Book 11: Chapter 31: Along Came a Spider

Sen wasn’t sure how to react after learning that Glimmer of Night was physically there in the manor. Coming all that way just to tell him about the communication cores seemed…It seemed excessive. Particularly given that Sen had a communication core. He could have been told about any improvements through that core. He even would have used it as a wholly transparent excuse to return home and see Ai. Although, he’d been considering doing that anyway with ever-increasing frequency, regardless of whether he had an excuse or not. Ai was growing fast, growing up fast, and he was missing it. In the years to come, he would miss so much more. Enough to break his heart. Right now, the sect wasn’t

that

far away, and it wouldn’t take him nearly as long to get there as it might once have. Especially if he flew.

However, that method came with its own challenges. Given his limited amount of practice, there was zero room for error. There had just been too much to do to give the method any real attention. It was also such an unnatural thing for someone shaped like a human being to do that there weren’t any other physical activities that resembled it. He had no instincts to draw on. Everything he’d learned so far had come through grueling trial and error. It would take a staggering amount of additional practice with it before he expected that he’d feel comfortable with it.

That meant that he’d have to make the whole flight high enough to avoid the possibility of slamming face-first into any of the small mountains that dotted the country. Even a large hill would be problematic if he flew at the height he’d prefer. While the crash probably wouldn’t kill him, he couldn’t be certain it wouldn’t injure him in some ghastly fashion. What if he lost an arm? He could heal that, but it wouldn’t happen fast. He also couldn’t count on it being functional anytime soon after the healing. He had regrown limbs for the people who lost them in that idiotic attack on the manor. All of them did regain use of those limbs, but it had taken months, and not everyone had regained full use of them yet. He couldn’t afford to have a useless limb for months or half a year. Not with everything that was going on.

Of course, flying that high on the way back would make him an obvious target for potential enemies. His speed would be such that most of those enemies wouldn’t have the time to react or the swiftness to catch up. Most of them. It was the possibility of ones that could catch up that worried him. While he’d give himself very good chances in fights with the majority of spirit beasts, he knew full well that there were some out there that could kill him. The dragon he met could almost certainly could do it. That particular dragon would likely have no interest in the war. Unfortunately, Sen was confident that there were other, comparably old and powerful spirit beasts in the world. It would only take one with a deeper hatred for humanity, and he could find himself in a fight he couldn’t win. He didn’t want to find himself in that position, far from any aid.

Sen had to forcibly stop himself from taking those thoughts any further. It was an argument he kept having with himself. He hated feeling torn between what he wanted to do and what he thought he needed to do. Not that his own objections weren’t valid. The dangers that kept him from heading home that moment were very real. That was the other reason he was so surprised that Glimmer of Night had made the journey. The spiderkin wasn’t foolish or reckless as a rule, which meant that he would have understood the risk.

“I’m sure that someone told you that a king is supposed to look serious, but you really shouldn’t scowl that way,” said Grandmother Lu. “You’ll scare people.”

Sen glanced at her before he realized that she was right. He made an effort to relax the muscles in his face. It proved harder than he thought it ought to be, which he found somewhat concerning. Was there a grain of truth to the idea of people’s faces getting stuck a certain way if they kept making a particular expression?

You’re being stupid

, he chided himself. Even Sen knew that was just something people said. Soon after that, Grandmother Lu led Sen into an innocuous room that he couldn’t remember being in before. No matter how much time he spent in the manor, it seemed there was always another room to be discovered.

Glimmer of Night was there in his human disguise. He looked oddly scholarly with his face close to the wall and studying only the gods knew what about a particular stone in the wall. When the door opened, he turned to look at Sen and Grandmother Lu. There was a pause as everyone seemed to wait for someone else to say something.

“It’s good to see you again,” said Sen, choosing to be the someone.

“And you,” said the spiderkin with a nod.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I’m sure this will take a while,” said Grandmother Lu. “And

someone

stuck me with a noble house to run. So, I’ll leave you to it. You can fill me in on the important details later.”

“Yes, Grandmother,” said Sen, waiting until the door was closed to the smirk slip through.

“I saw that, boy.”

Sen flinched a little as her words carried through the door. Glimmer of Night tilted his head a little to one side and appeared to study Sen. Before the spiderkin could ask any questions, Sen gave the one answer that would prevent them all.

“It’s a human thing,” he said. “Not something you need to worry about for now.”

Glimmer of Night said nothing for a moment before shrugging.

“Now,” said Sen, “while I am glad to see you, why did you come all this way? Couldn’t you have explained whatever you did over the communication core?”

“I could have, but I had to bring you these,” said Glimmer of Night.

The spiderkin summoned a sizable crate from a storage ring and put it down on the floor. Sen walked over and, frowning, removed the top. He stared into the container and saw what had to be dozens of beast cores. He picked one up and examined it with his qi. His frown deepened. It was definitely still a communication core but had been modified in some way he didn’t understand. He looked up.

“So, what did you do?”

That began a lengthy explanation that, even with his own participation in the creation of the communication cores, Sen didn’t really follow. From what he did understand, the spiderkin had worked out some way to automatically relay the voices from one core to another specific core. That removed the need for someone to always be monitoring the cores back at the sect. At least, it would mean that eventually. The catch was that he also needed to modify the cores to work with those relays. Almost all of what went into that was lost on Sen. He only managed to pull out a couple of salient details.

Each core needed its owner to imprint the core with their own qi. Since no two people’s qi had exactly the same composition, it worked as a kind of identifier. That had been one of the modifications. The other big modification was that other people could apply a lesser imprint from another core. That allowed for direct contact between the cores.

“Wait,” said Sen. “You can just pick which of these secondary imprints you contact?”

“You can,” said the spider.

“How does that work?”

Sen forced Glimmer of Night to explain how it worked three times before he finally gave up and accepted it as something that simply

was

. If the spiderkin said it worked, it worked. That was good enough for Sen. If he had no other concerns, he might have set aside a couple of weeks to try to get an understanding of the details. Since life hated him, he’d committed to living with that ignorance until he did have the time to sit down and glean a better understanding. Of course, even with the modifications, the cores weren’t a perfect solution. Each core could only take secondary imprints from a finite number of other cores. The current limit was eight. It wasn’t ideal, but it was such a dramatic improvement over what they currently had that Sen could only be happy.

“Have you tested the range yet?” Sen asked, deciding to focus on details he might actually understand.

“No,” admitted the spiderkin. “With everything happening, Sua Xing Xing deemed it imprudent to risk people’s lives to test the cores.”

That made Sen want to curse.

Imprudent

, he thought.

What could be more prudent than testing something that might help win the war

?

What was the woman thinking

? Except, he understood exactly what she had been thinking. Her role wasn’t to defend humanity. She was acting as the sect leader in his absence. Her role was to run and defend the sect and the town. The sect’s main job was to defend Ai. Sending people out into hostile territory without a hugely compelling reason or a direct order from him wouldn’t have aligned with any of those goals.

She likely would have seen it as unwisely weakening the sect, since only cultivators would have had a reasonable chance of surviving a spirit beast attack. Given that both sides had gotten very violent, she would have had to send out some of their very limited supply of core cultivators to give them the best chance of both completing their missions and surviving. Unfortunately, those were the same people she needed to keep close because they were the best equipped to defend the sect and town.

In a moment of painful honesty, Sen admitted to himself why he was frustrated with her. She didn’t make the choice he wanted her to have made. In an even more painful moment of honesty, he admitted that it probably was the choice she should have made with the information she had. They absolutely should have told him the details, but it was possible that Sua Xing Xing hadn’t gotten all of the details from Glimmer of Night. Plus, even if she had gotten them, he couldn’t have expected her to understand the details. He had a frame of reference and hadn’t understood most of them. She couldn’t be expected to evaluate the significance of things she couldn’t have understood even if told about them. He might need to have a chat with her, but the decisions were already made. Sen decided to set aside those concerns and get some information that might prove useful.

“How was your journey here? Were you attacked?” asked Sen.

“Spirit beasts tried to attack me three different times. I ate them,” said the spider in an unconcerned voice.

A morbidly curious part of Sen almost asked for more details, but he stopped himself. There was something he cared about a lot more than that.

“Tell me about my daughter,” he said.