As the Dwarf Player slowly stopped being able to fight back, the nameless giant spider that styled itself as a Goddess couldn’t help but be both surprised and amused. While it could easily tell that the Dwarf was not as high-leveled as Vaile was, the fact that there was now a means for it to have more children to use and, of course, to feed on made the trade far more appealing. Besides, despite the malevolence that it possessed, it still had some small reservations about its decision to use its Tamer, the one who had awoken it from mere bestial primitiveness and elevated its mind to true sentience as nothing more than an egg sack.

Yes… that would indeed have been a waste. Besides, if the others all over creation were to have found out about that if it had transpired… well, they would have made survival an impossibility. Now that she no longer had nearly the level of anxiety over her own fate as she had mere days prior, she was able to see things a bit more clearly. Vaile had been popping around the world recently, and if he were to simply no longer be doing so after everyone knew that he was around… Well, there would certainly have been an investigation and she would have been visited. Besides, some of those others could smell him from miles away, and if they smelled him in that state….

Yes, this was for the best. Also, she could now use this little event as a tool in her own way, if she played her part right. She looked down at Vaile who was using a round of potions to heal himself and felt something she had never truly felt before. She had seen countless worshippers, including some that she held in (relatively) high regard, die at the hands of others. Some were slain by chance, others by the hands of their fellow worshippers (which was perfectly acceptable, as the strong should always overcome the weak), and some to outside forces.

But this was the first time that she felt... what did the worshippers call it? Concern? Worry? Yes, those things. And… something else as well… Something that bubbled and boiled inside her, something that made her lethargy and slothful nature fade away more and more as she both dwelled on the feeling and looked at Vaile treat his wound. It was hot, violent, and it urged her to do something, anything in retaliation for this insult. Even when the most recent and current High Confessor had tried to talk her out of her previous decision, she had not felt this, not anything like it.

This… this was anger. Rage. The same petty and vindictive malice towards those who stood opposed to her plans that she had felt so very long ago when the first iteration of the cult was destroyed, and her scheme back then was foiled. She was powerful enough that she didn’t need to worry about her own safety should the cult be wiped out again, but this was a fury that somehow burned both hotter and brighter than it had back then.

She could feel her body warming up, the flesh beneath her carapace twitching and going through the motions that lesser beings would call ‘warm-up stretching’. She knew her body was essentially demanding that she get up and bring ruin upon her foe with her own power, and he was nearly about to do just that. She was gearing up to move upwards through the ground and break out from her self-imposed seclusion underneath the capitol of the nation above her, but a voice called out to her and diverted her attention.

…

“He won’t be nearly enough, you know.”

Vaile spoke up as he popped another potion. His wounds were nearly fully healed at that point, and by all rights he could have just waited until his natural healing power as a Player did the rest, but he continued guzzling healing fluids from the bottles for dramatic effect. Truth be told, he wasn’t using the stronger ones. Had he been doing so; he would have been healed to perfection after just downing a pair of them. No, he was a wily one, just as, if not more so, than the big fucking spider that he could tell was stewing in all manner of turbulent emotions.

He could see the creature’s libs twitching and her massive black eyes shifting between himself, the other Player, the High Confessor and the cave ceiling above her. He knew what she wanted to do, as it was exactly what he expected from something that was as malicious and cruel as the rat ladies had been. She saw him yank the dagger out of his side, she saw him pop potion after potion to heal his wounds. Despite her actions and words to the contrary, Vaile had that nagging feeling that what prevented her from wanting to keep him as he was currently and her desire to reduce him to the state that the other Player was soon to be in was her overwhelming instinct for survival.

She had survived so long and gotten so powerful and so massive after being just a mere giant spider, and now her age was beginning to get to her. She wasn’t made to be able to get like this, and that fact was nearly about to trap her inside her own shed exoskeleton. He couldn’t imagine what being buried alive would feel like, but he could imagine that it would be just as terrifying as being doomed to die inside a recently shed husk of your old body. She would die as her new body crushed her inside her old body, and that was a morbid and horrible fate.

Using the other Player as frequently as he expected her to would mean he would meet his final end far too quickly. She would use him up and then be left to eventually meet that fate anyways. She had something to keep her from worrying overmuch about survival for now, but when that Dwarf died, she would go right back to the way she was just moments prior; scared, anxious, paranoid and driven by nature once again.

Thankfully for everyone (well, okay, not everyone; just the people on the nameless spider’s side and those on the side of the other Tamed Beings) High Confessor Gareth had given him an idea as to how to make sure that he never had to worry about giant spiders and cultists coming in the night to take him away and make him a tortured victim of the spider’s instinctual drive for survival. He just needed to give the big girl a few nudges in the right direction and, in so doing, he could (hopefully) set up a situation where he could mold her in a slightly less terrible direction. As she was, there was no god damned chance that she could maintain control over any decent territory, nor could she fully maintain control over the people she would use as cattle.

Even if she could keep control through fear and malice, the rebellions would eventually be too much, she would lash out, and she would be ‘forced’ to kill everyone and then flee to another place and start over from scratch. And, if he was being honest, she would die of the aforementioned terrible fate long before she could establish anything remotely like what she had now again.

He needed to give her a path to maintaining a less cruel control, otherwise, the only cultists she would get would be the mad and the damned, which was what she already had. A slightly more ‘gentle’ and manipulative approach was needed, and he figured that he knew just what kind of carrot he could dangle over her head to get her to change, even if only a small amount.

He knew the one thing that had the best chance of ensuring that she would outlast the Doomed Dwarf by thousands, if not tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. Something he had neglected to bestow upon her back in the game. Something he figured would render that instinctual fear of an ever-present and terrible death a nearly moot point.

A Name.

Ad he had just the one for her. Not an overly imaginative one, but it would work. Hopefully.