Molting the Mortal Coil

It had been six months.

Sage had turned the office area into his own personal home. He lived mainly in the outer office, and had turned the private boss’ office into an insect nursery. Things had been very rough at the start, adjusting to the unappetizing cuisine and having to brave many dangers in order to secure a good source of water. Now that he was at the peak of the ‘Qi Building’ rank, things were relatively safe down here for him and he was almost strong enough to make the final push towards the last unexplored part of the mines. The evidence was even quite promising for there to be a way to the outside if he broke through this final bottleneck.

It hadn’t always been easy though, when he first went down that big spiral ramp to descend the vertical tunnel he had nearly died a half dozen times. With no way to research the species of spider he’d seen, his only hope was to take them on directly. On his first foray he was reluctant to use up his last torch so he went into battle with just the glow-torch and narrowly escaped being bit. He was lucky that the spiders were actually weaker than him physically, as that barely made them a match. The spiders had the advantage of darkness, webs, numbers, and as he learned later: poison. In the beginning he killed one and ran off, his clothing torn and bearing a cut on his upper arm. The second time he also killed a spider but he had time to pick up the corpse and drag it back with him.

His first set of experiments with the spider’s corpse taught him to be wary of their bite as he found a poison sac. At that time he had no idea how strong it was so best to be safe. He also tested how strong their carapace was and after much deliberation: their taste. Thankfully they weren’t the worst thing he’d ever tasted, but they were far from good. Spiders had from then become the main part of his diet, with small bits of Spirit Jade Beetle and Azure Moss mixed in. The beetles were edible, but their ‘meat’ was even worse than the spiders and they were more work to clean and prepare. The moss on the other hand was similar to other green vegetables, it sort of reminded Sage of the most leafy part of ‘Kale’ from his previous life yet it didn’t seem to wilt in the same manner.

At that point, a month into his stay down here, Sage took a break from working deeper down the vertical tunnel and instead put his Insect Immortal Index to use. He used the biggest and most impressive Spirit Jade Beetle he’d found so far and used the ‘Mutate’ spell of the Insect Immortal Index. Each of the three main parts of the Index had allowed the Chong Clan to rise to its current position. This qi technique, Sage had started to think of them as spells, used qi to take the essence of an insect and then fertilize another insect’s eggs with it. This circumvented the usual rules of creatures only mating with their own species and it was also the reason that nearly 90% of Chong Clan members were always linked to females rather than males. The few exceptions were only when certain insect species ended up with extreme morphologies based on their gender. Notably some species of huge beetles where the males had huge horns of different sorts.

Sage fertilized his Colossal Iron Mantis with the essence of the most impressive beetle he found and then used another part of the Insect Immortal Index to rapidly incubate and hatch the new eggs. From there he fed the near 100 eggs with his qi and matured them to an adolescent state in order to study the changes. The index even spoke of the most suitable method of using this technique. The eggs each having varying levels of intermixture between the two parents this caused all sorts of variations among the children. It was his job to then find the most suitable ones and interbreed them. Each generation continued to mix the traits until the two chosen parents were similar enough to stabilize into the desired breed. From there, the cultivator should keep many of the new breed in reserve or even release it into controlled environments in order to ensure they had more breeding stock for replacements or sales.

With the usage of the Insect Immortal Index, it only took a few days for Sage to breed a half-dozen generations and then merge with his newly perfect breed. There had been quite a few promising options, one of the spawn appearing to be a Spirit Jade Beetle that had inherited the forearms of a mantis, but the lack of height and flexibility made it far less effective in practice than the current breed. Sage was calling it the Colossal Jade Mantis. In appearance it looked similar to another breed, the Emerald Mantis, but was fundamentally different. The Emerald Mantis was merely colored similarly and was famous for its reaction speed and the sharpness of its forearm claws. This new Colossal Jade Mantis on the other hand had inherited the mantises body and ability to increase in size from the Mantis and the Spirit Jade carapace of the beetles.

Later, he learned why none of the Lang clan had already done as he did. The new Spirit Jade Mantis actually had to go through the same strengthening process as the Spirit Jade Beetles, having to consume the Azure Moss in order to have the Jade carapace of the beetles. The ones which didn’t consume massive amounts of Azure Moss were basically fragile in comparison, their carapace actually weaker than that of the spiders. The Iron Mantis was famous for having a carapace as hard as iron and the requirement for them was simply providing raw meat or powdered iron. The only reason he pulled this off was because he stole the Azure Moss from the beetles in order to raise his Mantis. With another week of careful feeding the Colossal Jade Mantis showed its worth. With much better night vision and a powerful carapace, the Mantis was able to battle head to head with the Spiders.

Having a full partner instead of just a distraction made things much easier and before long, Sage had descended to the second main level of the mines. The vertical tunnel descended about a hundred feet before there was a second massive opening into mine tunnels. The mine having dug deeper and then started searching for jade again. This second level brought Sage far more comfort as after an exploration he actually found an underground pool. There was a large cavern with stalactites on the ceiling, water dripping slowly from them to form a large pool below. After finding it was fresh and drinkable, his next goal was looking for a way out. Sadly, the source water for the pool came through very thin cracks in the rock and the pool kept from overflowing by another thin crack on the wall. He did end up finding a huge seeming colony of the Spirit Jade Beetles. They used this pool as a water source and they had a few tunnels that must have filtered through the rest of the mine.

With a source of freshwater, Sage was far more comfortable. He took baths and drank as much water as he liked. He no longer was forced to get all his hydration from the spiders and had to drink far less of their disgusting juices. It wasn’t until another month later that he finally found a source of heat and greatly improved his cuisine. He’d made it to the third level of the mine at that point and it was there he found cave lizards hunting small cricket like insects. The lizards were the real find. They had a pair of fleshy sacs on either side of their throat, which filled with a sort of gas, and they had a thread of fire qi in their bodies which they used to ignite the gas. Spitting tiny gouts of flame at the small crickets. After capturing a dozen of these Fire Lizards, as Sage was calling them, he was able to boil water and made some soup out of the different insects and moss.

Sage did another round of breeding, using some of his breeding stock of the Colossal Jade Mantis and that eventually got him to where he was now. He called this breed the Fire Weaver Mantis. Its combat abilities were somewhat weaker than the Colossal Iron Mantis, as there was always losses with every use of the ‘Mutate’ qi technique. It pleased him though as he’d been able to keep all the features he wished for. The Fire Weaver Mantis had the body shape of a mantis, the same ability to grow large as the Colossal Iron Mantis, the spinneret of the unidentified spiders, a red spirit jade carapace, and finally the gas sacs and fire qi of the lizards. With this new Mantis it was much easier to cook food, light his way, and the webs made things far more comfortable.

His bed was upgraded from moss on desktops into a spider silk hammock, and with some training the Mantis used the webbing to set up traps and capture crickets for some variety in meals. Funny enough, when the crickets were cooked in flame they were actually the best tasting food he had access to. He’d even crafted a sling out of spider silk, throwing the many cave stones at the spiders from a distance. After he’d killed a few dozen of them they now treated him as a predator and avoided him. All it took was a couple rocks in their direction and most of the spiders cleared the path for him. At least until that day a month ago.

One of the spiders was many times more ferocious than normal, its abdomen (the big round butt) was bigger than normal and when it pounced he saw eggs shimmering on the outside of it. His leading hand missed the parry and instead his forearm was bitten into. The follow up hand split the spider in half, but it was already too late. The spider’s poison sunk into his body and a wave of numbness spread through him. Wasting no time, he tried to slow his pulse as he immediately turned around and went back towards the office. When he entered the office he had to have his Mantis help keep him from stumbling as he immediately started drinking water.

Sage drank as much water as possible to help dilute the poison. He fought through the numbness of his body and sank into meditation. Following the Mantis Heart Manual and breathing qi from the world in, and bad qi from his body outwards. It was the best he could do before passing out. Luckily he kept qi breathing while unconscious and when he awoke, two days later, the poison was completely expelled. Eating some of the dried rations he’d brought down with him five months previous he then carefully trekked down to the second level and refilled all his water containers. The hollowed out spider abdomens serving adequately, but given the size of the spiders each of them only held about a quart of water. He had rigged spider silk slings for them and carried a dozen with him. Submerging himself in the water he cleaned off his body, the poison having been expelled not just in his qi but mostly through the pores of his skin leaving him quite filthy.

Six whole months and I’m finally reaching the most promising place.