The Spider Queen

Chapter 4: Dad we need to talk….

Pain shot through her stomach continuously as Sophie trudged on towards her dorm room. The passing students saw her in an injured state, but no one offered to help.

The kinder ones would simply avert their eyes when they saw Sophie pass them by.

The usual reaction she received were a couple of snickers and malicious laughter from students eager to see her humiliation.

Those looks burned a deep impression in Sophie’s mind and fueled the growing sense of rage in her heart.

What a bunch of self- righteous assholes.

Bragging and boasting of the superiority of the noble blood when none of them had any idea what a life in society was like.

“I need power”, Sophie muttered to herself in a low voice. The world she was in obeyed the simple rule of survival of the fittest. The noble children laughing at her today would lose power almost instantly were it not for powerful cultivators associated with their households.

Sophie did not seem to realise it, but her eyes started gleaming in a hypnotic light when her desire to get stronger began to overwhelm her.

The campus dorms were optional for students to live in as with the creation of short-range transportation technology, there was no need for students to worry about travelling to and from their homes.

Most of the students in the dorms were those from other planets or those that sought independence from their households.

Sophie’s father was fiercely overprotective of his only daughter and did not approve of her living at the dorms by herself. The original host argued and threatened to stay at school as she did not want to return home with injuries and cause her dad to worry.

“What a foolish girl,” Sophie spoke softly with an almost sorrowful look on her face.

Perhaps it would have caused her father distress to find out that his daughter was being bullied but it would be more painful to find out that his daughter faced these problems alone without seeking him out for help.

Throb!

Sophie clutched her heart with a painful expression as a fresh droplet of blood poured out of her mouth.

A person with a qi body of stage two was no match for Leona’s attack which was at least stage eight.

She could tell that there were certainly internal injuries causing her to cough out blood periodically and it hurt like hell.

There was an urgent need for medical attention but fortunately the dorms were only a ten-minute walk from the library. Sophie approached the dorm building and let out a gasp of astonishment.

This was a campus dorm house?

It was bigger than any skyscraper Sui Meng had ever seen!

The words ‘Royal Academy Living Quarters’ hung from a banner off the front door of the building, whose height could not be seen from the ground level as it peaked above the clouds. The dorm was like the other buildings she had seen with a dark silvery colour that seemed to be fused to the ground itself.

There was a single main entrance roughly the size of two carriages placed side by side and a small secondary entrance to the right.

Sophie approached the door and lifted up her wrist to show her band to the scanner placed on the doorknob. A whirring sound filled her ears and a clear mechanical voice spoke,

“Student 13923 detected!”

“Second floor. Room 45 resident”

“Access approved”

The door swung open with a flourish and Sophie limped inside. A cool flow of air brushed against her face and she closed her eyes in contentment. The lobby area of the dorm was spacious with exotic plants arranged around the floor, giving one the impression that they were in the middle of a forest. Sophie even heard what appeared to be bird- like calls from small animals darting around the treetops.

She followed the rocky pathway through the trees and arrived at the front desk at the back of the room. There was an eastern beauty working as the receptionist who glanced up at her then lazily asked,

“Room and floor number please”

She seemed to pay no mind to the injured student in front of her and simply resumed staring at the tablet on her desk.

“Um…. Second floor and room number 45,” Sophie hesitantly replied.

The receptionist gave no sign of acknowledgement but plugged in a few commands on her tablet and gestured to the raised platform to the left of the desk. Sophie was a bit confused and did not understand what the lady wanted

A few moments passed by and the receptionist glanced back up with a puzzled look on her face,

“Why aren’t you standing on the teleporter?” she asked.

Sophie jolted up and looked at the teleporter with a cautious gaze, she scanned through her memories and recalled that to enter her room she could be teleported directly from the lobby.

Her face burned bright red with embarrassment and she hurriedly stepped onto the raised disc with a shy smile.

The teleporter platform looked very plain to the outside eye, it was simply a raised white semicircular disc that had strange marks carved into the perimeter. What bothered Sophie were the flashes of red light that would enter the marks accompanied by an ominous humming noise.

The receptionists saw that the student was on the teleporter and pressed the button under her desk. Sophie’s figure blurred and then dissolved into white particles and disappeared from the room.

Moments later the white particles converged to form the figure of a girl who appeared in a bedroom.

Sophie immediately collapsed in fright and began throwing up the food in her stomach with a pale face.

What a horrible experience!

The teleporter could disassemble matter particles and carry them to other locations where they could be reassembled to form the original form. This method of transportation only worked for non-cultivators and those in the qi body and spirit stage as higher levels of cultivation would cause the matter particles in the body system to become densely packed and unable to be separated.

This reason and the fact that teleporters were highly expensive to maintain ensured that this transport method could only be enjoyed by wealthy institutions.

The original host and Sui Meng were both individuals who got motion sick easily and the transportation was the equivalent of shaking every cell in your body vigorously. It took a few moments, but Sophie was able to calm down her upset stomach.

There was the unpleasant smell of vomit filling the room, so Sophie began to look around for some cleaning supplies. The bedroom she entered was the size of Sui Meng’s entire apartment in Shanghai.

There were pink curtains hanging from the windows and a few posters of popular virtual idols scattered along the bedroom walls. There was a small indoor pool as well as a kitchen and two bathrooms.

The bed was massive, and Sophie estimated that it could fit well over six people comfortably.

Sophie was eager to explore the room but the jolt of pain echoing through her body reminded her of the injuries.

“Okay first things first, I need to treat these injuries,” Sophie muttered to herself.

She approached a desk at the side of the master bed and fumbled around the drawers until she opened the correct one. There was a small pack of vials with a sickly green colour glowing slightly in the sunlight.

Sophie grimaced internally but popped the stopper on one of the vials and drowned the contents in one gulp. Her father had sent her the most expensive gene serums on the market that could accelerate healing.

Sophie sighed in contentment as a warm feeling of fire spread through her body, rejuvenating her cells and causing her injuries to heal. She lay down on the bed basking in the pleasant feeling before a loud ringing sound came from her schoolbag.

Sophie sprung up and hurriedly opened the bag and saw her tablet was vibrating. She saw a notification which read, ‘Incoming Call: Duke Peterlor’. It was her dad and Sophie hesitantly pressed the accept call button.

“Oh, honey you picked up!” a man’s cheerful voice rang out from the tablet.

“How have you been my lovely daughter? Is anyone mistreating you? Tell your dad and I will immediately have sent them to bankruptcy!” he continued in a loud tone.

Tears welled up in Sophie’s eyes and an unrepressed sob was came out of her chest. Why was she acting so foolishly before?

“Dad,” she spoke in a quiet voice.

“We need to talk….