The last day approaches. The day before we head out.

I just barely made it. I made it to the required Spiritual root level in order to get access to the inner court: Peony Earth 4.

Without my healing constitution, I would have had no chance to get into the sect.

While not getting into the inner court would not be the end of the world, it would not be the advantage that we need in order to be successful.

The main reason, is that I wouldn’t have access to the library. Without access, the cost to find out information from the library to assist Lin and Ai Would be far too great for me to handle.

However, I found that as soon as I do get access to that information, then the mental cost to find out, go significantly down.

Since I wouldn’t be able to find them anything using my scan, they would have to choose their own cultivation methods.

Which would likely still not be too bad. But, still may not be the best for them.

In addition, one of them would have to give up all of their cultivation methods, in order to give the demi humansmethods that works for them, as well. Which would also be non-optimized for them.

And that’s only part of the surface issues. That doesn’t include the fact that we found out that outer court members are more susceptible to outside or even inside plots by young Masters or powerful forces.

Once you get into the inner court section, you’re viewed as more of a resource for the sect to cultivate, rather than just to be used. Which generally means that you aren’t to be touched.

With me being at the proper level to safely get in, it’s one less thing to worry about.

So, my mind moves to the next few things that I have to make sure that is working right, while I’m gone.

The first of these, is making sure that the healing for everyone, including the plants, will still be working when we I go to the sect and possibly beyond.

To do so, I use my scan, which quickly helps me to see that I need to really readjust the amount of healing I have available toward these aims. In fact, this now means that I need to readjust the number of spiders that Gong can have active.

This time, in the vein of being cautious, I take the above average distance away from the sect, that I would have to do for missions for the group. Which increases the cost by quite a bit.

The reason I set the parameters this way, is so that even when I’m doing other activities, I will still be somewhat prepared and have a range on how much of my mana is being used at anytime.

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Taking into account the new adjusted numbers, I had to reduce the number of spiders that I told Gong that she could have previously use, by 30%. I also have to reduce my available mana. Leaving me at 75% of my current total.

When I let Gong know, she definitely wasn’t happy. However, she seemed to already take such a thing into account, since I had first warned her about limiting the number of spiders.

It appears she was originally planning on having a mobile team of spiders, that would move from place to place in case an emergency happened. With these reductions she just took the majority out of this team, in a little bit out of the other teams Spiders that she had.

She seemed a little disappointed, but nothing could be done about it. Which she communicated to me pretty openly. She did quiet down quickly, though… Which seemed suspicious, but I let it go.

I really should have taken this into account earlier, but better to be last minute than not at all. I would have soon found out how bad of an idea that would have been.

Moving on to my other thoughts, I considered the state of all my tamed creatures.

The spiders, as a whole, as I noted previously, add around a puppy or cat level intelligence. Any insects birthed by then seem to retain a measure of the same intelligence level, still need to learn as an infant of that same intelligence of a would anyway.

What is scary, though, is how quickly they learn. My guess is that due to their normally shortened lifespans most of their actions are due to instinct, which is carried over in their genes. Now, this intelligence is being carried over as well, and over a longer period of time. Possibly indefinite.

Even though I have control of the spiders as well, I generally consider them to be part of gongs forces. And I continually remind myself, to never get on Gong’s bad side. With Gong being as fiercely intelligent as she is, and these spiders learning and growing as fast as they are, I wouldn’t like to test that bond. Even if my scan tells me that I would ultimately win. At that point, it would be the same is being required to follow the letter of the law, rather than the intent. Since they clearly love her more.

However, that doesn’t seem to be the same across the board.

Apparently the first batch of spiders are still alive, and really like me. I found out that the spider that had accompanied me on that day I went over to the yellow sashes place, was one of these batches of spiders. It definitely seemed much more intelligent than the others at the time, but now that I’m checking I can see that it’s around the level of a small child.

Going back even further, is my Red Blob and the Roach.

They seem to have the largest growth out of any others that I have. Which makes sense, because they’re one of my oldest intelligence-wise, I put them at the level of a high school student.

I do seem to find out a secret, that Gong was lightly trying to keep from me.

Apparently, my red blob and the Roach had been having adventures, throughout the city during all this time that I have been running around. In fact, from what Gong told me (when I started grilling her about it), they’ve stopped quite a few bad apples and helped out in a variety of situations. They know how to bandage and stitch up wounds. To plan out ambushes and setup areas of control.

Part of the reason at the village is going so well, and that the borders are being maintained is due to the hard work of these two and the network of spiders that they’ve been using. Which also brings into the picture the older spider that I had mentioned earlier, that came with me to the yellow sashes place, has also been joining them on those adventures.

In fact, it appears that the spiders actually all look up to these three. Whenever they need extra backup, they basically call on some of the spiders to assist them.

I found out the reason that Gong was being a little dodgy about the mobile team of spiders. This was the group that they were going to ‘command.’

… they are basically like a mini hero group.

And they’re actually better than me, since they are much smoother at planning things out and handling situations. They are also good at staying undercover, since the only reason I was able to tell that something was happening at all, was that I was checking their progress through the taming system.

With this new information in my hands, I decided to bring them all in front of me.

Let’s see how special they really are.