A content smile crept across Axl's face every time one of those groups passed by, since they were clearly reinforcements off to deal with the wolf pack he left behind. And these were the kind of spiders with stronger bodies and more legs, like the one that jumped at him from a bamboo tree, so likely a better match for fighting than their more stationary siblings. Also, these barely used the webbing Mana at all, so [Mana Shroud] easily kept him from their more limited vibrational senses.
There were other large caverns full of spiders in their webs at some of the side-passages, and Axl briefly thought about whether he should go into one of those, weaving past more and more of these clumps until the pack was fully dealt with. But from even the smallest he couldn't tell if there was an exit on the other side, most looking like they only had smaller openings in the ceiling that were barely large enough for a single spider to crawl through.
He could try to scale the wall to reach one of these, but it would be difficult while maintaining [Mana Shroud]. Also, it felt like a bad idea to blindly dive into such a narrow passageway that could easily get him trapped between a wolf and spider.
So, Axl decided to keep to the main passages, following where the Void got thicker. The endless racket of the pack behind was now echoing chaotically on the walls, but it clearly felt more pitched and frantic, true battle-cries, not the gloating mess of an easy chase. Even the dead webbing on the ground vibrated with their endless rattle, as if shouting their presence to the spiders.
Go ahead, keep up with the noise. Axl flicked off the wolfpack in the dark, then shook his head at the pointless gesture. Truly, his brain had broken from a month of fighting and landing himself in a twerpish water-elf's body.
The passage got wider and wider, the side-passages more numerous, many of the rooms looking very different than simple caverns filled with spiders. One had a placid lake with a handful of spiders ringed around it, their vibrations forming a strange resonance with the water, another a large quarry, with dozens of the burlier spiders biting and striking at the rock. Many were simply empty, with a single spider or two idling within. He hesitated before the quarry, curious what sort of ore they were digging for and the details of their techniques, but he begrudgingly tore himself away and continued his escape.
This latest one caused Axl to freeze as he saw it, the small room filled with bones neatly lined up in the air by barely visible webbing. Only three small spiders lingered in these webs, carefully etching dense symbols into the countless bones. Each of these four-legged variants was among the most powerful spiders he'd seen so far, the Mana coursing through their bodies qualitatively greater both in density and the complexity of how it churned. Nothing like the towering power of the massive grey wolf, but Axl figured if the pack chasing him and the regular spiders were G-grade, these were solidly F-grade.
As he slowly stepped back, one of these spiders turned to him and hissed. Before Axl could react, it swiped at the air, and a thick wall of webbing formed in front of him, as if appearing from nowhere. [Mana Shroud] couldn't even touch this barrier, its Mana more substantial than the stone around it. He didn’t linger anymore and quickly turned to charge back down the main path, only pausing at a concealed corner.
Axl braced himself for an attack, expecting those terrifying spiders to have raised some sort of alarm. He focused every shred of his will on searching the environment, [Mana Shroud] pushed to its peak. He slowly held out his sword, stilling his breath for a few seconds, then a few more, but no attack came. When another group of spiders charged down the hallway, they were again only a handful of the usual G-grade ones, which he easily hid from as before, and they headed towards the wolf pack.
The F-grade spider apparently just chose to ignore him. While this was good news in the immediate sense, the casual dismissal made him more than apprehensive. The spider that saw him literally just brushed him off, likely because he was distracting it from whatever they was doing to those bones.
This was a wakeup call, that he got careless with idle exploration, overly confident in his newly improved Skill, and being able to pit the wolves and spiders against each other so far. He already gained one valuable lesson from the massive wolf—that he was nothing in the face of higher tiered creatures. This latest encounter showed him that creatures further up the power ladder weren't all that unusual, that he was a bug crawling in a forest dense with towering monstrosities.
Properly humbled, Axl kept his path down the main hallway, his pace faster than before. But soon the sense of Void felt like it was coming from one of the side-paths, veering sharply to the side. He turned to the narrower path, his pace now at a crawl, [Mana Shroud] fully focused on sensing Mana, hopefully to give him the chance at detecting a higher-tiered creature and turn back early, if necessary.
The room in front of him was one of the smaller ones, and luckily devoid of spiders. It had a large white stone dominating its middle, within a shallow indentation in the ground. He'd seen rooms like this before, and slowly inching forward, he sensed the countless spider eggs lining the inside of the groves along the inner lip of the indentation.
An eye appeared in the large stone, bloodshot and frenzied, Axl nearly jumping out of his skin, but [Mana Shroud] quickly realized that the white stone was in fact a large creature utterly restrained by webbing. Its Mana and very presence were entirely disrupted by the impossibly potent web around it, an interaction that he couldn't have predicted from his cursory study of the strange material's Mana.
Even restrained, Axl got the sense this creature wasn't weak, but more importantly, it wasn't the source of the Void. Confused, he walked around the room, then looked up at a nondescript empty spot on the far wall.
"So, you can sense the Void after all," a low voice muttered.
Axl ran, shifting [Mana Shroud] entirely into an empowering his stride, but he barely took one step before he was utterly restrained, a single thread of webbing across his chest, paralyzing his muscles and disrupting his use of the Skill, even freezing his very ability to tap into his internal Mana. [Mind-Soul Bulwark] shattered, a splitting headache blooming behind his eyes.
A gentle haze of light filled the room, revealing a flurry of massive spider legs erupting from the empty spot in the wall behind him, encircling the room in an ominous grasp. A figure gently lowered itself upon the restrained creature at the center of the room, like a monarch upon their righteous throne.
It hurt to look at the tear of darkness that was the core of the endless morass of spider legs, his eyes the only part of his body able to move. Mistress Nox looked like a patch of the lunar sky against the stone, shimmering beyond the confines of an unseen body radiating more and more of the spider legs, some massive, as if the beams that held the heavens up, others thin and spindly, drifting in the air as easily as webbing, other barely a fuzz of condensed power extending from her Void.
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"What brings you to break the calm of my domain?" The voice was feminine, with a gentle sweetness to it, barely louder than a whisper.
Axl's restraints were lifted, and he stood straight, then gave the deepest bow his body could contort itself into.
"I came here seeking the Void, Honorable Mistress. I seek its cultivation, and thus to become your student, as unworthy as I am of such heights."
This was all he could think of, something Roken had seen in a few plays when a weaker cultivator was questioned by a stronger one. There was a flicker in his mind, and Axl coughed up blood, his Mana briefly seized up to fight against his body. His wounds reopened, and his filthy clothing, already drenched in dried blood, was soaked in a new, fresh patina of refuse.
"Lie to me again and die." The sweetness in the voice felt like a dagger pointed at his throat.
Axl paused for a moment, his mind reeling in fear. He had hoped the Void would be concentrated in locations, or better yet, in an object that he could steal before sneaking out, but it was all a tight density around that insubstantial body. None of it even extended into the myriad legs filling the room. Even if he managed to extricate himself from the situation, there'd be no way he could use this Void for his quest.
He even waited for a tense second in case Terrania gave him some clue through a new quest or something, but none appeared. This was particularly worrying, with even the neuromorphic system seeing no real way out.
Axl slowly lifted his head from his bowed pose to look at the churning darkness. He tentatively turned on [Mana Shroud], but the figure still looked like nothingness torn out of the universe, while the Mana coursing through the many arms was a dense network of blinding light.
"The thin whisper of a heavenly bridge is trying to reach you," the voice seemed surprised, its tender tone cloying and playful. "One I have not sensed before, yet so incredibly weak."
Axl tensed, hair raising on his back that she could sense and even block Terrania. He'd hoped that the Terran influence would remain a secret for as long as possible until he made the Foundational Nexus and it did what it needed to do here, but that was clearly out the window.
"I stumbled on a quest to produce a Foundational Nexus for a new subsystem, but it requires Void attunement, in addition to Metal, Earth, and Water."
Sing-song laughter filled the air. "How desperate it must be to rely on an unleveled groundling, its accumulations so meager as to not even properly seek out a worthy champion."
Axl's heart sank at hearing the words, knowing that Terrania had limited resources to help him, but that the situation was so dire was worrying. Especially as it felt like continuing at all was entirely dependent on this powerful creature's goodwill.
"Still, this may be a welcome opportunity," she continued, "Even if it is unlikely to survive, much less channel a force as foreign to this firmament as the Void. I have long given up finding a bridge suitable to my cultivation, but indeed, the path to cultivation is twisted."
A window appeared before him.
>>Discipleship Quest (Nox of the Void): Void Tribute
>>Conditions: 1) Usurp a shrapnel of the Void 2) Provide sufficient tribute to Nox.
>>Reward: Discipleship to Nox. Benefits proportional to contribution.
>>Accept: Yes/No?
Axl grimaced at the quest, not sure it would be a good idea to associate Terrania to this eldritch spider. Perhaps it would be better to kill himself, keeping a fundamental corruption from the soul of humanity.
"Don't look so glum, little cultivator," Nox snickered. "A discipleship is not some death sentence. It simply means that I will impart to you knowledge and guidance in exchange for good Karma. This is why I require payment in advance, since it is a costly endeavor with unclear benefits. But do bear in mind that if you reject my generosity, I might choose to tear you up and see if I can fish out that bridge myself."
He nodded, not readily believing everything she said. Still, she obviously didn't feel confident taking on Terrania by killing him, or else she'd simply do so as her first option.
"How can I get a shrapnel of the Void?" he asked.
"A careful one, aren't you?" The undercurrent of danger in her voice persisted, even as it was mixed with amusement. "This is a proper mentality to foster, indeed. To answer your query, a century ago, I took in another stray in a situation somewhat reminiscent of this one, and imparted to her one of my few artifacts embodying the Void, a powerful one. I tasked the metal dryad with establishing a suitable cultivation spring with it at the Shrouded Crescent, but I can sense she has largely dithered away since, failing to meaningfully progress with my request. I planned on giving her another century or two before having my property returned, but this is better. Here is her location—ask for no more information on her, since I am still lightly bound by my previous patronage of her efforts."
A thin spider leg poked Axl's forehead, and a distinct map was implanted into his memory, crisp and clear, including a neat path through the winding cave system all the way to the Shrouded Crescent Valley, vaguely a large forest enclosed by a massive mountain range. The path there was clear, even if it was a trek that would take him at least a week to complete, but he got a high bird's eye view, showing the vast woodland area, with the mountains barely visible at the edges of each of the distant horizons.
Axl's sense that this could work vanished as he realized this was a far higher vantage than his own sight, that even making his way from one end of this valley to another would take months. How could he even manage to find a single person there before Terrania's time ran out? Especially not knowing anything else about his target.
"Is there another source of the Void in this area? Or somewhere else?"
"Not within the land you could travel before dying of old age, even if you reached the peak of F grade tomorrow. Do not underestimate my own efforts to gather any scrap of Void anywhere reasonable. That you could stumble upon one without my guidance is laughable."
Axl grimaced, this at least felt true. If only Terrania had dropped him in that valley to begin with, but it was perhaps drawn to the larger source of the Void around Nox instead. Or did this mean that the Void in the valley wouldn't be enough to satisfy the quest?
"And you're sure that the Void in that artifact is enough to create a Foundational Nexus? And how can I do that? I don't even have any idea of what a Foundational Nexus is."
"I wouldn't give out quests that are impossible to complete," said Nox, "The heavens wouldn't let me, not to mention these are costly investments. I also observed your entire little fight with the elf and your progress since then, and I have to say I found your resilience and adaptability adequate to the task before you, perhaps. To answer your second question, merely collect attuned objects to one location, and your quest will produce your bridge's required Nexus, the Deep System taking over at that point."
As much as he was relieved that actually doing the Nexus thing didn't seem so hard, he still hoped Nox wouldn't have seen as much from his fight, and now wondered how many of his secrets the spider had uncovered. "Can you see my status screen? Olkan clearly couldn't, but somehow figured out I have a Dao glimpse."
"The touch of the Deep Heavens is inviolable, as far as I know. The elf likely inferred much from your entirely deficient use of Charisma, and I have far more experience than he at assessing fledgling cultivators," she said, a thread of impatience simmering beneath her soft voice. "Now quit stalling, accept my bounty or die."
Body tense, he accepted the prompt, and the new quest was added to his Status.
"Good. Now here is one final gift before I send you off."
>>Quest (Nox of the Void): Provenance Trial
>>Kill the G-graded leader of the pack hunting you as your first kill in the G grade.
>>Reward: Choice of one of three gifts from Nox.
>>Accept: Yes/No?
Axl's stomach dropped at this. "You won't stop that wolf pack from chasing me?"
Nox snorted. "Of course not. I already approved that mangy wolf's request, so rescinding it now would be far too costly. This quest I offer you is already skirting the edges of an improper intervention. You now need to bring me benefits before I invest further in you, groundling."
Axl gulped, not relishing the idea of actually having to fight the wolves nipping at his heels, much less having to carefully target a single one of them. It made the impossible odds even less likely. But somehow Nox was framing this as a gift, and he got a sense she wasn't lying simply to get him killed, and he felt a big hint was the quest's title.
"Thank you for your kindness," he said, accepting the quest. "Indeed, it should be a great accomplishment to kill such a powerful beast as my first, a proper stepping stone to the difficult task I have ahead."
The depth of the Void smiled down at him, and she was gone.