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Chapter 333: Whispers Drifting in the Wind - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2024-12-18 22:45:37 +0000 UTCEach leap of the monstrous spell-spider made my heart quiver. I had thought we were out of the woods for a moment, but this thing had other ideas. Worse, whatever relay the thing used to communicate with its main body was eldritch in nature. My clone was the only eldritch ability I had, and while I hadn’t checked m ySystem notifications yet, I could probably only make one clone before I ran out of Achievement. The translucent spider was also the largest threat in the area. The small spiders were terrifying enough, but they were like children compared to this abomination.
It was moving nearly as quickly as a boosted Wanderer of Lost Silence. Unlike them, I had no idea what mechanics the translucent spider operated off of. Was its ability conditional in some way? Were its base stats just that much higher than ours? Was there some way to sabotage its boost, like there was for the smaller spiders?
I had no clue, and that lack of knowledge made our situation all the more dangerous.
After a few moments of hesitation, I turned back towards Felix. He looked at me, and then glanced back at the giant, translucent spider.
<What do we do?> I asked.
Felix frowned.
<Opening a portal and trying to make noise is a bad idea. We don’t know what kind of range or conditions its senses have, and it reacted to your clone opening up portals earlier.>
<Agreed,> I said. <But it’s not leaving. Is there a way we can distract it somehow?>
<Let me think,> said Felix.
The giant translucent spider continued crawling around the area. It wasn’t leaping through the skies like a flying spider anymore, but that was only a small relief when it was still less than 500 meters away from us.
<It’s not heading directly towards us, at least,> said Felix, sounded torn between fear and relief.
I said nothing, as I continued to cycle through the items and Abilities I had on hand.
None of my items seemed very useful right now, with the possible exception of {Breath of the Storm}. That could help me fly away, or toss lighting bolts around. I couldn’t think of a way either of those abilities helped me, when flying would just make me an obvious target for this thing and lightning bolts would give away our position.
None of my Abilities were useful here, either. My spatial runes seemed to be countered by the spider’s senses, since it had reacted to my portal earlier. My clone could weaken the spider for a few seconds, but my clone would either need to charge out of our room, giving away our position, or portal out of the room, possibly giving away our position.
I gritted my teeth as I realized that there was nothing I could do to make our position safer. I had no way to distract the spider, or redirect it, or attack it. Anything I did would make our situation worse.
A moment later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Felix’s eyes brighten, before he materialized an item I had nearly forgotten about.
It was… the origami kit?
When we had last been to the Market, Felix had found an origami kit and added it to one of his item slots. However, at least so far, the origami kit hadn’t played a very big role in any of our adventures. It had just kind of sat around. I wasn’t sure how it helped our current situation, but if Felix was pulling it out, he must have an idea.
While the spider crawled around the area, Felix carefully folded and unfolded his piece of paper, before he pulled a few pieces of metal out of his dimensional factory. He started adding in little bits of metal to his work, as I tried to figure out what he was doing. Before I had any clue what he was working on, Felix turned towards Anise.
<Anise, can you help me by using your {Shadow Dryad’s Eyes}? I need you to make a few rustling sounds with the plants a block or two away, and keep the rustling sounds going. I need a bit of cover noise.>
<Got it,> she said. Anise closed her eyes in concentration, and while I didn’t hear anything, the spider reacted to something a moment later.
Meanwhile, Felix stood over his little origami creation, furiously folding and unfolding it while he did something with his essence.
I didn’t have to wait long to figure out what he was doing.
Soon, Felix released the little paper crane in his hands. Instead of simply falling to the ground, the paper crane started to flap its wings, almost as if it were a real bird. Despite the amount of metal attached to the bird, somehow the little creature managed to keep itself in the air, and even started to fly faster and faster as it adapted to its surroundings. It started out silent as it flew down the corridors of the apartment complex we had landed in. A few minutes later, the little origami crane flew out of the apartment complex… before it split in half, releasing two origami cranes. Both of these origami cranes started to make a very quiet buzzing sound as they both flew away from the apartment.
Then, both cranes split again.
<It worked! I wasn’t sure if that would work,> said Felix, as I watched two of the origami cranes drift out of view.
The two that I could still see split again a moment later. At the same time, I heard each paper crane start to make different sounds. What had started out as a soft buzz was now a cacophony of random noises, all echoing throughout the area at totally random intervals and times.
The spider went berserk, and started leaping towards the little paper cranes. However, by now, the paper cranes had already scattered quite a bit, and every few seconds, each of them split in half again. Even more importantly, the paper cranes were capable of flight. The spider was only capable of leaping. It was able to move through the air quite quickly, but it had limited maneuverability once it left the ground. The little paper cranes had no such disadvantage. The paper cranes weren’t intelligently dodging the spider, of course - they moved in totally random directions.
But it didn’t seem to matter. Within a minute, there were over sixty paper cranes in the air, despite several of them crashing or getting caught by the spider and ripped apart. The noise was overwhelming, even to my ears.
<Now’s our chance! Miria, use {Breath of the Storm} to fly us out the door! Don’t go out the window or above ground - I just want to avoid the sounds of our footsteps alerting that thing. We can shuffle a little further away while the creature is distracted!> said Felix.
I immediately complied, and used {Breath of the Storm} to get myself airborne. My friends grabbed onto my arms, which made things rather claustrophobic. It was also rather heavy - my Strength was only at Grade 7, which made it hard to carry the weight of three adults at once. Luckily, a moment later, Sallia managed to get a better grip on my umbrella itself, alleviating some of the weight concerns.
Then, I gently flew us down to the first floor of the apartment, before I used my sight to check on the spider. It was still going crazy, ripping apart the flying paper cranes. The cranes had stopped multiplying, but they were still serving as admirable distractions - for now.
I quickly flew us down a few streets, making sure to avoid our feet touching the ground and making any sound. Then, before the spider finished wiping out the cranes, we ducked into another building. We hadn’t moved as far away as I had hoped - but we had put a lot of distance between ourselves and the spider.
The spider didn’t give up. It wiped out the rest of the cranes, and then kept crawling around the area - but it didn’t seem to have any good way to track us. It grew more and more frustrated as the minutes passed by, while I started to relax. It looked like Felix’s trick had worked.
Finally, the spider did something… incomprehensible. For a moment, it was like geometry and space twisted in the house the spider was searching, and I felt my eyes start to hurt as the spider’s actions warped towards total incomprehensibility.
I had a rudimentary understanding of the eldritch, but as I saw the spider twist space like it was a plaything, I realized that was all it was. My understanding of the eldritch was like a child playing with sand, compared to this thing. I felt a moment of panic, as I thought the spider would somehow locate us. It might twist space, and drag us directly into its waiting maw. Or perhaps it would find the spot where we had teleported to, and then track us down and kill us from there.
Instead… it seemed like nothing happened. Whatever the spider had tried to do, it didn’t work.
The spider finally let out a screech, like the sound of an angry dragon preparing to soar into the sky. The sound itself was shocking, since I hadn’t heard these silent creatures make any sound at all up until now.
Then the spider withdrew. It stomped angrily away, almost like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum as it moved back towards the Spatial Fair.
It hadn’t found us. After nearly an hour of searching, the creature had given up. It seemed to have decided we had already fled the area… or perhaps it had just decided we were more trouble than it was worth.
As the spider started to surge away from us, I felt the urge to giggle madly. I managed to suppress it, worried that I might give our position away, but I felt glee as the invincible monstrosity started to leap away from us.
We had escaped.
We had stepped into one of the inner districts of the Market, got a few rewards that would make our builds stronger and more effective, and left with our lives.
Even if the situation had been desperate, I felt a little seed of confidence sprout in my heart.
The things that had destroyed the Market were terrifying. They wanted us dead, and they had made sure we had almost no space to grow. But despite those odds, we had managed to secure a few rewards from the Market and leave alive.
We might still be woefully unprepared for securing more lives. Heck, there was no way I could even fight that giant spider and survive. We were still weak. We couldn’t win yet.
But surely after a few more lives, we would have a way. We had taken a step that should have killed us, and we had lived. That would make our next life easier, leading to better rewards, leading to a better next life. We had taken our first real step towards survival.
Author’s Note:
Don’t forget: I will be taking the last week of December and the First Week of January off as a vacation. The last chapter for 2024 will be on December 20th (my time) (for my other story. The last chapter for this one will be the day before), and I will return around January 5th… ish. I mean, that’ll be the day I start working on rough drafts for chapters for the week, which will take a few days to clean up, edit, and release. The first actual chapter of next year is probably going to be around January 7th for Markets and Multiverses, and around Jan 10th for Budding Scientist. (I say around because timezones can make this a bit wonky, and sometimes I upload really late in the… morning, honestly. But you get the general idea).
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