Chapter 355 (1/2)

After being rocked back and forth like a baby for about 10 minutes, Arbor had calmed down enough to let him back on his feet. Randidly brushed most of the ash off of him, and turned to Kiersty, who seemed content to just standby and watch the process. The men and women in robes behind her were just watching wide eyed, most of them aware of who he was now.

There was… something in their eyes. Worship. Randidly’s mentality had make great strides since the arrival of the System, but this… this was something new. This was a strange form of pressure apart from responsibility that was cloying and sticky. He shifted uncomfortably, turning to Kiersty.

“So… where did the spiders come from?” Randidly asked, his eyes scanning the nearby treetops, seeing the hundreds of thousands of tiny spiders that skittered around.

Kiersty shrugged. “...we don’t really know. One day, they just came out of Arbor, and started making this area. But he said they came from you, and they could be controlled, so we communicated with them to stay in a certain area….”

For the first time since Randidly arrived, Kiersty frowned, seemingly confused. “...you don’t know what they are…?”

Randidly opened his mouth, then closed it. Because he could suddenly feel Lucretia’s amusement, and made the connection. Arbor’s connection to his Soul Skill… had let a life form similar to the Weavers from inside of him come out into the world…?

Now that Randidly knew what he was looking for, he focused his vision, feeling threads of Aether. There was a thick rope going from himself to Arbor, which flowed into the surrounding Aether. But from Arbor, there was also two smaller flows of Aether, one of which, to Randidly’s surprise, went to Kiersty. That had… a lot of repercussions. The strangest of which was that the number of people who were feeding off his Aether was growing.

Not really at an alarming rate, but still, without his consent. He passed it, and then down the line it flowed, from Arbor to Kiersty. Also, he wondered if any of the people he gave Aether to would pass that onto their children. Perhaps not the men, but the women? If they were carried in the womb, flooded with that Aether? Would there be side effects on the birth?

Randidly felt a headache coming on. More questions for another time, he supposed. Instead, he focused on the second stream of Aether, which flowed into the canopy of of webs. Randidly turned to Kiersty. “And there is…”

“A matriarch.” Kiersty said, smiling and nodding. Then she shooed him away. “I’ve got to handle these things here, after you have messed them all up. I’ll come find you later.”

There was something extremely strange by being shooed away by an 8 year old, but Arbor was already waving at him goodbye. Feeling strangely rejected, like a parent meeting their teenage child and quickly dismissed, Randidly walked back through the group, trying his best to ignore the stares that he got.

They muttered behind him, but Randidly heard Kiersty take charge, and he could then slip away into the treeline. Apparently the matriarch felt his approach, because the thousands of tiny spiders sprung to action, rushing to the area in front of him and parting the curtain, allowing to make a beeline directly for the location he sensed.

Although they stayed somewhat back, he could sense… a curiosity from them, like a child’s as they examined him. It was a whole nother sort of examination than the one that Kiersty’s cultists gave him…

But he supposed it made sense, in a way. As Lyra said, he was the Inciting Action. Based on what he had heard from her, she meant more grandly, but it applied more specifically

Randidly made a mental note to ask what Kiersty called her cult, and proceeded deeper. The ground was soft and wet beneath him, probably due to the lack of sun, but there were no more leaves falling, so there wasn’t any real decaying matter on the ground. It was all just soft loam between his toes.

The matriarch was sitting on a stump, her nondescript, grey-white armor glowing softly in the darkness. Whereas most of the spiders here were the size of a quarter, this one was about as big as a human hand. It regarded him thoughtfully, its eyes trained on him.

For several seconds they stood there, and then he felt something brush the edges of his mind. A notification popped, indicating that a monster attempted to form a non malicious mental communication line between them. But there was a warning that this could change, and the monster could use this to have a small advantage in mental attacks.

That certainly made Randidly grit his teeth, but he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere if he didn’t trust the other. So Randidly accepted the mental communication. It was hard for him to believe that the monster in front of him, that only had a Lvl 19 hovering about its head, would be able to deal any significant damage to him anyway.

Welcome, Progenitor. The Matriarch said formally, bending its front legs in an approximation of a bow. We have long waited for you here, near your prophet. I am glad we were not misled.