Maxine woke up while feeling a weight on her whole body. She opened her eyes and saw Silky laying down on top of her. Silky's head was resting on her breasts. Maxine thought Silky looked adorable while she slept, but wondered why she wasn't sleeping on the blow up matress that Maxine had put on the floor. However Maxine had to remind herself that this is the first time Silky had actually slept in the same place as herself and probably wanted to cuddle.

"Silky," Maxine said softly while stroking Silky's head, "It's time to get up." Silky stirred at Maxine's touch and revealed a big smile once she was awake.

"Good morning, mama," Silky said cheerfully. 

"Good morning, Silky," Maxine said happily, "Could you get off me? I need to make breakfast." At the thought of breakfast, Maxine wondered how much Silky could actually eat. Maxine guess that Silky could easily eat the same portion as a large man could just based on her size.

"Okay, mama," Silky said as she got off Maxine and onto the floor, "What are we going to eat?" It was a legitimate question. However Maxine was going to make something with lots of protein since spiders normally ate meat.

"Bacon and scambled eggs," Maxine said as she got up and quickly got a fresh change of clothes on. Silky followed her towards the kitchen with a curious look on her face.

Maxine cooked breakfast while Silky watched her with rapt attention. Maxine was making enough for three people and served Silky her breakfast as soon as she got it ready. 

Maxine watched Silky as she played with her food before tentatively taking a bite out of a piece of bacon. Her face lit up as if she had tasted something amazing and quickly started stuffing the bacon into her mouth greedily. Maxine almost started laughing at that.

"Silky, slow down and enjoy it. No one is going to take it from you," Maxine said with a smile. Silky had already devoured all but one piece of bacon before Maxine said that. Silky slowed down considerably and ate it one bite at a time with a big smile on her face. Silky took her time eating the eggs as well. However when she finished, Silky asked more. Maxine was surprised, but still cooked another helping for Silky.

While Silky ate, Maxine wondered how to keep tabs on General Jones. She had forgotten to put one of her Shadow Wolves into his shadow yesterday because she had been too angry to think straight and she doubted that he would let her get close enough to do that after threatening him yesterday. 

Maxine noticed a raven resting on a telephone line outside of her house and got a devilish idea. She quickly scanned the raven with her spiritual sense as thoroughly as she could. She wanted to make a batch of ravens in the same manner that she had made the Shadow Wolves. However she couldn't create one right away as Silky had just finished her food and announced that she was finally full. Maxine quickly cleaned up after the both of them and checked outside for any reporters. There were a few outside.

Maxine quickly formed a shadow clone and had it exit out of the front door while Silky and herself exited out of the backdoor. Maxine had to go slow enough for Silky to follow and tried her best to avoid people while they headed to Silky's nest. They managed to avoid being spotted by anyone along the way. Maxine didn't want anyone to find out what she was doing. 

As soon as they arrived, Silky ran towards her nest. Maxine noticed a few animals were stuck in Silky's webs and decided to leave Silky alone while she got to it. While Silky took care of them, Maxine pulled out thirty copper essence cores. Maxine tried to recreate a larger version of the raven that she had scanned with her spiritual sense earlier. Once she was satisfied with it's shape, Maxine created one using one of the essence cores. 

Maxine tried to make it talk using her voice. Unfortunately it's vocal cords needed some work and had to adjust them to make them sound more like herself. After she did that, she ordered it to fly in a circle above her head. It flapped it's wings a few times before it took flight. She was pleased that it had retained the capacity for flight and swiftly made another twenty nine ravens with the remaining copper essence cores. She gave them four orders once she had made thirty of them. They were to follow General Jones, for some of them to hide in his shadow, to say 'I am watching you' using Maxine's voice once every minute whenever he was alone, and to peck him in tender areas multiple times whenever he tries to do something harmful to cultivators. These ravens allowed her to listen in to all of his conversations and she could order them to peck him to death should he ever take things too far. The best part was that no one would believe General Jones if he said that some birds under Maxine's control were stalking him. Even if someone was suspicious of her, there was no evidence that it was actually her doing it.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Maxine decided to have one of her ravens to relay a few rules after a couple days that General Jones has to follow if he wants her stop tormenting him. Otherwise if her ravens continued with her orders, he might go insane and that would just result in someone new appearing again. Even if he doesn't want to agree to her rules, she would continue to torment him with the ravens until he gave in. With that plan in place, she released her ravens to torment General Jones.  

After sending those ravens off, Maxine looked at Silky as she started coming back from tending to her nest. She wondered if Silky could use essence in the same way as cultivators and called her over to find out. The first thing Maxine teaching Silky was to make an essence dart. Silky figured it out very quickly. However what formed above her hand wasn't exactly an essence dart. It had the right shape of an essence dart, but it looked and smelled like it was made of crystalized spider venom. Maxine assumed it would be the same kind of paralytic venom Silky had when she was still a Widowmaker Spider. It would be great means of restraining essence beasts in the future.

Next Maxine taught Silky to form essence armor. Silky had formed it on the first try. Silky's essence armor resembled platemail and it even covered the spider portion of her body. Her essence amor looked like it was made of finely wrought silver. However unlike everyone else she had encountered, Silky had an open face helmet instead of one that covered everything but the eyes. Oddly enough, Maxine didn't think it was a weakness in the essence armor as she could sense protective essence covering Silky's face. Maxine noticed tiny studs all over Silky's essence armor that smelled vaguely of poison. Maxine didn't have to worry about Silky loosing to essence beasts since they would get poisoned regardless of whether they attack or get attacked.

Maxine was happy that Silky could use essence like that, but it appeared that Silky was just happy to get attention. After encouraging Silky to find other ways to use her essence, Maxine pulled out her phone to call Emily. Out of everyone that she knew, Emily knew the least about how to use her essence. 

However before she could even dail the number, Emily called her. Maxine quickly answered the phone, but heard General McKenzy's voice, "Hello, Maxine. You havn't made it easy to get in contact with you." Maxine was tempted to end the call right there since she was still angry at him, but she was also curious as to why he would call her.

"Hello, general," Maxine answered coldly.

"You don't need to call me that anymore. I retired. Call me, Howard," General McKenzy said.

"Fine, Howard. What do you want?" Maxine replied.

"I wanted to apologize for what happened to your mother. It was a mistake to use her as bait for those people and to assign only five cultivators to your mother's protection detail. Had I only realized how much of a threat those men were, I would have never risked your mother in that fashion," General McKenzy said, "I am aware that this is selfish to ask, but can you forgive me for my failure?" Maxine hadn't known about the five cultivators that had been protecting her mother. She had only seen the ten bodyguards laying dead on the ground. 

Maxine almost said no reflexively, but it would negatively effect her relationship with Emily. "I don't know if I can, but I will try," Maxine answered honestly. 

"Thank you. It is more than I deserve," General McKenzy said, "I will put Emily on now. She has been wanting to talk to you."

When the phone was handed to Emily, they talked about everything that had happened the past few days, but Maxine left out her confrontation with General Jones. It was only after they had run out of topics to talk about did Maxine ask Emily if she wanted to learn a few more abilities using her essence. Emily agreed readily and asked when they could meet up. Maxine offered to teach her tomorrow at Maxine's house since she couldn't get Silky to Emily's house without her being seen. Emily agreed to meet her tomorrow around lunchtime. 

After the call ended, Maxine called Amanda to see if she wanted to learn anything new, but she was too busy to do any kind of training for now. She was writing a petition to the government to setup a police force consisting of cultivators. Her reasoning was that it was far easier for cultivators to keep their own in check than it would be for even the military. It made perfect sense to Maxine and didn't want to bother Amanda any more than necessary. However Maxine did ask Amanda to let her know when she was free before ending the call.

Maxine had one last person that she needed to contact, but he was someone whom she had confusing feelings for. However Patrick had the same knowledge that she did and he didn't need any help improving his abilities. However she wanted to know who, besides Maxwell, he had taught how to cultivate. She needed to know everything in order to setup a proper formation and battle plan for the next essence beast horde. Even though it made her feel uncomfortable, Maxine dialed Patrick's phone number and waited for him to answer.