Goldie gestured with her forelimbs to mimic a mouth opening and closing. She obviously wanted to know what had happened. She could tell that something important had taken place.
Adon activated Telepathy for a split second, just to send a quick message.
Used all my Mana, can’t talk!
Then he deactivated Telepathy and returned to silence. A quick check of his Status revealed he had just one point of Mana left.
Adon wanted to delve back into the magical void and come out with something more powerful and aggressive than healing magic. But he knew he needed to recharge his Mana, or he would wind up paralyzed with a murderous migraine like the last time he allowed himself to completely run out.
His head was already killing him, but the last few days of repeated Adaptation and serious injuries had slowly adjusted his tolerance level for pain. He could compartmentalize and continue to function at a high level.
On the other hand, Adon’s body felt better than it had in living memory. That healing magic was the real deal. All of the pain from the spider bites was gone.
He walked up the side of the web to where the remnants of the food Goldie had brought for him remained entangled. There was very little left. Just scraps of scraps. Skins of apples and cucumbers, a little hunk of cob from an ear of corn.
Goldie walked to where Adon was beginning to eat his food, and she engaged him in a sign language conversation.
Forelimbs raised with the undersides of her feet facing up—the equivalent of standing with her palms showing. Strong body language for: So? How did it go?!
Adon shoved in a bit of apple skin, then gestured at his chest. Where there had still been some obvious visual signs of injury, his skin was pristine. He raised both his forelimbs in a ‘V for victory’ stance, and Goldie tapped his right forelimb in the arthropod equivalent of a high five.
Goldie sure is articulate with just body language, Adon thought. I guess it’s not surprising since she spent almost her whole life here unable to talk to anyone verbally. As for him, he really missed being able to use Telepathy. He checked his Status again to try to estimate how long it would take for his Mana to refill.
It hadn’t been very long, so he still had very little. 4 points of Mana now, slightly over thirty seconds after he had dropped to 1 from using magic and Telepathy. By his reckoning of time, it looked like he was regaining about 5 Mana per minute.
Hopefully faster once I’m on a full stomach, he thought. Although he had not been especially hungry before using magic, his Biomass was a lot lower now than it had been too. There was probably some correlation between the magic he’d been using and burning through some of that.
I already knew I was going to go hunting again soon. I don’t even use Mana for that most of the time, so this should be fine. He looked at Goldie. I have to tell her I’m going. He felt a bit bad about it. I’m going to go put myself in danger again. You stay here!
He started to pantomime himself walking away, then throwing punches, and she started twitching with agitation. She used her forelimbs to point at him, then at the web.
He didn’t need Telepathy to know what she wanted to say.
Damn it, Adon, you stay right here! You only just recovered from being shot full of venom. You’re in a spider web. We have a steady supply of food coming.
Adon pantomimed jaws opening and closing with his front arms and tried to emulate the sound of a stomach growling with his limited vocal capabilities. It sounded goofy, but on the bright side, Goldie clearly understood, and she looked like she was laughing inside.
The spider got very close to Adon and began looking him over for any signs of remaining injuries. He held still for this inspection, confident that she wouldn’t find anything, and finally, she let him go and stepped back.
Then she started going through the motions of sign language again.
She used her forelimbs to point at him, then at the web, again.
Adon started to shake his head. No, I need to leave—but then Goldie waved her left arm from side to side frantically, indicating, No, no, you misunderstand me.
She tried again. She used her forelimbs to point at him, then away from the web, and finally back to the web.
Well, of course I’ll come back, he thought. Are you really worried about that? We had a pretty long chat recently where I was insisting that I wanted to feed you more advanced animals, so you could Evolve again.
Then Goldie made a gesture that surprised him. She moved her front limbs to make a round shape, and she pulled her front limbs in front of her body. It looked just like she was cradling a baby.
She pantomimed him leaving and coming back again, then repeated the gesture that looked like holding a newborn baby.
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Adon checked his Mana. It was still only down at 22 points, but he couldn’t resist anymore. He activated Telepathy.
You’re about to lay eggs?! he sent in an almost exasperated tone.
Yes, she thought back. Waited until you recovered. Will wait again until you return from hunt. Must happen soon.
Okay, I’ll be back soon, Adon transmitted. The pounding in his head was starting to get really painful again. This is great news. Talk to you later!
He switched Telepathy back off. He was down to 7 Mana now, but that felt like a very rewarding use of his limited resources. He had felt a certain amount of temptation to let his Mana recharge before he left, just in case he wanted to be able to use his Mana energy ball against any large predators. Now it was obvious that time was of the essence.
Maybe I should just go back to the basket Goldie mentioned the princess left and get some food there instead of thinking about taking down big predators right now.
But no. That wouldn’t quite work. He needed food for Goldie, too. He remembered her telling him that she would be weakened after she laid her eggs. That was why she was so worried about the Kleptomaniac Dewdrop Spiders living in her web. So, naturally, she would be unable to hunt and unable to leave her web for a while, and she would need to rely on him and Red to defend her while she recovered.
That meant she would also need food. Adon didn’t want to leave her alone too often in her recovery. So he should stockpile food now.
Okay, I’ll go to the basket and get a quick recharge there, and then I’ll take down some kind of big predator. Maybe even a bird! He was joking to himself, but there was a part of him that thought he could really do it. An energy ball that could tear through plant stems like a hot knife through butter could probably pierce a bird’s breast, too, couldn’t it?
First the food that’s just sitting there waiting, though. Hopefully none of the gardeners or the other bugs in the garden would have cleared it away already.
Adon walked through the familiar territory of the garden, moving briskly with his fully recovered body. Heading straight for the place where he had first hatched.
Minutes passed uneventfully as he covered ground quickly and easily without straining himself. Adon did not bother trying to hide his movements. Let anything that wanted to taste some venom come and get him.
Perhaps sensing his complete lack of fear, whatever predators might have been active in the area chose not to show themselves.
He knew when he’d made it close to the basket, because there was a lot of activity there. Long lines of insects moving in and out of the basket. Ants. Specifically his old enemies, the Vendetta Ants.
Goddess damn it. Those damn thieving ants again!
Adon felt a righteous fury swell in his chest. Why couldn’t these ants leave other people’s food alone? He had used their greed for any food supply that wasn’t nailed down to his advantage before, but this was a big nuisance.
Adon looked off into the distance, and he could make out the shape of the anthill the Vendetta Ants were moving to and from with scraps of his food.
He checked his Mana pool. He had 120 points of Mana now. Charged enough… It was just enough power to tempt him. Enough that he could use that Mana energy ball he had launched at the shrubbery before. There was a small part of him that wanted to hurl one of those things right into the middle of the anthill.
Adon tamped that impulse down. The attack wouldn’t kill all the ants, after all. It would just destroy everything directly in its path until it came to rest. The energy might even collapse the whole anthill and kill most of the colony. But so what?
That would be momentarily satisfying, but how would it help Adon or, just as importantly, Goldie? There would undoubtedly be survivors, and they would hold a grudge, just like on the previous occasions he had encountered them. They might even be able to trace his path all the way back to Goldie.
Adon was larger than he’d ever been. He probably left more of a smell trail than he would have as a newborn baby caterpillar. He might get himself and Goldie killed—assuming he even made it back to the web. The energy ball wasn’t a very useful trick for facing a large number of small enemies, and Adon didn’t have enough Mana to use it more than once or twice in total anyway.
Ironically, at the moment, the ant colony might be a more difficult opponent for him than a random bird. If the whole horde of them went after him—thousands this time, rather than the hundred or so he had faced before—they could whittle down his stamina just as well as if he was a newborn again.
Alright, forget about killing them all, he thought. Maybe I could dive into the basket and just snag some of the food. How would they take that? Would the ants be possessive of the food that they had stolen? Would they begrudge him whatever scraps he could carry off? He wouldn’t put it past them.
Vendetta Ants seemed like specialists in the emotions of envy and bitterness.
It’s not worth the risk, he thought, frustrated. I fucking hate these things! Fine, shit, I’ll just eat some other bits of plant life to get the energy to go hunting.
He turned his head and began scanning the environment for a plant that might be particularly nutritious.
Then a flash of blue light appeared in his peripheral vision, and Adon’s head snapped forward again. That light came from near the ants…
Adon saw something stranger than anything he had witnessed in this short life. It was fantastical, magical, and slightly horrifying.
Every single ant in view was on fire. The flames that licked at their bodies were not ordinary orange-red flames, either. They were blue.
Normally that means they must be much hotter than normal, right? Adon thought.
In this case, he could not be completely certain if the blue fire meant heat or simply that the flames were magical. They certainly were magical, of course.
The caster stood across from him and in front of the ants, watching them burn and nodding to herself. Her hands were empty of any material that one might use to start a fire. A slight glow was gently fading from around them, though.
“The gardeners should have exterminated these things weeks ago,” Princess Rosslyn said, looking down at Adon with a small smile. “Before they grew their colony to this size. Vendetta Ants are notoriously dangerous and stupid. In addition to stealing food that was originally meant for caterpillars, they are very prickly. They attack anything that makes them angry. Even humans. They have very little sense of self-preservation. But if you lack access to magic, a large number of them could be deadly. How about you, Adon? Do you have magic?”
As she spoke, Adon kept looking back and forth between her and the dying ants. Some of the burning creatures had managed to make it into the anthill, and Adon saw the first wisps of smoke rising from within it.