Chapter 774: The Widow of the Web (Patreon)

Princess Noelle sat in one of the palace chambers across from Barristan Bolt, a noble merchant known for moving easily between royal courts, grand halls, and treasure vaults. Jewels glittered beneath the soft light streaming through the windows between them: necklaces, earrings, rings, and pieces rare enough to tempt half the kingdom’s nobility.

Barristan presented the pieces one by one with practiced patience. Noelle examined each piece with polite interest and asked the occasional question, but her mind had already wandered elsewhere. She was waiting for something far more valuable than jewelry. Even so, she could think of three noble houses that would fight over the largest necklace alone. Barristan probably knew that too.

When the meeting ended, she left the room and made her way to the palace gardens, where she often spent part of her afternoons. Among the carefully tended trees, quiet fountains, and stone paths, there was a kind of manufactured peace. More importantly, it was one of the few places where Noelle could be reasonably sure no one would get close enough to spy on her conversations with Tristan.

She was walking beside him when she finally spotted the man she’d been waiting for. Before the visitor could get too close, Tristan had already stepped into his path.

“Marquis, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to search you.”

The man smiled, neither surprised nor offended. “Do your job.”

Tristan searched him with the same thoroughness he’d use on a complete stranger. He checked for blades, small vials, needles, poisons, anything that might pose a threat to her. Only after making sure the man had nothing hidden did Tristan step aside.

“Am I clean, son?”

“Yes, Father. And you know it’s my—”

“Job. I know.” Marquis Percival Blackwell smiled faintly. “And you don’t hesitate just because you know me. Good.”

Tristan said nothing, but Noelle caught the quiet pride in the marquis’s eyes.

Percival Blackwell approached her and gave a slight bow. “Your Highness.”

“Marquis Blackwell. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Noelle raised an eyebrow. “If you’re looking for my brothers, I can assure you they’re not here.”

“Your Highness does have a sense of humor.”

The marquis began by updating her on the places he had visited. Percival traveled constantly throughout the kingdom, always listening more than he spoke and seeing more than he admitted. To Noelle, that made him invaluable, not just because of the information he carried, but because he could appear harmless while delivering news that might shift the balance of an entire negotiation.

Still, his travels weren’t the real reason for his visit. Noelle had once asked him for a small favor.

“When?” she asked.

“Today, at dusk.”

That was all she needed. One of her brothers had arranged a meeting. Important, exclusive, invitation only.

Noelle inclined her head. “Thank you.”

By nightfall, she had reached the meeting place. It wasn’t the palace’s usual council chamber, the obvious room where anyone would expect to find nobles and advisors debating matters of state. This one was more discreet, more private, chosen specifically to keep unwanted eyes away. Getting there was easy. Staying would be the interesting part.

Noelle entered at exactly the right moment: too late for them to send her away without causing a scene, too early to call her disrespectful. One minute before the meeting began. Perfect.

The moment Nikolai saw her, his gaze snapped toward her. “Noelle... what are you doing here?”

“This is a meeting for high nobles,” she replied calmly. “And last I checked, that includes me.”

He couldn’t order her out without causing a scene in front of everyone present, and he certainly didn’t want her warning Vincent. For a moment, the silence grew heavy.

“Fine,” Nikolai said at last. “But keep quiet.”

Noelle didn’t argue. She sat down and watched.

The meeting began shortly afterward, and she remained silent, listening carefully. Exactly as she intended. Noelle was playing against her own brothers, and her faction was the weakest of the four. If the king died tomorrow, she would lose, not because she lacked ambition, but because she simply didn’t have enough allies. She needed outside support. Not enough to defeat her brothers outright, just enough to make one of them need her. Then she could negotiate, especially when it came to her own future.

If any of her brothers won the succession, they would most likely decide whom she married. Noelle wasn’t naive enough to believe in the commoner fantasy of marrying for love. Among nobles, marriage was a tool. It raised status, sealed alliances, and bound enemies in golden chains. None of her brothers would marry her off to someone far enough away to slip beyond their control. Nor would they allow her to marry someone powerful enough to build a faction around her and, one day, put one of her sons forward as a claimant to the throne.

So if marriage was unavoidable, she needed enough power to bargain over the terms: her husband, perhaps even her children. If she ever had a son, her brothers would never allow him to grow up beyond their watchful eyes.

She didn’t need freedom. Not yet. She needed leverage, and to get it, she needed Nikolai to start taking her more seriously.

The subject of the meeting was exactly what she had expected: the war against the Duchy of Ironwing, which had declared independence ten years ago and now called itself the Kingdom of Ironwing.

Rosemark was trapped in a dangerous dilemma. Recognizing Ironwing’s independence would make the crown look weak, and other duchies might follow its example, setting off a chain reaction that could fracture the kingdom. But launching a full-scale attack on the Duchy of Ironwing would be disastrous as well. Open war would drain soldiers, resources, and powerful warriors from both sides. And with the Empire and several other kingdoms already at war, weakening themselves now would practically invite an invasion.

Then Nikolai changed the subject, and Noelle stopped thinking about marriage.

“And the Teleportation Array?” he asked. “Still nothing?”

“No, Your Highness,” one of the nobles replied.

Nikolai drummed his fingers against the table. “It’s been months since that thing appeared, and we still have nothing.” His eyes narrowed. “Let’s hope it didn’t show up on the wrong half of the continent.”

The Teleportation Array was a bigger problem than most nobles liked to admit aloud. Kings and allied representatives had traveled to Rosemark specifically to discuss it. The plan was simple: work together to locate the Array and keep anyone else from gaining access to it.

That continent needed to remain sealed. Allowing an enemy like the Empire, or any other ambitious kingdom, to use the Array would create a threat no one could ignore: an open door to invasion, a direct path into lands that, until now, had been protected by distance, borders, and the unknown.

***

Nara followed the demon through the forest. A few hours ago, she had been trying to kill him. Now she was traveling deeper into his territory with him and the spider called Norn. The farther they went, the more alive the forest seemed around them. Not alive in the ordinary sense, full of prey, predators, and roots fighting for space. This was something else, a strange feeling as if the forest itself were watching them.

At one point, Nara heard the demon arguing with a female voice coming from something around his neck. The voice said she hadn’t known he was into “milfs” too. Nara had no idea what that meant, but judging from the tone, she suspected the word had something to do with her.

She just called me a beautiful milf. That doesn’t sound bad... I think.

“Boss, are you sure you want Norn to leave?” the spider ahead of them asked.

“Yeah, Norn. Go ahead and keep hunting.”

“Okay. Norn is going.”

The spider left soon after, humming to herself. Norn was young, as young as Nara had once been. Perhaps she was searching for a male to mate with. Even so, something about their relationship felt wrong. A female spider should not have followed a male so willingly. It should have been the other way around. The male should have been subservient, protected by the female. That meant only one thing: Norn had been defeated, just like Nara.

“Mother, we can attack now. He’s alone. We’ll distract him for you,” one of her young spoke into her mind.

“I already said no,” Nara answered firmly.

“But why, Mother?” they asked, restless and unhappy.

“You’re still far too young. I’ve lived for several thousand years, and I’ve learned a thing or two. Very few creatures have ever fought a demon lord and lived long enough to tell the story.”

“A demon lord?”

“You do not pick a fight with a being like that unless you’re certain you can win. We’ll watch this demon lord closely and learn how he behaves. He’s willing to maintain a peaceful relationship with us, and that is a good thing.”

“How is that good?”

“The crater is getting too crowded. Soon, you’ll have to hunt on your own. A safe forest will matter then. And thousands of years from now, when it’s your turn to build colonies of your own, you’ll have a good story to tell your offspring, the story of how you once stood this close to a demon lord.”

After that, they grew quieter. They weren’t convinced, which was good. Neither was she. At least they were well fed. The demon lord had given them beast corpses, a lot of them. Enough fresh meat to keep the young satisfied for days, and fresh meat was good for their growth. Sap, not so much.

Nara had only allowed them to eat after confirming the meat was safe. Otherwise, she never would have permitted it.

“We’re here. Stay in the forest,” the demon lord said.

Nara peered through the trees. Ahead was a human colony, or a “village,” as they called such places. Though humans weren’t the only creatures living there. She saw goblins.

Suddenly, a winged human female descended from the sky and landed nearby.

“I’ll be right back,” Luke Moon said. “She’s my friend. Her name is Angie. She’ll stay with you while I’m gone.”

Then he took off toward the castle, moving too quickly for any ordinary creature to follow. The human female stared at Nara without showing the slightest fear. Her eyes moved over Nara, then over her young, studying them with an unsettling calm. She carried a spear.

“Are you one of the demon lord’s generals?” Nara asked.

“Maybe,” the human female replied.

Nara looked around the settlement again. A simple village. A castle. A territory still in its infancy, yet the presence hanging over the forest was already unmistakable.

“The kingdom was only founded recently, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe,” the winged woman replied in exactly the same tone.

She was stoic, almost cold. Not hostile, exactly, but not comforting either. She simply stood there, watching Nara and her offspring. Nara understood why the demon lord had left this particular female behind. She wouldn’t panic, and more importantly, she wouldn’t hesitate. Maybe that was why he trusted her.

The silence gave Nara’s mind room to wander. Long ago, she had been born into a colony, where she grew up, learned to hunt, and eventually left to build a life of her own. Years later, she met a male she wanted and challenged him for the right to claim him.

She won, and what started as instinct slowly became something more. He hunted beside her, shared shelter with her, and became the one creature whose company she never tired of. In time, they became mates and eventually mated. Soon after, Nara felt their eggs beginning to form inside her.

For once, she had a future to look forward to. But carrying the eggs left her weaker, and somehow the Lamia Queen found out. Her huntresses waited until Nara and her mate were far from safety before springing the ambush.

Nara fought, but she was slower than usual. Her mate stayed beside her even as the fight turned against them, and when the chaos finally broke for a moment, Nara found him lying still. She rushed to him, touched him, called to him, and waited desperately for any sign of life.

There was none.

Her mate was dead, and one thought kept tearing at her: she should have been strong enough to save him.

The huntresses gave her no time to grieve. Wounded and exhausted, Nara kept fighting while carrying the last thing he had left her. She knew she couldn’t win. Then, just as one of the huntresses closed in to kill her, the sky flashed. Light swallowed everything. When Nara could see again, the huntresses were gone. So were the mountains. She stood alone in a land she had never seen before. Whatever had happened, it had saved her life.

Nara wandered until she found the crater. There, she laid her eggs, watched them hatch, and made the surrounding forest their home. As her young grew, she rarely strayed far from them. She told herself they simply needed her, but deep down, she knew her mate’s death had never stopped haunting her. She had failed to save him, and she refused to fail their children too.

Now, after nearly dying again and seeing those same children in danger, Nara was starting to understand the flaw in that thinking. She couldn’t protect them forever. Maybe keeping them safe wasn’t enough. Maybe she needed to make them strong enough to survive without her.

“Here,” the demon lord said.

He had returned. The lord handed Nara something small, far too small to look important.

“Don’t worry. I just need you to touch it.”

Her young bared their fangs at him. None of them liked the demon, and Nara couldn’t blame them.

She touched the object.

“Officially, you’re a citizen of my kingdom now, Nara. That means you and your children are under my protection. You’ll be safe here.”

Nara did not trust promises, especially not promises from something capable of killing her. For a moment, nothing happened. Then she felt it. Her mana recovery suddenly increased.

Interesting. She was connected to the territory now. His words were only words, but this was not.

“Our relationship started off pretty chaotically. I have people of my own to protect. I came here thinking you might be a threat to them,” the lord continued, glancing toward her offspring. “But now you’re part of my kingdom. That makes all of you my responsibility. Your mother too.”

The little ones answered by baring their fangs and letting out low growls. Nara laughed to herself.

“You’re a beast too, aren’t you, Demon Lord?”

She could sense a core inside him. She wasn’t imagining it.

He stared at her for a moment. “In a way, I am.”

***

Luke made every one of Nara’s children a citizen of the kingdom, one by one. All one hundred and fourteen of them. They stared at him with open hostility, and Luke couldn’t exactly blame them. A few hours earlier, they’d all been trying to kill one another. Not exactly the kind of beginning that inspired trust. Still, bringing the spider colony into the kingdom was far too useful to pass up. With every spider he added, he felt the [Kingdom Core]’s area of influence expand a little farther.

So that’s what it was. The spiders were blocking my territory from expanding.

Feeding them would be a pain, but spiders had slow metabolisms. At their size, Luke figured thirty beasts a week would probably cover the whole colony. Manageable. Nara was the real question. Maybe five beasts a week? Luke had no idea how her metabolism worked. Norn, for example, was a complete glutton and always hungry, but that was because of her ability.

Food wasn’t exactly a problem right now anyway. Luke still had plenty of butchered beast meat in his pocket dimension, left over from his hunts in the underworld, and the place certainly wasn’t short on monsters.

Once he finished, Luke escorted the spiders back to the crater.

“The meat will spoil eventually, but I’ll leave some here in case you get hungry. Consider it an apology for invading your colony. Hopefully we can get along from now on. We’re part of the same kingdom now, and you’re free to move through my territory. No one will attack you.”

“Thank you, Demon Lord,” Nara replied. “Though we are already well fed.”

“I’ll stop by every now and then, or send someone with food. Just remember the rule.”

“Kill no one,” Nara said. “We won’t forget.”

Luke nodded and headed into the forest alone.

“So we have a spider milf on the team now?” Artemis asked.

“Why is it that every time a woman enters my life, or apparently any female creature, you immediately assume I’m going to do something with her?”

“You’re officially a king now. We have to keep our options open. Milfs are an option," Artemis said. "A sexy widow living alone just a short walk away sounds suspiciously like one of those porn site ads, now that I think about it. Anyway, congratulations on your latest conquest.”

Luke ignored her. Then the notification appeared.

[Your Kingdom Core has leveled up to Level 6!]

[Your Kingdom Core has unlocked a new skill!]

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Remember when I said I’d planned Norn pretty early on, and that the spider Luke and Charlie fought back in the first arc was sort of an Easter egg for her?

Yeah... I lied. Norn wasn’t the only spider I’d planned that far back.

Later, during the tutorial, Luke went to a cathedral for a quest, with Artemis’s necklace as the reward. And the necklace just happened to be guarded by... a giant spider. That was a little hint at Nara.

And it gets worse.

That spider boss was named Aracna, as a nod to Arachne from Greek mythology. Take ARACNA, remove the first A and the C, and you get RA-NA. Swap the two halves, and you get NA-RA.

Okay, I know. I went way too far with that one. But there was absolutely no way anyone was ever going to figure that out, so I had to tell you.