The Great Core's Paradox

Chapter 207: Loop 2, Day 7

Dimmed swathes of mana-water slid across my scale-flesh, stolen light rushing into my reservoirs with every passing touch. I flexed my length forcefully, cutting through the lake with a powerful slither that sent me rushing forward, my increased swimming speed a result of strengthening [Streamlined Scales] while the thread-trap was being prepared. More than that, [Enhanced Lungs] had grown powerful enough that I couldnt feel the burn of before, that desperate need for air that came with staying below the surface that had been my doom in the most recent false-life.

I could, however, feel the same need to escape the bad-things swimming behind me. Two of them - one more than I had been ready for. The brilliance of the mana-water slipped just a little more, the light dimming further as it filled my flesh.

Even now, the sight of the leviathans was daunting. [Size] did little to change that. It only made me realize how much further I had to go. The giant bad-things were many not-Needles in length, sure, but they were also thick. Wide, with meaty spans of flesh that made them feel even more gargantuan compared to me, and giant teeth that I was sure could shred through my scale-flesh with barely any effort.

And they were gaining on me.

I worked furiously to outpace them, but even [Streamlined Scales] wasnt enough to overcome the giant leviathans speed. The lake was their domain, and I was only a visitor. Not designed for mana-water in the same way that they were, even with my stolen Trait.

It wasnt long before the first shadow cast itself across my form, ever so slightly dimming the still-brilliant mana-water that surrounded me. There was a tug on my tail as a current formed, pulling me backwards. My slithers hitched, and I stole a glance backwards.

An open maw stared back at me, strips of flesh trailing between serrated teeth, mana-water streaming violently into its open throat.

The leviathans mouth closed behind me. I lunged downward with a painful flex of scale-flesh, breaking free from the current created by the leviathans yawning maw. [Illusion Spark]s effects cascaded across my scale-flesh, shifting tier appearance to match the mana-water around me with a burst of light. The glow was the hardest; it wasnt just the color that I had to match. It was the radiance. It was the motion, too, something that was hard to mimic while trying to escape. And I couldnt pull from the light around me to maintain it while I held the illusion, since that would leave darker spots around me that would make me more visible than I could afford.

Soon enough, my carefully-gathered light slipped away, used up in a horribly short amount of time - but it lasted for long enough. By the time that I lost hold of the illusion, running out of light to sustain it, I had gained enough distance that the danger wasnt quite so immediate. I would have a chance. There wasnt that much further to go.

I flexed again, cutting through the mana-water with another series of forceful slithers. Relentless in their pursuit, the two leviathans followed, and I could only hope that the thread-trap would work for two just as well as one.

I hadnt planned for both, but there was nothing that I could do about it.

If something went wrong, Id just have to improvise.

The thread-trap was a cloud of darkness amidst neverending light; a black weave submerged in the shining mana-water, bound to crannies of the lake with dense, thick fibers by my Darkweavers. Other pieces reached upwards, finding anchor points on the shore, where the bundled threads could wrap themselves around sturdy stone-spikes. Those had been harder to manage; my Darkweavers couldnt swim and place the threads themselves, and I might have gotten trapped if I tried to do it myself. Instead, I had been forced to convert a few of the larger Blueswifts and have them carry the threads to their underwater destinations. Many of them were still there, trapped by the very same threads that they had carried. Waiting for death.

It was the work of days, even with the number of spore-puppets that participated in its creation. A work that had sent many of them to the point of starvation - and was beginning to send some of them past it, as my spore-puppets worked frantically in response to my hurried thought-hisses, desperately attempting to increase the strength of the thread-traps tethers. They had been made with a single leviathan in mind, and I was worried that two would force them to fail.

More than one Darkweaver collapsed in the process, legs giving out along with their stores of energy - but it didnt matter. If things worked out, I wouldnt need many of the Darkweavers anymore.

I would have something better. Something that would let me conquer the lake where the many-legged spore-puppets would fail.

I would have a leviathan.

A flex of my will colored me in the shades of mana-water again, [Illusion Spark] proving its usefulness once more, and I narrowly slipped out of another bites reach. Narrowly. The leviathans were getting closer than before, the stupid bad-things finally beginning to understand what I was doing. Starting to guess which way I would dodge.

And with two of them, they could guess in two different directions. More than once, that had been nearly enough. Even worse, one glancing blow had torn a gash in my scale-flesh; black blood seeped from the wound, trailing behind my every slither.

Marking me for the leviathans.

I tried to cover that, too, to coat the blood in light the same way as I did my scale-flesh, but it was harder. I left it behind too quickly; the light of [Illusion Spark] could only reach so far from my body. Eventually, a trail would appear. One that the leviathans could easily follow.

I was running out of time.

And yet, there was something exhilarating about that, about the way the leviathans tried and failed again and again in their attempts to devour me. About the way that I could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

And yet, despite my excitement, my [Enhanced Lungs] were reaching the point of agony. The last time that I had managed to break the surface and take a breath seemed far, far too long ago. There was no more time to waste.

The thread-trap would be ready, or it wouldnt.

I pushed forward with a series of powerful slithers, mana-water churning in my wake and pitch-black threads growing in my vision. Under the overwhelming radiance of the mana-water, the threads were anything but hidden; I could make out almost every little detail, both the individual threads and the blue-gold spore-roots that I had tangled in between. I sent out a careful thought-hiss, and watched the edges of the thread-trap flex and twitch like it was something alive. Something ready. Eager.

That had been difficult to create; normal spore-roots hadnt been able to move in the right way, not without some sort of body to inhabit. It had taken the combination of [Life - Vigorous Spores] to enhance the roots strength, along with carefully forcing the spore-roots to grow within the bundled fibers of my Darkweavers threads, to manage something even approaching decent movement in the water. Even then, it wasnt perfect - but the threads themselves were relatively light despite their strength. Light enough that they could be forced to move at my command, and by the spore-roots will. While the spore-roots lasted, at least. They were fairly exposed, tangled in the threads the way they were forced to be, and even if the bad-things teeth couldnt tear through the threads themselves - something I wasnt sure about and couldnt even test - the spore-roots wouldnt stand a chance. They would be torn to shreds in an instant.

Then again, I only needed the thread-trap to work once.

With the bad-things gaining on me again, I rushed forward, putting on as much speed as I could in an effort to reach the thread-trap before they reached me.. The wound in my side formed spikes of pain with every new slither. A shadow fell over me. A current formed behind yet again, tugging at my tail as the nearest bad-thing opened its maw. I slithered harder, my scale-flesh feeling weak with lack of air. A set of teeth came down, and just as another line of pain bloomed across my side -

I was through, slipping between the gaps in the thread-trap. Gaps that the leviathans, giant as they were, could never hope to pass. The thread-trap bulged, the weight and momentum of the two leviathans more than enough to stretch its thick fibers. At the edges, the places where the thread-trap broke the mana-waters surface and anchored to stone above, spore-puppet after spore-puppet pressed their bodies against bundled threads, using their weight in order to keep the thread-trap steady. More than one was sent tumbling backwards into the mana-water, legs flailing helplessly in an attempt to right themselves and return to their task.

Below the surface, where the edges of the thread-trap had been anchored to crevices and around bits of shaped stone, without the weight of so many spore-puppets to hold them fast, things were going even more poorly. The threads wobbled and twitched, with some of the weaker attached points coming loose entirely - and some of the weaker stone as well, crumbling away under the strain.

The thread-trap loosened. The mana-water churned. I began to wonder if they would hold. If two bad-things had been one too many. If I had failed.

And then, with a thought-hiss, the thread-trap began to move on its own. The powerful spore-roots created by [Life - Vigorous Spores] and woven into its bundled fibers flexed and thrashed, edges curling inwards and wrapping around the great leviathans. Constricting and squeezing, wrapping around one another until the captured bad-things could hardly move, trapped within a tangle of threads.

I surged towards the surface, taking a desperate breath to douse the pain of my burning lungs.

And then, before the leviathans could break free of the thread-traps hold, I plunged back down again. Mana-water slid across my scales with the motion, and a set of spores gathered within my mouth, eager to take root.

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