Chapter 201: Loop 2, Day 1 (4)

Chapter 201: Loop 2, Day 1 (4)

There was one thing that I forgot about new lives, something that should have been obvious. Really, really obvious.

If I did things differently, different things would happen.

In this case, that different thing was the many-legged bad-things retreating to their nest earlier than before. Between their hatred of light sources and the overwhelming strength of [The Golems Echo] and [Little Guardians Focus] merged together, they had mostly just thrown themselves towards their own deaths previously, alternating between roasting and crushing as a means of snake-assisted suicide.

The stronger and smarter bad-things in the nest itself were killed all at once when [The Golems Echo]-[Little Guardians Focus] combination took enough damage to make it explode.

Without something similar, and with more of the bad-things gathered than in my past life, I would be in for a difficult fight.

Of course, I wasnt planning on fighting them at all. I would need many of them for what came next. After all, I wasnt going to give up on killing a leviathan in this life just because [Size] hadnt let me become one myself. I would still have to try.

The Darkweavers would be able to help with that, after they learned to follow the Great Core.

That, however, would take some preparation.

I was forced to track backwards, puppets walking in step with each of my slithers. It was easier than the way in; the path had already been cleared, and so I only needed to slither along it. Before long, I had returned to the start. Three points of light shone against my eyes like painful pricks, forcing me to flex the new muscles at the corners of my eyes, causing the membranes set there to slide. [Ambushers Vision] disappeared; the cavern became a little darker, and the light far easier to bear.

Then, the spore-roots infesting them receiving new thought-hissed instructions, my puppets gathered both ore-flesh and shed skin. The two light sources were wrapped in binding threads made thick enough to block out the light entirely, and then affixed to their backs.

That done, we began the journey back to the Darkweavers nest. When we arrived, it was still in a frenzy of motion. Watching from just outside its boundaries, my bulk hidden behind carefully-positioned puppets, I could see new traps being made. Thread after thread was pulled from unmentionable places, difficult to see even with [Ambushers Vision] to aid me.

The darkness was near all-encompassing, with only the faraway [Little Guardians Focus] providing any real light - and even that was barely noticeable. All other sources, from glow-caps to luminescent mosses, had already been destroyed.

A weakness. If they tried to preserve food, it was because they needed food. They didnt have mana to sustain themselves like I did. It couldnt be easily replaced.

That was my target. A way to make sure the nest was weak enough to take over. I sent out the first thought-hisses required, and my spore-puppets began to move.

With their spore-roots hidden underneath bristled hairs, my spore-puppets were able to walk the threads with aplomb, the bad-things around them unaware that enemies were within their midst. I was forced to suffer the brief indignity of being fully wrapped in one of my puppets threads, concealing me from the enemy bad-things view. Just another wrapped-up prey, caught in a trap and taken to the food-filled stone-spike.

Just like all the others.

My eyes were just barely able to peek out from a gap in the threads bindings, giving me enough vision to time everything right. The stone-spike itself was almost empty; only two Darkweavers waited within, guards for the nests vast stores of food. My puppet passed them easily, unchallenged, and brought me to a corner of the stone-spike.

As it reached down to cut me from my threads, I sent out a thought-hiss to my remaining spore-puppet.

Just outside, I knew that light was born within the cavern, my recovered ore-flesh radiant in the darkness. The sudden clamor was all that I needed to confirm that as many of the bad-things moved towards it, chittering and rustling their fangs, the nest churning violently with sudden motion.

In the midst of that chaos, my spore-puppet and I had more than enough time to kill the guards and set the food stores aflame.

I was taken back out the same way I came in, wrapped again in threads that kept me concealed. Ignored in the chaos of flame and light.

Only a few of the bad-things many prey survived the flames, and all of them were taken with me.

In a day or two, the bad-things would grow weaker. Both their size and their sheer numbers would work against them, forcing them to starve quickly, unable to feed the many members of their nest.

The starving ones would be desperate, forced to strike out for food and abandon the relative safety of nest and numbers.

It wouldnt take much to make them mine.