The Spider Queen

(Unova Syndicate)

(Hidden Location- Planet Xerciam Prime)

"You aren't from around here… are you?" Q'reanea jiggled his gelatinous body as he opened the door to the private room.

"I heard there were plenty of opportunities to get rich on this god forsaken planet, so I arrived a few weeks ago," Sophie smiled and replied without hesitation.

Working with information sellers was a tricky business as they could just as well sell off your information to the next highest bidder.

Or worse…

Sophie had already thought of a backstory before entering the inn despite not knowing much about the planet.

There were just some motivations that were universal across civilisations.

Greed was one of them.

"Hmmm," Q'reanea swayed slightly and entered the private room before a tendril on his back beckoned for Sophie to enter.

Sophie walked inside confidently and took a quick glance to see what was inside the space.

The room should have only been the size of a bedroom, but the walls had clearly been carved with spatial runes as the space inside was roughly the size of a two-bedroom apartment.

There were numerous cages that held different alien species and organisms. These cages lined the walls along the entire length of the room.

The creatures were held inside energy-based cages that pulsated gently as the ion light particles formed an impossible to escape enclosure.

Sophie noticed that several of these cages held intelligent alien species who just stared at her with looks of despair and desperation.

There wasn't a single change in Sophie's expression as she did not plan to rescue the creatures held within the cages before getting a better grasp of the situation.

Acting like a hero and rashly releasing a group of prisoners would just be a stupid thing to do as she was currently in the middle of enemy territory.

Beside…. the innkeeper being able to afford a mage who could carve spatial runes into his private room meant that there was a dangerous power standing behind him.

In the center of the room was a small table with two chairs on opposite sides.

Q'reanea unhurriedly moved his gelatinous body into one of the chairs and Sophie gracefully sat down on the other.

A few moments passed by in complete silence as both parties watched each other carefully.

Eventually it was Q'reanea who broke the awkward silence by forming a mouth on his jelly-like body,

"Do you like my collection?" he whispered in a low tone.

Sophie leaned back on the chair and replied, "There seems to be quite the variety of alien species in those light cages."

"I am quite impressed."

Q'reanea's blob-like body swayed from side to side and Sophie could not shake the feeling that the innkeeper was pleased with her compliment.

"It was not easy to secure some of these specimens let me tell you," Q'reanea continued the conversation with great enthusiasm.

"I had to fight with several collectors in the black market to even get a shot at buying these prized specimens."

"The Xercian and the Preciex alone are worth over two thousand dollars!"

He gestured towards two cages on the right that housed a small bluish-green alien with a bulbous head and two glowing eyes and another creature with sharp spine-like barbs jutting out of its back.

Sophie narrowed her golden eyes and suppressed the bloodlust in her heart as the innkeeper continued to brag about the creatures in his collection.

I just want to kill him….

Q'reanea was very happy to meet a client who shared his appreciation for collecting different alien species.

Most clients would simply give the cages a cursory glance and then go straight down to the main business.

So, he spent the next thirty minutes carefully introducing one specimen after another to his eager client.

Sophie kept up her appearance by nodding thoughtfully after Q'reanea introduced each alien held in the light cages, but her rage was slowly building.

"Oh wait! There is one more I haven't shown you yet!" Q'reanea suddenly got up from the chair and slid towards the back of the room.

There was a particular light cage that was covered with a dark protective cloth so that its prisoner was not visible to an ordinary onlooker.

Of course, this barrier was no match for Sophie's inhuman vision, so she simply squinted her eyes and peered behind the veil.

Inside the cage was a sleeping eight-year-old girl with soft curly brown hair and wearing an adorable princess outfit.

Lily!

Sophie almost lost her cool and rushed towards the cage, but her instincts suddenly flared up, so she remained seated.

There was something or someone extremely dangerous watching over the inside of the room and Sophie could not identify where the threat was coming from.

She took a few deep breaths and observed Lily's condition to make sure that the little girl wasn't hurt.

Lily's princess outfit was still left completely intact and her complexion, weight and appearance seemed normal.

She just appeared to be slightly skinner than Sophie remembered.

Q'reanea extended three tendrils and hoisted the cage into the air before moving towards the small table.

Sophie tightly pinched her thigh to make sure she didn't do anything reckless as Q'reanea inched closer and closer with the light cage.

Q'reanea finally approached the table and planted the cage firmly in the middle as he slid back into the chair.

"I have the most amazing story to share with you," Q'reanea could not help but boast as he moved the black cover off the cage.

"A human?" Sophie gasped and showed a mixed expression of both disbelief and surprise.

"Yes! It was the first time that I had ever seen one in real life," Q'reanea replied in excitement.

"It is just the strangest story…. one day I was cleaning out the back rooms of the inn when there was a flash of blue light and this human appeared right in front of me!"

"The human kept babbling words in some kind of weird human language but I couldn't understand a word, so I just tossed it into a cage."

"I'm not too fond of how humans look…. so, I've been keeping it in the back of the room in case someone wants to buy it."

"But there isn't a single collector on the market who wants to buy a human!"

"Oh? Did you make sure that its condition is undamaged?" Sophie probed with an innocent question.

She wanted to make sure that Lily didn't have any hidden injuries she would need to worry about after they escaped from here.

"I'm not sure…" Q'reanea thoughtfully replied.

"You know the rumors on the black market say that humans are disease-filled pests so the only time I made contact with it was to toss it inside the light cage."

"I made sure to disinfect my tendrils thoroughly afterwards! Can't be too careful with the nasty viruses hidden inside the human body."

"Yes, I heard that it is quite dangerous to have skin to skin contact with humans so that was the safest thing to do," Sophie nodded with a small smile.

She didn't know who was responsible for that ridiculous rumor but thank god the innkeeper believed it.

Clearly humans were extremely rare in the Unova Syndicate if an information seller had not seen one before and had such inaccurate information.

But it was thanks to this rarity that Lily had managed to survive several days as a prisoner without being harmed.

"What have you been feeding it?" Sophie asked curiously.

"Humans need to eat?!" Q'reanea replied in shock.

"I thought that humans absorb darkness into their bodies and convert the night energy into nutrients."

Sophie's expressionless mask cracked slightly for the first time that evening as there was just one thought running through her mind…

Who the fuck was spreading these false rumors about humans?!