It took almost an hour to destroy enough of the spiders that the creature coordinating the colony was exposed. A symbiote was finally revealed instead of a Queen spider, which had evolved far enough to generate a hive mind.

A creature that was very similar to a silkworm in both body and shape. But with the addition of eight legs serving as a mantle to surround the head and protect the worm. It was a strange blend of spider and worm, made even more horrendous when it began spewing the contents of its stomach in a projectile attack that contained a potent acid.

It reminded me of a creature I had seen in an old movie. It wasn’t the same as the creature from Aliens, but it was close. At least it didn’t have an inner proboscis that came shooting out and tried to worm its way down my throat. There was no frenzied attack as the creature attempted to plant a parasite inside me. One that would burst out of my chest and kill me after being incubated.

Or at least if that was one of its goals, it was not getting close enough to me to try. As soon as my perception was able to pierce the cloaking effect of the spider silk and identify the creature, I began targeting the lightning at this mind worm. The onslaught of [Falling Cherry Blossoms] was sufficient to deal with the remaining spiders.

The creature finally realized the danger it was in, and that was when it attacked directly. Using the prodigious power of its mind, the same power that had allowed it to control the swarm of spiders, it unleashed a mental bolt that battered against the barrier of my mind. Its relentless attack attempted to destroy the protection surrounding my inner ocean.

Storm screamed in fury. That part of her Dharmic soul that resided within my inner ocean responded along with the fluctuation in spirit Qi as my inner sea moved to shore up my defenses. We hadn’t reached the stage in our development where we could fuse Dharmic souls, that wouldn’t happen until after the Nihility Realm, so our attempt to shore up my defense was splintered, with little coordination between us.

It was the first time I was aware of this barrier as something physical. I knew that my mind was protected, that the Dharmic acted as gatekeeper, but I thought that description metaphorical. I hadn’t realized a barrier actually existed.

What little work I had done with my mind was related to creating partitions for my mind. I had done so without encountering the wider defenses that protected the whole. Partitioning allowed me to split my mind. It gave me the ability to focus on multiple things at once. Beast tamers could go even further, partitioning their inner ocean to form unique landscapes for each of their bonded animals.

The attack was painful, but not so painful that I was at any immediate risk of having my inner ocean invaded or the barrier that protected my mind shattered. What was more worrisome was a psychic aberration formed and clung to the border, protecting my mind.

An astral representation of spider legs clutching at and a proboscis was trying to drill into my astral fortress using an attack similar to the acid attack it had released earlier—a type of psychic venom that burned and destroyed the protections of my inner being.

I was able to withstand this attack, at least for the moment. But I needed to destroy this parasite before its invasion was successful, and I found myself nothing more than a shell. A zombie controlled by this thing for as long as it or I lived.

[Dragon Tail] was another of the new martial techniques I had been practicing. This technique used a whipping movement, reminiscent of a dragon’s tail lashing out to funnel and direct my attack. It was tailor-made to handle and deliver lightning attacks. This attack was effective because the lightning chained together, that energy creating a simulacrum of a dragon’s tail. It was similar to Daniel’s fire whip and one I had focused on learning since our battle.

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I had only stepped into the initial understanding of this technique, but my new understanding of the nature of lightning made even that burgeoning understanding deadly. None of the starts and stutters I was used to when beginning the opening movement of [Dragon’s Tail] remained. The flow of lightning leaped to my command and created an intertwined lash of electricity. Electricity that traveled across the spider silk the worm was using. It transformed into a conduit for the lash, funneling the lightning and destroying most of the remaining spiders.

All except that strange amalgam of spider and worm. It was able to shrug off the secondary effects of the lightning, the electrical discharges that would usually stun a creature making no difference. I understood how as I watched the lightning become grounded. A strand of silk connecting the worm in a web of silk anchored by trees worked as a lightning rod.

I had to be more precise with this attack since the silkworm could shrug off glancing blows, I was determined to see how it would survive a direct hit, but it was just as determined to evade each manifestation of [Dragon’s Tail]. It took more than a dozen attacks for me to succeed. The bug seemed to anticipate where the [Dragon Tail] would strike and move just enough for me to miss.

I wasn’t sure how it was able to anticipate my attacks but thought that the astral construct that was beating at the barrier of my mind might be involved somehow. I sent a message to Storm through our bond, asking her to send a lightning bolt at the creature. We timed our attack so that we both moved within seconds of each other.

Storm waited for me to complete [Dragon Tail] and the creature to start to move before unleashing a lightning attack of her own. Her attack landed, stunning the creature for a moment. That was all the time I needed as I once again lashed out with elemental fury.

That creature took the full brunt of the strike as the lightning fried the organism instantly, killing it before it exploded as the lightning grounded itself in its body. The creature’s death was not without cost to me. The astral attack shattered with a psychic scream of such power that it came close to doing what the directed attack hadn’t.

That scream of pain and rage almost shattered my inner barrier. If I hadn’t been able to bolster my defenses with Storm’s help, killing that thing would have resulted in my own self-annihilation. The animal had managed to create enough of a connection with my mind to make a feedback loop. I was lost to the horror of its death until Storm, and I calmed my inner sea and cleared my mindscape of any hint of foreign interference.

I wanted to rest, to take time to cultivate and cleanse the taint the astral attack had left, but that would have to wait. I knew there was no real corruption left behind now that the beast was dead, but the sense of violation I had experienced remained. A few hours of cultivating would help me restore my equilibrium and ‘cleanse’ my psyche.

And I would get to that in time.

Now that we had identified what probably happened to the hunters as they were foraging in this area, we could do a more thorough scan to find their remains. Something that should have been easy without our mastery of perception but wasn’t because of the unique quality of the spider silk we encountered.

The intrinsic nature of this silk to confound our perception made it necessary for us to scour the area methodically.

It took almost half a day, but we eventually found a trapdoor leading to a tunnel hidden within the roots of one of the larger trees. There were species of spiders that were proficient at hunting using trapdoors, but with the spiders being controlled and forced to work together, I doubted they used this trap for hunting.

From the size of the tunnel we found, it was more likely they used the tunnels to store any game they captured. There were passages festooned with cocooned beasts that had been wrapped in silk and stacked to provide enough food that would satisfy even the prodigious appetite of so many spiders.

The hunters were among those waiting to be eaten. Surprisingly, they were still alive. They had been injected with a venom that made it impossible for them to move, and they were suffering dehydration, but with healing and time, they would survive.

The talismans that tracked their vital signs were still working. Once freed of the silk that worked to shield the signal from escaping, they re-established a connection with the tokens in Hunter’s Lodge. I spent the rest of the night collecting all of the silk and bodies of the trapped beasts that I could find.

The unique properties of the silk might be something that could be used for trade. I also harvested a few spider egg sacs, placing them inside the torc. If the silk was as unique as I believed it to be, it might make sense to have an army of spiders spinning that silk for me to farm.