CHAPTER 11: PART 1 OF 2
ANCESTRAL DREAMING
Despite suffering from insomnia for years, Lucas couldn't remember ever being this tired. He had no idea how long it had been since he slept, but his brain kept sinking in and out of a dream-like state where his thoughts would turn nonsensical. Any old bit of rock looked like a nice place to sleep at this point, but Lucas took the time to wind his way up towards the cave entrance.
Something strange about the cave made him pause before he reached it. It seemed as if the darkness was being marred by gradients and shades of black. He turned off his Map, which had been the way he viewed his world for a long time now. Sure enough, he could see with his own eyes. Not long ago this part of the cave had been perfectly dark. Could his vision be continuing to adapt to the darkness? It made sense, from what he understood of this world.
He had been alone in perfect darkness for so long that looking at the world with his own eyes felt nostalgic. He was tempted to go up and look at the sky, but was sure he would faint soon if he didn't get some sleep. Reluctantly he turned back and made for the alcove that had been his home for so long. As he tucked himself into the bear skin, Lucas summoned up the notifications that he had missed.
[https://i.imgur.com/ND98Rwe.jpg]
[https://i.imgur.com/u8HZK2K.jpg]
[https://i.imgur.com/w1UnQjZ.jpg]
[https://i.imgur.com/pGQ15np.jpg]
[https://i.imgur.com/RstRMHh.jpg]
‘Wow, ok. Two Spirit level ups, a new skill and some sweet quest rewards’.
Lucas wasn't sure what to make of summoning duplicates of his mind from another dimension. By the sound of it, he could end up acting as a duplicate for a ‘Lucas’ in another dimension using the same ability. He remembered the feeling very clearly, they had existed within his Aura as some kind of Mana construct, dividing the task of channelling all that Mana that otherwise would have killed him. The part about them leaving their experience behind suggested that they wouldn't notice anything had happened when they got back to their dimension.
Other than channelling lethal amounts of Mana, Lucas wasn't sure what other uses the ability might have. It was essentially another mind, so maybe it could help him problem solve, or just be someone to talk through his ideas with. Lucas decided to explore it more at a later date. The big win for now was getting his Spirit to 6. He had vastly more Mana to work with and several of his abilities had grown significantly more powerful. Most importantly, it unlocked new possibilities for modifying his Arach Brood. Having gotten his hands on a couple more health potions also made him feel more confident, not to mention scoring an ‘Enchanted Armour’.
‘Yep, that's got to be something good’
Lucas opened his inventory to find the Enchanted Armour, but did not see what he expected. His inventory had become enormous. Last time he had looked at it, back when he had 3 Spirit, there had only been a 6 by 6 grid with 36 spaces. After counting the rows and columns, he nodded appreciatively. It was now a 24 by 24 grid, and he had to zoom in to see the icons properly. He was now basically a walking storage warehouse. He returned his attention to the Enchanted Armor, taking it out of storage. It was a thick and firm leather chest piece. He had to undo a series of straps and buckles to get it on. They were cleverly positioned in a way that allowed him to secure them all without help. The result was impressive. It fit him perfectly, thick and strong, but also comfortable and flexible. He could feel Mana pathways throughout the leather, inviting him to let his Mana flow into it.
[https://i.imgur.com/ebo2vlE.jpg]
‘This is a real treasure.’ Lucas thought.
Experimentally, he used a Mana point on it. It took on a peculiar quality that caused it to turn hard when he rapped his knuckles on it, but immediately after became soft and pliable again. Leaving the armour on, Lucas stretched out under his Bear Skin.
Feeling pleased with himself, he pulled up his Character Sheet as his consciousness began to drift away. He was not sure how long he had spent in this cave. It couldn't be much more than a month, but it felt like years. The amount of pain and suffering he had experienced in this world was far more than he had thought he could tolerate. Realisation dawned on him as he drifted off; he hadn't actually known himself before, known what he was really capable of. Now that he had gotten this far, everything he had gone through felt worth it.
Lucas woke slowly after a very long rest, packed away his Bear Skin, and went to fill up his water bottles. As he waited for the slow trickle to fill them, he watched the tunnels that led deeper into the cave. There was something down there in the deepest part, something he had made.
‘Probably best to just leave it here to do... whatever a spider with 76 brains does,’ he thought.
He hated the idea of leaving behind such a tremendous investment of Mana, but he was totally done with living in this cave. There was no way to modify its body at this point so it couldn't' come with him. He needed to go back to the surface and felt ready to do it on his own power. If worse came to worst he could retreat to the shelter of his Giga-Brain spider, though honestly he was a little intimidated by the thought of having anything to do with it. It was so superior to him, wouldn't he just get in its way?
Even if he was its master the power disparity created its own problem; like being a child-lord with an omnipotent spider for a guardian. Regardless of what the toddler wanted, the superior party would do what was in the pair's best interest. Its intellect was so superior that he was incapable of understanding the ways in which it might manipulate him to get around his ‘authority’, even if only to make certain that he didn't hurt himself. Lucas wasn't interested in surrendering his agency, regardless of how benevolent his ‘servant’ may be. It would undoubtedly begin creating its own Brood, since it had all the tools of a Broodmother and couldn't move to act for itself. That would require prey to sacrifice, ideally he could get away from the area so their hunting territory didn't overlap.
As Lucas made his way back up to the entrance he thought over his options. It didn't take him long to decide what he wanted most, civilization. He needed someone to talk to. Caleb had been travelling between settlements, hunting and selling slaves or whatever, so there definitely were human settlements nearby. If there are settlements of humans living together then not everybody can be a cold blooded killer or Slaver. You can't build a civilisation with everyone constantly stabbing each other.
Everything Lucas had experienced in this world had been either a killer or gotten killed, a slave or a Slaver, prey or a predator. Everything was so incredibly black and white. At least he wasn't so weak anymore. He let his mind drift on to thoughts of Caleb and the Slavers as he made his way past the ruined carapace of the old Broodmother and started climbing the rocks. A familiar anger put his teeth on edge. That shard of metal was still in his chest. Caleb would soon realise that he had left the cave. Lucas doubted he would be able to make it to any settlements before they caught up to him. Civilisation would have to wait, first he would find out who was the prey and who the predator.
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As Lucas' climb brought him closer to the entrance more and more light made it down to him. At first he was glad to have everything thrown into bright detail after spending so long in total darkness, but soon he was squinting at the glare from the reflected light. After another minute of climbing, still without having seen a single ray of direct sunlight, he had to stop. The light was so bright that he couldn't keep his eyes open.
‘I'm not even going to be able to move around by day like this,’ he thought.
‘Well if I adjusted to the dark I can adjust again. But for now, I'll have to move at night.’
Lucas opened his Map, the road was close. If he climbed out of the ravine he might be able to see it. He wasn't about to wave down the first person he saw though, he had changed a lot since then. What he needed was a way to find whatever was out there before it found him. He had an idea, but wasn't sure how well it would work. Before he could try it out, however, he needed protection. Engaging with the Nexus absorbed all his senses and left his body vulnerable. Thankfully, he had a LOT of his own Mana to work with now. Lucas climbed back down until the level of light was comfortable. He got out his Nexus, an egg, and opened his design interface. He did not see what he expected.
The first thing he noticed was the penetrative power of his Mana as it saturated networks within the Nexus that were so fine Lucas had not even realised they existed. Most of them involved the new Ancestral Behaviour Templates and Dream Training. As Lucas observed his Design Interface it began to populate the various toolbars with new buttons and functions to reflect his expanding skill set.
Dream Training sounded especially interesting, but before he allowed himself to properly explore everything he focused on getting his defences in order. The embryonic Cave Arach inside the egg twitched on his interface. All of his eggs were Cave Arach’s by default, so no expensive alterations were needed to hatch one.
Only the 4 Mana required to bring it to maturity. That would result in the Broodling size of Arach he had used to conquer the cave. However, if he continued using his eggs at the rate he had been, he would run out very quickly. The Cave Arach’s basic design was very powerful, so a cost effective way to create stronger fighters was to leave them as Cave Arachs and simply increase their size. With his Spirit at 6, he could afford to pump up their size considerably.
Lucas drained his entire Mana pool into the egg. 2 Mana was used to increase its size and 4 to hatch it. Withdrawing his mind from the Nexus, he watched with great anticipation as the egg grew to over half Lucas’s standing height. A long crescent blade sliced it open from within and the egg’s sack fell away to reveal a Cave Arach that stood a metre tall and probably two metres wide. This was the first time Lucas had seen one in clear lighting. Its four front-most legs had thick carapace armour and the outermost leg-segments of each were replaced with great scythe blades. Its chest plate and face was large, housing two enormous eyes and a scattering of smaller ones.
[https://i.imgur.com/f5Lkeeh.jpg]
The new Arach, who Lucas decided to call ‘Combat Spider’, was stretching its limbs as it regarded him curiously. Lucas used Analyse on it.
Waking up an unknown amount of time later to see a blue screen and the face of an enormous spider looming over him. Lucas yelped involuntarily, scrambling away in confusion. Combat Spider looked on, clearly concerned. It took him a moment to realise he had used Analyse while his Mana pool was empty, having just spent it all to hatch a spider. That was the first time he had tried using Mana he didn't have. The second time would probably be the moment he died. He did, at least, get the Character Sheet for Combat Spider.
[https://i.imgur.com/AZPiLb5.jpg]
It matched the size of Arach that the Broodmother had been hatching, which resulted in an almost identical Character Sheet. Considering that he could hatch one of these every time his Mana completely regenerated, which was roughly once a day, he felt pretty good about it. Any prey he managed to get his hands on could of course result in even more. Now that he had a guardian to keep him safe, Lucas returned to the Brood Nexus.
The interface now had an extensive new set of tools. The Ancestral Behaviour Templates were organised into drop down lists, seemingly in order of how distant the ancestor was from the Cave Arach. Interestingly, the Cave Arach’s default behaviour also had a template now, which when selected showed him a list of basic behavioural states.
These were;
-Follow and protect the Broodlord when it's on the move,
-Hunt and return with prey when the Broodlord is nesting and,
-Otherwise attempt to sense what the Broodlord wants based on context.
Its sense of context was obviously rudimentary, and its ability to understand complex instructions was limited. Lucas could sense that the Nexus did have functions for customising the templates, for building and customising behaviour from scratch, but these functions were again too fine even for his 6 Spirit. He shook his head, wondering just how much Spirit that Broodmother had to create something so fine. But, what he had unlocked now still sounded very interesting, especially the ‘Dream Training’.
He already understood it since his Mana had unlocked that part of the pattern. The little Arach inside the egg was always dreaming. Lucas’s interface gave him a perfect depiction of it in real time, like a video feed. He simply sat and watched as the tiny Arach was subjected to a variety of dream sequences that all followed a similar theme. The little creatures' dreams were creating imaginary scenarios designed to trigger and train its instincts. Arach’s were fully developed the moment they hatched from the egg, so this dream-training must be how they learned the skills it would be born with. Conveniently, it also allowed Lucas to watch how the Arach was being trained to behave.
Lucas watched as the embryonic Cave Arach moved through various dream sequences. Roughly two in every three dream sequences was spent learning the complex martial art based around using their four scythes in combat. This resulted in a lot of ‘duels’ and hypothetical combat encounters with various types of prey.
Lucas tried to delve a little deeper into the behaviour. He could sense a network of triggers and reactions that governed the Arachs system of scythe combat, but the ultra fine complexity of it was beyond his reach of 6 Spirit. Even if he could design something so sophisticated, the depth of the alteration would push the Mana cost through the stratosphere because of the complexity. However, since every egg was defaulted to the Cave Arach design he essentially got this for free. Without having a great stockpile of living creatures to sacrifice, he would need to work with the creatures natural body plan for now, making only minor alterations.
Lucas turned his attention to the list of Ancestral Behaviour Templates. Here he found a selection of pre-built behaviour patterns that appeared to be a function of existing but dormant DNA within his Cave Arachs. Activating them was relatively cheap since he did not need to create anything new.
Deep Arach was the first on the list, presumably being the closest relative. The rest had simple descriptive names like ‘Web and Trap’, or ‘Spot and Ambush’. The option was there, so Lucas simply activated ‘Web and Trap’, then watched the dream sequences for any changes. The normal Cave Arach behaviour was still active, so he had to watch as the dreaming Arach worked its way through some of the ‘hunt and retrieve’ dream-missions before he encountered anything new.
When the scene did change, the landscape changed with it. The dreaming Arach found itself attached to the cliff of a great red stone mountain. Surrounding it were similarly immense structures of rock, many leaning or balancing in unlikely positions as if some galactic child had been stacking them like toys. Powerful winds blew unceasingly through a network of tunnels and channels that honeycombed the immense stone structures. This created a cacophony of wailing, moaning, and screeching sounds of every pitch imaginable, like a monument sized pipe organ that was hopelessly out of tune.
The dreaming Arach immediately began plotting out a series of web traps that it could monitor from a safe nook in the stone. To the Arach's (and Lucas’s) great dismay, it soon discovered that it could not produce any web. Lucas swore to himself, realising what was happening. He had activated behaviour from a different species of Arach, but had not modified the creature's body to match.
The Arach, which looked exactly like a normal Cave Arach, simply stood in stunned confusion. These ‘Dormant Behaviours’ came from the Cave Arach’s ancestors, behavioural instincts that became dormant as they continually evolved to suit new environments. Lucas reverted the creature back to its default nature, to spare it the constant nightmares about not having web. He then realised he had probably been in the Nexus trance for several hours, so he withdrew his consciousness to look around.