HNSW - Chapter 2 - First Blood (Patreon)

Author's Note: Oh, look, I wrote another lol. So here you go! ...that's, like, a LOT of non-bee chapters, or something, might need to write more POBees now...

***

Lilussees slowly opened her eyes. She blinked but still couldn’t see much. But that was to be expected, for it was the middle of the night.

She had used the Rest skill to go to sleep quite early in the afternoon. And, as she hoped, she had now awoken when all the adults were asleep…well, technically there was a woman in the room, but she was there to respond if Lilussees began crying, so as long as she didn’t she would be undisturbed. Additionally, it would be too dark for the woman to see much of anything, which meant there shouldn’t be a repeat of the…earlier occurrence.

It was, like, kind of annoying that her body reacted in such a fashion to sudden loud noises. She knew the correct response to something starting was, like, to make less noise, not more, or something. But this body had other ideas, it seemed.

Which was why she needed to figure out a way around it. Once again she stirred up her mana, and sent it out into the room via her Spider Queen skill. And, fortunately for her, she got a reaction. Another spider was crawling on the roof…or so she assumed. She, like, had a vague sense of the skill contacting something, but she couldn’t actually see in the dark. Just, like, another annoying thing about this body.

Still, she pulled on it with her mana and she felt the contact slowly moving towards her. It took an agonizingly long time, but eventually she felt the tickle of tiny feet upon her face. A spider had answered her call.

She tried to send a command through her mana, as she might have done as a dungeon master. Since she couldn’t actually see the spider, she just told it to crawl in a circle around her face. She could feel the spider move about.

She frowned at the little legs tickling her face. That…didn’t feel all that pleasant. But at least she confirmed the skill’s function. And now, she once again had subordinates…or a subordinate, at least…with which to act and defend herself. She had taken a step towards resolving her helplessness.

And that was, like, all she was going to do tonight, or something. Mostly because she was, like, almost out of mana after all that. Fortunately, though, the vague contact with the spider seemed to persist, it just took her mana to actually do anything with it. So, she spent the last of her mana on one final order.

“Like, go set up, or something. But, like, stay out of sight.”

The spider obediently crawled away. And with that, a deep fatigue fell upon Lilussees’s body, weighing her down against her crib and pulling on her consciousness.

She was all too pleased to let it take her.

***

From that point on, Lilussees fell into a pleasant rhythm. She slept, she woke up, she ate, she slept again, she let the humans do things with her (mainly cleaning and attempting to communicate with her, it seemed), she slept again, and then when she was neither sleeping, eating, or being handled by an adult, she practiced manipulating her mana. During the day she just moved the mana on its own, and when it was too dark for humans to easily spot the spider she practiced her Spider Queen skill. Such efforts would quickly exhaust her, and so she could sleep again.

She was still pretty helpless, but she was making progress. And that was, like, good enough reassurance for her to sleep peacefully, or something.

In time, her little mana trickle became a little mana flow, and she reached the point where she could issue more than, like, one or two orders, or something. Now she could, like reach out to the spider and look through its senses. Which were, like, so much better than her human ones…not. The little spider was, like, nowhere near where she had been as a dungeon master, or even just as a monster spider. But, it was, like, nostalgic to see the world through eight eyes, or something. And it had much better night vision than her human eyes did, at the very least.

And it was on one of those nights, when she had just awoken from her Rest, that something happened. Her spider was crawling on the ceiling and she was looking through its eyes and observing the room when she saw the window crack open slightly. A faint fog drifted through the room. It was incredibly hard to see in the dark, even for the spider’s eyes, but she could feel it more than see it.

The fog had a bit of mana to it. Barely more than the ambient environment, but Lilussees’s body currently had so little of her own that even that difference was apparent to her. She watched as the fog drifted over to the woman sitting at the corner of the room…who began to nod off almost immediately. Within seconds, she was fast asleep.

A bit of the fog drifted down and touched Lilussees as well and she felt the blessed call of sleep once more…but, unfortunately, she had justperformed a Rest so she didn’t manage to answer it. Maybe if the fog was denser around her but it was mostly concentrated at adult height and had mostly dissipated by the time it reached her.

And then, the window opened up fully. A human, or something, climbed into the room. They stood still and glance at the corner, confirming the woman was asleep before their next move. They then slowly and silently crept across the room towards the crib. Lilussees watched through her spider’s eyes as they reached into their pocket, and pulled out something that glinted in the moonlight. It appeared to be a blade of some sort.

“Oh, an assassin? That’s, like, kind of annoying, or something. I, like, just died, or something.”

Well, there was very little Lilussees could do about it and the last time she died it kind of worked out, or something, but she did want to master the Rest skill before she died again. She didn’t get it in her first life, so there was, like, no guarantee she’d get it in her third, or something.

So, she did what little she could, and ordered the spider to, like, bite the man, or something. The spider let go of the roof as the assassin passed under it, silently falling onto the human’s clothing. It quickly crawled towards the closest opening it could find.

Lilussees didn’t know if, like, that spider could actually kill a human, or something, so she also passed it whatever mana she had, trying to concentrate it in the spider’s venom glands and fangs. She, like, didn’t know if that would help but it was something.

And with that, Lilussees had done, like, all that she could, or something, and had tuckered herself out in the process. So, she got comfortable and went back to sleep. She’d, like, find out if it worked when she woke up. Or when she didn’t, or something.

Like, no point in being awake for the stabbing, or something.

The assassin slowly drew towards the crib and lifted their knife when suddenly they felt a sharp pain at the back of their neck…

***

Lilussees was rudely awoken by the sound of screaming. She frowned, and then her body began to react in kind. Fortunately, someone was holding her tightly in their arms, so she was able to calm down. There was, like, a lot of screaming and yelling going on, so she couldn’t actually decipher words or anything.

But then, there were heavy footsteps and the doors opened and everyone fell silent. She heard footsteps and then a deep, masculine voice.

“…what exactly is the meaning of this?”

Oh, that was, like, her father, or something.

“M-My lord, s-someone attempted to…to…”

“I can clearly see what occurred, an assassin attempted to murder my daughter and perished in the attempt. What I wish to know is how it was allowed to occur, and how it was prevented.”

Lilussees gathered at this point that she was, like, still alive, or something. So it looked like her little spider succeeded, or something. At this point, she tuned out of the panicked explanations by the staff and focused on the nice, warm sensation of being tightly embraced. Unfortunately, there was still, like, a light shining in her eyes, or something. At first she thought it was, like, the annoying sun, or some annoying magic lamp, or something, but it remained even she closed her eyes. She frowned as she was forced to wake up enough to pay attention to it.

You have learned the skill Familiar I.

You have learned the skill Poison Magic I.

Bind Monster Spider as your familiar?

Oh, it was, like, the records, or something. And she got, like, new skills, or something. Neat. That seemed helpful, or something. And she could, like, bind a monster spider as her familiar. Even now she could feel the spider still in the room, the vague magical contact she had with it pulsing. It was, like, kind of annoying now that she noticed it. She guessed that was the, like, the familiar offer, or something.

But…a monster spider? She was, like, pretty sure the spider was a normal one, or something. Maybe it, like, evolved by killing a human? Was that, like, a thing?

Lilussees wasn’t sure. Her dungeon had been, like, pretty young and in a remote location, or something, so she hadn’t actually slain any humans before her destruction. But, like, a normal spider killing a human had to be, like, kind of impressive?

Lilussees got tired of thinking about it. So, she just accepted the familiar bond, willed the records away, and then settled into the warm arms wrapped around her, ignoring the increasing animated conversation of the humans around her…

Author’s Note:

Awww, baby’s first kill. …actually, wait, is this, like, Lilussees first ever human kill? Cause, like, the only human she ever met as dungeon master was Seero…and then she, like, was mostly just killing monsters after that…well, there may have been a war or two so surely she got a human kill somewhere in there…

…it’s Lilussees’s first human kill as a human, so there we go!

Anyways!

Will Lilussees’s second life last long enough to master Rest? Can she defend herself with her new skills and her familiar? Is this her first…or last…human kill? Tune in next time, to find out!