The Great Core's Paradox

There was one thing that I forgot about new lives, something that should have been obvious. Really, really obvious.

If I did things differently, different things would happen.

In this case, that different thing was the many-legged bad-things retreating to their nest earlier than before. Between their hatred of light sources and the overwhelming strength of [The Golem’s Echo] and [Little Guardian’s Focus] merged together, they had mostly just thrown themselves towards their own deaths previously, alternating between roasting and crushing as a means of snake-assisted suicide.

The stronger and smarter bad-things in the nest itself were killed all at once when [The Golem’s Echo]-[Little Guardian’s Focus] combination took enough damage to make it explode.

Without something similar, and with more of the bad-things gathered than in my past life, I would be in for a difficult fight.

Of course, I wasn’t planning on fighting them at all. I would need many of them for what came next. After all, I wasn’t going to give up on killing a leviathan in this life just because [Size] hadn’t let me become one myself. I would still have to try.

The Darkweavers would be able to help with that, after they learned to follow the Great Core.

That, however, would take some preparation.

I was forced to track backwards, puppets walking in step with each of my slithers. It was easier than the way in; the path had already been cleared, and so I only needed to slither along it. Before long, I had returned to the start. Three points of light shone against my eyes like painful pricks, forcing me to flex the new muscles at the corners of my eyes, causing the membranes set there to slide. [Ambusher’s Vision] disappeared; the cavern became a little darker, and the light far easier to bear.

Then, the spore-roots infesting them receiving new thought-hissed instructions, my puppets gathered both ore-flesh and shed skin. The two light sources were wrapped in binding threads made thick enough to block out the light entirely, and then affixed to their backs.

That done, we began the journey back to the Darkweavers’ nest. When we arrived, it was still in a frenzy of motion. Watching from just outside its boundaries, my bulk hidden behind carefully-positioned puppets, I could see new traps being made. Thread after thread was pulled from unmentionable places, difficult to see even with [Ambusher’s Vision] to aid me.

The darkness was near all-encompassing, with only the faraway [Little Guardian’s Focus] providing any real light - and even that was barely noticeable. All other sources, from glow-caps to luminescent mosses, had already been destroyed.

I struggled to see at all; the threads had become thick enough to blot out what little light there was, already spreading far beyond what I had seen in my false-life. And with so many bad-things working together to make that happen, it was hardly a surprise.

The creatures spanned across the edges of the nest, a tide of bristled furs and revolting legs. I couldn’t bear to look at it, almost turning away, but I soon rallied. If they were to follow the Great Core, I would need to accept them for what they were, overabundance of legs and all.

I stared, slowly getting used to the -

No. I couldn’t do it. I looked away again, fighting down a new wave of disgust.

Even their scent-taste was horrible, a single flick of the tongue enough to almost overwhelm my senses; as if just knowing how many legs it represented was enough to sour me to the taste. I could just barely catch the scent-taste of my own spore-puppets underneath. Enough that it helped, even being Darkweavers themselves.

It was a difficult thing to describe, but there was a detectable difference, minute as it was. Like differentiating between a slow-spot and a fast-spot solely from the distortions they created in the air; hard at first, but easier once I really knew what to look for. If I had to explain, the scent-taste of my spores was similar to the scent-taste of home; something intangible that carried the scent of comfort, of safety.

It soothed the scales.

I looked towards the thriving nest again, this time more willing to bear the affront to my eyes. I peered past the horde of legs that made up the working Darkweavers, focusing on the nest itself.

Though [Ambusher’s Vision] struggled to make out individual threads in the darkness, obviously not yet as strong as the version that the Darkweavers had, it was more than enough for the moment. Other things were far easier to see. And, having seen the nest illuminated once before, I already knew what I should be looking for.

The nest of the Darkweavers wasn’t quite the same as the Aridae’s had been; in fact, there was little they shared beyond the use of threads. Whereas the Aridae had made their home across the ceiling of their cavern with small bundles of thread, forming bridges between the stone-spikes that happened to reach high enough, these larger bad-things had found their homes partly within the stone-spikes. Massive ones.

Each was riddled with holes of varying size, some relatively small and others multiple not-Needles across. Inside, the stone was coated in unending threads, noticeable less due to the threads themselves than due to flickers of movement created by bad-things walking upon them, each stepping as if on air.

Bad-thing upon bad-thing clambered out of those same holes, moving towards the edges of the nest. There, they joined the others in their frenzied work, quickly forming new threads in order to increase the nest’s defenses. Only a single one of the stone-spikes, however, had the bulk of my attention; inside, I could just barely make out bundles that rested against its inner walls, the slight color of flesh that slipped between the gaps in their wrappings a stark contrast to the threads themselves. Prey. Preserved in threads and waiting to be devoured.

Food.

A weakness. If they tried to preserve food, it was because they needed food. They didn’t have mana to sustain themselves like I did. It couldn’t be easily replaced.

That was my target. A way to make sure the nest was weak enough to take over. I sent out the first thought-hisses required, and my spore-puppets began to move.

With their spore-roots hidden underneath bristled hairs, my spore-puppets were able to walk the threads with aplomb, the bad-things around them unaware that enemies were within their midst. I was forced to suffer the brief indignity of being fully wrapped in one of my puppets’ threads, concealing me from the enemy bad-things’ view. Just another wrapped-up prey, caught in a trap and taken to the food-filled stone-spike.

Just like all the others.

My eyes were just barely able to peek out from a gap in the threads’ bindings, giving me enough vision to time everything right. The stone-spike itself was almost empty; only two Darkweavers waited within, guards for the nest’s vast stores of food. My puppet passed them easily, unchallenged, and brought me to a corner of the stone-spike.

As it reached down to cut me from my threads, I sent out a thought-hiss to my remaining spore-puppet.

Just outside, I knew that light was born within the cavern, my recovered ore-flesh radiant in the darkness. The sudden clamor was all that I needed to confirm that as many of the bad-things moved towards it, chittering and rustling their fangs, the nest churning violently with sudden motion.

In the midst of that chaos, my spore-puppet and I had more than enough time to kill the guards and set the food stores aflame.

I was taken back out the same way I came in, wrapped again in threads that kept me concealed. Ignored in the chaos of flame and light.

Only a few of the bad-thing’s many prey survived the flames, and all of them were taken with me.

In a day or two, the bad-things would grow weaker. Both their size and their sheer numbers would work against them, forcing them to starve quickly, unable to feed the many members of their nest.

The starving ones would be desperate, forced to strike out for food and abandon the relative safety of nest and numbers.

It wouldn’t take much to make them mine.