Chapter 471 (2/2)

He trailed off as if he was unsure what to say. Randidly's mouth tightened, but he couldn't help having empathy for the boy. Due to everything Randidly had on his plate, he wasn't able to closely watch what was going on with Kiersty, but based on her strange cult following and now the inclusion of the spiderlings in that area, it made a lot of sense that it was a subject worth carefully monitoring. It was hard enough to know what effects the System had on people who had lives before its arrival; for children, they could pretty easily graft onto the new way of life, quickly forgetting the realities of the old world. What that would mean for Classes and Skills and Paths remained to be seen, but it was worrying enough that it held Randidly's attention.

When Nathan had approached Randidly previously, it had been almost as though fate had offered Nathan to Randidly as a guinea pig for his Class creation, so he didn't have to bear the risk himself. And now, it seemed like fate...

Randidly's eyes flashed. Perhaps he couldn't give Nathan the power he wanted, but he might be able to give him a Class that could help him there.

”Give me a week to think,” Randidly said simply, small wheels in his brain turning rapidly. ”At the end of that week... I expect I'll be able to help you.”

Nathan's face bloomed with a bright smile, catching Randidly by surprise. Wryly, he smiled back and then patted the boy's shoulder as he walked past him. As he did so, his eyes hardened.

One more thing to think about, but that could wait. For now...

The first of three trials that Randidly had to go through before he was confident in what he would do next.

When he walked into the room, he found a surprisingly non-mundane office. Mrs. Hamilton had lined her walls with tubes filled with different brightly colored liquids. These tubes grew increasingly slender until they became droppers near the ground, which led to small trays. Spiderlings moved to and fro between the dishes, dragging lines of their silk

However, the longer Randidly looked at the silk, the more he frowned. Because this was clearly not the silk of the spiderlings; the silk he had seen from them was as fine as gossamer, a beautiful net that worked based on sheer quantity of threads dropped on top of them. This thread… there was a strange dull quality to it, that made it rather unobtrusive in a very dangerous way. Although you wouldn’t notice this silk, it had enough tensile strength to rip through a man’s bones, if he wasn’t specced towards Endurance.

It was Marrow Silk, likely extracted from the farm of Bone Wyrms that Neveah had brought with her when she had been given that body.

After being dipped in the brightly colored liquids, the Marrow Silk quickly shifted to muted colors of that shade. The Spiderlings moved quickly, and their half of the room was a flurry of activity, slowly throwing together a long dress made from the dyed silk. It was somehow… magical to watch the garment form before his very eyes. But even when he let the impressive nature of the feat stir him, Randidly still watched with still eyes.

As someone with extremely high Control, likely the highest human in terms of that Stat, Randidly could understand what it would take to manipulate so many spiderlings. He had always known that the creatures had a strange mental connection that allowed them to act in concert, but this…

“Penny for your thoughts? I find it oddly soothing myself,” Mrs. Hamilton asked, looking up from the drab desk that constituted the other half of the office. “But I understand that not all people can be comfortable to see so many… tiny creatures moving together for one purpose.”

Randidly allowed himself a smile. “No, it's fine. I wonder why people would let something like that get to them, especially now. A two-headed troll that could level a building but walking into it seems a lot more fearsome than bugs. But now we have quite a few individuals that would gladly throw themselves before the greater foe.”

Chuckling, Mrs. Hamilton said “I think it has to do with humans seeing their own strength in another form, and recognizing the threat. After all, millions of insignificant humans were doing a pretty bang up job beating the entire Earth into submission prior to the System’s arrival. Perhaps bugs remind people that against some small threats, the big man truly has no recourse and if enough of those small threats pile up…”

She fell silent. Randidly, who wasn’t inclined to dwell overlong on that point, let the silence remain. Not after he was being brought face to face with his own shortcomings in so many small areas. And no amount of strength would allow him to clear away those problems; only with time and attention could he hope to make a dent in them.

Eventually, Randidly cleared his throat and looked at Mrs. Hamilton with a heavy gaze. “Do you have anything to say, or should I make my accusation first?”