I woke back up in my respawn cave, with Sru'taklin still prowling around outside. Maybe my trigger respawn activation had been premature there; I hadn't really been feeling any serious effects from the blight at the point it kicked in. Even if my skill evolution wasn't enough to stop it completely, it certainly offered me a lot more protection, and it felt like it would take hours before I started suffering serious effects.

To be fair, the horde of zombies that had come at me would have taken me out long before the blight. They were individually weak, but I couldn't see the end of them, and I'd already been getting tired. Or even if I didn't get tired, the light from my shield was fading, and had it gone much further I'd have been blind. It was just a shame I couldn't stick around for long enough to see if my sword or dodging skills evolved.

Now then, I'd been intending to collect the spider queen's webs and use them to reinforce my armour, then to ask the spider queen to freeze me for a bit. She was bound to be after more kidneys by now. I coated a new shield in moss, not wanting to risk bringing the original out given the blight, then activated fast travel again, but this time I aimed for the top floor shrine.

"Whu?" exclaimed a fox-kin, jumping upright from where he had been sitting and knocking over a barrel, sending piles of coins tinkling around the room. The fox-kin on the other side of the makeshift table, who had been facing away from me, swore. Aside from those two, I didn't see or sense any others. If the shrine was working and they were inside the barrier, they shouldn't be too hostile to me. Maybe. Hopefully. In any case, I tried my usual trick of flat-out ignoring them and headed to the jungle at a jog.

"Hey, wait up!" called the first one.

"What's going on?" asked the second, while turning around. "Oh! After her!"

Darn, my pretend-they-don't-exist strategy was a failure; they were chasing me. Luckily, I had a head start, and the jungle was dense. I ploughed into the treeline then switched direction, slowing to a crawl and making full use of novice stealth.

Novice stealth advanced to level 8

Which promptly levelled up. Nice.

Having successfully lost my pursuit, I headed to the queen's former lair, finding the outer webs to be quite heavily occupied by the panther monsters.

Spear proficiency advanced to level 16

Cool, been a while since I got one of those. It had already been a successful trip.

After murdering and removing the useless panthers, I moved on to collecting the webs, needing to use my sword to cut through them. I tried to collect only what I needed; I didn't have space in my item box for everything, and with my usual base still being camped, I couldn't drop off the leftovers.

It took hours to rework my armour to use the stronger threads, after which I also made myself a hooded robe. It wouldn't live up to close inspection, but from a distance it might hide my identity from any fox-kin. It was rather distinctive, and I had never seen any fox-kin wearing anything hooded, but at least my lack of fox ears wouldn't be obvious. I just needed to dye it some colour other than white, so that it wouldn't stand out so badly.

Improvisational artisan advanced to level 12

Appraisal confirmed the boost to my armour's defence rating from thirty-four to forty-five, but the description still called out the fact that I'd used some material from the smaller centipedes as a weakness. That was too bad; I wasn't strong enough to make the whole thing from the thicker and more weighty giant centipede.

Packing the small amount of leftover silk into my item box, in case I needed to make some field repairs, I set off back for the shrine. My next job was to check over the giant centipede for a mana crystal. I wasn't completely certain that it would have one, or if either the fox-kin or the new monsters that I was still yet to see would have taken it, but I needed to check. Chances were high that I'd come across more damaged shrines, so I wanted to be prepared to repair them.

Unfortunately, that involved getting out of the jungle, and the passage was being watched. I couldn't see anyone, but sense presence picked up something hiding around the first bend. It wasn't one of the big five, but neither of the two I'd seen on the way out had been strong enough for me to pick up with sense presence at all. Should I use trigger respawn to teleport, rush past, or try to talk, with the possibility of it turning into a fight?

However much I wanted to ignore them, the simple truth was that I was going to be spending time up here, and I wouldn't be able to avoid them forever. I'd only really managed it in the temple and on the way to the jungle because the fox-kin involved hadn't seen me fast travel before, and I'd caught them by surprise. Maybe they thought that was how I created new bodies after each death. Regardless of what they thought I did, they'd be less off-guard the next time I popped out of a statue. I should probably try to talk.

"What do you want? I thought I'd made it clear I wanted nothing more to do with your species," I called out, staying out of sight of whoever was hiding, and keeping sense presence focused on them. I felt them jerk in surprise, hesitate a moment, then move towards me, so I backed away around the next corner.

Sense presence advanced to level 8

"Who's there?" a male voice called once he reached my previous position.

"Who do you think?" I snapped, at which he started moving towards me again, requiring me to back out into the jungle to stay out of sight.

"Show yourself!" he shouted. I could see him now, from my hiding place. He was wearing the same sort of mismatched armour that I'd seen on both Si'canna and Mi'taan, rather than the standard guardsman uniform I'd seen on Si'janrii and Si'chieen or the other guards. That was a mark in his favour, but the way he kept looking for me wasn't. He wasn't close enough for me to appraise and tell his caste from his name. Maybe if I could lure him far enough away from the entrance, I could sneak back in behind him?

"No thanks. Bad things tend to happen to me when you guys see me."

His head snapped around to look in my direction, but this time he didn't move. So much for sneaking.

"We only want to talk."

"I can talk perfectly well from here."

"It's not me that wants to talk to you, but the head of our mages' order."

So he's from the mage caste then? That's another mark in his favour, but that still didn't mean I was going to follow him somewhere. "Well, I have no interest in talking to him. I'm certainly not going out of my way to do so."

"You... It's a great honour for the arch-mage to take an interest in you, and you dare to spit in his face like that?!"

Novice empath told me he was angry. I never would have guessed. Ah well, there went all his marks.

"Fine, if you insist on slapping away the hand that's offered to you..." I saw him pull something out of his belt and immediately decided I'd rather be hiding elsewhere. I started to sneak away just as he threw it. It smashed nearby my previous hiding place, releasing a cloud of green smoke. I held my breath as I continued to move, thankful I'd fled early and that only the edges of the cloud had reached me.

Poison nullification advanced to level 21

Novice stealth advanced to level 9

Sheesh, even though I was holding my breath! It felt like I'd been awake for days, and I had to fight to stay awake. My limbs felt like someone had tied lead weights to them, and even my eyelids felt heavy. The feedback from poison nullification was telling me it would be able to purge the poison within a few minutes, but until then it would slow me down. Without it, or if I'd taken a breath of the stuff, I imagine I'd have been knocked out instantly. These people all seemed to be quickly coming to the same conclusion; that the best way to deal with me was sending me to sleep. Dangerous!

The mage made his way over to where I'd previously been hiding, while I continued to crawl away, being sure to stay out of sight. He spent some time in silence, searching the area where he'd tossed the vial, leaving me to edge around closer to the treeline. If he was still looking once I'd purged the poison, I'd run for it.

A slow couple of minutes passed, during which I was very thankful he didn't seem to have any tracking abilities, before my body seemed sufficiently back to normal for me to run. After one last check with sense presence to ensure there was nothing else in my way, I made a break for the passage. I very nearly made it before the mage saw me.

"Hey! Wait!"

I wonder if anyone in the entire history of history had ever stopped when the person they were running from yelled 'wait' at them. It seemed unlikely...

I burst through the shrine, where the same two fox-kin were playing card games again, although I did note the angle of the table had been adjusted so that the statue was in view of both of them. With them both sitting down, staring at their cards, neither managed to stand up before I was through the room and on my way to centipede territory. Fortunately for me, their lack of focus made them rather ineffectual guards.

Sense mana advanced to level 6

Sense presence informed me that the mage was catching up, and sense mana told me he was using some sort of magic to do so, but he was too far behind to reach me before I'd scrambled down the drop and into centipede land. Despite the new occupants of the cavern feeding on them, they didn't seem any less numerous, and I dropped flat to the floor, face up, letting my friendly fake-siblings climb over and hide me.

I felt the mage stop at the edge of the passage before a bright light bloomed, illuminating a large swath of the entrance of the cavern. He held it up for ten seconds before swearing loudly, then retreating slightly into the passage. It seemed he intended to wait again, but that was a problem for future-me. Current-me was distracted slightly by the sensations of the centipedes crawling all over me, but mostly by the way the mage's magical light-show had illuminated one of the things on the ceiling. I hadn't had a great view through the barrier of centipedes, but what I'd seen looked kind of like a grey, five-limbed starfish, except that one limb ended in a wolf's head, and the other four ended in black, hooked claws. It was attached to the ceiling by those claws, and the head had been looking straight at the mage.

With the light gone, I could no longer see it, but sense presence told me it had detached from the ceiling and was swooping towards the passageway. My brief glimpse hadn't been enough to tell me how the heck such a ridiculous thing could fly, but it could obviously manage it somehow. I sensed it enter the passage, and moments later heard the sounds of combat. Saw, too; I could see red light reflecting off the walls, and occasional licks of flame.

Not wanting to stick around to discover the winner, I made my way to the giant centipede corpse, looking over it with mana sense. After walking the length, I found nothing that reacted. Pity; that made the whole visit a bit of a waste. The corpse itself was still looking pretty good, but that was largely because it was wrapped in a durable chitin shell. Judging from the smell, the insides were not doing quite as well as the outside appearance would suggest.

Mind magic resistance sprung into activity, alerting me to an attack on my mind, just as sense presence alerted me to one of the creatures dropping from the ceiling, straight towards me. No, not one. Two? Four? Ten? I shook my head; there hadn't been that many up there to start with; something was using mind magic to mess with my perception, showing me ghosts. Which ones were real?

Mind magic resistance advanced to level 12

Hiding under an overhang of the centipede to spoil their normal strategy of dive-bombing their prey, I looked out and saw three of the creatures flying straight at me. I was about to attempt to block the first strike when I spotted that sense presence didn't react to them, and once I concentrated, they seemed a little... blurry. Making a guess that they weren't real, I ignored them, and sure enough they passed straight through me, vanishing through the centipede behind.

Whatever was attacking me had the raw power to pierce through my mind magic resistance as if it wasn't there, but lacked the finesse to properly make use of that power. It was showing me ghosts, but making no effort to keep my various senses in sync. Almost as if an amateur was trying to wield the giant centipede's power... I double checked each presence I could detect with sense mana, and there was only one reaction. A sphere embedded inside one of the presences. So, had it eaten the centipede's mana crystal, and somehow gained a portion of its powers? If so, could I do that?

The real one seemed to have realised that its ghosts weren't achieving anything, and they all cut out, just as it landed on the floor in front of me, its flexible limbs flailing and the claws slicing apart every centipede within their range. It started dragging itself forwards, unable to walk properly, but fast despite that fact.

This close, I had a far better view of the thing. It was more than five metres across, but this one's body was far smaller compared to its tentacles than the one I'd seen attached to the ceiling. Its skin was grey and leathery, divided into uneven scale-like sections. The wolf head looked completely normal, if I ignored what it was attached to, staring at me and drooling.

Natatio sideralis

These flying predators can inflate and deflate a flight sac in the centre of their bodies to adjust their weight, attaching themselves to the roofs of large caves purely with the force of gravity. They have no magical abilities, and produce no venom, but simply drop silently and at high speed onto their prey, using their powerful claws in an ambush attack to inflict fatal wounds from behind.

That explained how they fly, and why its body was smaller than the one that was still on the ceiling. Sort of. Even pumping the sac full of helium or hydrogen shouldn't give them enough lift to actually get airborne, so there's obviously magical mischief going on again, but at least it meant that I could ground it by popping that sac. It also confirmed that its mind magic abilities were sourced from the centipede.

Stillness

Mind magic abilities that I'd apparently forgotten about. I felt its will crash into my own, ordering me to stand still while the wolf head sprung towards me at the end of its tentacle, mouth wide open.