Reincarnated As An Archmage’s Daughter

Hania took a breath.

​Professor Arachnia stood by with a tray of emergency binding threads, her mandibles twitching with anxiety. Behind Hania, the orb hovered around her shoulder.

​"You're shaking," the orb pulsed.

​"I'm not shaking," Hania muttered back, her fingers steady as she held the glass dropper filled with undiluted fermented fungal sap.

​"Begin when you are ready, Princess," Arachnia said, her voice tight. "The tissue rot has reached the secondary node near the core. If you miss, the reaction will be irreversible."

​Hania didn't answer. She closed her eyes, sank her consciousness into her mana channels, and let the silver-purple threads unfurl.

​The first two nodes went seamlessly. The sap dissolved the jagged crystal blockages with a hissing sound, and her threads swept in like microscopic surgeons, binding and smoothing the fractured mana pathways. Tessik let out a shuddering sigh of relief.

​"Magnificent," Arachnia whispered.

​Then came the third node, the nexus point right beneath Tessik's primary spinneret.

​Hania applied a micro-drop of sap. But instead of dissolving cleanly, the crystal deposit reacted violently to the concentrated mana. A dark spike of corrupted energy flared backward, surging up the channel like a blocked artery under pressure.

​Tessik’s body arched off the moss bed. A high-pitched screech echoed through the room.

​"Stop!" Arachnia shouted, stepping forward with her binding threads raised. "The core is rupturing! She's going into systemic collapse!"

​"Don't touch her!" Hania snapped, her eyes springing open and glowing with light.

​The monitor-equivalent mana stones flickered from steady blue to a warning red, then flatlined. The room plunged into silence. Tessik went completely limp, her legs curling inward as the dull gray patches on her carapace spread rapidly toward her head.

​Arachnia froze. "By the Great Weaver... she's gone. The pressure killed her."

​The orb let out a terrified beep. Hania! What happened?!

Hania didn't listen. ​In her past life, she'd spent hundreds of hours studying in hospitals, observing procedures, watching failing hearts on monitors, and learning the protocols for managing cardiac arrest. A spider's mana network wasn't a human heart, but the physics of fluid dynamics and pressure overload were universal.

​The node didn't just block the flow, Hania realized. It created a closed-loop pressure chamber. If I try to clear it head-on, it blows out the whole network. If I pull back, the rot consumes the core.

​There was only one option. A bypass.

​Ignoring Arachnia's gasp of horror, Hania drove deeper, fracturing her own mana signature into a dozen micro-shards.

​"Princess, what are you doing?!" Arachnia reached out to grab her. "You are desecrating her remains! Step away from the patient!"

​"Don't interrupt, just watch," Hania snarled, her voice carrying a chilling authority that made even the seasoned professor recoil.

​Hania bypassed the ruined node entirely. She took her silver-purple threads and wove an artificial shunt—a temporary, external mana bridge that routed the fluid around the blockage. Simultaneously, she flooded the surrounding healthy channels with a counter-infusion of cooling mana, quenching the thermal spike before it could reach the brain.

​For a few seconds, nothing happened. Tessik remained motionless.

​The orb dimmed to a shivering flicker. We... we killed her?

​"Not on my watch," Hania whispered.

She felt the pressure stabilize as mana began flowing through the newly cleared channels. Only then did she snap the artificial shunt shut, guiding a final, sweeping pulse of life-mana through the restored pathways.

​Crack.

​A pulse of blinding light erupted from Tessik’s abdomen. The necrotic patches on her carapace began to flake off like dead skin, replaced by a healthy sheen.

​Tessik’s legs uncurled. All eight eyes snapped open, blazing with vivid color.

​She took a massive, shuddering breath, drawing in mana like a drowning person breaking the surface of the water.

​"By the Ancestors..." Arachnia dropped her binding threads, stumbling backward until her legs hit the wall. "The core... the core is regenerating. The rot... it's gone."

​Tessik raised a foreleg, flexing joints she hadn’t been able to move in centuries. She looked at Hania, then down at her own gleaming carapace.

​"I... I can feel the weave," Tessik breathed. "The song is back."

​The news spread through the caverns of Silkhariana like wildfire through a dry silk-loft.

​By evening, the Grand Hall was packed with thousands of spiders hanging from the web-tapestries, clicking their mandibles and stomping their legs in a rhythmic ovation that shook the stalactites.

​Professor Arachnia stood beside Hania on the central dais, publicly bowing her head, an unprecedented gesture from the kingdom's chief healer.

​Lusha stood at the center of the stage, her magnificent spider-form draped in cascading layers of silver silk, her expression a mix of maternal pride and royal awe.

​"For centuries," Lusha's voice echoed magically through the cavern, amplified by the resonant acoustics of the silk palace, "we believed silk rot was a curse of the body, an inevitability of time and service! But today, our Princess, Hania Luxe Noctis, has proven that even rot can be outsmarted by brilliance, courage, and a new way of seeing the world!"

​The crowd erupted into cheers.

​"From this day forward," Lusha continued, raising a hand for silence, "Hania's Silver Bypass technique shall be codified into the sacred texts of the Academy. And in recognition of her achievement, the Medical Council hereby bestows upon her the title of Master Healer of the Silver Weave, and establishes a permanent Academy Chair in her name!"

​Arachnia stepped forward, handing Hania a heavy ledger stamped with the seal of the medical wing, the textbook for the very first class she would now be required to teach.

​Hania stared at the ledger, feeling a strange mixture of triumph and utter exhaustion. Then she thought with a dazed smile, I'm already tenure-track.

​The celebration continued.

​The floating web was illuminated by millions of bioluminescent purple and gold mushrooms. Spiders danced in intricate, synchronized patterns, weaving ribbons of glowing silk through the air. Tables were filled with honey cakes, roasted cave-crickets which Hania politely avoided, and sparkling nectar.

​Hania found herself swarmed by well-wishers. Young weavers begged for her autograph, older professors nodded in solemn respect, and Nettle practically tackled her with tearful hugs of gratitude.

​Even the orb was buzzing with high-energy gold pulses, spinning lazy loops around her head. We did it! We should write a textbook called 'How to Not Explode Patients'!

​"We'll workshop the title," Hania whispered back, dodging a particularly enthusiastic group of Northern Cave representatives offering her a crown made of spun starlight silk.

​As the night wore on, the celebration grew louder and wilder. Amidst the sea of dancing legs and flashing lights, Hania caught a glimpse of movement near the perimeter of the Grand Hall.

​It was Lusha.

​The Spider Queen had slipped away from the dais, her movements uncharacteristically hurried as she headed down the western corridor toward the private royal resting chambers.

​More importantly, Hania felt a jagged mana signature that didn't belong to any spider in the kingdom.

​Without a word to the surrounding crowd, Hania slipped behind a massive stalagmite, pulled her cloak tight around her shoulders, and melted into the shadows of the corridor, the orb trailing nervously behind her.

​Hania, where are we going? The party is still happening! There's cake!

​"Shh," Hania hissed. "Moments of high intrigue require silence, orb."

​They crept down the winding stone-and-silk passage until they reached the doors of the Queen's private receiving room. Muffled, angry voices spilled out from beneath the crack.

​"...you cannot simply ignore the Emperor's summons, Queen Lusha! The succession crisis is reaching a boiling point, and the Noctis bloodline—"

​Crash.

​The sound of shattering porcelain echoed through the hall.

​Hania didn't hesitate. She slammed her palm against the door, channeling a burst of mana to blow it wide open.

​"Nobody threatens my family!" Hania shouted, stepping into the room with her threads flaring dangerously around her hands.

​Inside, the scene was chaotic. Lusha stood in her full spider-form, her onyx-tipped legs pinning a young man against the far wall with tight coils of binding silk. The man was dressed in imperial court attire, his dark hair slightly disheveled.

​"Hania! Stop!" Lusha shouted, her eyes widening in alarm. "Release the spell—"

​"Not until he explains why he's shouting at you!" Hania raised her hands, weaving a defensive barrier between Lusha and the intruder.

​Lusha stared at Hania for a moment. Then her shoulders slumped, her spider legs retracting as she let out an exhausted sigh. She released the binding silk, stepped back, and rubbed her temples.

​"You know what?" Lusha muttered, waving a hand dismissively. "Just... do whatever you want. I'm too tired for this."

​Hania blinked, caught off guard by the Queen's sudden surrender. "Wait. What?"

​The young man straightened his tunic, brushing off non-existent dust, and glared at Hania.

​"So," the young man drawled, his voice dripping with condescension as he looked Hania up and down. "This is the infamous 'Princess' of the spiders. A fragile little human milk-drinker playing dress-up in a cave."

​Hania’s hands lowered.

​"Excuse me?" Hania said, her voice dropping an octave.

​"I said," the young man sneered, stepping forward into the light, "that it is pathetic. The great Spider Queen reduced to coddling a lost human child. You aren't a spider. You aren't even a true noble of this realm, you're a stray left behind by an absent Archmage and a mother, whoever she was, who abandoned you the second she laid eyes on you."

​The room went dead silent.

​OH, HE DID NOT JUST— The orb lost its temper.

​Lusha opened her mouth to intervene, but stopped. She looked at the young man, then looked at Hania. A faint smile touched the corner of the Spider Queen's mouth.

​Oh, Lusha realized. He has no idea what he just did.

​Hania stood completely still. Then, slowly, she stepped forward.

​"Let me get this straight," Hania said, her voice terrifyingly sweet. "You stand in the heart of my kingdom, under my Queen's roof, wearing clothes that look like they were tailored by a blind tailor with a vendetta against symmetry, and you think you have the moral high ground to comment on my lineage?"

​The young man's smirk faltered slightly. "What did you—"

​"First of all," Hania stepped closer, her eyes locking onto his, "your posture screams 'third-born cousin desperately trying to stay relevant while the actual heirs ignore him.' Second of all, your mana signature is so thin and jittery it looks like a caffeine addict trying to thread a needle during an earthquake. If you tried to cast a simple illumination spell right now, you'd probably singe your own eyebrows off."

​"You little—"

​"Third of all," Hania cut him off, her voice rising, "you talk about being a 'true noble' while sneaking around like a whipped dog delivering messages for an Emperor who is currently wetting his robes trying to figure out if my father is going to turn his entire palace into a glass paperweight. You are an errand boy in a shiny coat, standing in a kingdom of apex predators, insulting the person who just revolutionized regional medicine before breakfast."

​She stepped right up to his chest, forcing him to take a backward step.

​"So unless you want me to test my new Silver Bypass technique on your vocal cords, I suggest you pick up whatever dignity you dropped at the door, crawl back through whatever imperial sewer pipe you crawled out of, and tell your Emperor that if he ever sends another condescending lapdog into my home..."

​Hania smiled, a dead-ringer for Dravin's signature expression.

​"...I won't just lock you in a vault. I'll charge you rent."

​The young man stood frozen, his face drained of color, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. He looked at Lusha for help, but the Spider Queen was currently leaning against the wall, covering her mouth to hide an uncontrollable grin of delight.

​"Leave, please," Hania whispered.

​He didn't need to be told twice. He turned, tripped over his own cloak, scrambled to his feet, and bolted out the ruined doors, his footsteps echoing frantically down the hall.

​The room fell silent once more.

​The orb floated over to Hania, pulsing with awestruck golden light. Remind me never to make you mad ever again.

​Hania exhaled slowly, her shoulders dropping as the adrenaline faded. She brushed a strand of silver hair from her face, turned to Lusha, and offered an innocent smile.

​"So," Hania said brightly. "Who was the idiot, and why are we burning letters?"