There was very little the Baroness could do. If she was bigger, she might have had the strength to overcome the hundreds of Monkeys pulling on and anchoring the nets which kept her bound. If they’d used anything other than Night Weaver Silk, she could have dissolved the nets instantly without needing to consume them to recycle and be rid of them.

If the Monkeys hadn’t had their enchanted Sticks beating down on her, they might not have been able to meaningfully harm her. If it wasn’t a Golden Howler Monkey King leading them all with an incredible mastery of Thunder turning all the Monkey tribes here into his weapon, she could have used Shadow and Void magic to tear everything under Ruler rank apart and dueled the Monkey Kings directly.

Without the Sound Magic ripping along the Veil and breaking her concentration, she could have fled.

Alas for her, the Monkeys had prepared well, thinking through all of these things, and they had been both cunning and clever.

Her carapace wasn’t cracking so much as deforming under the ringing impacts of their Sticks hammering down repeatedly, annealing the metal like steel on a smith’s anvil, the force of the blows reverberating through her desperate internal and natural defenses. She was a noble Bloodline, with a terrifying amount of Mana to spend protecting herself against those hammering strikes, but she rapidly realized that the incredible reverberating force of the blows were going to relentlessly continue for far, far longer than her Mana would persist.

All her children were dead, no allies were coming, and her time was done.

At the end, she Shrieked. It was a spiritual thing, a blast against the soul of pure raw malice and spite, a Call for help, knowing that she had failed, that she would be punished for even having to do such a thing... but she was going to die now, there was no escaping it, and the more of her hooting and howling slayers she could take with her as she did so, the better.

The Monkeys all swayed in place as dozens of Vivic Braziers thoughtfully dropped in front of them flared up at the Shadow-laden call, eating the worst of it, and instead of slamming and scattering the hundreds of Monkeys intent on keeping her bound, it instead drove them to new heights of berserker fury as they felt the Dark powers she was bound to, and raged back at them with new bloody rage and willingness to die to see them brought down.

And then, then a Light went off above, and swept through the Veil like diamond adamantine, a globe of impassable spatial existence that expanded over the entire area in an instant. The dozens of minor Shadow conduits and one large one concealed far below this area were shut away instantly, the planar seal impassable for the time needed to respond to her plea, and her fate was sealed.

---

I watched her last hope leave the Spider Baroness, the last of her resistance and power crumbling. Less than two minutes later, the circular beating of the Sticks, having continued unabated for over half an hour, finally crumped down as her carapace lost its magical rigidity and began to fully deform under the impacts of those slamming Tetsubos brimming with magic and hundreds of pounds of mass each.

It was one long, raging scream from the Monkeys, the Thunder of their collective rage and hate making the corpse bounce and pulse with the sound. Her innards liquified, her shell bent, and finally the pulp began to exit her spinnerets, rectum, and mouth as she perished.

The Tetsubos rose, and stilled.

Just like that, the screaming blood-rage and triumphant howling was silenced. The massive Spider and its bulbous carapace had been smashed down to less than a foot thick, and puree was leaking out of her now, hissing and bubbling with Dark Mana.

Pawed hands pressed specific studs on those great spiked Sticks, and gleaming black Spears, humming with deadly constrained magic, slid out of all six of them.

“Salvage her hide, and burn the rest for a Soul Jewel!” King Dorado ordered formally, and the butchering of the Night Weaver Baroness began as his five subordinate Kings bent to the task. “Gather the rest of the silk! Healer Fae! What needs we do?!” he called up to me, and thousands of Monkeys perched in the trees, on the roots and stones, and in clusters on the ground turned to me floating up there in the air.

“Misguided Humans eager for power wrought edifices of Stone and Shadow in this area. Some are buried under trees, some are exposed. You can see many of the plants and foliage are infested with Dark Mana.

“I want every Stone stacked and built here torn out and down and pounded apart, be it by Stick, Fist, or Mana. I want every infected plant torn out down to the roots and burned with Fire and vivus.

“Chefs and armorers, take apart all those Spiders you have slain as do your Kings, treat the innards with vivus, and prepare you a feast for all those working, saving the carapaces for your own use.

“Unwind the last of the Silk, and go searching for any and all poison left behind to cleanse. Flower-bearers, if it is persistent, come fetch one of us and we will help you dispose of it.

“Know, Monkeys, that right now a force of Humans came from the lands of the Mystic Eye University to the south, through the Beastmen territory, led by a human half-Sage with two Dark Elements. If you feel to the south, you can sense the battle that is ongoing there as the rest of the jungle’s Rulers make their displeasure at this intrusion known.

“You have taken the territory of the Shadow Weavers, and now you will have to hold it against the intrusions of both the Beast-men and the Humans there. Where they lived in fear of the Night Weavers, now they will have to learn to respect and fear the Monkey tribes and the Six Kings thereof!”

Many, many Tetsubos were raised below me, hoots and calls and jeers arising as many promises were made that such a thing was exactly what was going to happen!

“Now, let us tear down this place of Shadow, Burn it clean, and make it a land suitable for more than cursed Spiders to dwell upon!”

A new bloody howl headed for the canopy, and as if they hadn’t just spent more than a day in battle screaming their heads off, the Monkeys went looking for stuff to Burn and tear down.

------

Some of the infected foliage was semi-sentient, but the Night Weaver Baroness hadn’t allowed any possible contenders to her power and authority to grow here, so all that it did was make it harder for the Monkeys to tear them down.

Still, they were Mana-fed jungle hardwoods hundreds of feet high, and the ones infested with Shadow energy were everywhere. It was plain several square miles of the jungle were all going to have to be cut down and regrown as the trees that preceded them came toppling down one after another, crashing and Burning with Fire and vivus.

Multi-ton Stone blocks covered by jungle growth were revealed, and then torn apart with absolutely no respect for their age, hammered apart by supernaturally strong Monkeys eager to shatter and Burn the greasy Stones. Once their integrity was shattered, the Stones of the temples that had helped form the Shadow Conduits actually Burned like coal to vivus, breaking apart into heaps and mounds of crystallized ash the Monkeys were quick to spread over the jungle as fertilizer.

It wouldn’t take too much time for the central area to become one of the most verdant and colorful locations for Plants in this entire jungle, and the Monkeys were anticipating it eagerly, having precious seeds and blooms ready to plant and grow with the purified energy.

The Monkeys also rolled in the great stones necessary to build the menhirs to contain these Shadow Conduits and set them alight, giving themselves a source of natural energy that would only help this area bloom further.

The local Rulers of the jungle were invited in to watch all the work being done, informed of what was going on, and what and why and how it all worked... and each of them was given one ring of Menhirs, one Shadow Conduit Burning with vivus, to guard and use as they deemed fit to do so.

Breathing in the thick vivus, the Beast Rulers of this section of the jungle were quick to agree to both duties.

The Pyramid I set over the largest conduit was only twenty steps tall, and the Monkeys took great pride in rolling in all the stone from outside the Night Weavers’ territory necessary to construct it. A trail for rolling multi-ton balls of stone soon wove through the jungle, Earth magic helping smooth the way from the hills nearby and down to the rapidly expanding clearing in the jungle. The clearing was already going green and exploding in colors as it promised to become a great hanging Garden of incredible vitality in the jungle, guarded by the Rulers of the jungle!

---

The six Monkey Kings looked on in great satisfaction at the small Pyramid. It was only two hundred feet high, but currently the tallest thing in the clearing, even after it was sunk down a hundred feet to the Shadow Conduit’s position. Thick mistfires bubbled about it, feasting on Dark Mana returning to the cycle of life, the whole pit long washed crystalline white as the vivus sank into it, too pure for even the riotous jungle life to grow upon it... although the areas about it were fairly bursting with new vigor.

Its Domain was small, but they could all feel it Burning the Dark Mana and helping invigorate the jungle hereabouts. It had nothing to control or move, only hovering there on constant vivic flames, pumping life into the jungle, theirs to protect and profit from, but with no need to stand upon and control it.

New trees planted only a week ago were already twenty feet high, and we could sit there and watch them grow in the revitalized and super-verdant soil. Monkey groundskeepers were ushering the whole thing into existence with a natural feel for how things should proceed, and swirls of Bees and Butterflies and other Insects attracted by the new Blooms were coming into the area.

The Monkeys were even helping design and put into place Plants desired by the other Rulers and helping care for them. The Night Weaver territory was going to become a sacred Garden for the Tribes tasked with guarding it, paying them for their service and vigilance... and, no doubt, the greed of many who would want to profit from the fruits of their labors.

There were Jaguars, Ocelots, several tribes of Snakes, Parrots, Capybaras, and some lesser Bee and Butterfly tribes in the area, basking in the Mana and vitality, nobody fighting, all helping the new area grow. The Garden area was naturally going to extend right up to the highest levels of the trees once the Garden was restored, and the place would be a heady paradise for all the Tribes.

“Well done. It will take a great deal of strength to protect this place, but you’ve great room to grow. With the aid of the other Rulers, this should be a bastion of strength for the Beasts of the Jungles,” I congratulated all of them. “I hear Son Wukong is going to visit and endorse you, so you should have no problems with some Low Emperor coming in to take this place from you.”

The six Monkey Kings, including Mighty Turk, bared their teeth in excited smiles. After all, the Amazon wasn’t that far away, with all the Low Emperors lurking in the skyscraping trees there hungry for Demesnes away from other Emperors who would contest them. None of them would be willing to fall out with The True Monkey King over this place!

There were now faces and figures carved into the valleys through the hills leading to this place, displaying all six Monkey Kings and the other Rulers who were guarding it. There’d been only one curious group of Beastmen who’d come in, seeking to verify if the Night Weavers were gone, and they’d been chased off by the astonishing sight of Tetsubo-waving Monkeys riding Jaguars and Ocelots ferociously to the attack.

The territory markings were clear and unambivalent. Come this way, you were intruding on the territory of all those Rulers!

I was here with the other four Contract holders of the Monkey Kings. They would need to be here to help guard this place, so it was time for the Contracts they held to be returned to them... and quickly passed on to a new youngster of the Tribes, tasked with a new mission: learn as much of magic as possible, not just the Sticks and strength, so that the Monkeys here might gain some Monkey Sages!