Chapter 50 - Forgive Me, Mother!

Solace led them to where Marvel would be appointed to work. Considering she had no experience, she would observe the preceding of the second phase of treatment. It mostly involved studying the infant spiders’ behaviour and spotting any signs of depravity in the babies.

Obviously, Marvel was unqualified for the job yet, so she would be assigned to shadow someone qualified to learn better. The small, little problem was that the qualified person didn’t seem to want her.

“What is she doing here?” Elegy asked. Her response was curt, not radiating any empathic spark at all. And yet somehow she managed to sound condescending.

Marvel’s eyes wavered, as she couldn’t look up at her.

“Apologise now,” Shai conveyed privately, though she was uncertain if it was private with two elder spiders in proximity. The stare the other spider gave her was the very evidence of that.

“Elegy...” Marvel’s telepathic pulses wavered as she transferred. “I’m sorry. It was very selfish of me to sneak out without permission. I’ll never do it again.”

Elegy gave her a long look and turned to Solace. A tacit understanding was exchanged between the two spiders.

“Fine, consider yourself drafted,” Elegy said. “But be aware this is not a place where you make a mistake. Lives are lost when you make a mistake.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Of course you will, or I’ll send you back to the chasm again.” Elegy turned her attention back to the spider babies playing inside the safe layers of webs. “Now come in and learn. Your part won’t be difficult. You just need to observe their empathic pulses.”

Marvel jumped to join Elegy, leaving Shai at the mercy of the elder arachnid.

“Now that’s got out of the way,” Solace said, latching Shai to herself. “What I am to do about you?”

“Sent me away out of the dungeon, providing me with a very detailed map?” Shai said, sounding more hopeful than she imagined herself to be.

Solace expressed an expression of amusement. “That ship has sailed long ago, don’t you think, Little Serpent?”

“What do spiders know about ships?” Shai hissed as the elder spider brought her along with herself, not trusting her at all to follow up.

“Ship?” Solace stared at her, contemplating as understanding dawned on her. She was terrifyingly quick to make a conjecture. “A translating power. It even translates metaphor to your understanding. Fascinating.”

Shai’s spine chilled. Perhaps she should stick to non-verbal terms if even a single comment from her gave the elder spider more idea about her special circumstances. Although spiders weren’t the scholarly type, this one seemed to be in charge of all the inventions of their clan. Shai didn’t want to be the subject of a fresh experiment.

“Am I that intimidating?” Solace asked.

Shai didn’t answer. “Where are you taking me?”

“Definitely not somewhere to experiment on you,” the elder spider said with a crackled laugh. “Don’t worry about that.”

“I told you to stop reading my mind!” Shai exclaimed indignantly.

“My bad old habit doesn’t go away easily.” She didn’t seem apologetic about it. “Moreover, you mentioned not to manipulate your mind, nothing about reading.”

Shai hissed exasperatedly. Non-verbal terms were the only way for her to not be aggravated with this monster. She doesn’t have Marvel’s innocence at all.

“Goodbye, Shai,” Marvel’s voice echoed in her mind abruptly. “I’ll see you later. Do not try anything funny with Solace. She’s very understanding, but she is the Guardian of our Clan first.”

With that, Marvel cut off the telepathic link between them, making her feel alone and exposed.

“So, Shai is it?” Solace continued as she carried her away, climbing down. “What do you think of this place?”

Shai was hesitant to reply, as spilling her beans always made it disadvantageous for her. In the end, she answered curtly, choosing every word carefully:

“Oddly improvised and advanced.”

Shai had noticed four kinds of formations laid in the nursery and only the elder spider knew how many more were there. Shai barely understood the function of two of the four she located. Apart from the Grand Dream, there were Gravity and weird force-field formations that seemed to block trespassers from entering the nursery. The fourth one seemed to have some aura-negating effect, but she wasn’t sure.

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“For a hatchling of only a few weeks, you seem to know quite a lot about scripts.”

Shai hissed.

“Why is it odd?” the spider asked.

“Well, apologies if my words offend you, but we don’t see terrifying eight-legged … arachnids living civilly inside a dungeon,” Shai answered truthfully. She was pretty sure the spider could judge whether she was speaking the truth. Better to play it safe than accidentally spilling out about her special circumstances.

“You seem to have a greater knowledge of the civilization,” Solace didn’t let go of the topic. Even though her tone was elderly like a good grandma, Shai couldn’t help but feel she was being interrogated. “And scripts too. Inherited knowledge, I suppose?”

“I barely know anything.” If Shai wasn’t a reptile, she would be sweating cold. Would the spider granny take offence if she learned Shai had stolen her scripts?

“You definitely know more than more than Marvel, perhaps even the guardians,” Solace said. “I swear none of them want to learn anything related to scripts. All they want is to play and hunt. But I suppose they have no other choice. Spellforging takes years to master, even for a genius.”

Shai said nothing for a while, as the spider brought her out of the nursery. It wasn’t the way they came, but deeper into the chasm somewhere.

“Where are you taking me?” Shai asked again, unable to stop the dread from welling up.

Solace didn’t answer and faltered on the path, her eyes darting everywhere. Giving her no answer, she changed direction and swung away, shooting a web for support. It didn’t take long for Shai to figure out something was wrong. Some powerful creature was messing around nearby, enough to create ripples even hundreds of metres away.

Shai barely picked up the unrest in energy flow from a couple of hundred metres away, but Solace had changed her direction two whole minutes ago. That was a couple of miles away, easily.

It wasn’t just one creature that was making the mess, but an entire pack of them, radiating high auras of copper and iron ranks, wrecking against a force field that blocked their way into the founding. But more importantly, it was all spiders, gigantic arachnids over two metres tall with jagged appendages, their mandibles opening in high-pitched screeches.

Solace dropped behind them, her figure towering over even the tallest spider. Solace’s body language changed completely. No more amusement could be seen in her aura, losing all pretence of the good grandma. A chilly coldness oozed out of her and assaulted them all.

“STOP!” She commanded.

They all stopped as if Solace’s voice charmed them into compulsion.

“GO BACK,” She commanded again. “This isn’t your place.”

One by one, the spiders crept away from there, scaling the wall. Their pace was rigid, but all of them heeded Solace’s command. Shai finally came out of her transfixion to recognise these were the erratic male kinds of the spider clan.

After the departure of the male counterparts, Solace didn’t just leave. Instead, she moved near the formation and started mending the damage they caused to the defensive formation.

“What will happen to those spiders?” Shai heard herself ask.

“What do you think?” Solace didn’t stop her Spellforging as she answered. “They will slowly—”

“LOOK OUT!” Shai screamed, her [Predatory Instinct] blaring, even though she had no clue why.

Solace spun, her eyes finding another spider of a similar size immediately. It launched itself from above, prepared to go all the way. A burst of force surged through the elder spider as she sent the assailant hurtling through the air to crash into the other side of the wall.

It all happened so fast that Shai couldn’t catch anything. However, the confrontation was merely beginning. A simple crash wouldn’t kill the tenacious arachnid.

A familiar dark power oozed out from where the assailant spider crashed. It rose again and came hurtling towards them, malicious and corrupted essence permeating the air. Sadly, the corrupted spider was dealing with one of the scariest beings of the spider clan.

The assailant froze ten paces away, its appendages shooting rigidly, yet unable to move even a single inch.

Shai finally had a full view of their assailant. It was a spider alright, but nothing like the one she saw before. Other than eight long appendages sharp enough to dig a hole in a wall, it had a humanoid upper body. A face with multiple pairs of eyes, ashen skin, monstrous with sharp, jagged teeth. Its disjointed jaw opened in a bone-chilling growl, cold eyes staring venomously.

Solace’s demeanour softened as she stared at the spider suspended in the air.

“BE CALM, Grim!” She commanded. “Calm!”

The spider with a humanoid upper body growled a few times but eventually calmed down.

“Mother,” it spoke, its voice still growling. “Mother! Forgive! Forgive me! Mother!”

[Grim - Arachne Arachnid Lvl 113], told Shai’s Golden Eyes.

Solace stared at it with all her eight eyes, her demeanour solemn, sorrowful. The very air of her shifted to something greater, something powerful, irreproachable.

“I’m sorry, Child.”

An invisible spike of annihilating mind wave shot off her and plunged into the cursed humanoid spider’s mind, stirring it all around, yet it was unable to struggle, frozen in place.

“MOTHEEERR!”

It dropped dead. No visible signs of wounds could be seen on its body or soul. And as for his mind, it existed no more. Well, that was what happened when one died; however, its mind was ripped out of existence before it died.

The silence extended, even though it felt like no moment passed. The air shifted back to normal. Well, normal was pretty screwed in this dungeon.

“Every time I do it, it feels like I’m ripping a part of myself,” Solace said, her demeanour returning, though not her usual self.

“What happens to the other spiders you let live?” Shai asked, sucking in a frigid breath. An experience like this wasn’t something you come across every day. Who she was kidding, she never came across something like this.

“They will go to their designated area outside our dwelling,” Solace said monotonously. “Hopefully, they will hunt down several cursed creatures, making it easier for the guardians. And will eventually fall into the same fate as Grim here.”

Solace crept near Grim, the dead half-humanoid spider. Essence surged out of her body and pulled the corpse into herself as it vanished in the naked eye.

Did the elder spider store the creature away somewhere? Inventory? Did she have access to them?

“Come on,” Solace said, “the guardians are busy tending to others. I have to play their role for today.”

With that, Solace flew away, taking Shai with her to hunt.