The Rise of the Unbound Sovereign Sect Chapter 6: Chapter 6

Read chapter 6 of The Rise of the Unbound Sovereign Sect by Magic on NovelPedia.

"The heaviest stone may crush the bone, but the smallest needle commands the blood." The Weaver’s dismissal left nothing up for debate. The moment the massive emerald eyes closed, the crushing weight in the cavern lifted, but the danger didn't. Vora didn't wait for me to process what had just happened. She just grabbed me by the back of my belt, hoisted me like a sack of feed, and marched out of the Weaver’s den. We didn't go back to the base of the cliff. No, we went higher, because of course we did. Oblivious to the silent panic attack rattling around in my skull, Vora hauled me up a narrow, winding goat path carved directly into the sheer rock face. The air grew thinner and colder the higher we climbed. She finally ducked into a jagged fissure—not perfectly hexagonal like the rest—about two hundred feet off the jungle floor. It wasn't a home; it was an oversized bear den, and about as clean. The biting wind howled past the opening. The air smelled heavily of cured leather, unwashed giant, and a distinct, sharp note of wet dog that suggested Vora shared the hygiene standards of a medieval peasant colony. My desire for a bar of soap was rapidly shifting from a want to a desperate need. Shaking my head, I looked down at the floor. The bones scattered around weren't just stripped; they were cracked open for the marrow by teeth that could likely bite through a steel padlock. Great. My new landlord is a nine-foot-tall Amazon who treats cleaning like an optional hobby and looks like she belongs as the heavy muscle for a comic book villain. I made a mental note to introduce her to the miracle of taking a bath someday, but she’d probably drown me for the suggestion. Giant brute or not, I wasn’t keen to find out what triggered her temper. That was just asking for more trouble on my already overflowing plate. Seriously? How did I go from cataloging artifacts in a sterile basement to this? That wasn’t even my day job! Vora dropped me unceremoniously onto the hard rock. She didn't say a word. She immediately sat down, inspecting the crushed fern paste I had packed into her thigh. Satisfied that the necrotic purple veins had fully receded, she reached into a shadowed alcove, pulled out a slab of heavily salted, tough meat, and tossed it at my head. It hit my chest with a wet, heavy thud that completely knocked the remaining wind out of my abused lungs. The contract was clear. I fix the puncture; I get the mystery meat. No dental plan, no hourly wage, just a piece of salted leather that tasted suspiciously like a shoe sole. It was an incredibly predatory arrangement, but considering the alternative was becoming a snack for a rusty snake—or god knows what else was lurking out there—I mentally signed on the dotted line without complaining. She leaned back against the wall, closed her eyes, and went perfectly still. After waiting for at least fifteen minutes and seeing that her breathing had evened out, I crawled into the deepest, darkest corner of the roost. Wrapping my torn lab coat tighter around my shoulders to fight the biting wind, I tore a chunk of the tough meat off with my teeth. I chewed mechanically as my mind raced, but I kept having to give my jaw a break. It was like gnawing on the world's oldest piece of jerky. Regardless of the food, I needed to put my mind to work and focus on my current list of problems. I needed to do a cold, clinical audit of my reality, or I was going to end up dead before the week was over. Option one: run. I thought back to my first few minutes in this hellscape. The iron-scaled snake was dead, but this was a primal forest, and I would be an idiot to think that was the worst thing out there. No, something told me that snake was on the weak end of the monster spectrum. If I left the cliff, I had maybe five to ten minutes before I was turned into fertilizer. Running was suicide. Option two: stay and do nothing. If I remained a hundred-and-twenty-pound mortal, I was just a pet. I had proven my worth as a