NOVEL WEB 61. Brood Control
Shiraori/D PoV:
Location: Shiraori's Current Position: The Moon Sized Body or 'Space Debris', Wide Expanse of Space, In Pocket Dimension
‘Well done, brats! Not that I expected anything less from you,’ My voice reverberated inside the minds of every member of the spider baby army who were dancing joyfully. Whether it was at my praise or their successful hunt against a competitor swarm was unknown.
It was not a difficult task for them to crush these enemies. Ultimately, the a weaker part of the Brood and the Skrulls was no match for an army of evil eye spamming and magic wielding babies.
The result was obvious. Heaps of corpses belonging to the Brood and the Hive lay littered across the surface of the moon. The scene was pretty gruesome but nothing really new to me. Other than the quantity of corpses, of course.
But with this, my creation of an ideal swarm has begun. All I have to do is keep giving all the beneficial evolutions and adaptions of other swarms to the babies. That makes it sound rather easy doesn’t it.
Unfortunately, as with everything it will take time for my multiversal swarm to come to fruition. Let’s aim for being the only one in all of existence.
‘Take all the bodies to Demiurge’s lab,’ I commanded as the babies began to scurry about dragging the heaps of corpses with them through the fissure I had opened.
They were also taking away the corpses of enemies killed by Sophia and Cocytus. I allowed them to carry most of the ones apprehended alive as well. All except one small spaceship worth of Skrulls and a few members of the Brood.
“What do you wish to do, Master?”
‘I am initiating the next stage of my plan. These guys will be necessary for what I wish to do,’ I replied to Vampy who looked deeply satisfied after letting out her primal destructive urges after that massacre.
This situation kind of makes me feel like I am a pet owner taking out their dog for a walk. I guess that analogy is not entirely wrong? Anyway, there are more important things to focus on right now.
Some clones crawled out of my shadow and entered their ears as they squirmed on the floor in agony.
“Screee…”
“Aarghh…”
“…”
It was not long before they got up again now under my control. For now, I had not left the controlled Brood any autonomy like I did with Mobius.
The reasons for controlling these Brood and Skrull members were also different. I won’t underestimate classic villain camps that have had hegemony over the vast stretches of space for aeons.
In all honesty, it won’t take them too long to figure out that something went wrong. Despite this, they will most likely gloss over this loss of theirs as situations like these are too common in the treacherous corners of space.
Now, I won’t be me if I don’t take advantage of this situation to the fullest. Since the goal of creating the single, greatest swarm in existence has been determined, I will take the next step starting here.
The Brood are a hive-mind with all information passing onto the queens and then onto the empress. I have personal experience in dealing with something similar. Yes, I am talking about ‘Mother’.
‘Mother’ was a Queen Taratect who basically did the same thing with the entire Taratect racial tree back in YGGDRASIL. There was no Ariel present in YGGDRASIL so she was the de-facto head honcho of the spider group.
I was able to consume her soul using my parallel minds before killing her. I can try and do the same now with the Brood. There was no limit to the parallel minds I could create as long as I had enough MA energy or mana.
It was now a YGGDRASIL skill and of course had not been lost even when I became a god. I have always been using the skill until now, after all.
In order to do this, I completely controlled the members of the Brood standing before me right now, forming a vague connection with the Brood hive-mind.
A connection weak enough to go unnoticed by the hive-mind that spanned galaxies. I created new parallel minds and spoke while mentally saluting:
‘You are now the [Brood-In-Charge 1-X]. Go forth, mighty warriors.’ I allocated numbers to the many parallel minds I created.
‘Roger. Wait for the good news boss!’ The newly created parallel minds saluted back and then entered the clones that had controlled the Brood.
These parallel minds could start devouring the hivemind. Of course, this connection was a two way street. Technically, the Brood hivemind can also attack me back. This is why I split the parallel minds from my main body and inserted them into the clones.
The ones getting tracked and retaliated against would be these parallel minds. In case, something does happen, I can permanently terminate these parallel minds before causing harm.
This was not the end of the plan. I used the [Administrator] skill and added the tags <Undetectable>, <Untraceable>, <Covert Strike >, <Permanent Memory Concealment>, <Undisrupted Connection>, <Temporal Displacement> and many more tags next to these parallel minds.
I provided accurate descriptions of the intended effects in the syntax. Just because I added them does not mean that they will work as intended. There might be unknown mutations arising based on past experience.
For example, when I bestowed [Silent Casting] to Shalltear, it ended up becoming [Obscured Casting]. And that was a rather simple change being made for the skill I was bestowing.
Depending on how great of a change I was making and how the change reacted with the rules of reality, along with my personal power, the effect displayed would be different. And as I had hypothesized earlier, some changes simply did not take effect at all. Like asking to be the creator of the multiverse.
If and when I became a cosmic entity, which was unlikely or even entirely impossible, I could just brute force these changes. Just like a painter can paint a word however they wish or an author can modify their story settings to their desires.
But with all the experimentation I had done, there was no visible pattern for what sort of change would take place.
Anyway, the reason to do all of this was so that I could send these few brood that were now under my control to other timelines.
Ideally, <Undisrupted Connection> and <Temporal Displacement> would ensure that my parallel minds can maintain the connection with the hive mind and consume it even if they were at different points in time.
At the same time, <Undetectable>, <Untraceable>, <Covert Strike >, might help in obstructing any attempts the hivemind might make in attempting a counterattack against my parallel minds.
I don’t even know if they might have been able to influence my parallel minds across time. But at the very least, they can’t physically eliminate these Brood carriers as they will be in different timelines.
I wonder what sort of abilities or power would consuming a galactic hivemind give me? Regardless, the very thought of this hunt thrills me. Gaining power and gaining control of an existing swarm while making my own ideal swarm. A plan that combines all of these things in one.
Again, this is the ‘ideal’ scenario. I’ll know the true situation once I actually start. Worst case, I end up with a whole bunch of nothing. Let’s begin!
I used the tempad and opened multiple time-doors to different points in time. From within my seat at the head of the council of spiders in the depths of mind, I waved at my parallel minds tearfully:
‘Adios. Sayonara…’ I bid them farewell in multiple languages and they did so as well. To be honest, I simply wanted to say ‘Goodbye JoJo!’ after naming one of the parallel wills after the Joestars but I desperately held back.
I am being overdramatic? Tsk, tsk, tsk. It must be boring in the mind of a person who thinks like this. After all, what is life without a little whimsy and drama. One must make the most of every moment they live on the throes of death…Haa, that’s a little too much philosophical bullshit even for me.
The parallel minds then controlled the Brood carriers and leaped through time doors, disappearing from my sight. The time doors also immediately closed after this.
Now, then let’s move on to the other group. The controlled Skrulls did have some level of autonomy. But just enough autonomy to control their spaceship. Yea…that’s the only reason I controlled this bunch.
I have no grander reason this time unlike with Mobius and the Brood. I might just kill them directly after they have no use left. Unless they do provide me with another reason for their continued existence.
For now, I want to ride a cool spaceship right out of science fiction. It’s definitely not because I am annoyed with having to fly across this endlessly empty nothingness myself.
Aah, is this the feeling of crossing genres from fantasy to sci-fi? Is this how OG Shiraori felt when she got to know how advanced the world she was in had been in the past? Or when she saw Potimas and his robots?
Well, technically I encountered sci-fi stuff with the whole TVA time travel technology. But such concepts like time travel also exist in many magical worlds. A real spaceship on the other hand, is directly out of a sci-fi book.
I brought out one spaceship from the pocket dimension where I had stored it and supplied it back with some of the energy I had stolen earlier before commanding them to pilot the ship.
Of course, I was concealing the ship itself with my magic
‘Let’s enter the ship. Follow me,’ I spoke to the two guardians standing behind me as I led them into the ship. I teleported us to the command room and took a seat upon the throne like seat at the back of the room.
This was where the captain under that commander whatever used to sit while ordering his lackeys. Sitting here on this seat inside a spaceship made me imagine if this was what being in Star Wars might have felt like.
Creating my own Galactic Empire and roleplaying might be fun but its too much unnecessary work just to satisfy my childish fantasies. It also would have too many unknown variables to consider. Especially as this world has a ton of monstrous beings who might squash me.
Nope. Not even going to consider such an endeavour.
“How. Should. We. Refer. To. You. When. You. Are. In. Disguise?” My thoughts were disrupted as Cocytus inquired after witnessing me not look like my usual self.
‘Hmm, in this form you can refer to me as ‘D’. The Evil God ‘D’. Anything will do, really. I don’t mind.’ I replied.
“As. You. Wish. Lady. White.”
In truth though, I am far from portraying ‘D’.
I thought back to what ‘D’ was like in the novels. What sort of requirements were necessary to roleplay as ‘D’? Let me think of the original for inspiration. I came up with a list off the top of my head:
[Evil God Role-play Checklist:
- This is not based on ‘D’ from the novels, but all the ‘evil’ plans I have put in motion until now will help me act as an evil god.
This includes all the massacres and killing, the chaos I have caused, my plan to spread my influence over timelines using my resurrection eggs and clones and now the plan of creating the swarm.
- Based on the novels, lazing around fits D’s persona. That’s totally fine with me as I love to do the same.
- Speaking in a voice devoid of emotions and usually appearing as a silhouette. Basically intentionally staying hidden while indirectly communicating with others using telepathy or her smartphone.
- What else? Hmm, reading novels, playing video games and acting like a shut in while toying with innocent victims. Yes, this is an important one. D was described to be extremely sadistic and all her goals were related to her own personal amusement and entertainment.
- In the same vein as the earlier point, she loved toying with Shiraori, taking immense joy in her suffering but having some twisted sense of care at the same time.]
So, I need to find a cute, innocent spider to incorporate into my act. That is if I decide to stay dedicated to acting as the original. Now, I can’t torture myself. I have no such inclinations.
I guess I can find a substitute. What about one of the many spider-men/women spread across the multiverse? I guess they fit the bill. But which one? Hmm, I have not come across any of them so the first one I come across will work, I guess.
If I play such a scenario out, it has to be the perfect blend between concern, care and sadistic enjoyment. Uhh, I’m not a sadist myself so this will be hard to do. We’ll see how it goes when the time comes. No point fretting over it. It’s just roleplaying at the end of the day.
If I think about it in another way, I will be doing them a favour. Considering how much shit the poor spiders have to endure, being under my ‘care’ would be beneficial to them? I guess I am the ‘Spider Goddess’ now.
Taking care of one lost little spider while using him/her to my advantage is something I can totally do. This is an angle I can use to tackle playing this role. Alright, its settled. I think I can somehow pull this act off.
For now let’s enjoy sitting in a spaceship for a while.
***
~Hope you enjoyed reading!~