Novel Full Chapter 1900 Feather Dusting
Chapter 1900: Chapter 1900 Feather Dusting
— Kat —
Plan B was a go, time to execute. Hedera was carrying the rule change scroll and Lily was going with her. This was because they didn’t want to test how the scroll interact with Lily’s transformation and Kat was staying behind. Why? To see if Weaver ’woke up’ once the scroll was out of range. Theoretically Lily could’ve done it but it was quickly agreed her shadow magic was going to be better for cleaning up the cobwebs then anything the other two had, so she was on the ’away’ team by default. Which meant it was better for Kat to stay behind and watch Weaver to make sure the groups had some contact with each other.
Hedera did actually try to counter this, not wanting to be holding the scroll for some reason… but she was rapidly outvoted and handed the scroll anyway. It’s not like it was going to hurt her or anything, and here in Weaver’s space they were safe so nobody was going to try and steal it either. Hedera was worrying over nothing, or at least, that was the feeling Kat and Lily had.
Sadly for Kat, it didn’t seem like Weaver was waking up. The scroll was completely out of sight, folded up and hidden under Hedera’s armour as you couldn’t put it into one of the bracelets… Weaver had no reaction. She had no reaction as Hedera got further and further away from the Arachne. *Do you think it’s because she can ’see’ everywhere around here? Or if it’s more of a ’in her domain’ type issue. Like, if I opened it in the mayor’s basement would he be frozen upstairs?*
[There’s no way to tell really. When are you heading over? I think we’ve gone far enough. It’s been like ten minutes of running on our end and we’re about to start setting up.]
*I suppose I can head over now…* Katt gave one last glance at Weaver before starting to run in the direction she could feel Lily. It was a shame that Weaver didn’t react at all but that’s just how things work out sometimes. It did mean that clearing out the webs was more important now. If things caught fire there was no way of telling how long it could be before Weaver regained consciousness and if the webs were flammable the whole place could be up in flames in just a few minutes. Kat didn’t want Weaver getting hurt more considering her injuries were far from healed.
Over with Hedera and Lily, they were getting started with the cleanup. Hedera was in charge of removing the dangling black curtains, or sheets or whatever they were. They hadn’t worked out exactly where they were going to move them, as they were too large to store… but the answer was probably just shoving them off to the side. It wasn’t an amazing solution but nobody felt like wasting time coming up with a better one. It wasn’t like these were particularly precious bits of fabric.
For Lily, her job was to start cleaning up the spider webs, especially the ones that stretched upwards. It was good Kat would be here to help soon… because they needed to clean a massive vertical area. They had no idea what ’angle’ the strike would come at, and the ceiling was really, really far up. If they didn’t manage it properly even a slight angle could strike a bit of webbing right up the top and then… FIYAH.
Which was exactly what they were trying to avoid. Alas, Lily was finding her first idea to not be amazing. After her recent success with the properly squishy couches, she tried to jump straight into making a shadow feather duster to remove the webs. This was proving to be awful. It was one thing to make a couch. Lily knew couches. She’d seen them just about every day of her life, especially growing up. She knew what they felt like to sit in, to move. To rummage around the cushions looking for change.
She did not know much about feather dusters. In fact, now that she was looking at her odd shadow construct utterly fail at its job… Lily wasn’t sure she could remember ever seeing a feather duster in real life. Plenty of cartoons where they’d vaguely wave a feather duster in a corner and all the webs and dust would vanish… even a few in old tv shows. So Lily did know what a real one looked like… but not how they worked, how they felt. How they did whatever they did… or what they actually did in truth.
[Ok this clearly isn’t working…]
*Well why not try something else?*
[Like what? A vacuum cleaner? I may have a much better understanding of how they work but not only do I have no spell that’s at all similar to that to provide the effects… but it’s a lot more complicated.]
*Are you sure? A couch is pretty complicated.*
[Look… it’s a difference of… I guess electricity and magic? I know how every part of a couch works. Even if you can go into super minute detail with them technically, knowing the individual thicknesses for every square millimetre of couch is irrelevant. Not so with circuit boards and whatnot. Maybe if I knew how those really old school vacuum cleaners worked I might be able to do something but I don’t.]
*Hmmm… what about a stick?*
[What?]
*Just… make a big stick? I don’t know how well the spider webs stick to shadows… but if you just imagine it’s a big wooden stick and then wave it around you should be able to collect a fair bit… I think?*
[That’s so silly… but it might be effective so hang on.] Lily gave an attempt at Kat’s idea, focusing on the idea and then started to wave the shadow stick through the nearby spider webs. It was… alright. The webs seemed to slide around more than she thought they should and there was just so many webs that it quickly weighed down her shadows and caused issues for her flight. Which was interesting to note.
As Lily was testing this out, Kat strode into the ’clearing’ they were making. Hedera was currently folding the curtains nicely. Kat thought about asking why she was wasting her time with that but decided to just let it be. It wasn’t that much time and they weren’t really in a rush. It was still early yet and they didn’t need to meet with the mayor for a while. If they weren’t doing this, they might just be killing time in town.
Lily let herself fall to the ground, a big bundle of spider webs wound tightly together as she lowered herself down. [That’s… surprisingly awkward. If I’m using my own shadow it’s… ’anchored’ to me and I can’t fly properly. Plus, it starts taking more and more mana as I catch more spider webs. More than it should in fact, it’s not that heavy I don’t think…]
Kat walked over and lifted the bundle. It wasn’t heavy at all. *Yeah this weighs nothing. It might just be my strength… but I don’t feel anything here. No strain at all.*
Lily transformed and tried it herself… also lifting it easily. “Ok there’s something weird going on with the webs here… I thought there might be something a little weird going on here with them but I know my shadows. They can lift WAY more than this without strain. Maybe… not that’s not it…”
“What’s not it?” asked Kat.
“I was wondering if maybe it was because I was collecting it all on the end of the stick but that really shouldn’t be it. The cobwebs here don’t weigh enough for it to be an issue… could it be because they’re magical? That would be weird… but maybe not that weird?” mumbled Lily.
“Can’t help you two there,” said Hedera from the side. “Only thing I can suggest is waiting until I push this stuff out of the way, and then flying right up to the top and slicing through a bunch of the webs nearby. Just… let them fall to the ground afterwards. If they get caught up in each other just keep cutting them away until we’ve got enough space,”
Lily nodded, “Yeah sorry I guess I was overcomplicating things. I’m not even sure why I wanted to gather them up ’properly’. Well, I KNOW why, it’s because we can theoretically hand it all back over to Weaver afterwards, but honestly it’ll still be a tangled mess so just having it all fall around the place won’t be that much messier. Just… maybe more of a pain to carry back,”
Kat shrugged. “Look, at this point it’s best to just get this done as quickly as possible. Even if Weaver is a bit annoyed… will she be more annoyed once she noticed that she’s missing some time? Like… we didn’t exactly have a quick conversation and clearing all of this out is going to take a while…”