Chapter 615: Chapter 611: Spider Dryad

Agdistis

Happy New Year to all. I hope 2026 treats you all well and you find wonderful stories to enjoy.

And as always, thank you for reading.

“You know, I think you’re kind of cute,” Sabina said as she tilted her head from one side to another. “Maybe not cuddly, but definitely pretty. I mean, maybe you are cuddly? Having all those extra legs means you probably give great hugs, unless you aren’t soft, but you don’t look like you would be sharp, so you might be cuddly.”

“Only you would call a giant spider ‘cuddly,’ Sabina,” Sorcha shook her head in disbelief.

“I like… The way… She looks…”

“See!” Sabina pointed excitedly at Alex. “She understands!”

“Why do you like Meli’s spider form?” Sorcha asked the Demon with one fist resting on her hip.

“More limbs… Are more efficient… Better Design…”

“Well… She’s not wrong…” the half-elf shrugged.

Jadis and the majority of her lovers were gathered in Lyssandria’s temple once more. With the sun having set, she had flown back to the small temple with Sorcha and Meli in tow, expecting that everyone else would be waiting for them. While most of them had finished their business for the day and had returned to their temporary lodgings, Aila and Severina had not yet returned from the senate. Jadis wasn’t worried about the two since Wilhelm, Lucia, and Rein were with them, but she was curious about what could have caused the delay. Likely they had been surrounded by a multitude of senators who wanted to talk to them for one reason or another. While she knew that they were both powerful women and could handle themselves both in a debate and a fight, she couldn’t stop a small part of herself from feeling anxious.

In an effort to distract herself as much as cover important topics with the others, Jadis had brought up Meli’s tertiary class and its strange transformation abilities. While the group had developed the routine of always discussing everyone’s status sheets, not everyone was yet familiar with the Dryad’s full kit. Jadis and Aila had gone over everything with Meli, and Eir, Alex, and Severina had been read in as well during some quiet moments, but the others had simply not had a chance to go over the full spread of her abilities due to their often busy and chaotic schedule. Since they had time, they started a review session which eventually involved a rather detailed analysis of the Dryad’s druidic transformations, though initially it was just about her status sheet in general.

Meli’s base status sheet, not including any of the power ups that Jadis and her lovers offered, wasn’t super impressive, in all honesty. She was far from weak, and her power relied on spells that buffed her physical capabilities, but she wasn’t exactly an example of extreme stats.

Of course, when compared to just the regular everyman off the street, Meli was still far and above any of their capabilities, even without her spells. Still, the before and after of Meli’s stats once Lewd Lover’s Bond, Paladin of Jadis’ Boldness, Exhibitionistic Accession, and Vital Overflow were applied was stark.

Stat improvements aside, the Dryad’s true power came from the various skills and spells that her three classes offered her.

Meli’s primary class was called Wildwood Strider and it was by far the highest level at forty-one. Strider classes in general were meant for speed, and the Wildwood variety was no different in that regard. Specialized for someone who spent their time in the wildernesses of the world, Wildwood Strider also had offered some combat capabilities, though in truth it wasn’t intended to be a martial class. Meli’s choices had evolved her path to be about as geared towards fighting as anyone with a Strider type class could expect to be, though, and the abilities that she possessed showed that she was far from helpless.

Jadis personally found Wildwood Strider to be an interesting class, though not one that she would have considered taking herself. The passive ability to befriend animals, or even magic beasts, was fascinating though, and Jadis wondered if an enchantment could be made to mimic the effect. Both Meli and Sabina had informed her that yes, it was possible, though such enchantments were generally considered to be a rather high tier on the scale of what was able to be crafted.

Meli’s secondary class, Cloistered Animist, was far more interesting, at least to Jadis, in that it offered the individual two distinct paths to travel from the very start, and the choice made with the first skill affected practically all the skills that would be offered to the class in the future.

Animists were those who used spells to empower an animal companion. There were several different varieties, all of them exceedingly uncommon as the class type was a rare one, though Cloistered Animist was one of the more unusual among its peers. Unlike the others, which offered specializations such as animals versus magic beasts, one companion over several, or elemental alignments, Cloistered Animist gave the individual the choice of either bonding with a single animal companion, or forgoing having a companion and empowering oneself. In Meli’s case, she had chosen to focus on herself.

The list of skills showed that Meli was reliant on magic to boost her physical stats, rather than directly attacking her enemies with spells. If she had chosen to have a beast of some kind as her companion, Meli would have been empowering that creature with similar status boosts, but the Dryad’s choice had been to focus on herself. When Jadis had asked why, Meli had explained that while she enjoyed the company of animals, magical or otherwise, she had never developed a strong bond with any one creature, at least not to the point that she would have wanted to keep them at her side until death.

When Jadis had joked that if they had met earlier in their lives, she might have been able to fill the role of Meli’s animist companion, the Dryad had given the idea far more serious consideration than she had expected.

Meli’s tertiary class, the one which she had gambled so confidently on under the possibility of starting a physical relationship with Jadis, was called Nephilim Powered Druid. The class was strikingly similar to Aila’s Nephilim Powered Arcanist, both in naming convention and the fact that Arcanists and Druids were both rare and largely undocumented due to the infrequency of individuals unlocking them. Meli herself had some decent knowledge concerning the druid class because her father was one, though the details of his class were obviously different from anything powered by a Nephilim.

Druids were considered to be a hybrid class between an animist and a priest of Villthyrial. Animists empowered companions and Villthyrial Priests performed nature-related miracles such as the healing and growth of flora and fauna, or transformations of the user into beast forms. Druids typically couldn’t heal the way a priest could, nor did they have the same kind of extreme empowerment spells that an animist would have, but they were nature-based spell casters who used the Divine attribute for their magic. The biggest difference between a druid and a priest was that druids usually used active spells, while priests performed rituals. While there were more details that Meli could provide on the archetypical druid class, the main point of interest was that they were frequently not capable of transformations. Some could, but in Meli’s limited experience, most druid spells were more focused on plants and acting on the environment, rather than enhancing the self.

Perhaps because of her animist class choices, Meli’s tertiary class did not fall into the mold of the typical druid.

Admittedly, Meli only had four levels in her new class and thus she only had two skills to compare to her memories of her father and other druids, but the first spell made available to her seemed like a fair weathervane to judge by.

All of the discussion regarding Meli’s unique druid class and the bizarre, sex-powered spell that it had given her, had naturally brought the discussion around to the form she had chosen for her transformations. The fact that she could become a giant spider was a point of contention among the group.

“What k—kind of spider, ah, are you supposed to be?” Thea asked as she openly examined Meli’s eight-legged shape. “This is a magic beast?”

“I chose to imitate a Flora Asterion. I believe imperials would call them giant flower spiders. Rather than weaving webs, they are known for their speed and agility as hunters in the northern forests of Larista and Parusyat. I thought an asterion form would complement my abilities.”

Jadis didn’t know enough about giant flower spiders to comment on whether it was a good fit for Meli’s skills and talents, but she did sit on Sabina’s side of the fence. In her opinion, the flora asterion was oddly cute.

While Meli’s new form was large, it was also compact. She probably weighed somewhere around five hundred pounds, yet she didn’t take up as much room as expected thanks to how her legs naturally arched. Rather than looking like a giant orb weaver or a tarantula, the Dryad’s transformed shape was similar to a jumping spider. With large, forward-facing eyes and wide pedipalps, there was something strangely charming about the way Meli looked in her spider form. The effect was enhanced by the beautiful colors and imitation flowers that covered her bulbous abdomen. She almost looked like she was carrying a bed of pink, purple, and white orchids on her back, though all of it was actually a part of her body. Aside from the false flowers, Meli’s transformed body was a mix of greens with white and purple highlights, while her eyes were the same orange as she had in her natural form.

Jadis supposed it helped that Meli’s spider legs didn’t have any hair. They were all smooth and had an almost rubbery texture, which made them look more like the stalks or leaves of a weirdly-shaped plant than the limbs of an arachnid.

“An asterion spider?” Jay repeated thoughtfully. “Interesting name…”

“No, asterion or spider. Not both,” Kerr corrected absently as she ate a bowl of the soup that Alex had cooked for the group. “Asterion means venomous spider in old Parusyatian.”

“Oh,” Jay blinked at the explanation. “Alright. Well, it sounds a lot like Asteria, the name of the fallen Nephilim Nation.”

“That is because asterion is derived from the name Asteria.”

Turning to look at the other side of the room, Jay focused on Eir. The elf had been quietly eating her own bowl of soup, mostly staying out of the discussion. She had been extremely busy all day using her spells to cleanse as many people of disease as she could. While it wasn’t a physically taxing job, constantly running out of magic and having it replenished by Alex, only to run out again repeatedly, was draining on the saint. If they weren’t waiting on Aila and Severina to return, Jadis was certain that Eir would have fallen asleep from exhaustion already.

Smiling at Jay’s attention, the elf tiredly motioned with one hand towards the ceiling of the room they were in.

“Asteria, the ancient nation of the Nephilim, bred the giant flower spiders for their silk. While the Last Bastion of the Nephilim fell, many of the creatures that they had used as livestock survived. Over time, the spiders of Asteria became known as asterion.”

“Huh. Learn something new every day,” Kerr mumbled before tossing back the last of her soup.

“You know, that makes this even more fitting,” Jay laughed as she raised her hands to her sides and looked at Meli. “A Nephilim and an asterion, together again after a couple of thousand years.”

“I am not actually an asterion,” Meli pointed out while rubbing her pedipalps together. “I am a Dryad. This is just a spell.”

“…right. I know.”

“I think your new s—spider form is very pretty,” Thea said into the silence a moment later. “I like it.”

“Thank you,” Meli responded, fully turning her body around to look directly at Thea since she had no neck. “I think you are attractive as well. You have an especially admirable bottom.”

As Thea blushed and Kerr guffawed with laughter, the sound of a door opening caught Jay’s notice. Glancing over, she saw both Aila and Severina enter the room. Seeing the utterly exhausted looks on their faces, Jadis woke her other two selves up from the nest of cushions she had made with a sleeping Hope while Jay went to greet them.

“Rough day?” Jay asked while leaning down to give Aila a kiss.

“I never want to live in a republic,” the redhead said with deadpan seriousness after she reciprocated the kiss.

“Why not?” Jay asked before turning to give Severina a kiss.

“Because at least in an empire, we have only two hardheaded aristocrats vying to be emperor,” Severina answered for Aila, “instead of two hundred obstinate fools trying for that same role.”

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