Adon’s half-conscious mind drifted to another, different scene.

This one didn’t feel like a memory so much as a waking dream, which was a bit confusing. Unlike the last scene, he could see a figure in this one. Not with his normal vision, which was even worse while Adon was quasi-sleeping than when he was awake. With his Spiritual Sight. The figure glowed with a golden light that easily put the spider’s tiny flicker of aura to shame. To Adon’s eyes, it felt like looking at an angel.

She spoke some words, but even though she was speaking Claustrian, she was talking in a low voice. He only understood scraps.

“—poor thing…”

“My little friend…”

But Adon found the figure speaking so captivating that he didn’t mind missing so much of what she was saying. He didn’t want to wake up, and he didn’t really care what the figure was doing. Just keep talking, he thought. You’re so beautiful… He dimly wondered if this was a real dream. An invention of his imagination and isolation.

Then the figure adjusted the posture of her body, and her voice grew a bit louder. It seemed she was talking directly to him now.

“Sorry, stranger,” she said. “This is just the circle of life. If death comes for you, you should not expect help. No one can save you. Even all the King’s horses and all the King’s men.”

Weird to start randomly quoting nursery rhymes, but it’s nice that she’s talking to me, Adon thought.

The figure’s body language made it seem as if she was about to leave.

Oh, please stay, Adon thought. He felt suddenly terribly lonely. He would have given anything in that moment to have taken Telepath I instead of the more immediately practical Adaptations he had actually acquired. To talk to her, even if he wouldn’t know what to say.

But it was too late now.

Still, the figure’s last words were promising. They strongly suggested that even if she was going, she would eventually come again.

“Live through this, little butterfly, and maybe I can bring you a treat,” she said. Then the figure turned and moved away.

Part of Adon’s mind wished he could cry. She was leaving. Instead of producing tears, his half-asleep eyes followed her as she walked a distance away. From her size and shape, he had already recognized that she was probably humanoid, but seeing her glow from such a great distance confirmed it if there had been any doubt. She was so much larger than him.

Say, what was that bit about living through this? Living through what?

Then a sudden sensation ripped his attention away.

Searing pain tore through Adon’s body. It shattered his dreamlike state in an instant. His eyes instantly focused. His head swiveled back, and he saw—

No, that’s impossible! Somehow the Ladybug Larva had climbed up to the top of the plant again, and it was positioned above him. Its mandibles snapped open and shut again, clamping down on Adon’s side. Eating him. Or trying to.

The desperate pain worsened as the monster greedily bit into his exoskeleton.

Calm down! Adon ordered himself. You have to stay calm. It’s just a surface wound. That last might have been hope talking rather than reason. The situation was beyond scary. He’d awakened to find himself in a monster’s jaws.

He forced his body to move. He shoved the Ladybug Larva’s head back with all six of his opposable limbs. The fierce effort barely moved the creature. It wasn’t chewing further now, just holding on with locked mandibles. Its beady little eyes stared up at Adon’s head from where it held his side.

Adon almost felt as if he had Telepathy after all, because he could practically hear the monster’s thoughts: Try all you like, but I’ll never let you go.

Fine then, don’t let go! Adon activated Shed Skin, and he threw himself against the Ladybug Larva’s body at the same time, pointing as many of his Venom Spines at the monster as he could. He felt rather than saw them make contact. Some of the spines splintered on contact with the rugged armor. But more than half of the venomous tips found vulnerable places like the joints, or simply penetrated the thick exoskeletal hide.

The Ladybug Larva began writhing and flailing with what Adon hoped was intense pain. It finally released its death grip on Adon with its mandibles, but it almost immediately slashed at him with one of its long, sickle-like claws.

The claws didn’t seem to have quite the reach he remembered. Something off about the way the legs bent, but he didn’t have time to analyze what was wrong with it. The blades, despite being slightly less effective, sliced through the layer of skin that Adon was already shedding. A big chunk of it came loose and stuck onto the monster’s front claws.

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Finally free from the Ladybug Larva’s hold, Adon stumbled backward onto a flimsy leaf.

That’s right, he realized. I was sleeping on top of that area connecting these leaves to the stem. Because the leaves can’t support my weight anymore. If there’s nothing under me but a leaf now, then—

The leaf bent backward, and Adon found himself tumbling, head over heels, through the open air.

Goddess damn it! No, not again.

Adon tried to stabilize his fall by wiggling his body toward the stem, but all that managed to do was reduce the amount of tumbling. He fired a shot from his Silk Spinner, trying to grab onto the plant, but he accidentally fired a short burst that didn’t remain connected to his body.

The second shot gave him purchase on the plant. He stopped falling a few inches from the ground, the silk pulling uncomfortably at his nether regions.

Oh my Goddess, what a way to wake up… Under a thin veneer of shocked relief, Adon found himself very angry at the way he’d awakened. I just wanted to sleep. Damn it. I should have fought this thing in the first place. Trying to remove it from the plant clearly wasn’t enough. Adon resolved to correct his mistake.

He tried to pull himself up the silk thread, but he found that his muscles were simply too weak to pull his weight along such a thin cable. Just like gym class all over again…

He felt embarrassed but not deterred. If anything, he was angrier.

Adon began swinging his body back and forth on the thread, until after a few seconds he struck the stem and bounced off of it. The next time he collided with the surface, he managed to hang on. Then he fully attached himself to the stem and cut the silk thread.

With his outer layer of skin shed, Adon was basically uninjured. He knew he was probably still outmatched, but he decided that wasn’t going to be the deciding factor for him today. On day two of his new life, he was going to punch above his weight class.

With no particular plan, but many violent ideas running through his mind, Adon charged back up the stem. His frenetic energy carried him quickly up the side of the plant until the shape of the Ladybug Larva loomed over him like a six-armed alligator statue.

Adon managed to stop himself before he accidentally closed into melee range with the big creature. The monster started moving toward him, narrowing that gap, but Adon pointed his Silk Spinner at its head and fired a short burst. The web struck it right in the face. The creature stopped in its tracks and began clawing ineffectually at its own head, trying to remove the web that was stuck in its head.

The claws were definitely not the deadly precision instruments they had once been, some part of Adon’s mind noted. The legs were absolutely bent. Apparently permanently. Perhaps they’d been damaged when Adon threw the Ladybug Larva toward the ground earlier. But his mind focused mainly on what the monster was trying to do with his claws. Cutting at its own stiff face. Trying to remove the stuck-on silk.

I covered its eyes, Adon realized. Yes, I can win this!

He closed the distance before his enemy could make progress with the thread. Adon jabbed his mandibles at the closer of those two front claws, and he bit down on the joint that connected the limb to the body.

There was a moment of struggle, of fear and anxiety, as he wondered if he was strong enough to chop through the limb. It definitely resisted being cut far more effectively than the ants he’d fought earlier.

Maybe I should have upgraded these old mandibles after all, he thought grimly. Then they tore through. He stumbled backward slightly, the limb clenched in between his mandibles like an ugly trophy of war.

Adon swallowed the limb down without bothering to taste it and closed the distance again.

As he stepped in to try and rip the other primary claw away, a foul smell reached his antennae. A sour, bitter taste like a stronger version of what the ants had emitted earlier.

Adon flinched for a second. A reflex response, almost uncontrollable. But in the moment that he stepped back, he saw the Ladybug Larva’s shape changing. He was confused for a moment.

Then he recognized what was happening. He’d just done it himself, after all.

The monster was shedding its skin. Adon noticed that the area he’d covered with web, the skin above the eyes and head, was coming off as well. So the Ladybug Larva would be able to see him again.

He stepped back and prepared to fire his Silk Spinner again, watching the monster carefully as he aimed his lower body and prepared to fire a quick burst of silk.

The Ladybug Larva began stepping out of its skin. The back of the body came first.

Thank you, Goddess! Some of the damage was clearly more than skin deep. Several of the Venom Spines were still stuck inside of the Ladybug Larva, although others came away with the skin. And the severed limb hadn’t grown back.

The most important change that Adon noticed was the one he’d been expecting. The Ladybug Larva had removed the silk covering its eyes. Adon wondered if that was the reason why the monster had chosen this moment to shed its skin. As he watched the creature, he’d noticed there was still a bit of silk stuck to it from when he threw it from the plant. Maybe the Ladybug Larva couldn’t easily remove that material.

Adon tried to shoot another burst of web as the Ladybug Larva’s head emerged from the old skin, but the creature was smarter than he’d given it credit for. It threw the old skin into the path of Adon’s silk burst. Then the crumpled layer of skin was falling towards him, obscuring his vision.

Adon prepared to fire another burst once the skin fell past him, but charging in right behind it was the Ladybug Larva.

It used the skin for cover, he realized. This thing definitely knows how to fight. Shit, I just got lucky before.

Cold fear lanced through his guts as the monster closed the distance with him.

He’s too close! The angle’s all wrong for my silk. I’d miss or get his back legs. What do I do?

The Ladybug Larva wasn’t slowing down. Adon realized it intended to tackle him with its heavy, tank-like body. Close combat had favored the creature before. It was when it let Adon get range that it suffered the debilitating webbing to the face.

At the last moment before it made contact, Adon managed almost reflexively to point all the Venom Spines on his front at the larva.

Then the Ladybug Larva’s body struck him, and they were tumbling through the air together, spinning and struggling for position.

Locked in the beginning of their final duel to the death.