on the creature's leg and those connected during its mad dash earlier, the film begins to pulse and fill with liquid. Looking at the incapacitated enemy, she tentatively prodded the surface to test if it was dangerous to herself. Upon contact, it seemed to bunch up towards her limb; before returning to normal as if understanding the identity of her limb, assured of her safety, she uses her fangs to inject the specialized venom from [Parasitic authority]. Returning to her nest, she begins claiming her spoils. The once pristine web she calls home is covered in disembodied limbs and dying insects. Entirely fitting for a spider nest, but ultimately all good things must come to an end. Preparing her feast, she makes her way through the pile, moving around the outside, saving the most brutalized corpse in the center for last, slowly mopping up those still alive before finally getting to the second larger cockroach in the middle. It has been ripped to shreds; looking at its body, it has to have been dead during several of these injuries, and her new servant must have gone rabid during the fight to have either not realized it was killed or not cared enough to stop attacking. Polishing off the last trace of this bloodbath, as obviously, she needs this place free to orchestrate this again, or at least not smell of blood from fifty paces. It is far too efficient to stop after only a taste; as she bites into the flesh, she notes a slight heat transferred through her fangs into her body and settles in the upper abdomen. ================================================================ *obtained skill(s) [Hardening], [Sharpening], [Muscular enhancement], [Regenerative enhancement], [Qi sense]* *All affected skills at Lv.0* ================================================================ Looking at the names of the skills, she has a feeling she knows how that roach managed to nullify her terrain advantage, looking at their definitions: ================================================================ Hardening - increase the rigidity of body tissue to better resist physical impact, or increase damage from unarmed strikes +0% physical defense, +0% unarmed damage - Lv.0, Exp. 7/100 Sharpening - concentrate energy on the tip of a surface, dealing increased penetration, + 0% pierce damage, +0% slashing damage - Lv.0, Exp. 4/100 Muscular enhancement - Increase force and speed generated in musculature +0% effective strength, +0% effective speed - Lv.0, Exp. 12/100 Regenerative enhancement - expend energy to activate cells near a wound to turn into stem cells regrowing missing limbs, also speeds up natural regeneration, +limb regrowth, +0% regenerative speed - Lv.0, Exp. 34/100 Qi sense- perceive and receive energy stored outside of your body, +energy perception, +0% qi ingestion efficiency - Lv.0, Exp. 1/100\ ================================================================ She notices the difference in experience gained. It dawns on her that maybe the roach wasn't being brutalized as a corpse but was constantly regenerating, forcing the other cockroach to continue tearing it to pieces to finally put it down. Looking at the surplus of skill points she just got and her list of skills, she marvels at how long her character tab is getting and fears that one day she might gain so many skills she won't be able to find anything worthwhile on the list. Looking at her skill points, she adds four points to all five of the new skills, and aside from the limb regrowth and perception effect, which aren't affected, all the other modifiers shoot up to six percent. Feeling the increase from each skill, she realizes that the bonus is based on her maximum output. Even if she puts no physical strength into her movements and only relies on this new form of energy, they are still quick and powerful, allowing her to run or attack when physically tired, albeit currently much weaker than a normal attack. But if this skill is leveled up to ten or higher, then very rarely will it be feasible to exert all her energy at once during a fight in a decisive blow, as even with hardly any power used, she would be able to still deal with most threats to herself and stall out evenly matched opponents as long as they weren't as proficient in this "Qi"s use, with having something akin to another store of physical energy she would rarely need to overly exert herself every again. Looking at the remaining seven points and thinking about the tremendous increase from her first specialized skill, she scrutinizes her collection of level three skills. She thinks of which would be the most beneficial to her current situation. ================================================================ *No Name* Sex: Female Race: Marbled Orb Weaver Spider Str: 8 Dex: 12 Con: 8 Int: 14 Wis: 7 Cha: 12 Skills: Web construction 2 (+), Line control 1 (+), Bite 3 (+), Intimidate 1 (+), Danger sense 1 (+), Eloquence 3 (+), Linguistics 1 (+), Territory marking 1 (+), Packing 0 (+), Parasitic authority 5 (+), Hardening 3 (+), Sharpening 3 (+), Muscular enhancement 3 (+), Regenerative enhancement 3 (+), Qi sense 3 (+), Abilities: Web production, Spider climb, Venom production, Arachnid language (Orb Weaver), Pheromone language (Cockroach), Parasitic venom, Transformative silk Skillpoints: 27 ================================================================ Removing bite from the equation first, as none of the prey she has access to can resist her fangs, removing the newer skills from the choices until she has more experience; she finds [Eloquence] to be the only remainder. Adding points, she was once more thrust into the darkness. Thinking of her current understanding of eloquence, she understands two chief weaknesses, primarily when the other party doesn't speak the language you do. However, this one can be solved by [Linguistics]. The second more critical flaw is that someone can see through your intentions allowing them to resist your flowery ways of presenting the language. She decides to make her pheromones a means of communication and a way to influence someone's subconscious mind, allowing her to affect their more primal mind to subtly influence them into doing what she wants. Upon cementing this desire in her mind, she is ousted from this unique state. She feels that she can both release normal pheromones and "secret" pheromones that can only be picked up by subconscious minds, which will help her accomplish her next goal, subduing her minion. Hopefully, the venom she injected affected it, but it's always good to have a backup plan. Returning to the arena-like area in which she left the cocoon, she finds that it has shrunk by about a third, leaving far less liquid in the center. You can even vaguely see eight legs forced against the deflated sides of its cocoon. It looks like at least the mode of travel is almost wholly spider-like. Stepping forward and prodding the surface, attempting to stretch it to outline more areas of the body, she finds that the main body is still mostly cockroach, but the fangs, legs, and eyes seem to be spider-like. The eyes are harder to tell how much has changed through solid matter, but there are at least eight eyeballs on the insect's face now. She is unsure whether the actual eyeballs themselves are like cockroaches or spiders. Still, figuring that it isn't that important to perfect the changes on her first attempt, she stops worrying about its form and begins looking for a group of insects to bring back and let it try its strength in its new form. Feeling the seemingly limitless strength in every step so much that even a slight jump sends her soaring upwards. Using her skills at precise moments of applying force allows her to cross obstacles that would have needed her to spend time climbing is as simple as a single thought, allowing her to speed through the area several times faster. [Qi sense] is also beneficial, so she doesn't need to check every crevice. All creatures have clumps of unactivated qi inside, like signal flares lighting up the night compared to the minuscule amounts floating around. Although at a distance, it adds up, but for her local surroundings, it is a convenient ability for finding insects. Upon finding a roach, she sends a tale that a mysterious creature is hatching over in the webbing in the corner of the bed, and those that kill it after hatching can absorb several years' worth of qi. Immediately, all the while, she is sending secret pheromones of trust towards her words and greed towards qi, causing all the insects in her path to charge towards her web fanatically. She makes several rounds on the outskirts of her web and realizes she has to go toward the other end of the bed to find any more roaches; she cuts her losses and heads back. Upon making it to the web, what awaits her is a throng of cockroaches standing around the egg, all slightly spaced apart, watching each other's movement, waiting for the cocoon to rupture. Climbing into the webbing hanging above them, looking down on them, she begins sending her unique pheromones to cause them to be angry and restless or worried the surrounding roaches would steal their prize. While waiting for the perfect moment for this bomb of paranoia to explode, she slowly influences roaches to face away from the cocoon, using it as motivation for their hate but making them forget the actual reason they are here. She puts the bugs all on the cusp of exploding at any slight provocation, which she intends to let chain off of each other, creating a bloodbath for her servant to wake up to as breakfast allowing her new servant the grandest stage to show itself. Having realized it's far more challenging to kill a united front of enemies than to kill a swarm of insects tearing one another apart, all without realizing what's happening as you cull their numbers before they know you exist; this must be similar to "breakfast in bed" for humans. As the roaches demonstrated towards those they felt most threatening, the cocoon started to move as if prodded by something internally; none of the bugs noticed this. Still, eight dark eyes captured the anomaly from above and sent forth the message that detonated this little gathering into a slaughter. One of the smallest roaches, as if possessed, charged headlong at a gargantuan specimen that could hardly be defined with the simple utterance of "roach" To those with a sober mind this looks like a mouse fighting a bear, originally, this would've never happened, but she needed the most powerful one to be distracted just in case her new servant was weaker than expected. As the fighting gets more and more intense, the cocoon is finally sloughed off, revealing a horror of insectoid might. The main body retains the cockroach frame and still retains its wings. Still, the head has a radical change, with eight dark eyes gleaming with a cruel intelligence and a set of chelicerae. The most considerable difference is the eight spider-like legs, including the back four so pronounced they force its frame to tilt forwards as if always prepared to leap. She began releasing pheromones towards the creature, a mix of roach language and her unique influencing pheromones. "Your queen grants you access to her royal feeding grounds (you should be grateful); stride forward bravely and repay her cultivation of you, warrior (you are starving, tear these weaklings apart and feast!)." Its eyes seem to follow the trail of pheromones upwards and catch sight of eight gleaming eyes looking towards it. The initial confusion gives way to almost pious reverence before settling into crazy desire as it barrels into the fray ahead of it. It leaves itself wide open and focuses exclusively on harvesting those foolish enough to exist in its reach, carving a hellish path of corpses in service of its queen. Arrogantly disregarding the larger opponent centered in the battle, it blatantly slaughters, seemingly unbothered by any attacks or threats raining down onto it from its surroundings. The attacks of immature roaches bounce off of its carapace. The larger cockroaches circle at a distance, more conservatively allowing him to exhaust himself by killing the weaklings before striking. Growing bored, she takes the initiative to send one of the hesitant roaches into a rage, causing it to barrel forward into the roach-spider amalgam. Just before its reckless charge makes contact with the creature, a sharp spindly leg pierces into its neck, nailing it to the ground, before gleaming a deep dark purple and severing its head from its body. The body continues the charge but doesn't notice that same leg raised above its body swinging downward, still covered in a gloomy light until it bisects the insect right down the middle. The largest insect in the center takes note of a peculiar glow from its periphery. Upon spotting the amalgam, it begins forcing the smaller insects underneath it using them as a pathway above the slaughter between them, heading on an unmistakable collision course with the creature. Barging its way towards the only creature here that could threaten it, the roach's carapace gleamed like a perfectly molded set of steel armor as it barreled into the crowd, all those ahead of it plinking off of its body. Upon taking its first step into the monster's range, it is immediately set upon by four spider legs at once. The closest thing this creature can show to respect for a powerful foe is to slaughter it immediately, and upon killing it, ingesting it to take its strength for its own, an honor this cockroach has the unfortunate fate of being nominated for. As the spider limbs tear across its side, opening scars in its carapace, The roach realizes that it underestimated the offensive capabilities of its opponent, fully unleashing its hardening ability and empowering its regeneration to attempt to fix the scoring on the surface of its armor, it begins to dance on the edge of the creatures range stepping in to aggravate it into attacking. Successfully taunting the entity into attacking, it continuously moved away from the centerline to make it awkward to stab it with all of this creature's power. Looking on from above, she notes that at first, her servant was just awkwardly piercing towards the roach's vitals in an attempt to end its life. Still, with every near-miss or ineffective attack, its tempo, footwork, and attack placement are becoming more refined, slowly switching from being played around at will by the more experienced roach to drawing even and even has a faint chance of suppressing the insect if it makes even a minor mistake. Even with most attacks being dodged or rendered ineffective, the roach, scarred severely after a few rounds, realizes that if this continues, the monstrosity ahead of it will slowly whittle its armor away. Once it cannot defend itself from its piercing attacks, the creature ahead will be able to pierce it and gain leverage to hold it still and go for the kill. It stops its sideways movement. Suddenly it lowers its stance and charges into the spiderlike creature in front of it in a bid to tip it over so it can rip its comparatively less armored underside to pieces. The spidermorph realizing its plan splays its back legs out to create a broad base and begins repeatedly stabbing into the same point on the creature, slowly boring through its qi empowered armor. At the same time, the roach relents its plan to tip the beast and begins to extend its legs to gain a height advantage before launching several quick kicks to the skull, attempting to disorient its foe. Leaning backwards with the help of its many limbs, dodging the attack before launching forwards into the underside of the roach, biting deeply into its gut and keeping hold, the spider uses its back legs to anchor itself before repositioning its front two legs and repeatedly stabbing the roach in the stomach. While opening several holes in the roach's body, covered with a splash of clear insect blood whets its appetite, it flips the injured insect over before tearing it to pieces while it is still alive. Several bites later, the insect finally stills, and soon after, all evidence except for the body fluid coating the spidermorph is gone. Looking upwards towards where it had seen those eyes earlier, only to find no evidence of any hiding existence. Before it could continue to survey its surroundings, thin threads quickly bound its legs. Immediately after the lines were yanked up, taking him into the webbing above, eight fierce eyes searched its surroundings before rapidly focusing on the arachnid above it, emanating a dangerous and powerful atmosphere. Looking at the trepidation and fear in the eyes of her new servant, she allows it to struggle uselessly for a moment before using her pheromones, "This queen is satisfied with your performance, worm, as payment I will grant you a name, understood? (this is a great honor! a being as weak and inconsequential as you standing in front of the queen without dying is rare!)" Seeing the amusing spectacle of a bound mutant attempting to present its best side to her while upside down almost briefly distracted her from keeping up the charade, continuing, "I dub thee Kinegos. Now before I grow hungry and decide to eat you to replace those weaklings, you removed from my hunting grounds, make yourself useful, go scout for any creatures of particular strength in the area." Cutting the binds on the creature and watching it fall gracelessly from thread to thread in a safety net created to prevent her new subject from becoming a paste under her web, she hid a slight expectation from her new servant, perhaps it might return with useful information? When seeing it lose itself earlier, she noted the qi in each living thing being absorbed and transformed into qi in its control while watching on thinking of how much progress she might have gotten from devouring that roach used to test her subordinate. She ultimately comforted herself with the fact she learned that others can only gain skill from eating those creatures with power. While musing about the info gained from her qi sense, she felt a large grouping of qi above the mattress shift before feeling large shocks traveling through her web connected to the underside of the mattress, leaving her webbing shaking for several minutes. After the human stirred in the bed for around half an hour, it began to rise. It stepped out of a door in the far wall and gradually left her range of perception. She began to plan on either eliminating or controlling this rather significant variable as if a creature of that size wanted to kill her, none of her current tricks would suffice to protect her. The first step in her plan was undoubtedly to feed and thinking back on how her servant grew in size from eating other empowered creatures. She decided to hunt down those beings around her nest until she became large enough to threaten the human. Looking forward to this next step in controlling her fate, she crawled deeper into the web to await the results of the mission she sent Kinegos on. Feeling the stillness following the movement of the human before the gradual increase in activity under the bed as the insects slowly return to their usual activity, she opens her inventory tab. Looking into her mostly empty inventory, she begins thinking of how to deal with the coming battles against other qi empowered creatures. Seeing the whip she made to help subdue Kinegos, she mentally focuses on it and is surprised to see values tied to it: ================================================================ ???'s Spider-silk whip - Attack rating: 1-3 Defensive rating : 0-1 Qi Efficiency: 13% A sturdy whip made entirely from spider's silk, chance to stun targets upon impacting the head, chance to intimidate non-sentient creatures. Equip? y/n ================================================================ Upon accepting the prompt, she found the [Equipment] tab was glowing. Looking at a full-body diagram of herself from a top-down perspective, she saw many faintly visible squares and had the feeling they could fit equipment. In the box on her left forelimb, there was the outline of her whip, setting her attention on her forelimb, feeling the whip materializing at a rapid pace, and the outline in the slot filled out. Enjoying the novelty, she thought about removing it. It disappeared, and the shape faded back. She looked towards the empty space on her other forelimb, one per leg, two on her body, and three on her head. She thought of all the exciting ways she could equip herself, especially excited if the qi efficiency modifier meant what she thought. Thinking of creating a set of woven spider silk coverings and being able to insert hardening qi into it to make a super-light set of pseudo metal armor for unexpected situations or sneak attacks that couldn't be dodged opened her eyes to the wondrousness of utilizing outside assistance. ================================================================ *you have gained the skill [Alchemic production] Lv.0* *Through your theorizing, your Alchemic production skill has increased to level 1* ================================================================ Using the newfound armorer's knowledge granted from her level up and looking towards the slots on her head and chest, she notes that the two equipment slots on the chest could be used in a segmented plate armor design. Envisioning a piece of body armor starting from her second set of legs back to her fourth row and a separate piece for the abdomen that houses her spinnerets. Finally, looking towards the head's spaces, she could create a full helm encompassing all three slots or three-segmented pieces. The first would protect from the first set of legs to the base of her fangs, omitting her eyes, then a place for eye protection, and finally a space for her to equip on her chelicerae. Looking toward the newly gained skill: ================================================================ Alchemic production - form equipment from components; higher levels allow equipment to keep unique properties from materials and allow more complex blends to create more powerful composite materials, + property recognition, + material evaluation, + material blending - Lv.1, Exp.0/100 ================================================================ Beginning work on her envisioned armor; she quickly finds that just spinning using her spinnerets is challenging to complete her armor. Realizing that without some form of tool to stitch separate pieces of silk together and the ability to accurately measure the necessary length for each of the pieces of silk, completing the set of armor immediately would be almost impossible. Through practice, she quickly realized that this skill would not rapidly increase her armors effectiveness but give her the knowledge and know-how to research more robust variants, preserve more powerful resources, and imbue them into her armor. Setting aside her idea, she began working on another whip, using the new techniques learned from her skill. While she had no precise equipment or powerful materials, she quickly found that this whip's tensile strength and durability far out-performed the previous. Upon completion and looking at the stats for the piece, it quickly became apparent why: ================================================================ ???'s Infused Spider-silk whip - Attack rating: 5-9 Defensive rating: 2-6 Qi Efficiency: 73% A sturdy whip made entirely from Infused spider's silk, landing strikes to the head causes a target to recoil involuntarily, chance to cause fear in non-sentient creatures, and increasing [intimidation] effect on struck enemies for five seconds. ================================================================ She pulls the old whip from her bag and quickly finds the difference, setting the two aside; she begins pondering. The concentration of qi was radically different, even assuming a piece of imbued equipment gradually loses qi due to the differing abilities of materials to retain energy and the amount of atmospheric energy in an area. Losing ninety percent of an item's qi within a few hours would be completely ridiculous. Thinking back to what happened since creating the whip, she realizes that she only had access to her qi after ingesting the awakened roach's corpse. Perhaps upon awakening, the qi in her body not only responds to her active urging to create specific effects but also passively enhances her bodily functions. As a side effect when excreting webbing now, it imbues the silk with some of the surrounding's qi. Satisfied with her explanation for such a significant disparity in quality, over a few hours, she begins to test her hypothesis. While focusing on perceiving her qi, she begins creating silk and notices a tiny portion of the qi carried in her abdomen is infused in the webbing as well as some of the surrounding qi is brought in to supplement what she lost. She also noted that her new whip ever so slowly released the infused qi towards the surroundings and, based on the current rate, would probably revert to the same state as her last whip in about four hundred years. ================================================================ *skill [Alchemic production] leveled up* *Successfully guessing the mechanisms of a higher substance improves your skill, [Alchemic production] is now at Lv.2* ================================================================ Feeling extremely pleased with her deductions, she notices a slight trembling from her webbing coming from the north. Seeing a familiar silhouette coming towards her nest and equipping her new weapons. Feeling secure in her ability to protect herself in a fight with other empowered creatures, she watches dispassionately as Kinegos humbly kneels before her perch. Her instincts scream in the back of her mind at the thought of a bloody battle to come, her life has been too cushy, and her predatory nature rears its head, telling her all she needs to know, it was time to hunt! Stepping down from her web, she briefly meets the eyes of Kinegos, manipulating him into feeling inferior and afraid of her before motioning for him to report, he begins to relay all he has found, his pheromones are slightly different accented slightly, his new form seems to have allowed him to pass a numbing agent along with his speech, to those immune they could only detect a slightly smoky tang to their pheromone receptors, to those not immune they would quickly find themselves stumbling about like an inebriated buffoon, perhaps she should develop something similar? After a brief report, she motions him to march ahead of her, while heading northward, she found that the amount of qi in the air was slowly increasing as she got closer to a large mat on the ground. Stepping closer, she immediately smells the heavy scent of smoked meat. Looking past the cushion, she sees a round steel device, the bottom of which opens into a hole leading deeper into the machine. While seemingly nothing is happening visually, in her qi sense, a sizeable flow of qi keeps this device aloft, most likely to prevent the theft of whatever delectable meat is inside. Another floating item, this time shaped like a metal trunk, is surrounded by a similar scent; while not as noticeable as the fragrant scent of meat, a far gentler smell of earthy vegetables exudes from the chest. Aside from the means of keeping aloft, both devices house incredible sources of qi, and a devious glimmer deep-set in arachnid eyes signaled the beginning of her plans. Looking toward the ceiling while measuring the distance from the ceiling, she sees a foolhardy fly getting too close. A small knob on the top of the machine spins slightly, targeting the insect before a qi burst is released. The fly instantly disintegrates; with her qi sense upgraded, she can barely sense the qi in between each point of its journey, merely sure of its route after passing due to the area void of qi. Immediately hiding her greed, she looked towards her subject, who was wholly ignorant of the great danger lying just above. As Kinegos continued onwards towards a hole at the base of a wall near the cushion, she quickly put away her plans and began to gear up for her next conquest. Taking the time before reaching the hole, she questioned Kinegos on the approximate strength of her foe. "I have only seen small furry creatures coming from the opening, but upon getting near the entrance and peering inside, I saw an animal at least three times larger than myself. It seems immobilized due to its size in the tunnel and forces its runts to hunt to sustain itself, allowing it to survive until now." Sensing no signs of trickery in his speech, she devises a plan to strengthen herself and weaken her enemy in one fell swoop. Looking towards the hole and approximating that the wooden shelf near the mat, covered in refuse from the human's feasting, would be the most suitable food source due to its comparative richness and proximity. She began plotting how to trap the rodents without leaving obvious signs of spiderwebs in their active area lest she warns the human of her existence. It would be terrible if the human could sense her level of awakening due to the qi in her webbing leading to being hunted down by a creature several hundred times her size. Deciding to observe the next group of rodents that forage in the human's trash to find any common pathways, she could discreetly lay traps down without disturbing the function of the human's shelf. Settling in for several minutes, she watches as the mice, seemingly as industrious as a group of ants she had lived near, slowly picking clean the remains of the human's most recent meal. They seemed to find it especially easy to climb the sides of the shelf as they were left uncut to give a look of a naturally formed frame. The smooth interior and top contrast with the bark left on the sides, making the shelf seem right at home if stumbled upon in a forest glade. Although aesthetically pleasing for those who enjoy nature, it's also very functional for creatures suited to woodlands to use to traverse your home. Noting several commonly used footholds of the rodents, she set to work laying particularly sticky webbing in the cracks in the bark, allowing her to successfully stop the delivery of food to the rodent in the tunnel and feed off of the trapped young. Making sure to lay her webbing securely in the depths of the bark far out of view for casual observation, she settled into the shadow of the bench, waiting for the next mouse to come along. After waiting for less than two minutes, another mouse made its way toward the shelf. This mouse seemed to be the runt based on the marks on its body. It seems to be repeatedly bullied by its siblings and forced to collect food far more often than others of its kind. However, deducing this brought no sense of pity, the life of a predator had hardened her heart to the plights of her prey. Keenly noting that her observation of others, especially that which was gleaned before engaging, could allow for a more advantageos first meeting and make her far more likely to get favorable conditions if she needs to negotiate with others. Riding the thrill of this discovery, she decided to take the initiative to capture this morsel. Maybe she can learn something of the method its larger kin may fight. Thrusting herself into the light, she quickly scaled down the shelf towards her prey, equipping her whips. She began lashing behind the rodent, attempting to block off its retreat, the sudden loud noise behind the mouse causing it to leap forward towards the shelf's base. While this instinctual action doubtlessly could save it from any typical, thoughtless predator, it leaves its back wide open as a rather plush landing pad. Dropping on top of the rodent and taking the initiative to wrap her whips around the throat of the rodent she digs her eight legs into the rodent's side to provide an enhanced grip, before eagerly baring her fangs. Upon piercing the spine of the rodent she begins injecting a potent burst of venom, all the while savoring the first bit of warm blood flowing into her mouth, the comforting heat ever-present in her abdomen since developing access to her qi begins rapidly heating up, going from a pleasant campfire to a roaring inferno before she had a chance to react, her vision rapidly fades as her consciousness recedes deep into her mind As her consciousness sobers up, she finds herself centered in a void. Upon taking this in, she attempts to move forward only to be met with the unpleasant discovery that all of her limbs are gone, hell, even her torso and head are gone. The only thing remaining is an organ she instinctively realizes is her brain. Realizing this is probably something to do with her qi from the fleeting feeling of explosive heat before appearing here, she begins actively feeling outwards for any source of qi. While there seems to be no qi in the area, she finds that specific paths are far more resistant to her probing than others. Eventually, she finds eight tracks with almost equal resistance, feeling intuitively that these paths lead to her eyes. After understanding this, she begins progressing in all eight ways at once. If one side stalls, she slows the advance of the other seven; if one speeds up, she increases her focus on the others eventually, while far more tedious than focusing on one. Upon completion, her dark world blooms into a deep moody purple glow as the paths she took begin to flow between her brain and eyes and increase in brightness with every revolution. Her eyes ignite, burning brightly like eight bright stars lighting up the sky. ================================================================ *Qi pathways constructed (8)* *Perfect ocular awakening* *Trait system activated* *Trait [Awakened eyes], gained: Tier {EXTRAORDINARY}* ================================================================ As the words float upward past her vision, she is sucked back into her body. The familiar tactile sensations almost overwhelm her after her time swimming in nothingness, but the sweet taste of her meal quickly wakes her from her stupor as fierce need wracks her brain. Looking down, she is surprised to find that she 'sees' the weakest point of the rodent beneath her and finds a peculiar confidence telling her that biting just below the base of the skull instead of over the spine will kill the beast struggling beneath her several times faster. Taking the chance to experiment, she unsheathes her fangs from the flesh of her foe and clamps down a millimeter below the skull, feeling a hard lump under the skin but not being deterred while grinding her teeth against this foreign object and rapidly deepening the wound on the back of the rodents neck. Eventually, she feels the rodent freeze before stiffening as the solid object seems to have cut through her prey's spine. Quickly flaying the skin of her meal, she quickly realizes the true face of the lump, a shard of sharpened metal inserted into the back of her dinner and healed in place over time. Reminiscing on the feeling, it felt almost like a slight pulse of pressure in the center of her eyes and then streaming towards her brain before being translated into a complex sensation that would relay her enemy's weakness. Quickly finishing off her meal, she slips back to her hidden perch, leaving a ball of refuse, discarded fur, bones, and other inedible matter tucked away in a shaded corner at the shelf's base. Once again, diving into her interface, she finds a radiant new header titled "Traits." ================================================================ [Traits] Awakened eyes - Funneling qi through biological eyes without damaging them is difficult, but the rewards are extraordinary! - viewing something with hostile intent allows you to see the easiest route to kill it - attempting to perceive past opaque visual obstructions allows a sense of sight through said objects - viewing a creature with the intent to heal a wound or cure a disease enables one to see the cause of an ailment and an idea of the next step in helping said creature ================================================================ Realizing the potential of this trait brought both a great incentive to take control of the human as well as tremendous pressure; if she could gain such an incredible ability, What about the creatures exposed to qi for far longer? What if some human near her had awakened its whole body? What power would it wield, and how would she avoid or contend with it? This thinking momentarily paralyzed her with fear, and before she knew it, she heard tentative steps. It seems her foe grew impatient waiting for food and sent another of its kind to forage. Looking towards the inquisitive mouse making its way towards the shelf's base, she prepared herself to strike. As her eyes fell upon her foe, she realized it seemed to favor its right foot, as every time it took a step, it never used its left foot to step forward merely to support its weight, and even that seemed strenuous. It appeared that infighting must be very common in its burrow as the two sent out both sustained substantial injuries. Taking the time while its right foot was raised, she dropped onto its left side, and using [Sharpening], she slashed downwards with her whip intending to test the penetrative effect of her skill. The whip sailed through the air, making a soft hissing sound. Before the mouse could react to her descent, its hind legs suddenly went limp, and an intense pain battered its senses. Its first instinct was to leap forwards, but upon stretching its front legs to assume a leaping stance, it found itself not bracing against the ground but slumping downwards. As it processed the lack of function in its hind legs, another soft sound came heading towards the back of its skull; a fierce bout of pain nearly caused it to faint. Fear overtaking it, it began frantically screaming in hopes of its fellows in the den coming to save it. It attempted to turn away from the aggressor and crawl away, merely taking one step before another whip came down coinciding with the last slash, and finally penetrating the skull, putting the rodent out of its misery. Before she could drag it to the shadows, an unfamiliar warning sensation came from the base of her legs. This shivering feeling immediately caused her to face the hole across the room, searching for an enemy. Upon attempting to find the danger, a hazy image of the inside of the den allowed her to see the trapped mouse ferociously struggling against what seemed to be a fallen pipe, bucking upwards and clawing at the ground, slowly pulling more and more of its body out and towards the entrance, deranged malice clouding its mind, seeing this scene she knew the calls of her prey attracted her enemy, she would have to fight. Quickly leaving her kill, she begins making her way towards the bed, releasing a massive cloud of pheromones, calling back Kinegos to her side. The sound of a hurried insectoid sprint quickly makes it to her ears as she makes it to the edge of the bed. glancing back, the creature has finally freed itself. Still, its hind legs seemed unresponsive, only occasionally twitching but completely unconcerned, Her enemy began gnawing at the edge of the mousehole, attempting to allow its prodigious girth to pass through. The last two surviving mice under its lead seemed to be sent deeper into the hole, past the edge of what she could perceive. The seething rage had cooled, no longer scrabbling, ripping, raging; now, it has methodically removed its obstacles and is slowly closing in on its target. Upon successfully widening the gap and squeezing through, it tenderly maneuvers its now slightly less deflated legs through the opening. Quickly surveying its surroundings before zeroing in on a discarded corpse near the area where the giant feeds, it towers over its lost companion, sadness and incompetence flashing across its eyes before returning to a steely gaze of a rodent on a mission. Upon coming to terms with the pruning of its family tree, it grips the deceased's hind leg in its jaws before tenderly bringing it into the nest to prevent it from being defiled. On its route back towards its home, its eyes peered over towards the underside of the bed. Its vengeance may be momentarily paused, but the hateful glare is the only warning the mouse gives to its enemy. After its eyes peel away from the darkened space underneath the bed, eight gleaming orbs peer out from behind a bedpost, carefully tracking its steps until it goes deep into its lair before turning away. Opening the skill page and seeing the array of skills able to be improved, she calculates how each of her skills would help her in the face of her much larger foe. Although thinking back to that indistinct feeling that alerted her to her enemy, she was thankful that she had gotten out beforehand instead of fighting a much larger creature while woefully unprepared. She quietly reminded herself to quickly increase that skill's level to five when she had extra skill points. Unfortunately, she is currently in the sights of a much larger enemy. Before focusing on, albeit practical, noncombat skills she needs to ensure she won't be hunted down and eaten by a household rodent. She finds her gaze constantly drawn towards her new skills, precisely two in particular [Muscular enhancement] and [Qi sense]. Leaving aside the specialization bonus given upon reaching level five, just increasing the maximum speed and strength she can exert would significantly bridge the gap between the weight classes, if only artificially. Qi sense would allow her to quickly distinguish between qi empowered attacks and where most of the hardening qi is going when attacking a particularly defensive opponent. Deciding to take the leap, she quickly funnels a portion of her points into [Muscular enhancement], immediately finding herself in a familiar space. She communes with her skill and begins adding not only emphasis on muscular strength and speed but expedited creation of mass. While establishing a connection with her [Regenerative enhancement], she quickly finds that although unable to create body tissue from pure qi, the ability to use qi to empower her organs to digest matter is relatively easy to form. Pairing this with qi used to instruct her body to grow at a significantly increased pace would allow her to continuously expand her body in food-rich environments. Feeling her slightly hollow stomach, she was keenly aware that just the food available would hardly be able to increase her size by a small margin, let alone large enough to contend with the much larger mouse. Before leaving this space, she also increases her qi sense to level five, choosing to increase its efficiency towards qi regeneration, giving a dramatic increase from ten percent to sixty. Upon leaving her fugue state, her empowered eyes detect a faint whirlpool revolving around her of invisible qi. Looking downwards, she finds her servant overcome with trepidation. Kinegos' instincts warned him that the being in front of him was incredibly dangerous. Just a second before, he only felt that the air near her was slightly stuffy, now he finds that he cannot even breathe when she looks at him, almost as if she has total control over his body and had arrested his lungs. Luckily for him, the eye contact is short-lived, returning control of his organs. She coldly orders him to bring her as much food as possible, no matter the cost. A shiver wracks his monstrous body as the finality of the last statement batters his mind. He knows that if he does not satisfy his queen, she will eat him and cultivate another in his place. Watching her servant skitter out of her web once again, she begins transferring her current food reserve into mass. Taking special care of sculpting her legs while making them longer, she raises a ridge on the top and bottom that culminates in a jagged line of chitinous exoskeleton to increase the effectiveness of her [Sharpening] skill. As she grows, she finds that the previous exoskeleton that covered her rapidly greys before falling off in a heap at her feet. The new pale exoskeleton rapidly saturates before joining its predecessor on the ground after seven moltings. Kinegos returns; it seems that when faced with death, even insects will burst out with incredible ingenuity. He rolls a ball of shattered insect corpses mashed together into a sphere for speedy delivery. The sight before him nearly causes him to ram the ball directly into her. Before an intense feeling of imminent death brings him back to reality, he quickly positions the ball right in front of his queen and, as fast as his eight legs can carry him, sprints off into the darkness in search of food to save him from joining in the feast before him as a dish. Rousing herself from a food coma, she finds herself on a small hill of moltings. It seems she continued growing during her small bout of torpor. Quickly reorienting her eyes, she finds the mouse in its nest, plugging a recently gnawed hole with debris to cover the corpse of its kin. Secure in knowing that her enemy is occupied; she surveys herself she finds that all the food Kinegos brought has been eaten, meaning she couldn't have been out for long. His trips have been very fast to prevent her from looking at him as food. Feeling her stomach, which by all accounts should be filled to bursting, is currently relatively empty. Upon careful estimation, her stomach seems to be only about twenty percent full. Still, looking towards her towering physique, she finds the sacrifice supremely worth it, her body now half the size of a human's hand, and combining her legs, she dwarfs its whole hand! Carefully checking through the walls, she finds the human has left, and now would be the easiest time for her to move around. She has to be more careful than before, as a spider the size of a coin will get a far different reaction than one the size of a fist. Kinegos is currently away, but at her size, the help he can provide is minimal aside from collecting food. Setting off once again out from under the bed, she stalks to the entrance of the mouse hole. Peering through the wall, she finds the mouse seems to be satisfied with the size of her blockade and has begun attempting to pack it in to be a more solid defense should any scavengers find it. Boldly stepping into the entrance, her large size blocks out eighty to ninety percent of the light coming in from outside the hole, causing the rodent to whirl around, searching for the source of the change. While mice cant see particularly well, a familiar scent found on the body of its kin greets its nostrils. Flying into a rage, the quiet reverence it felt while dealing with its kin's corpse that had momentarily smothered its hate was destroyed as its emotions flared. It bounds forward towards the entrance; in the dark environment, the slight glow erupting from the rodent stains the nest an earthy brown, clearly perceiving an almost solidification of the light coming from its smaller opponent. A look of surprise flashes across her eight eyes; she finds that its mastery of qi is equal to hers, if not slightly better in the [Hardening] department. Quickly putting away her contempt for the smaller rodent, she quickly inputs qi into her muscles, activating her [Muscular enhancement]. While a large percentage of her specialization went towards awakening her growth ability, she still receives a hefty fifteen percent increase in her speed and strength. Her size increased the amount of muscular strength she can augment, making her fifteen percent equal to several of her previous selves' full-strength attacks put together. Charging forwards as a hazy purple hue shines through her exoskeleton, the sudden acceleration brings her to the rodent in an instant. Before either of them realize it, they collide, instinctively running [Hardening] saves her from splattering herself upon the front of her enemy. She finds her fangs seem to be heavily damaged. It would take several minutes for her natural regeneration to get them in working order. Even using [Regenerative enhancement] wouldn't be able to fix them in a timely manner. Comforting herself with the sight before her of the rodent's snout being bent towards the left, causing its teeth to misalign, although a potent weapon on her side is rendered nigh unusable, the primary source of danger ahead of her has also been severely damaged. Taking the time while the rodent was still assessing its wounds, she leaped forward, attempting to bring its two forelimbs downwards while concentrating [Sharpening] on her two knife-like edges on the underside of her limbs. The two limbs whistled as they slashed downwards, warning the rodent of the incoming danger. The rodent attempted leaping upwards into the strike to prevent them from gathering too much speed, a wise decision that turned a potential killing blow into two jagged tears on its shoulders. While contesting its opponent's limbs, it scratches two of the eight eyes in front of it, a slight trail of qi enveloping the path of her claws. As she made contact with the spider's eyes she finds a slight resistance before piercing through the surface, her claws flowed through the undefended internals of the creature's eyes, successfully wounding the spider. Digging her nails in momentarily before shoving into the wound, pushing the arachnid backwards while leaping back herself to create distance. The remaining six eyes exuded anger, shock, and hatred, this filthy rodent dared harm her! Reluctantly biting back a wounded hiss, a tingling envelops the two damaged eyes as [Regenerative enhancement] begins. Realizing that the rodent has far more combat experience than she had during her life as an ambush hunter, she steps further into the burrow. She splays her forelimbs towards her opponent, fully activating her [Regenerative enhancement]. She begins preparing herself for a long fight, confident that she can exhaust her opponent far before she grows tired. She starts making light attacks empowered by her [Muscular enhancement], although none of her physical strength has been invested to prevent exhausting herself before her opponent. When a strike misses, the accompanying crash was loud enough that anyone putting their ear against the wall would confuse it for the human breaking smashing things, the resulting splintered wood of the floor leaving proof of its destructive might. The rodent in front of it seems unaware of her plans and is constantly pushing into her forelimbs or intercepting hits to prevent proper force accumulation. She begins recording and categorizing its combat skills to learn from its extensive repertoire of defensive actions. Ever so slowly, the attacks coming at the rodent are getting trickier and more well-timed and angled. As well as, its counterattacks are being prevented far before they start, leaving it with no option aside from being passively beaten. The once-raging glow in its eyes has long been extinguished, leaving a bitter cold feeling of fear in its heart. Fear turns to desperation rather quickly. With all the jumping around and quick defensive motions necessary to reduce the damage from her dangerous forelimbs, the mouse had managed to tire itself. Surveying its enemy, its fearful gaze quickly soured upon finding it standing steadily before her, its beady black eyes staring at her like she was already meat in its jaws. Another slash coming down from its forelimbs forced her immediately into action. Leaping forward and pinning the bladed limb to the spider's body, she found herself not as agile as before. Before she stepped back to a safe distance, the spider jostled forward, bouncing her slightly back before it landed on top of her back legs. Digging into the rodent's flank using the other of its forelimbs before ripping downwards. She reveled in the pain visible in its eyes as its recently recovered leg was put out of commission. The rodent began scratching at the limb embedded in her body, but the defense of this limb was much better than her far softer eyes, and all it managed was to leave white marks against the carapace. Her once damaged fangs began to wiggle as she pressed her weight down. While not as nimble as before, they were once again operational. Using the anchored limb to press the mouse down securely, she bit into its shoulder and began injecting venom. Its high-pitched cries echoed around in the enclosed space and became quieter and quieter as time went on. Eventually, the mouse stilled, fully utilizing the idle time waiting on her venom to do its work. She began digging out her stolen meal and preparing it as well. Thinking back to the service rendered by Kinegos to her before her fight, she decided to allow him his fill from the smaller of the two corpses. Stepping out of the nest, she surveys the room on the way to her previous web; she quickly finds no creature that can oppose her. She is the apex predator in this room. No animal aside from the human could dethrone her, and although a safe hunting ground, it was no longer as abundant for her as it was before her growth. A new avenue of prey will have to be secured and quickly; based on the sound of moving insects under the bed, it seemed she had wiped out a third of the population growing to this size, and her appetite had increased several times faster than her body. Upon finding her web, she caught a glimpse of an exhausted and frantic Kinegos. He was so hungry that some digestive fluid was seeping out of its fangs, but it kept itself from touching the food sitting just in front of it. Seeing its management of itself even without her watching over it reminded her of the venom she injected while he was transforming. She had thought it hadn't taken hold and decided to oppress him enough to keep him in line, but seeing his dedication, she decided to officially take him as her servant. Stepping into the webbing, even with her front legs covered in light scratching and her fangs misshapen, Kinegos looked at her as if seeing some dark god. Silently enjoying its reverence, she relays, "You have served me well. My name is Moira, follow my command, and I will grant you power." Satisfied with his stupified appearance, she turned away from the web and beckoned him to follow her; he followed closely to her right side, his forelimb keeping in time with her hindlegs as they got closer to the hole. He seemed uneasy as they got nearer until, at one point, a look of confusion flashed across his eyes, and upon stepping into the doorway and seeing the dead rodents, its eyes gleamed. "Eat your fill," she said while pointing toward the smaller of the two. Without waiting for his response, she set upon her meal, savoring its taste while constantly running [Qi sense] to absorb all of its qi. When her body seemed saturated, she began liberally using sharpening on her legs to make room. The flashing lights and deep grooves appearing on the floor keenly reflected in Kinegos' eyes as a deep look of reverence glowing from deep in his eyes as he looked on in wonder at her strength. After a moment, he steps forwards and begins quietly devouring his meal. While tearing into her meal, she watches the numbers in her skill XP rise before long though she shuts off the menu, content to wait for the familiar dinging sound to ring out. Upon completion, no such sound occurs, leaving her slightly disappointed. As she prepares to move toward Kinegos to direct his next course of action, she again finds herself in a darkened space. ================================================================ *Skill [Hardening] leveled up* *Skill [Hardening] leveled up* *[Benchmark] hit: Prestige or Specialize?* ================================================================ Seeing the familiar question once again, she quickly adjusts her state and begins shaping her skill. She alters the function of her [Hardening} qi, allowing her to mix it with her [Sharpening] to puncture enemy skin and inject her hardened qi to freeze a section of the enemy's body until they can neutralize her qi. Thinking of all the times she had almost caught that filthy rodent infuriated her, and she needed a skill that could lock down a tricky opponent long enough to finish it off. As color returned to her, she found Kinegos looking up at her in anticipation, when she roused from her stupor he seemed to regard the shift in her posture as her commanding his attention, and thus left his meal half-finished, his hunger unsated, but his full attention centered on her form regardless. She thought of how she must reward such a loyal servant. Perhaps she should look into teaching him her specializations; they both use the same qi. There has got to be a way to give him some semblance of her abilities. Peering down at him, she points with one forelimb towards the depths of the mousehole "two more the mice about this size," she stops and prods his unfinished food, "were sent deeper in before I finished preparing, track them down after your meal." Turning away from him, she begins setting up webbing in the nest to make her stay more comfortable.