“Can I have your scales my great metal spider?”

“Yes. King.” The now much larger Great Metal Spider shook its body like a wet dog shedding its scales.

“Yes. King.” Twelve little metal spiderlings chirped happily imitating their parent.

He gathered big and small scales into his inventory; all were orange in colour.

[Metal Spider Scale: Greater] x25, [Metal Spider Scale: Lesser] x300.

With that done he headed to the workshop to craft the needed equipment for the expedition.

The scales were limited, but he had plenty of leather and cloth. The goal was to craft the Drow some fire-resistant gear. First, he used Enchanted Leather to make a vest and then surrounded it with Red Cloth, and finally, he added a large spider scale for chest protection. Then he used smaller scales to make a face shield, which was very much like a welder’s mask; he padded the inside with red cloth hoping that it will insulate the heat. Lastly, he made overalls, a type of full-body suit, entirely out of cloth. The armour turned out to be light, focusing on ease of movement meaning that it didn’t have high physical protection, but it was not made for physical protection anyways.

[You have crafted a FireWalker Suit of superior quality. Crafting +100exp.]

[FireWalker Suit: Reinforced +3. Fire Resistance: Medium.]

[Temporary perk Absorb Fire obtained.]

It ended up looking like some dystopian factory worker uniform, but hey, his theory that Fire Agave provided fire resistance was correct. And in no way was the armour was perfect, its main protection was concentrated at the front leaving the sides and the back vulnerable. To somewhat battle this drawback he decided to make a shield: he used the same materials to make a hexagonal shield; the first layer was metal, then leather, and then cloth.

[You have crafted a FireShield of superior quality. Crafting +100exp.]

[FireShield: Reinforced +3. Fire Resistance: Medium.]

[Temporary perk Deflect Fire obtained.]

“Awesome.” The fire theme was nice. It felt like he was making firefighter gear. To finalise the look he drew the symbol of Spider Kingdom on both the chest scale and the shield using blue ink.

The design was successful so he called spider crafters to make more sets to kit out the Drow expedition. And for himself, he will be wearing his Plate Armour, but with an additional tunic made out entirely of red cloth. Once he made the tunic for some reason it registered as Robes of Fire Resistance, but it only gave him Fire Resistance: Minor, however, he felt it was still adequate because his armour had other protective perks.

With the armour done, he grabbed some of the Chitin Spears he made before; they were made using Iron Oak and spider eggshells. The intention was to gift them to the Drow who still had no proper melee weapons.

The crafting went better than he expected and he had everything he needed for the Deep Cave expedition leaving him with some free time to deliberate over smaller issues, but still issues never the less. The first was the road towards the Ancestral Tree and the Human Kingdom, the former one was just a dirt path and the latter was still in the works. While the dirt path was better than nothing it was not excellent, the plants still tried to grow on it and it needed frequent maintenance. Hence he decided it was time to pave it, but that was sort of a mega project, the distance was quite great and he will need a lot of stone.

The second was the trail towards the Oberon Mountains, the distance was also great and the terrain especially at the end was rough. Making a road there was exceptionally difficult and from what he had seen so far, his spiders found it easier to travel using tree branches and winding vines than tricky ground trails… He had to discuss it with the trusty advisor later and ask for his opinion on what was the solution there.

…

“Spiders like to travel on the web. We have a perk for that: Web Walk.”

“I didn’t know that!” But now he does. “Does this mean that roads are no good?”

“No. The straight road can be as fast as a good web. It really depends.” The trusty advisor put a thoughtful expression on his spider face.

“Hmm… But for the trail towards the mountain, the webs would be the best?”

“Affirmative.”

“When let’s do it.” It was only obvious.

“King, it would take a great amount of blue rope to achieve that. It also would need to be Reinforced +1, the metal ores spiders carry are heavy.”

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“Use what we have for now, and just expand the farms. Simple as that. And for the Reinforced +1 I will…”

“King.” The advisor didn’t hesitate to interrupt. “Some of the veteran builders have reached Building lvl 1 obtaining that perk. Would you allow them to take this task? To take this very important duty away from our King? Not that I imply that they could do better than our King.” The advisor lowered his head in an apology.

“Isn’t that amazing? Let them do it! I don’t mind, ha-ha, less work for me.” He smiled at the good news.

“Then I must have misunderstood something. Never mind. I will tell everyone to start making Web Rail at once.”

“Yes, I entrust it to you spiders.” Honestly, he knew little of how to make a web anyway. King of Spiders who doesn’t know how to web, it was a little embarrassing.

A small messenger spider rushed into the throne room waving a parchment. “King, King!”

He recognised the wax symbol on the corner. “Black Hand Covenant. Get me the human.”

The middle-aged man was dragged by the spiders into the throne room.

“My King.” He kneeled in front of the throne with visible fear in his eyes.

“Why are you so spooked? I just want you to read this to me.” He handed the parchment.

The man began reading the message.

“King of spiders, it is a shame the previous message didn’t find you well. I’ve included the exact copy below, please read it.

=====

… we have received the cloth and sold the first robes already. The items turned out to be more powerful and more popular than we expected. Did you enchant the cloth with a Reinforce enchantment? It was unnecessary but we are grateful for that. A continuous supply of this rare item will help us greatly in our plot for dominion.

There were some little things we had to do to keep our deal going. I’m sure your spies told you all about it but you know the story of the cracked communications orb, the messages can get distorted, so let me summarise the events to avoid misunderstandings. We declared you the servant of the Demon Lord, while we know this is not true it was a necessary lie. This worked wonders to spook the peasants and aspiring opportunists away from the forest. We also disseminated the information that you have great forces of evil in your realm, greater than Our Kingdom could counter. Which probably is not a lie? Only with this could we could push the many political factions into even considering an actual truce. The goal is not yet achieved, the powers are just wary of the forest at the moment, but with time we will eventually invite you to the palace to sign the official documents of truce and rights to the Ancient Forest. Meanwhile, we will keep scaring everyone into compliance…

=====

We’ve gotten the samples you have sent and already inspected the wonderful items. Most wonderous indeed! Are you sure you aren’t supplied by The Demon Lord? My fellow magi had grown suspicious. Next time please just tell us about the properties so we don’t have to experiment. Henceforth, our assessment is:

Red Cloth: similar to Blue Cloth, but instead of magical resistance provides fire resistance. The current application is limited in this kingdom, hence the value is less than the Blue Cloth. We rather have Blue Cloth if you don’t mind, but some fire magi had expressed interest and will send you their offers later. As it stands now a roll of Red Cloth is estimated at 10g.

TomGrape: a magical fruit with alchemical properties still unknown. We just didn’t have enough for all the experiments. Would you be willing to send more? As far as we know, regardless of potential alchemical applications, it’s a delicious and nutritious crop; many found it simply tasty. If treated as food estimation is 1s per piece.

PurpleM: another magical fruit. We knew straight away that it is an ingredient for MP potion. The market is competitive and we could offer you no more than 10s.

Slug Jelly: Once again, I wish you told us about the items you have sent. While received very well, this one was quite a blight to deal with. It’s outright addictive, isn’t it? The ones who had the ‘pleasure’ to taste the contents of the jar were clawing at their faces at the knowledge we will run out. There were fights over the last drop you know. But I assume you meant well. This drug is very useful and we have great interest and need for more. Substance this addicting can’t be easy to produce. Will 100g be enough for a jar?

Anyway, I assume you sent the items in order to secure funds for your future endeavours. We will gladly offload your simpler goods like TomGrape, or whatever interesting you have, in the kingdom for a small cut of 25% (non-negotiable). The more interesting items we will be buying ourselves, the prices we can negotiate.

You have asked for the map, and I’ve included the most recent edition available to the public. As we are now, we can’t share military secrets willy-nilly with rogue sorcerers.

For the magical items please have a look at the package coming later. The faux phoenix can’t carry too much so expect a human messenger; please don’t kill him. Also, I will be including a Coordinate Scroll so that my familiar can find your base batter. By the way, I am looking at obtaining a communication orb for you, but as you know those are rare, expensive, and notoriously hard to ‘disappear’, we might just appropriate one from our puppet King; the fool doesn’t know how to use it anyway.

Signed, Grand Magus Vumbeldor, member of the inner circle of the Black Hand.”

The middle-aged man handed back the parchment with a shaking hand, his face was very pale.

“Thanks. Are you eating well, you look a bit peaky?”

“Yes, my King.” He patted on a developing pot belly. “I am fed very well. Both of us are. Thank you for your grace.” He bowed.

“Then, get some rest. Dismissed.” He waved the man away.

The man bowed and walked backwards back down the long corridor, then once midway he bowed again, and then again just before the exit. He observed the strange behaviour attributing it to human kingdom etiquette; as odd as it was.

“Demon Lord… I am not sure I like that, but I guess I can understand the reason. They are just prejudiced against my cute spiders! Always grouping us with bad guys. Ahh…” He sighed and shook his head pitying the ignorant humans. “At least we can finally trade now.”

“Indeed. Should I send the items to the outpost?”

He simply nodded. “So the Slug Jelly might be addictive to other races.” It wasn’t the case for him nor the spiders. And he just assumed that Lamia Queen had a bad case of a sweet tooth. “I will need to be more careful with that.”

“Should I forbid the Queen from the jelly cupboard?”

“She has access?” He didn’t remember giving permission. “Put spider guards by it. Aside from deserving spiders, no one else is allowed to it.”

“Understood.”

“Let's have a look at this.”

He unfurled the map. It had annotations in human language. He had been practising and could read something as simple as that on his own already. The nearby human kingdom wasn't too big, actually, it was quite small. Aside from a capital marked with a star, it had two other cities. The villages and small towns weren't even marked, but he assumed they were there from the presence of roads and rivers. The Kingdom was not alone, it had two more neighbours, both small kingdoms. Actually, the Human Realm was split into twenty-five human kingdoms of various sizes composing what must be known as Holy Empire. The Holy Capital was on the shore by the sea, build on the river delta, and from the size he judged it to be a metropolis. On the east of the empire was the sea and on the left, there were either mountains or forests marked simply as wilderness with forested patches marked as Savage Elves. The edge of the south was bordered by Oberon Mountains and the Great Desert. The north was a huge area marked as Beast Plains. The map didn’t even include his jungle, meaning that the humans haven’t explored past the Elf Forests or Oberon Mountains.

“Well, that was informative.” He gave the map to the advisor. “So where is this package?”

“Wisp. Couldn’t. Fly. It.” The spider chirped apologetically “Is. Coming. By. Another. Spider.”

Meaning it will take some time to get back to him. He patted the small spider as thanks. “I guess, It’s time for me to leave. I’m off to see the Drow.”

“Understood.” The trusty advisor bowed imitating the human.

“Now, where did the warrior leader go to, I need a ride.” He went to look for his noble steed.