The Spider Queen
chapter-14

Having just finished organising the bed, Sophie opened up her tablet to find out more information on combat skills of different races.

Knowledge is power and she desperately need to know more about this strange world.

In the vast expanse of the universe, there were many different methods civilisations used to improve their chance of survival and they could be divided into internal and external skills.

External skills were typically used by advanced civilisations of rank three and above as they were technological advancements for warfare.

This included technology such as nuclear core blasters, nano machines and pulse fire rifles present in the Earth federation to the biotechnology suits used by high class insectoid races to enhance their natural capabilities.

There were numerous other weapons developed across the galaxy such as the famous black hole generator used by the Unova military and the space manipulation blades the Federines empire became renowned for.

Technology served as an enhancement to the natural abilities of an individual and were quite powerful at lower tiers of cultivation but did not hold up against high level combatants.

Members who possessed high cultivation bases could easily shrug off attacks capable of devastating planets, so no weapon had yet to be created that was an effective tool to take them down.

This was not from a lack of trying as the headache of the one-man army style of god stage cultivators was a concern for all four of the great empires.

Internal skills were methods such as cultivation and mana manipulation, it was not an exaggeration to say that a race could only reach the starting line of a universal civilisation if they possessed training methods for internal skills.

Cultivation was the most commonplace type of internal skill within the Human, Insectoid and Federines empires.

This allowed qi to circulate and bathe the cells of the body to enhance an individual and draw out genetic potential.

Mana manipulation was only more popular in the Unova empire who trained the mana in their bodies to flow into unique marks they branded on the surface of the skin.

Each person capable of manipulating mana was given the title of mage.

Mages were even rarer than cultivators and the potential was usually inherited from one parent having the trait for mana accumulation.

When the mana flowed through these marks, a unique phenomenon would be born.

These phenomena were called spells and had strange effects only known beforehand to the caster.

Sophie frowned slightly as she mused over the information she had just learned. It was clear that her body before this change held no talent for cultivation but now, she felt significantly stronger.

She had not tested out her new cultivation level but suspected that she had increased a level to qi body stage three.

"Magic is real!" Sophie muttered in wonder.

Sui Meng was obsessed over magical novels and the supernatural in her old life, so her traits passed on to Sophie.

Unfortunately, she recalled a memory of mana testing her father performed on her as a child and her mana levels were too low to qualify to be a mage.

In fact, her mana count was much lower than the average non-mage person.

Disappointment lingered in her heart for a brief moment as her dreams of smiting down her enemies with fierce lighting seemed unlikely to happen.

"Well I better just take a rest," she contemplated.

It had been quite a long day and even though it was only the evening, Sophie was ready to call it quits and take a long nap.

There was an AI in her dorm room that would act as an assistant, but its capabilities were much more limited and there was no personality module installed.

Sophie pressed the button on the side of her bed to activate it and gave a brief command.

"Turn off the lights and lower the temperature," she spoke loudly.

A small humming noise was heard and soon she heard a mechanical reply,

"Shutting down lights in room 202 and starting up custom night mode"

Waves of cool air brushed gently across her face as the temperature was decreased slightly to make the room more comfortable. Sophie sighed in contentment, but she then realised the lights had not gone off.

"Err… turn off the lights"

"The lights have already been temporarily shut down,"

Sophie was greatly confused at this point. Was there a glitch in the AI? She could still clearly see the room.

Wait…why are the colours different?

Her golden pupils shone in the darkness of the room and illuminated the surrounding area. The vision provided from her eyes was quite strange.

She could still tell the overall shape and location of objects in the room, but the colours were a blend of greyish white.

When she glanced down at her own body, it was reddish orange in colour and stood out in this dull world.

Sophie stretched out her hand in curiosity and counted her nails in the darkness to test out her new power. She still retained her vision and could count the number of fingers held up with accuracy.

This was all very fascinating, but a huge problem soon emerged when she tried to go to sleep.

Even when she closed her eyes, the visual power of the golden eyes remained the same. It was like trying to sleep with eyes wide open in a bright room.

This was all in addition to having to lay down face first on her mattress as the spider legs made sleeping on her back an impossible task.

Sophie tossed and turned but was unable to get any rest.

Minutes turned to hours and eventually she got so tired that sleep quietly crept up on her and she fell into a deep slumber.

The necklace on her neck started to glow slightly and the qi in Sophie's body began to automatically circulate the strange cultivation pathway.

She did not seem to realise that the fangs in her jaw grew slowly outwards and a greenish liquid started to flow out of her mouth which sizzled and melted the bed sheets.