I don't own anything. Ok I own a couple things, but certainly not Hollow Knight.


A while later I was finished with my insect killing, and decided now was the time to go to sleep, because I was incredibly exhausted from all the magic I was using, very tiring. So I backtracked my way to the cave where I appeared in this world that was still guarded by my minions and went to sleep.

I woke up who knows how long later mostly rested and fine after a long sleep and after taking in my suroundings for a couple of seconds I went into the dungeon and started exercising as well as I could, considering I was a spider. Which wasn't very good, but nothing I could do about it, so I just mostly ran laps around a car and tried to occasionally do pushups with my spider body, which wasn't very succesful.

After about 20 minutes I took a break. A break of having my monsters carry me around as they explored the ruined city in a more in depth manner, but they didn't really find anything. Eventually I got up and started exercising once more. This repeated for several times.

Eventually I actually managed to complete those two hours of exercise after a couple of hours.

Body Upgrade Quest Completed!

Exercise for 2 hours. [2/2]

Kill 10 enemies yourself. [10/10]

Reward: Slightly increased Strength and Toughness

That was a bit underwhelming. But it was still useful and I can actually feel the effects a bit, but they aren't too pronounced. And now to select the next upgrade quest.

Upgrades: Body, Magic, Flesh Crafting, Flesh Crafting Spells

Hmmm. I want to know what Flesh Crafting Spells entail. So that.

Flesh Crafting Spells Upgrade Quest:

Use Flesh Crafting in an unintended way. [0/1]

Cast 100 Flesh Crafting Spells. [0/100]

Use flesh crafting in a different way? Hm. That... depends on different way. I'll have to see. Now to leave the dungeon and try to explore Hallownest some more and try to complete the quest.

And so me and my army returned from the dungeon to the real world and I went in a random direction. I quickly found another creature, a white, spiky tiktik crawling up a wall and I go near it, watching as it slowly makes its way up the wall and the ceiling, eventually making its way to climbing down the opposite wall I found it, soon heading towards me, and I quickly used flesh crafting to turn its legs into liquid meat slush, making it screech in pain as it was rendered immobile.

Use Flesh Crafting in an unintended way. [1/1]

Cast 100 Flesh Crafting Spells. [1/100]

oh. That was... easy? I expected doing that would be much harder honsetly.

Now I want to actually try to transform this crippled tiktik into some kind of flesh mosnter. Wait! I have to use Observe first. Mostly because I'm curious, of course.

TikTik

Race: Insect

Uses its small, sharp claws to climb along walls and rooves.

Cool. Now, to experiment. Muahahahahaha!

So I manipulated the body of the tiktik, changing the mostly decorative spikes on its back, sharpening them, toughening them, adding many, many more smaller spikes across its back while hardening its chitin.

Now that I think about it, I and the Radiance are doing something similar, aren't we? Changing the body of creatures, making them much stronger than before, but forcing them to give up their free will. That's a bit disturbing, but I don't let it bother me too much as I work on strengthening the very weak ass scavanger insect.

Making its underside similar to a snails to give it a way to move, albeit slowly, because I melted its legs. Don't ask me how I knew to replicate a snails underside, because I have no clue, I just somehow knew how to do it. Is the Flesh Crafting skill giving me information on biology without me realising? That would be pretty convinient.

Eventually I'm done with turning the tiktik into a small but durable spiked monster. It doesn't really have a way to attack, but maybe in the future if my Flesh Crafting skill improves enough I can make it capable of shooting those spines from its back and regenerating them like a Hydralisk? That would be pretty cool.

Its spikes and carapace were still white, though its underside was now a fleshy red color, and it could now sliter like a snail. I think.

Minion! Move forward, I ordered it.

And it did, slowly, but it was still movement and I was fine with it. At least for now, in the future when I am probably better at this I would like to make a way for it to slither faster, but I can't really do anything for now.

I then proceeded to continue to aimlessly wander through the caverns, occasionally finding a crawlid or tiktik. When I found any I melted their legs off and turned them into small tanks, or Spiked Snail as I decided to name that monster. It was a relatively good way to progress towards the quest, so I just continued doing it and ordering the resulting minions to either follow me or just wander aimlessly.

I had no idea where I was, I didn't even think that I was in a area that you can visit in-game until I found a smallish house. At least smallish for the resident I found inside. It was one of those nailmaster guys, I forgot his name. He was towering over me like a mountain, even sitting on the floor of his house. I didn't even consider that I was in an area found in the game, but now that I'm thinking about it, it makes sense. After all, the game is 2D, so the vast majority of Hallownest was probably left unexplored by players because it was just background.

So this means that I probably found my way to the nailsmith guy with a path that doesn't exist in the game. Which is pretty neat and also reminds that this world isn't a two dimensional video game and that I shouldn't expect everything to be the same as what I expect. What was his name again?

Mato

Race: Sapient Insect

A skilled warrior who exiled himself to the edge of the kingdom, away from his teacher until he mastered his teachings.

Hmm. I don't really remember his lore, so ok. It would be neat to be able to talk to him, but I don't think I can, and neither can I wield a nail or sword or whatever to learn nail arts from him.

Suddenly a voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Hm? Is there somewhere there?" He said, lifting his large, completely empty black eyes that looked like two voids from the floor, shifting his gaze towards me.

"Klhk!" I screech out. I tried to say something, but I couldn't actually do that. Why can he talk though? Isn't he also an insect, why is he able talk while I can't?

"Ah! How did you get here, young one? This is no place one as young as you should be in!"

Wait, what? He realises I'm sentient, but thinks I'm some kind of baby deepnest spider? That's the only thing I can think of that would explain his reaction. I tilt my head and try to hiss in an affirmative way, before nodding my head up and down, hoping that in this world is also a sign of agreement like on Earth.

"I'm sorry young one, but I don't think I could take care of you. I also don't think I could teach you my nail arts, seeing as you don't have a weapon." He continued.

I stare at him for a few more seconds before waving one of my legs at him and heading towards the exit, hissing at him a goodbye.

"Goodbye, small one. You are welcome to return if you want." He said while watching me leave his home.


A day later, after having some more food, going to sleep waking up and practicing some more with my spells I finally finished the quest.

Flesh Crafting Spells Upgrade Quest Complete!

Use Flesh Crafting in an unintended way. [1/1]

Cast 100 Flesh Crafting Spells. [100/100]

Reward: Self Shaping Skill

Self Shaping: A spell similar to shapeshifting, only much more limited, not instant and costs mana. The skill with which you can use this spell is governed by your Flesh Crafting skill.

How limited is "much more limited"?

You cannot change your race, grow, become humanoid and many other restrictions. The upsides is that this skill is more focused on strengthening your body.

Okayyy? Anyway, I want to take the Magic quest now.

Magic Upgrade Quest:

Spend 3 hours casting magic. [0/3]

That's... a little much, but whatever. Actually, now that I think about it, it won't take much at all. But anyway, right now I want to try my new skill or spell, or whatever I should call it. Doesn't matter really, I just want to try it out.

Now, what do I want to do? Oh, this is so exciting, I'm a shapeshifting spider now! That's just so cool, the only thing missing is being gigantic as well. But anyway, I have a few ideas.

First, let's start with my two front feet. I already knew what I wanted to do with them. I slowly hardened them and sharpened them, until eventually they were much touher than the rest of my body, but also much less flexible. They basically became sword feet. I didn't have any hands to swing or use a nail or sword or whatever, so I turned two of my feet into swords, practically. Maybe I could learn the nail arts from Mato and the other nailmaster with my sword feet? That would be pretty cool, but not what I want to do right now.

Instead, I focus on more important things, like further modifiyng my weak and small spider body to try to increase my survival chances. And I do that by hardening my chitinous carapace as much as I can without making it too rigid or heavy as to imped me or slow me down. It took me a while to make it harder without fucking something up because of how slowly and carefully I was going. So it took me about half an hour or so to go as far as I was confident in going in modifiying. And honestly, it wasn't that big of an improvment, but better to be careful when risking my life, and it was still more fun than reading 80 years old books for school.

Once I was finally done with that I went on to do the final change I planned to do today. And that would be growing spikes out of my carapace. Sharp spikes, to stab anything trying to grab me. It was very slow going and annoying, considering I had to make them as hard as possible without completely ruining my balance due to weight issues. Still, it took me a while until I was finally done with creating spikes on my carapace.

Once I was done I decided to head back into the duneon to try to find some secrets or something interesting, like treasure. And so, me and my small army headed back into the zombie dungeon with the mission of exploring it. So I send groups all throughout the dungeon at random to search for anything that they deem unusual or interesting while I and a much larger group wander in search of secrets as well.


Well I had some good and bad news.

Good new, I found a possibly secret area!

Bad news... well... the entrance to that secret area is guarded by 6 automated machine gun turrets that could easily shred through my minions in seconds, with no chance of any of them getting close to destroying the turrets. So while I found the secret area, it was currently inaccessible. So instad of worrying about that some more, I got back to the real world and got to creating a couple Many Eyed Devourers to replace the minions killed by the machine gun turrets. And that took a couple of hours of work, or more accurately taking a lot of breaks in between actually working to recover my magical stamina. But after a couple of hours I stopped. Not because I was bored and exhausted... OK not just because I was bored and exhausted, but also because I had finally completed the magic upgrade quest.

Magic Upgrade Quest Completed!

Spend 3 hours casting magic. [3/3]

Reward: Increased Magic Damage and Magic Resistance.

That... was certainly something. The feeling that passed through me was very strange, but the increase in magic damage isn't very good, at least I think so? I'm pretty sure that using flesh crafting to melt my enemies legs off doesn't really do 'damage', so it's probably not affected by the upgrade. Or maybe it is, what do I know? Though this other upgrade isn't that much better yet, considering I haven't found any enemies that do magic damage yet.

Upgrades: Body, Mana, Flesh Crafting, Flesh Crafting Spells

Wait... mana? Now it's mana instead of magic? Hmmm... nah. I'll just take Flesh Crafting again.

Flesh Crafting Quest:

Create 5 Weak Flesh Abominations. [0/5]

Create 1 Average Flesh Abomination. [0/1]

Huh. I don't think I've even creted a Weak Flesh Abomination yet, nevermind a stronger one than that. But I'll get to that tomorrow, cause right now I just want to lay down in my soft, silky web bed and sleep.

The next morning I woke up well rested and ready for more exploration. Technically it wasn't morning, as the day night cycle didn't exist here underground, but eh. I just woke up, so it's morning. There! Now, off to explore some more in the dungeon and try to create some higher quality minions.


Heh, no update in a while. Been away from home for a week or so and I didn't write anything at all.