CHAPTER 10: PART 2 OF 3

BROOD WAR

Lucas considered his options. None of the Arachs had so far taken his Broodlings seriously as a threat until they attacked. That gave him a possible edge. Apparently it was just going to sit there, waiting to see if he could figure out a way to hurt it. He couldn't just leave it. Before long it would start making a new Brood, possibly one adapted to survive his Broodling attacks. He may have access to a Brood Nexus, but a real Broodmother would have far more options than he did. Right now, while it was alone, was as vulnerable as it would ever be.

He had to test it. All Arachs had a leathery abdomen with no carapace, given the size of it however, it might be too thick for his little Broodlings to penetrate with their fangs. Only one way to find out. Lucas stood and flared the usual attack command from his Aura. As the Broodlings rushed past, he tried to restrain some of them. He managed to pin one down before the rest had leapt into the hole. His Aura flashing an attack command like that made it impossible to give any nuanced instructions.

A flood of Broodlings rushed down the incline. The Deep Broodmother paid no attention to them, intent on Lucas. Soon the Broodlings were leaping off the rock onto her, but the moment they landed a loud hissing sound filled the cavern.

Lucas’ heart sank as his beautiful little Broodlings began popping in quick succession. The energy from their Auras formed a vortex, trapped within the rock funnel created by the Broodmother’s pit. Lucas normally lost most of the energy as it exploded into the atmosphere, but the Broodmother had created a way to harness almost 100%. Two new Auras sprang to life. Lucas used his precious last Mana point to Analyse one as they began scampering up the incline.

[https://i.imgur.com/M5AQd5h.jpg]

‘Shit.’

They weren't very fast, clearly having trouble with the steep slope, but he would be dead if one caught him. Lucas put the Broodling he had saved on his shoulder and started to run, as fast as his legs could carry him. Half way up to the main cave network his Broodling leaped off his shoulder. Turning his head as he ran he saw the Broodling plant itself in the middle of the tunnel between him and the approaching Neo Deep Arach, its little Aura glowing with a fierce protective determination.

‘Dammit, no!’

He didn't slow down, but in his heart he swore to remember the little Broodling that stood so proudly to meet its death, even if all it could do was buy him a little more time. When he made it out of Deep Arach territory the Neo Deep Arach was still far behind, so he immediately rushed to his pile of paralysed Arachs and took out the Brood Nexus.

The adrenaline was making it hard to think, so he sat down and forced calm breathing until his heart rate followed. He was at a big disadvantage in this ‘spider evolution war’. Not only was Lucas restricted to the most basic modifications, due to his ‘clumsy’ Mana, he had no way to see their effects before hatching the egg. Reaching 4 Spirit might help, and was very close to the threshold.

Lucas got his knife and sacrificed one of the paralysed Arachs, draining its life force into an egg. All of the Mana went straight into blowing up the creature's size. A familiar feeling of pressure was building inside his Aura, but it wasn't enough. He killed another, blowing up the size of the egg even further, still not enough. The third sacrifice pushed him over the edge.

[https://i.imgur.com/T7Chi1A.jpg]

[https://i.imgur.com/NQJEAod.jpg]

A rush of power surged into Lucas. His newly refined Mana permeated inaccessible parts of the Nexus pattern, like water soaking into the pores of a sponge. He watched with awe as a staggering array of new possibilities opened up before him, more than he would have dreamed possible. The very DNA of the spiders unravelled its nature like so much computer code, his to weave into whatever shape he pleased. Knowing he had something else to deal with first, he reluctantly tore his attention away from exploring the new possibilities and withdrew from the Nexus trance.

The tell tale thumping sound of the Neo Deep Arach was fast approaching, but his new Arach had already hatched. Its Aura towered over him, almost reaching the cavern ceiling. The massive spider was regarding Lucas with new born curiosity when the Neo Deep Arach rounded the corner to confront the two of them.

‘ENEMY’ the thought reverberated through his Aura, and the titanic Arach sprang into action immediately. It hauled its immense weight across the cavern, crossing the distance in a single bound and slamming down with its massive scythes. The Neo Deep Arach hunkered down to shield itself but the impact of the huge Scythes was overpowering. Fear and pain pulsed in the Neo Deep Arach’s Aura as the sound of its cracking carapace echoed down the caverns. That was only the first of a series of crushing blows that soon reduced the Neo Deep Arach to a twitching mess as its Aura burst. The second Neo-Deep Arach came soon after, having been apparently delayed by his heroic Broodling. It met a similar fate.

Lucas got back to work, confident his gigantic bodyguard could hold the enemy at bay for a while. Inside the Nexus he was immediately confronted by another obstacle. Despite having access to an incredible array of new customisation powers, he could hardly use them because he had no idea about how a spider's body worked. His Mana awareness did not extend into the egg so he couldn't see, nor hardly imagine, what kind of effects his changes would be having. The result was like trying to add complex layers of effects to an image in a photo editing program without being able to see the image while you worked. His changes would be more likely to cripple the spiders than improve them.

Stolen story; please report.

The Broodmother must have had a way to understand the changes she was making to the embryo. She was a spider, so it made some sense that she could use her own biology for reference. While using the Nexus there was an uninterrupted circuit that connected the Mana in the Nexus to the rest of his body. His attention flowed with his Mana into the Nexus, but it could just as easily be turned to focus on the Mana running his body.

Lucas’s attention traced this flow through his own body, where he found Mana patterns that corresponded to the structure of his various body parts. The Nexus readily accepted the pattern of his arm, when he tried feeding it in, and applied it to the egg without issue. The cost of bringing the egg to maturity drastically increased, but it would work. Lucas imagined a Cave Arach running around with human arms in exchange for its legs. ‘Horrific, and pretty useless… but very interesting!’

Lucas reverted the egg to its default form and considered. What he needed was a way to gain some insight into the changes he was making to the embryo. His Analyse ability was the usual tool for that kind of thing, so he tried using it on the egg while maintaining his connection with the Nexus.

With his consciousness totally absorbed by the flow of his Mana, Lucas was aware of a small exploratory wisp of Mana that left his Aura and made for the egg. That was interesting in its own right, since it gave him some insight into how his Analyse ability actually worked. It was sending a ‘probe’ of Mana, that returned with information that would be translated into a popup. His Mana was always his to control, so instead of having the Analyse ‘probe’ go from his Aura directly to the egg, he manually directed it though the pathways of the Nexus to reach the egg.

The nature of the probe was to pick up patterns of information, so in passing though the Nexus it became laden with great quantities of data. It reached the egg, then navigated the patterns of the Nexus again to return to him. A popup appeared like usual when it reached him, but instead of generating the usual information about the egg, a ‘loading’ icon appeared.

Lucas smiled in satisfaction as he waited. When the loading finished, the popup box had completely transformed. Before him now was a complex interface that displayed the anatomy of the embryonic spider, along with a full suite of buttons, widgets and drop down menus that represented all of the customisation tools he had access to. ‘The power of 4 Spirit Analyse.’

Lucas was dumbstruck by what he was looking at. It was exactly the kind of interface he had used many times working on 3d models and animations at university. It undoubtedly looked like this because it was something he was familiar with. He was certain now that his abilities channelled his own experiences and memories to inform their development. That notion could explain entirely why his abilities tended to behave like a video game, since video games were something he was very familiar with. The last night he had spent in his old world was, in fact, spent staying up late playing games. Lucas pushed aside thoughts of home before they rose. He had work to do.

There were two options. He could either make something massive and powerful that could shrug off the acid and take the Broodmother on directly, or go with a swarm again, but make them capable of resisting the acid. The big problem with the first was the Metal Carapace. The Deep Broodmother had spent untold years collecting minerals from the earth to give itself a metallic shell over its whole body. He couldn't imagine himself making any kind of Arach that could compete with her in direct combat.

So a swarm it was. Lucas began to toy with some of the tools. Making any kind of modification increased the cost, but some modifications were much more expensive than others. All of his eggs were ‘Cave Arach’ eggs, and as such came built like one by default. There was a special function for shifting the eggs between three basic types, that were all encoded within the Cave Arach’s DNA. This amounted to changing which of the spider’s genes were expressed, rather than manually altering them, which made the changes very cost effective.

The templates included the Cave Arach Broodmother and the Deep Arach. The cost of hatching a new Broodmother was a staggering 50 Mana without any customisation. Morphing a Cave Arach into a Deep Arach cost only 2 Mana.

The Deep Arachs came with heavy armour by default, so Lucas decided to start there. He started by making the shell of its back-plate thicker and larger, extending it to cover the entire upper section like a turtle shell. Its soft abdomen he folded in, hiding it underneath the armoured section. He made the legs small and strong, with hooked feet. It resembled a beetle more than a spider now, with its legs barely visible underneath the massive hunk of armour.

Next he fused together the foremost legs that held the two pieces of the Carapace Shield, spreading out the thick chitin until it created a single curved plate. The spider now had two formidable layers of protection; the hunk of armour along its back, and a large frontal shield fused to its foremost legs. A little bit more fiddling was necessary to turn its frontal shield into something the Arach could actually climb into if it laid the shield under itself like a bowl. If it climbed into its frontal shield and hunkered down, the two pieces of armour sealed itself completely, like a walnut.

Lucas then changed the poison glands from producing acid back to the paralytic poison of the Cave Arachs. Pausing to consider for a moment, he moved his view around from within the interface, the little embryo twitched and kicked as he looked at it from different angles. He then elongated the fangs until they were almost as long as its whole body and curled up underneath it. He gave the fangs a little flexibility to stop them from snapping, but also to allow them to be inserted into irregular shaped gaps.

The modifications were so extensive that the Mana cost for one spider, which was only about two feet long, had gone from 4 to 9! Sacrificing one of his Paralysed Arachs produced 8 Mana on average, and he had a total of 49 paralysed Arachs. Using up his sacrifices didn’t worry him so much as using his eggs. He had 276 eggs left. Considering that he had started with 354 eggs he was not happy with how fast he was losing them, but the cost of victory had to be paid.

He left the Nexus trance, immediately taking out his knife and going over to the pile of paralysed Arachs, looking for the ones that had started moving. He emptied their life essence into his Brood Nexus until 20 new Broodlings joined him, at the cost of 22 paralysed sacrifices.

They lacked the skittering enthusiasm of his previous Brood but showed just as much curiosity. They crowded around him trying to manoeuvre their awkward bodies close enough to touch his feet. His massive Cave Arach bodyguard stooped to inspect one that had apparently rolled onto its back by accident and was having trouble correcting itself.

‘They are very nuggety little things’ Lucas thought. ‘I hope they can actually get the job done.’