Despite Adon’s fears, the bluebird didn’t somehow manage to reach into the thornbush and crush him between her claws. Nor did she even attempt to pluck her silk-encased egg free.

Based on her previous behavior, Adon was fairly certain this meant she must not have realized he actually had one of her eggs with him. He had disguised it fairly thoroughly beneath his webbing, and she hadn’t seen him hurl the egg into the bush as far as he knew. So perhaps that wasn’t too surprising.

One could only expect so much intelligence from animals anyway, right?

As the sun grew lower, the bluebird returned to the birdhouse for a short time and replaced her eggs in the nest. Then she flew in little circles in front of the bush for a bit longer.

A kind of warning? he guessed. She needn’t have bothered. He certainly had no intention of risking her wrath a third time. Two encounters was more than enough.

Adon found himself going over the battle with the bird as he waited for sundown. Trying to find the mistakes he’d made and how he could improve. If going after organisms above him on the evolutionary ladder was going to boost his powers as much as he suspected this had, he would need to become an expert fighter. In particular an expert at punching above his weight class.

And here I was, thinking this life was going to be all about me making friends. He sighed. Well, that’s alright. The Goddess moves in mysterious ways. If fighting was going to be a bigger part of this new life than he’d expected when he realized he was a butterfly larva, he would accept that. He would try to be the best he could of whatever he was. This incarnation might be the last chance he got.

Now, what should I have done differently? He started with how uninformed he’d been going into the battle.

If I had known she had that strange breath attack, I wouldn’t have risked this, he thought. It was the closest he’d witnessed to any animal he had encountered thus far having magical abilities. Maybe it really was magical. It felt a lot like a video game attack, not something a real animal should be able to do, and if she had chosen a better moment to use it, she might have killed him. For instance, if she had used it before he threw her egg out of the birdhouse as a distraction.

Yes, he had overcome it in the end, but things might easily have gone differently.

So how could I have countered it? His mind began to work through the possibilities. If I had some sort of projectile to throw into her mouth, that might do it…

As he war-gamed his past and future fights with larger and more threatening enemies in his head, Adon kept an eye on the bluebird, hoping she would go away. But he had no such luck for a long while.

The circles that the bird flew in grew slightly wider and she moved more slowly, as her body seemed to float up and down in elevation with the wind. But she didn’t leave.

After some time, the sun sunk down into the horizon.

The bird seemed to ignore the fact that the day was ending. She stood on the ground now, having given up wasting energy by flying, but she looked terribly vigilant. Watching. More than just looking in his general direction… Lying in wait.

As the light faded further, he couldn’t help but watch her in turn. It was simultaneously unnerving and reassuring. Unnerving by the sheer fact of her continued presence. But reassuring too, because he thought the fact that she wasn’t taking action might mean that she couldn’t.

Adon’s vision, even as the twilight turned to dusk, remained sharper than it had ever been before he upgraded his eyes. Perhaps also sharper than it had been right after he purchased the new eyes. That was strange. Were they getting better with experience?

He saw the bluebird still where she had been, restlessly pacing back and forth, watching the thornbush, and waiting for any sign of movement. She didn’t seem to have a precise bead on his location, but her sharp eyes played over areas of the bush near where he’d taken refuge.

The vengeful glint in her eyes had begun to fade, though, as fatigue slowly overtook her.

Finally, as the darkness threatened to become complete, she threw a last disdainful look in his general direction. Then the bluebird took off and flew back up to the birdhouse.

Thank the Goddess.

At last, Adon could relax a bit. He was finally alone. He let out a long sigh.

And he finally opened his Status menu. It was time to assess his rewards.

User: Unnamed Spiny Butterfly Larva

Age: 2 days

Sex: Male

Status

Health: 19/20(!)

Strength: 14(!)

Agility: 17(!)

Perception: 18(!)

Dexterity: 15(!)

Constitution: 21(!)

Intelligence: 95(!)

Will: 100(!)

Charisma: 11(!)

Skills: Identify, Impeccable Memory, Past Life Connection, Shed Skin, Spiritual Sight

Evolution Points: 220

Biomass: 25/45

Holy crap! My Stats all shot up. Even the ones that seemed sort of crazy high already!

At a cursory glance, it seemed that every number had gone up by at least ten points, including his total Health, but excluding the insanely high Evolution Points he’d accrued. Charisma is still my dump Stat, but eleven is a lot higher than one. He wanted to check himself out in a pool of water, to see if his physical appearance had improved with his increased charisma. But he’d never seen any body of water at all in the course of this whole life, so that would probably have to wait.

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He focused on one of the exclamation points, hoping that some explanation would appear. And he wasn’t disappointed.

(!): This symbol indicates that a noteworthy development occurred relating to the Status feature in question. In this specific case, these Stats were enhanced by the user. The user successfully consumed the recently living flesh of a species that was substantially above the user in the natural hierarchy. As a result, the impacted attributes were permanently increased.

So this is the reward I get for following this body’s instincts, he thought. I knew the eggs would be something good for me to eat, but I never imagined all this…

The incentives the System was giving him here would certainly drive his future hunting decisions. The overlap between his own goals for this life and what the System valued was that he needed to be ambitious. He would need to continue finding ways to pursue prey that was considered “substantially above” him.

That promised to be intensely dangerous. This would not be the last time he threw himself into a life or death situation like this.

On the bright side, he was just a little butterfly larva. What was really below him on the hierarchy?

That reminds me! His eyes floated back up to the top of his Status. Sure enough, the System’s way of referring to him had changed.

Instead of just being “Unnamed Butterfly Larva,” now I’m “Unnamed Spiny Butterfly Larva,” he thought. It was a tad bit underwhelming, if he was honest. Then again, maybe he would earn additional System brownie points and get a much more interesting species label by the time he evolved.

After he was done looking at the Status, he opened the Evolution Store. It was time to spend some of the bounty of Evolution Points he’d earned with his latest exploits.

Evolution Store

Adaptations

Evolutions

Skills

Oh my gosh, the Evolution options aren’t grayed out anymore! Doesn’t that mean I could evolve right now?

Adon stared open-mouthed for a moment as he pondered the implications.

Then he shook his head slightly. There was no point in thinking that much about it. It was time to give the options a look. He hoped there would be something good for him, but he didn’t expect much. He was prepared to wait a lot longer than he had, if it would get him better options. Frankly, some of the Adaptations and Skills might be more valuable to him for the moment than just making an immediate jump into adult butterfly form.

There were only two options available, so Adon decided to read the descriptions for both.

Standard Chrysalis Evolution: Activates the mechanisms that will cause your body to proceed through standard caterpillar evolution and become a butterfly after you create your chrysalis.

A boring and not particularly informative description, Adon thought. Not your best work, System. Somehow, though, it cost 200 Evolution Points.

He looked down at the second option, hoping it would offer something better. But the description for Specialized Chrysalis Evolution did not populate. Instead, a message that he had forgotten existed appeared.

Insufficient Evolution Points saved.

Right. That’s a thing that happens sometimes. Forgot for a moment there are things I can’t afford. The glow of imagined wealth dissipated in an instant. When you’re poor, they don’t even let you window shop. He imagined someone following him around a store asking if they could help him.

Adon had been poor in more than one past life. In one of those incarnations, an instance of the store employee following him and asking if he needed help had left such a strong impression that he still remembered it. The conversation with the store clerk had become confrontational, then almost turned to fisticuffs, before that version of Adon meekly backed down and left.

He cringed at the memory even now. I kind of wish I just punched him in the jaw, he thought. Maybe it’s not the enlightened thing to think. It might not represent a step forward for my soul. But that guy just made me feel so small. So unimportant. Like he thought I must be lost.

He shook his head again. When he wasn’t moving toward some goal, the memories could easily cloud his mind. Even though his recollections of his past lives were far from complete, there were so many memorable instances that he could easily have spent hours in dark reminiscence. Thankfully, his survival was so tenuous in this world that he had never had the time to indulge that unhealthy impulse.

Remember where you are, he told himself. Remember what you just did, despite what you are. You're absolutely not a loser. You’re brave now. Maybe even a little bit crazy. You’re ready to steal fire from the gods! A pause. Uh, no offense, Goddess, if you can hear this.

Focusing back in on the present situation, Adon made an instant decision. He wasn’t going to buy the Standard Chrysalis Evolution. He would save up until he could at least read the description for the Specialized Chrysalis Evolution. Maybe it wouldn’t be anything important. Sometimes products were priced radically differently with no meaningful differences.

But then again, sometimes buying the “premium” product was the only worthwhile option.

For now, let’s focus on being the best caterpillar we can be, he thought. He returned to the main Evolution Store menu. It was time to make himself a better predator. Again.

The first thing he purchased was Telepathy I, though. He had put that off enough. It wouldn’t help him fight, but that wasn’t the only goal he had for this life. I wanted to be a social butterfly, he thought, even as the idea sent butterflies fluttering in his stomach.

Even if the idea of trying to socialize with any of the life forms he’d met thus far scared him, it was time to make the attempt.

He resolved to save 50 Evolution Points through any subsequent purchase decisions, just in case he needed to buy the next tier up on the telepathy Adaptation tree. Even with 25 Evolution Points spent on Telepathy I, and another 50 earmarked for Telepathy II, he still had 145 he could freely use.

It would have seemed a disproportionate bounty of riches if he hadn’t been forced to pick a fight with a bluebird to get it. A bird that might, as far as he knew, find him again one day.

I really need to keep my distance from any potential predators the size of that bird, and ideally avoid any further sneak attacks, he thought. Even though he was thinking about taking on more birds and other ambitious enemies, the fact was that the little Leafy Bush Cricket had almost taken him out earlier today. All it took was an ambush, which Adon thought probably hadn’t even involved planning on the cricket’s part.

He looked through Adaptations for a while, mulling over his options.

There were Silk Spinner III, Venom Spines III, Piercing Mandibles II, and Hardened Exoskeleton II, upgrades to existing Adaptations that had already proven so useful. There were also all the options that had drawn his eye before that he hadn’t purchased: Venom Fangs I, Bladed Mandibles I, Crushing Mandibles I, Magic Perception I, Venom Spores I, Sleep Spores I, and Camouflage I.

And there were so many options that he could afford now that had seemed out of reach before. Some of them put the choices he’d previously been contemplating to shame.

Among the Adaptations, he now considered Bladed Limbs I, which would give him sickle-like limbs along the lines of what the Ladybug Larva had somehow possessed (20 Evolution Points); Poison Resistance I, which had been affordable before but had not seemed worthwhile given that he planned to target bird’s eggs (10 Evolution Points); Spine Thicket, which would cause him to grow more spines, covering every part of his body except his head and his silk spinner (12 Evolution Points); Natatorial Limbs I, which would modify his middle and back legs for swimming (20 Evolution Points); Fossorial Limbs I, which would modify his forelimbs for digging (20 Evolution Points); Saltatorial Limbs I, which would modify his back limbs for jumping (30 Evolution Points); and Acid Fangs I, which would modify his mandibles to inject acid in the same way that Venom Fangs I would modify them to inject Venom (20 Evolution Points).

There were a bevy of attractive options to strengthen his body and increase his chances of survival.

But the most interesting Adaptation, or at least the one that gave him the strongest positive feeling as he thought about purchasing it, was Color Change I.