As I head back to the room, Gong moves in behind me.

Leaning in, with a conspiratorial whisper, “Hey… hey you.”

Pausing for a moment, I look back at her. What I see is a spider-lady, with an unreadable smile, but her slight fidgeting demonstrate that she is excited about something.

Seeing no response, she slowly raises a finger up to my eye level. Like a comically slow torpedo, she circles it toward my face, ultimately landing on my cheek.

“Hey.”

I stare at her in slight disapproval. This seems to change nothing for her, as she just pokes my cheek again. Audibly sighing, I humor her.

“What’s on your mind, Gong?”

Continuing with the sly atmosphere, she moves her mouth right next to my ear.

“You want to see my secret dungeon?” My heart jumps.

O-oh…

I see her nose tilt a bit and a gesugao (evil) smile crosses her lips. “Mmmm… I know you’re going to looove it.” Heading out ahead of me, she takes a path to a deeper area.

Well.

This is suspicious as fuck. To be frank, though, I really want to know what this is going to be. That was just ambiguous enough to not know if that’s sarcasm or if it was an innuendo. That doesn’t give me any actual choice, but to go check it out.

For added effect, she doesn’t look back as we travel.

As we head deeper and deeper into the caverns, there are noticeably fewer lights. So much so, that I can barely see my dark colored shirt. However, what I can see is the light glistening off of Gong’s ample human butt.

It takes quite a bit of effort to not pay attention to it, as it is surprisingly the shiniest thing around.

After a few minutes of walking down this downward sloping tunnel, she finally begins speaking. “I’ve been doing this for a while, but I’m still building it out further. As you can see, there are still a lot of areas I need to work on.”

I can see the shadow of her arm wave towards the walls.

I can’t see anything. It just looks like dark, lumpy walls.

“I’ve really been considering your ability, the taming one, I mean.” Her voice sounds simultaneously studious and excited. “If you want to have an insect army… why not use spiders? Many spiders have… what is it called…? Venomous properties. It also wouldn’t be strange for a spider to be in an area. Great spies or information transportation. They can also carry quite a lot of weight and move quickly.”

She pauses and looks back at me. “When I was younger, I imagined myself like the mythical spider demi-human queens. Being able to control large amounts of spiders and influencing spider spirit beasts… I’ve always wanted to have the same ability.” She looks back and forwards, down into the tunnels.

“I’ve been making a lot of progress, as you can probably see. With your help, I can probably take it to another level.”

Wait a second. Why does she keep saying, ‘as you can see’?

“You know, I actually can’t see much down here. It’s pretty dark for me.”

She stops moving and turns back to me, she seemingly hesitating to speak. The little light I can see is casting a dark shadow on her face.

“Ah. So, that means… you have seen nothing at all in this cave? Wait… why did you have a pleased scent… no, that probably explains the lack of change in your scent. Oh, no. OH NO.”

She stops completely.

“Okay James, just to check… you aren’t scared of spiders, right?” I can feel my heart jump again, for a different reason.

Well, that’s an ominous question if I’ve ever heard any. That also raises way too many flags. Time to subscan and tame everything around. Fuck that.

As she continues, I extend out my range from myself and discover how bad it really is. Her voice gets very desperate and higher pitched. My breath gets heavier.

“We’ve been traveling through the spider tunnels for quite a while now and I thought you saw them and were okay?! We can turn back now, let’s turn back!”

At the end of her first sentence, I had finally consciously recognized that my back had a few small spiders on it. At the beginning of her second sentence, I found that there was a large spider chilling on my pant leg. At the end of her second sentence, I discovered… they were everywhere.

When I say everywhere… I mean it. The walls are lined with spiders. All watching. The air covered in spiders. Hanging, but moving to the ceiling as we pass by. Since they weren’t moving fast and the tunnel was so dark, I had no idea they were there. The webs are focused along the walls like drapes, so I felt nothing on my face.

The further I extend my scan, I can see some tunnels we passed, had spiders resting in burrows in the wall, that is the size Gong’s spider body. Apparently, all the spiders on the ground cleared a path for Gong and I to walk.

Ahem. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK

Without further question or thought, I tame them.

All of them.

If my taming of the insects in my initial test was like a glass of water that I poured into a plant, this wave of taming was like a dam bursting, overwhelming any potential resistance.

Nothing would be free of my influence. I let it wash into every cavern, down into the insanely deep depths of her caverns. All until I reach the end of the line. I have tamed every single one. The large, the small, and the babies. Everything goes still.

Well, except for the spiders on me. I tell them to get off.

Now connected to them, I can feel that they had another connection to Gong. If I had to describe it, it feels like a strong boss-employee relationship; willing to follow orders, but not jump into lava.

This only makes me feel a deep shiver, though. As I realize, just dangerous this could have been. If Gong wasn’t there or if she hadn’t had that strong of a relationship with them… I could have been attacked. There are spiders who are just as large, if not larger than Gong, in this cavern. All it would have taken is a single swipe from those monsters, and I could die instantly.

That’s it. From this point on, I will always have my low-powered scan on. I can’t always just rely on my eyes or being in a safe area anymore. When I get back to the room, I’ll look into how to do that completely unconsciously. For now, I need to see my stats:

James Delinion

5 Rose Man–Spiritual Root

Mana: 141658/141658 (163840)

Taming Maintenance 1 mana/ 1 human biomass – insects, no cultivation 1 mana/ 1 human biomass – arachnids, no cultivation 50 mana/1 human biomass – bacterium, no cultivation

Transferred Gifts:

Passive Scan: Max

Active Scan: Max (Increased Strain)

Healing Aura: Level 3 Exp: 159/160

Beneficial Taming: Level 12 – Exp: 1712/20480 rounded down

1 xp per 1 human sized biomass – no cultivation, tamed

Current Direct Tames

No cultivation/no contract Cockroach – 1 – under 1 human biomass Insect Horde – 88 human biomasses worth (212 cubic meters) Spider Horde - 22,094 human biomasses worth (53,027 cubic meters) Bacterium – 11586 – under 1 human biomass

Healing Constitution

Proficient Languages: Common Speech (English)

Literate Languages: Common Speech

Wow… okay, that’s a lot to parse. Overall, it looks like I’ve grown a lot from that. I’ll figure out more of what this means when I get back.

With a red face and apologetic tone, Gong quickly bows, “I’m so sorry for putting you in this situation… I got way too excited about what could be done with these children and didn’t consider what would happen if they were hostile to you.”

She continues, “Since they’ve never caused any problems for me, I forgot that I might have to think about that with others.”

Man, I’m still not accustomed to people bowing to me. Honestly, I will have to get used to doing that myself, since I’m sure I’m going to make plenty of mistakes myself.

“It’s okay, Gong. You can get up. I can understand not thinking of that, since it has always just been you in this large space.” I wave behind us, referencing this immense cavern system.

“Still, I was the one telling you to be more aware and cautious, but I’m the one who put you in danger. Sorry about that…”

After a second more of the bow, she lifts her head. “So, did you do something to the chil-spiders? I noticed something changed. Wait.”

Her eyes widen in realization. “No way. You didn’t tame all of them at once, right?!”

I quickly nod, affirming her thoughts. She seems to process this slightly in shock.

With a shake of the head, “Well, at least this proves I had a connection with them. I could feel when their allegiance switched to you. Though it feels like I still have a connection to them.”

Her words give me pause, as I wonder if I can make their connection stronger. “Hey Gong, I’m going to try something… let me know how this feels to you.”

Time to see if I can make this dream of hers a reality…