Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

Chapter 227: Tatiana Umbra - The Mother Of Dark Faeries

Humans and creatures alike drew strength from their gods and other deities, but such was not the case for faeries as they had their own sources of power–one so noble so ingrained in the stumps supporting the very world, that none could reach it much less attempt to usurp that power.

ʼWhere am I?ʼ Yet now dipped into the well of knowledge, Ravenʼs eyes fluttered open and he came face to face with the one such source of power.

Her arms spread and chained to the stump of a colossal tree, the mother of all dark faerie raised her head to admire her visitor. Her flesh made of pure darkness, her veins coursing with silver, and her eyes burning a white flame, Tatiana Umbra fluttered a smile at her child.

The mage, however, could barely make up her frame as the darkness composing her body reflected no light and only the silver of her vein cast a flicker of her shade in his face. Floating in front of her titanic eyes, he felt like an ant looking at the face of a giant. Yet despite the darkness and only a faintly visible body, the hair of a pixie gave away her identity.

”A faerie?” He muttered, and the mother chuckled.

Voice alone shook Raven to his core, he could feel the reverberation deep into his very soul.

”Amʼneista emʼ na faerie,” like the singing of Pathfinderʼs angels, her voice whispered from every corner. ”Eʼeula nesa, no Arachne. Solʼus kureio.”

Her words made little sense to Raven, but his confusion didnʼt last as Tatiana Umbra opened her lips and washed his body with a glowing silver light. Consumed into the source, Raven caught but a flicker of it. Then he woke back up in his body and with the Arachnes slowly turning to face him.

In that brief moment that it took for them to respond, something took control of Ravenʼs tongue and made him whisper.

”Umbra…” And so the light in the monstersʼs eyes ceased to exist. They could no longer see.

Drawing more on this newfound power, Raven felt his wound healing on its own. Then finally after heʼd recovered, he was struck with a deeper understanding of his own fae nature. Deception, trickery, and most importantly malice, were the core of a dark fae, something that had always fiddled with his heart, but now theyʼd grown even stronger.

By the time everything settled inside his head, a smile crept up his lips as he realized just how much being half-human had been affecting him. Stretching his hands towards the blinded monsters, he reined in the corruption that seeped deep within their pores. Pulling on it, he tugged at the parasite like a dog being reeled in.

Growing weaker and weaker the more Raven pulled, the already disheveled bodies of the Arachneʼs sunk in more and more. Then came the whispers, his voice being uttered by the lips of the soldiers themselves, and blinded they might have been, but their senses urged them to hurl attacks in the direction of the voice.

In a matter of seconds, the monsters were both screaming from being stabbed and stabbing someone else. Eventually, as the cycle continued the voices quickly died down and what was left was but a shriveled-up group of creatures lying lifeless on the ground.

Raven may have not realized it yet, but the corruption from their bodies turned into strength inside his body. And with the blessing of the fairy mother, he had a lot more new skills just waiting for him to draw them out. The first of which happened to be the conversion of corruption to power, and as Raven began moving once more, he noticed yet another skill that he now had.

His feet, although no longer cushioned, made no sound, and his senses felt so heightened that he could hear mumbling voices much deeper into the cave. Following the voices, what shouldʼve taken him an hour only took him ten minutes, and as he peered down inside a dark crater the size of the city of Athenia itself, he noticed a colony of Arachnes hiding in an endlessly long well.

At the bottom of which was something colossal–the very reason for the size of the cater being so wide.

ʼThe queen?ʼ He wondered, and he was right.

The queen of Arachne was as large as a city, she slumbered many miles under the ground. However, even while sleeping she gave birth to countless eggs every day. The job of the colony was to ensure that the eggs and the young were both taken care of.

Carefully looking around, Raven spotted at least ten thousand Arachnes crawling the walls of the crater, which in turn made him wonder…

ʼShould I test these powers or get everyone else here first?ʼ The question was but a formality for his pragmatic nature, as his heart was already set on annihilating the place with a plethora of new skills that heʼd found in his skill list.

Holding his hand above the crater, he concentrated his mana to conjure a summoning circle. At first, nothing happened, but soon enough with a flicker of silver light a swarm of astral dark fairies began flooding out of the circle. Chuckles and giggling began echoing throughout the cave as they descended into the crater and flew over to their targets.

Soon whispers and screams echoed out of the massive hole all while the fairies burst to the touch of the Arachnes. But as the fairies grazed their skins, plague befell the colony. From voices in their heads to their bones suddenly growing out of their flesh. But most fell to lust and murder for sex and torture was synonymous for the fairies.

The voices of the dead whispering into their ears, the hunger for blood, pussy, and dicks, and even the plagues that turned the bodies of many against themselves, it all spread like wildfire as Raven continued to flood the crater with more and more fairies. The very essence of a dark fae–corruption, torture, lust, and hunger, they were all now in his command as long as he could fuel his skills.

Being high on the power of corruption for now he had enough to continue doing what he was doing.

”This is no fun…” But alas, there were other skills to check, and caught his attention specifically.

Eyeing the buffing spell called the dark faeʼs true mask, Raven walked to the very edge of the crater and let his body be temporarily turned into a monster. One that looked just like the mother of dark fairies except in the masculine male form.

Staring down the depth, Raven cast the magic and plunged himself like a shooting star aiming for the queenʼs massive back bump.