Adon walked slowly and calmly through terrain he had fled through at a run before.

It was strange looking at the world through his repeatedly enhanced eyes. There was a kaleidoscopic whirl of colors everywhere, as his eyes took in more information and a wider variety of colors than even his human eyes had experienced in the past. There were shades that he found he didn’t even have a name for.

But the world itself was still recognizable, as long as he moved through it slowly—though, by comparison with his present self, he had been virtually blind the last time he came through here.

The memories were coming quickly now. Crisp and clear, with a quality that memories normally lacked. Adon guessed that his Impeccable Memory, coupled with the fact that he was in fight or flight mode last time he ran this way, had made these recollections especially vivid. Memories of himself ducking around corners, trying to evade, dodge, counter attack—and the ants outmaneuvering him and choking off his escape routes. Over and over, they had seemed to know where he was going, as if they had psychic powers.

Now that he had compound eyes of his own, he doubted that he had ever for a moment been outside the view of the Vendetta Ants once they first spotted them. The sheer range and quality of their vision had to put his old eyesight to shame. They had cut him off over and over, because they could see where he was going and split into groups that could confront him along every possible path.

At least they weren’t actually smarter than me, he thought. They were just watching carefully and pursuing relentlessly. At the time, it had felt as if the ants were almost omniscient. Now he suspected he could defeat almost any number of those same creatures.

That might be an exaggeration if hundreds or thousands of Vendetta Ants came at him, but only because his resources were still limited. He could only shed his skin a few times before he would run out of Biomass. His silk consumed the same limited Biomass resource as Shed Skin. He only had so many Venom Spines even with Spine Thicket, and they took time to regenerate—which also consumed Biomass, albeit that it was slower and less noticeable. And his latest and probably greatest weapon, Mana Manipulation, relied on another resource that he had only in extremely limited amounts.

His recent experiments had taken him down from 132/215 Mana to 84/215 Mana. In short, he used up Mana extraordinarily quickly when he was doing even very basic exercises. Based on his observations during this walk, he seemed to be regaining what he estimated at a single point of Mana per minute. He was already mostly full up again, but the limitations on this resource would be a big handicap at some point in the future. He could only assume that regeneration during combat in which he was actively using Mana would be noticeably slower, perhaps nonexistent.

Then I’d just be fighting with my mandibles and feet—and that’s no fight at all. In physical terms, I’m not nearly different enough from the caterpillar they fought on my first day here.

Magic would be an important part of his life, but it couldn’t solve all of his survival problems. Maybe an approach more like Goldie’s was exactly what he needed.

As he approached the place where he remembered his fight with the ants ending, Adon sucked in several long, deep breaths. He could see the shimmer in the distance now. He knew exactly where Goldie was.

And all the little reservations that he had about seeing her again had leaped to the forefront of his mind.

What if she doesn’t remember me? What if she doesn’t like me? What if she can’t talk back and forth with me? Just because she seemed vaguely intelligent to him and had a mysterious glow around her didn’t mean she had access to verbal communication, or that she could even think in words. And, perhaps most pressingly, What if she tries to eat me?

Goldie trying to eat him would almost be a relief in comparison to the spider not liking him. Somehow, he thought she would be friendly. It might be something to do with her not having tried to eat him last time they met—unlike literally every other predator he’d met in his short life.

Well, if she doesn’t like me, maybe I can go make friends with the Exploding Carpenter Ants, he thought. Not sure how much the self-destructing ants could teach me about survival by comparison, but it beats being alone…

Adon realized he was depressing himself with this line of thought. And stalling. Not doing anything productive.

He resolved to just go in. Rip off the bandaid. The worst that could happen was her trying to eat him. After all, it wasn’t as if there were that many other animals out here that she could talk to. What was it that Princess had thought at him earlier? Telepathy was apparently quite rare? So who would Goldie even compare him to, to decide she didn’t like him? She had been alive in this place longer than Adon had, he was certain. Surely, she would be a lonely soul just like he was.

With those heartening thoughts, he began to close the distance between himself and the distant shimmer of the spider’s web.

As he approached, he again observed the shimmering majesty of the silken construction. It was not quite symmetric, but was somehow almost circular nevertheless. An orb shape? he thought. She is a Golden Silk Orb-Weaver, after all. It was affixed to a large shrub, he saw, rather than a tree. The area seemed to be lined with large shrubs, and Adon realized that beyond the shrubs there was a massive wall he had never noticed before. This must be the outer limit of the garden.

I definitely get why she’s called a “Golden Silk” Orb-Weaver now. The web glowed golden in the sunlight. Not like that Princess he’d seen had glowed, and not like the spider herself faintly glowed. This was clearly not the ethereal effect of his Spiritual Sight. It was a natural result of some pigment the spider had woven into her web.

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It was just as remarkable, just as beautiful, as it had been the first time Adon laid eyes on it.

Strong, too, he thought, considering that it’s still standing after I rained ants down on it. He felt a little bad about that now. Well, hopefully she wasn’t too freaked that I dropped dozens of ants on her. Maybe she—What the hell is that sound?

Adon heard an annoying noise that reminded him of the whine of an electric drill. He stopped and looked up. In the web that now loomed two feet away from him, he saw a small dark shape wriggling, entrapping itself further in the sticky silk. Buzzing frantically as it vibrated its wings, trying to pull itself free. The sight and sound made him slightly uncomfortable.

It’s not as if I’m any different, he reminded himself. If anything, I’m objectively creepier than Goldie. She has a web that other bugs fly or walk into. Or jump into, if you’re a particularly stupid ant. It’s a passive hunting method. She just waits for food to present itself. She doesn’t even really have to fight. I’m an ambush predator. I attack from a hidden position while lying in wait, then bite the enemy to death. That was how he’d killed most of the ants he’d eaten in his first day of life, up until they started chasing him.

Then again, I guess if I count most of the ants, the Ladybug Larva, the Leafy Bush Cricket, the bluebird, the bat, and everything I’ve eaten besides those first few ants, I’m more of a retaliatory self-defense predator. If that’s a thing.

The point was, what he did wasn’t vastly dissimilar from what Goldie did. So he shouldn’t be creeped out by the sight of a fly wriggling in her web.

He forced himself to keep walking forward toward the lower part of the web, where there was a gap that he knew from experience he could slip through to get underneath. As he got closer, he noticed a slight smell of rot coming from somewhere. It wasn’t enough to bother him, though. But there were also some small creatures positioned at the corners of the web. Those made him nervous. They appeared to be spiders, but much smaller than Goldie.

Could they be her children? But they didn’t look like what he remembered her looking like. Their bodies were strangely shaped, with abdomens that looked a little bit like silver bells.

Identify! He wasn’t going under the web unless he knew what those creatures were. Unlike Goldie, he could imagine them being just as nimble on the ground as they probably were on the web. They were small, which reminded him of the dragonfly and the bat as compared with the larger, slower moving bird.

Kleptomaniac Dewdrop Spider (Female)

That name’s creepy, he thought. So, not her kids, then, I guess. Kleptomaniac. So they’re thieves? I wonder if Goldie knows about them. If she does, is she okay with it? She was kind enough to let me go before. Maybe she’s just very generous…

In any case, he resolved to mention it when he spoke to her.

The Kleptomaniac Dewdrop Spiders watching him, the fly violently making its drill-bit buzzing sound overhead, Adon walked nervously to the empty space between the bottom of the web and the ground. It was smaller than he remembered, but he squeezed through alright and didn’t get stuck to the web.

And he walked under the shadows of the many hundreds of silken threads, still marveling at their beauty. I’m grateful that my eyesight is so good. There are so many marvels in this world. There probably had been in his last world, too, he knew. But he hadn’t been in the head space to see them.

As he stared at the web, trying to ignore the fly that was buzzing almost directly above him now, he sensed movement.

He began turning his head to look, but he needn’t have bothered. She was still fast. A figure eight shape with an elongated bottom and incredibly long legs rushed into his line of sight like her web was on fire. Striding briskly across the web. Her movement conveyed the body language of ownership in Adon’s mind. Like a shop owner racing out to greet a newly arrived customer.

Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly, came unbidden into his mind.

Goldie was the same spider he remembered, but now Adon could appreciate her in a way he hadn’t before. In addition to the same thin yellow glow he’d noticed around her body back when he was nearly blind, he could see her actual physical coloration. Her legs had red, yellow, and black bands, like a coral snake. There were little tufts of what looked like fur at her leg joints. Her body was a dark reddish brown with small yellow speckles.

You’re a really pretty spider, Goldie! he thought admiringly. Maybe I wouldn’t have been scared of spiders in my last life if they all looked like you. No, who was he kidding? If you were a human, spiders were creepy unless you were a total weirdo!

No offense, Goldie.

Alright. Now was the moment. The spider, his prospective friend, was up there meeting her new, uh, meal. And while she was doing that, he had his chance to speak to her.

Before she could walk away.

As Adon thought about this, Goldie was biting the fly and injecting her venom. After a few seconds, at last the cursed buzzing noise stopped forever.

Right. Now would be good.

Adon stood on the ground below Goldie, paralyzed. She didn’t seem to have noticed him, and that was all to the good. Because he wasn’t sure if he was ready to do this.

Come on, Adon, he told himself. Talk to her.

He felt an unaccountable nervousness. All the courage from just after he’d tried to speak to the Princess seemed to have vanished.

Make yourself do it anyway! he yelled inside his own mind. Come on!

The spider was wrapping up the fly with her silk now.

Any moment now, she would turn and carry her prize off into another part of the web that was not as close to the ground. Wherever dead bug storage was.

Goldie plucked the fly from her web and turned to move back up the web.

Hello there! Adon suddenly called out, activating his Telepathy with the thought.