It took Sage a moment to recover his senses, time which he gained when the Living Disaster was fighting off the Samsara Flame shot into its mouth. That strange experience he’d undergone was his usage of the Soul Resonance technique. The residual pain of its use was flaring up now, but despite experiencing all the memories of the giant spider, it took only an instant for the transfer to occur. They had each lived the other’s life and almost immediately Sage realized it had been successful. Unlike the Living Disaster there were no terrible acts or prior prejudices. There were also no prior experiences with humans like with the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel.

The giant spider was something of a clean slate. It had lived its whole life without ever coming into contact with a human. It only took action when something threatened it, or it was migrating to a larger body of water. The rest of its life was spent carefully weaving a larger web, and straining the water for nutrients. Now that he’d seen its life, he knew it was a Swamp Genesis Spider. On earth web weaving spiders were the equivalent of a filter feeder on land, using their web to filter food from the air. The Swamp Genesis Spider was a true filter feeder. It had large vent-like holes on its large limbs. Those vent holes were filled with comb-like structures that could capture tiny living organisms and other particles from the water.

The Swamp Genesis Spider did not have gills, and it could also use those passages through its limbs to breathe. It could simultaneously be filtering the water through seven of its legs, while the last one reached up out of the water to act like a snorkel. Combined with its ability to create air bubbles, it was possible for the spider to live the majority of its life while submerged. It created a web that acted like a shallow bottom for a body of water, which could slowly transform a lake into a swamp. It was rarely seen, because of its shy nature and the fact that unless it was directly threatened it would never show itself. Two Demonic Beasts could be fighting right above it and it wouldn’t care. If one of them died, the victor would usually eat the loser. Then scavengers would pick through the remainder, and the Swamp Genesis Spider would filter nutrients from all the bits and pieces that fell into the water.

Sage took the gamble when he felt a surge of confidence and now the Swamp Genesis Spider was connected to him. It had lived his life and felt like a parent or sibling. For Sage, he felt wonder at the alien life of the giant spider and wanted to take it around to see the world. As a Demonic Insect, it had a lot more intellect than Spirit Insects, but it was still severely lacking in comparison to a Demonic Beast, let alone a human. The spider wasn’t a vicious human hunter so he felt no reservation at all towards it. It was a lot easier for a Soul Resonance to succeed on such an ‘innocent’ and simple minded creature. Of course, this was all speculation on his part, as there was no way to control or predict how a Soul Resonance would go. He was already on the edge of death and adding another enemy wouldn’t make much difference.

On the other hand, now that he’d succeeded, there was now a shimmer of hope!

The Living Disaster was shaking its head around. Then it smashed its beak against the ground, creating a large crater. The ground shook, parts of trees swaying and even a few of them cracking from the violent shudder. Then the huge tortoise opened its beak and it thrashed about like it was coughing. A few tries later there was finally an explosive rush of wind and sound finally came from its throat. It made a pained cry, a higher pitched version of its honking roar, the strange combination of a goose and a lion. Then fire shot out of its mouth and scorched the crater it had made. The flames were bright orange to start with and then rapidly changed color to its previous reddish magma flame.

Looks like it’s dealt with the Samsara Flame.

It turned its gaze down upon Sage, a murderous glint in its fiery eyes, but before it could act further it was knocked to the side. The world seemed to rumble from the force of the collision. The tortoise listed to the side, two of its legs losing contact with the ground as it was flipped over. A river sized column of water struck against its side. The huge amount of water caused not only a violent collision, but a miniature flood. Worse yet, there wasn’t just a flash flood, there was also an earthquake, caused by the turtle flipping over and smashing against the ground.

Sage was very glad he didn’t have a physical body at this moment as he would have been washed away by the water and rattled by the quake that toppled trees and caused strange currents in the flood water. Instead of being blown away by the instant tide, he flew into it. He fled from the shore, flying back into the swamp and moved towards the giant spider. By the time the flash flood washed back into the swamp he’d made it to the giant spider and sheltered under its immense body.

The Living Disaster was flipped upside down and the remainder of the people on its back were thrown into chaos. Many were sent flying, and a few were crushed. Unfortunately for Sage, most of them had already left the back of the tortoise. They had already spread out to create a perimeter and they started moving just after Sage did. Once the initial destructive wave from the tortoise’s flip had passed, they rushed towards the swamp and the giant spider. The trio of Nascent Souls were the most obvious, since Sage could feel Law energy swirling around them. Hei Bai followed along with them, her furious face standing out to him even from afar. Whitestaff didn’t advance, instead she went towards the tortoise’s head and started calling out to it. Sage was too far away to hear them, and without a body he no longer had the Heart’s Tongue to use.

Without a body, Sage was at a huge disadvantage against the other Nascent Souls. Without poison, how was he going to use the Law of Corruption? What use was he going to be against them if he couldn’t bring his own law into play? At their level, even Demonic Beasts used laws. Their usage of laws were instinctual, albeit limited. The ones that could reach tier 6 all used them in some way or another. The Living Disaster used some sort of earth type law, which it used to consume and spit stone, which he sensed on the molten rocks that had been constantly falling on him before.

At this moment he was still at a severe disadvantage, but at least there was a chance. He floated near the terrifying face of the giant spider and looked into one of its eyes. He patted one of its giant chelicerae, the creepy mustache-like jaw that was actually a pair of multi-segmented appendages with fangs on their ends. They were like tiny limbs used mainly to wield its fangs and deliver venom, the two scissoring fangs let it control penetration power and grab hold of prey so it could properly control a venom dosage without losing control. A venomous snake would bite down and hold on with its jaws to deliver the proper dosage. A spider, on the other hand did not have a large mouth with a distending jaw. Instead of adding the venom onto a bite attack, it used the fangs like tiny poisoned daggers, pinning a victim between them.

Despite the monster’s terrifying face, Sage found it quite cute. The huge monster was so naive and innocent and had basically come to his rescue. His ghostly hand couldn’t actually touch its body, but he made the gesture nonetheless.

“It’s just you and me now, Big Guy. I’m going to reserve a whole ocean for you on my Inner World, we just have to get rid of these idiots, right?”