Chapter 71: One Year Deadline
Sages time seemed to fly by as he trained. In the past hed always been bitterly trying to fight against fate, but now it seemed like he was changing his life. The vastly different mindset turned the dull chore into an engrossing hobby. It also helped that he was working on many different things at the same time. Training his body, techniques, crafting formations, breeding insects, and studying in the library. Along the way he also spent time with his friends, no longer feeling embarrassed by his inadequacies in comparison to their achievements. His frequent trips to the Million Skill Library also exposed him to the public more often and within a few months most of the Sect members no longer found him such an extreme and unusual sight. While walking along with a big crowd he didnt stand out too much from a distance, seeming to just be someone with a darker complexion than most. Without a crowd, the huge snake tail that was his legs were quite obvious. Up close it was also easy to see the scales instead of skin and the different shape of his skull, face and jaw.
As he grew accustomed to his new appearance and treatment, he was less driven to cover it up. His current plan was to head to the Seal Masters cave and search for treasure. He didnt plan to stop at any towns or cities along the way so he pushed back the plans to create a disguise as well as the study of the weapons and clothing he found in the Soul Taming Abode. None of the weapons were ones hed trained with in the past, so Sage chose not to purchase and train a whole new fighting style. When he encountered trouble the plan was to run away and return later to set an ambush. Additionally, he was still getting used to his new body. Most techniques were created for normal humans, which meant his lack of two legs changed how he could perform them. He still hadnt even successfully been able to make use of his old fighting techniques in this new body, let alone worry about learning new ones.
Over this year of training and studying, Sage had forged a few hundred Formation Plates costing him a few thousand contribution points in materials. Half of that was covered by his usual Insect related sales which put his points at a little over ten thousand, essentially his only points remaining were those he earned from the expedition reward.
Sage entered the Insect Shed. The majority of his possessions were contained within his Storage Ring. The only things of value in his whole home were contained within this shed. He carefully prepared the feeding formations and secured the many habitats. This time he had no idea how long hed be gone, it could take a few months or it might be a decade. As such, he cleaned out the majority of his experiments. The habitat rooms were pretty self-sufficient, arrays supported a healthy habitat and land condition to grow plants. Different insects would reproduce naturally and be preyed upon by other insects. The individual species cages on the other hand had to be more carefully managed with array formations. The formation required spirit stones as power and Sage aimed to reduce the expenditure by cutting down on the population of the individual cages. Hed already use the Spirit Jade Beetle Cage as a focus for the arrays to enhance them, but it was still better to reduce costs.
The Chameleon Mantis was chosen for stealth, information gathering, and assassination. It was also no slouch in open combat, but its main focus was to strike from concealment with its powerful forearm blades.
Sage had almost decided not to bring along any Steel Silk Webspinners, since the Steel Silk Centipede was better in nearly every way. In the end he brought the Webspinners for one reason, behavior. The webspinners he bred were trained to constantly spin webs onto rods, while the Steel Silk Centipede required Sage to Merge in order to maintain control. Sage had chosen the Webspinner because its silk was similar to a silkworm in that it only produced one variety of consistent silk, and it produced it faster, more efficiently, and more often. The Webspinner had spinnerets in its forearms and Sage naturally chose to maximize this feature by picking the bug with the most forearms.
The first three pair of the Steel Silk Centipedes forearms were equipped with blade and pick like spines and scoops. The rest of its legs were equipped with spinnerets and the silk it produced was as strong as the Steel Silk Webspinner. In addition the Steel Silk Centipede could spit a corrosive acid that was very effective at softening soil and melting stone. The Steel Silk Centipede was built as a construction crew. The acid and bladed forearms were excellent at destruction, demolition, and digging while the rest of the legs could spin Steel Silk to reinforce structures, create makeshift objects, or any number of uses.
While the first two were exciting, Sage was far more proud of his results with the last three of his creations.The original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.