Chapter 20: Chapter 20: Anger

Mind magic tolerance advanced to level 3

I... What? Where was I? Master had needed me, and I'd been trying to... do something? Wait, master? Who was that? Why would I be referring to someone as master? Despite the lack of any sort of headache, I felt like I should have one. Had I just been having a particularly vivid dream or something?

Anyway, back to my first question. Where was I? Why was I unconscious on a hard floor? Why was it so dark?

I lay there for a few more minutes as my shattered mind slowly dragged itself back together. Right. I was Katie, a poor university student that had got trapped in some sort of overly gory and bug-filled adventure. And I most definitely wasn't some sort of grotesquely disfigured shell-less centipede. That damn master... I mean, brood-mother centipede. The warnings about mind magic were spot on. He... I mean, it had overwritten my whole mind and memories in under a minute. The respawn had freed me from the mind magic, but the memories remained. I could remember exactly what sort of backstory he had given me. It. I mean, it had given me!

Dammit. I was angry. No, not just angry. Apoplectic. It hadn't needed to go that far. It could easily have manipulated me into pulling the horn out without making me think I was one of its damn spawn. Was that supposed to be punishment? Even though it considered me a far inferior form of life, it had lowered itself to negotiating with me, and I had rebuffed it.

The irony was that if it hadn't tried to manipulate me with its mind magic, I likely would have accepted the deal. The failure penalty from the side quest was a bit of an unknown, but aside from that, the terms were reasonable. Heck, having been on the receiving end of its mind magic, I might now be willing to settle for the resistance training on its own, even without the mana crystal. I didn't want anything to do that to me again. Had I not had the foresight to activate trigger respawn when I did, I might have spent the next sixty years thinking I was a malformed centipede!

The thought of trigger respawn reminded me of what I was doing when it activated. I quickly checked around the room, but there was no spear. It hadn't been teleported back with me when I respawned, which was a good sign. Hopefully, it was still in master's brain. Mother's. No, the mother's. Argg, these residual implanted memories were horrific!

When it could do that to me, why had it bothered trying to negotiate first? I could think of two reasons. First was that it wouldn't know if its brainwashing would last across a respawn, and it wanted to use me for multiple spawning cycles, instead of just one. Second was the comatose state it had ended up in after puppeteering me. It had obviously been seriously weakened, given how much it had struggled attacking me prior to the dragon, and must have used up the last of its strength to brainwash me.

Was it still unconscious? If I ran over now, could I shove a second spear into it before it woke up? Or even better, I'd seen a spider in the spawning chamber. Had its acid sac been intact? I bet my so-called master wouldn't appreciate having that poured over its brain. How much longer would it take me to fetch it first? Would the centipede spawn still treat me as an ally instead of an enemy? And sheesh was that freaky as heck, especially when they were helping me climb their brood-mother.

And another point; in my brainwashed state I'd been thinking of it as 'he'. Was it a father instead of a mother?

Didn't matter. All that mattered was that it was about to be dead. I already had my armour on, having respawned while wearing it this time, and everything else I needed was in my item box. I set off for the shrine, kicking off trigger respawn again as soon as I was sure I could get to the breeding chamber and back to the oversized psychic monstrosity within the hour time limit. No way was I approaching it without that safety net; I had no idea when it would wake back up.

The centipedes on the way to the shrine didn't attack, so I left my weapons in my item box and ignored them. If they'd been told to treat me as kin, I wasn't going to do anything to risk spoiling their delusion until their mama was a molten stain. Heading down the passage towards centipede territory, they actively got out of my way again, which was nice. Once in the dark cavern, they reverted to ignoring me, which given the far higher density wasn't quite the same experience as it had been on the way to the shrine; they crawled all over me just as they did each other. I shuddered at the unpleasant experience, but they weren't trying to attack me, so I still had little choice but to leave them alone, doing my best to gently remove them from my face each time they blocked my vision.

Thankfully, the brood-mother was still out cold where I'd left it the last time, so I ignored it and went in search of my acid. Despite the centipedes slowing me down, and needing to use my glowing shield to try to work out where I was going, I managed to make it to the breeding chamber in good time, and the acid sac was indeed intact in the single spider specimen they'd captured. It was almost enough for me to thank my good luck, but I refrained, knowing full well the brood-mother would wake up the moment I did.

Instead, I item boxed the acid sac and quickly made my way back, climbing once more up the brood-mother's face and failing to resist the urge to snigger when my 'kin' once again helped me up. I stood once more upon the absurd, exposed brain of the monster, living up to my class name as my snigger turned into full-on hysterical laughter when I saw my previous instance lying naked with its arm stuck deep into the brain. That couldn't have helped the monster's situation any.

I pulled out the acid sac and slashed it, spilling the contents.

Pain. Anguish.

Hah, that woke it up, but this time it didn't even move. Hopefully, I'd hit something important. I hopped over the expanding patch of yellow mush to an untouched patch of brain and drove a second spear into it.

Pleading. Mercy.

Ignoring the impotent pleas of the monster, I continued with a third spike.

Despair.

"You know," I told it, "if you hadn't tried to manipulate me, I would have agreed to your deal."

Regret.

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The cries in my head grew steadily weaker as I slashed away with a pair of spider claw daggers. I felt an attempt to invade my mind and force me to stop, but it was so feeble I didn't even get a mind magic tolerance level from it. Some nearby centipedes attacked, forcing me to pull a spear back out to deal with them, but no more came. Apparently it couldn't control them at distance anymore. I plunged the spear back in before resuming my assault, continuing for some time even after the cries had died away completely and sense presence had stopped responding.

Spear proficiency advanced to level 13
Dagger proficiency advanced to level 11
Dagger proficiency advanced to level 12

Was that all? After all that, I felt I deserved more. I bet it would get me an interesting class option the next time I earned a class slot though.

There were non-skill gains to be had too, of course. Surely a monster of this level would have some bits I could use to upgrade my equipment, and somewhere around here was a mana crystal waiting for me.

The spawn didn't immediately die off, but they didn't attack me either. It looked like they'd just follow their previous instructions forever. I hadn't had a quest success message, so I'd have to kill off at least the ones in the shrine. Hopefully, I didn't need to kill them all off. I also hoped that they wouldn't all attack me when I attacked one. I suppose it was time to find out, and to get my first class level up.

Actually, it was time for trigger respawn to activate again... A bit of a delay, but not one I regretted. I hadn't known it was so badly injured and was correct to take precautions.

Back at the shrine, the answer turned out to be half and half. Attacking one attracted the attention of others within earshot of its dying screeches, but not of the whole swarm. I managed to clear the room, but I took a few mandible wounds and a single poisoned bite for my trouble, leaving me unable to walk.

Novice blocker advanced to level 9
Side quest complete: Kill the chilopoda sagacitas

I didn't feel any different, so what changed this time? Dragging myself over to the statue to give me something to lean against, I brought up my status.

Name: Katie
Primary class: Princess of undying laughter (level 2)
- Class skills -
Trigger respawn
Item box
{Empty} [+]
{Locked}
{Locked}
{Locked}
- Combat skills -
Unarmed dabbler: Level 5
Novice dodger: Level 10
Spear proficiency: Level 13
Novice blocker: Level 9
Dagger proficiency: Level 12
- Resistance skills -
Friend of fear
Pain resistance: Level 14
Poison resistance: Level 11
Corrosion resistance: Level 10
Disease resistance: Level 13
Mind magic tolerance: Level 3
Heat tolerance: Level 1
- Crafting skills -
Makeshift crafter: Level 10
Artistry: Level 4
- Scouting skills -
Novice stealth: Level 6
Sense presence: Level 2

Oh, new skill! Which one should I take this time. Were there any new options?

Faster respawn: Cut respawn time by 80%.
Mapping: Automatically record the layout of any visited locations, along with the location of important landmarks.
Magic focus: Gain magic skills more easily, and level them faster.
Combat focus: Gain combat skills more easily, and level them faster.
Scouting focus: Gain scouting skills more easily, and level them faster.
Appraisal: View the name and basic information of a target.
Healing rest: A full night's sleep completely restores health, stamina and mana.

Yes, there were two new skills, but the others had changed too! Faster respawn switched from seventy-five percent to eighty. Mapping talked about landmarks. The focus skills lost the word 'slightly'. If I'd waited before picking item box, would it have been bigger? Slowed or stopped time, maybe? Not that I regretted my choice; it had been incredibly useful, and I wouldn't have wanted to live without it just to get a better skill later on.

Or had my existing skill been upgraded already along with the increased level? I tried storing some corpses, but if the size had increased, it wasn't by enough for me to notice. I couldn't check for slowed or stopped degradation right now, but I could rerun my nectar test the next time I was there.

Of the new skills, appraisal specifically said that only basic information was included. How basic? Given the latin-ish names of things, I doubted names would help much on their own. Maybe on occasion it would be useful for items, such as identifying a mana crystal. But even a small amount of information might be very useful. I would have loved to know that spiders could spit acid beforehand, for example. It was a potentially useful skill, but had the greatest potential for the current version to be useless and an upgraded version to be awesome.

Healing rest seemed like another RPG mechanic. Many RPGs allowed your party to fully heal simply by sleeping in an inn for the night. For me, it didn't seem quite as useful; I could fully heal myself at any time by committing suicide, and I'd be back in far less time than a full night's rest would take. It also raised questions such as if I lost a leg again, would restoring my health include regenerating the leg? The sort of games that let you heal by sleeping tended to represent health only as a single number, and didn't include injuries like loss of limb. In all, my respawn was not only faster, but more reliable.

Of the others, faster respawn looked more interesting now than it did the first time around; if my respawn had taken minutes instead of an hour, I'd have been less worried about the brood-mother waking up before I'd stabbed it. Although it might have led to me not taking the extra time to fetch the acid, so perhaps the faster respawn would have backfired... I'd also have worried less about centipedes making their way back into the cave while I was dead, but again, that didn't actually cause problems.

Perhaps the biggest argument for it was that the brood-mother wouldn't have had time to brainwash me, although even there, trigger respawn would have activated in the middle of our negotiations, and the fact we were negotiating may have led to me not triggering it the next time, which in turn would have led to me getting brainwashed without it active. Yeah, faster respawn would cause as many problems as it would solve.

Mapping then? It would have helped me find the breeding chamber when I went looking for the spider, although again, I did manage without it. I was going to have to search centipede territory for the mana crystal shortly, and having some way of tracking where I'd been would be handy there. It was, as far as I could tell, a skill that would enhance quality of life without being vital. The same could be said for the next three skills too.

Fortunately, I had a while to think about it. I was well experienced with the centipede venom by now, and knew it would take a while before I could move properly again.

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