Days passed, and the trio remained stationary in and around the web.
Adon was unwilling to leave for any reason while Goldie and her eggs remained vulnerable.
They continued to eat well, surviving easily on the crow Adon had killed.
Goldie’s body slowly recovered and filled in, moving closer and closer to its proper shape.
She never missed an opportunity to praise Adon for his amazing hunting performance. Many female spiders die caring for their eggs. Because they cannot hunt and watch their young at the same time. Thanks to you…
Her praise came in variants of the same basic script almost every time. But Adon never tired of hearing it. In part because Goldie was so genuine every time. In part because it made his failures in another area somewhat more palatable.
Each day, Adon made time to work on his language instruction project with Red.
On the first day, Adon used Telepathy to call Red over to him. He had figured out the best way to communicate with Red at his current Intelligence level was with images and videos, so he sent an imagined scene of Red walking across the web to stand near him.
And it was a mark of Red’s increased trust in Adon that the small spider hesitated only a moment before he walked over to Adon, imitating the scene.
From there, Adon gently placed a limb on each side of Red’s head, reached back into himself, found where his power was, and began slowly pushing Mana into Red’s brain. The spider was slightly startled at first but didn’t break the contact.
Wow. We really have built a trusting relationship, haven’t we? Adon thought. I guess Goldie knew what she was talking about when she said that she and Red had a sort of understanding. He’s not very smart, but maybe wise is the word… If some strange insect did this to Red, I have to think he’d run away. I know I would. I can’t wait until we can actually sort of talk…
Adon continued carefully moving steadily more and more Mana through his forelimbs and into Red’s brain. He didn’t want to potentially overwhelm the spider. Having never done this to anyone before, he didn’t know whether accidentally harming Red was a possibility.
Adon hoped there would be some sign if he was causing damage to his friend. If so, he would pull back from the attempt to enhance Red’s brain and immediately switch to healing magic.
I’m taking a terrible risk, if this power is more dangerous than I realize. The only evidence I have that mental magic isn’t dangerous is that it didn’t cause me any harm when I used it on myself. But Red and I aren’t the same at all…
Still, Adon continued.
Stop doubting yourself. I have to remember that if I don’t manage to communicate with Red, and we don’t push him to buy another Evolution, he’ll die of natural causes soon. That was what Goldie said. I doubt he even knows the end is coming for him. Most animals aren’t aware of their mortality. This is worth the risk.
The flow of Mana reached a stable place where Adon was fairly certain Red was using as much Mana as Adon could give him. It should be driving up Red’s Intelligence, enhancing his mental performance the way Adon had supercharged his own brain the first time he used mental magic.
And Red showed an appropriate reaction. His head shifted from side to side slightly, never pulling away from Adon’s forelimbs but seemingly curious about his surroundings. As if he was seeing them in a whole new way all of a sudden, with his temporarily increased Intelligence.
It must be working…
He let Red look around for about thirty seconds. Then he gently reached out to Red again with Telepathy.
Adon began trying to teach him words, sending simple phrases alongside specific images as he had the last time he tried to communicate. Working to build a basic vocabulary by association.
Slowly but surely, Red responded.
Leaf, he thought, in response to Adon repeating that word and the associated image together several times.
The first time this happened, Adon almost jumped up and down with excitement. He stopped himself, because he was afraid that if he and Red didn’t keep their same basic physical positions, Adon might break the contact and fail at maintaining the stream of Mana flowing from himself into his student.
Adon had no reason to believe he was permanently enhancing Red’s Intelligence—Adon’s own enhancement had been all too temporary—and he didn’t want Red to lose the benefit of increased brain power until they were done with this lesson. With Adon’s shallow Mana reserves, they were on limited time even without missteps.
Over the next fifteen minutes, they achieved the same result with the words “web,” “flower,” and “spider.”
Adon tested Red by sending the images without the accompanying words, and it became apparent that Red had come to grasp that the phrase and the picture conveyed were connected. Red would respond with the thought, Web, if Adon sent a picture of a web, and he would respond with an image of a leaf if Adon sent him the word leaf unaccompanied by an image.
The small spider seemed excited about the developments in his own right. He pumped his body up and down on the web as the session continued. Adon didn’t know how to interpret that except that Red was enjoying learning.
Unfortunately, the process of using both mental magic and Telepathy quickly wore down his Mana.
They had to break for the day. Adon felt excited, but he kept his feelings to himself. He’d already given Goldie hope that this might succeed. It would be irresponsible to keep pumping her hopes up. And anyway, he needed to save his energy and try to hoard as much Mana as he could, not have long telepathic conversations. The language lessons would need to continue.
The next day, Adon tried the same basic program again.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
This time, when he called Red over to him, the spider came over quickly, apparently eager to resume their practice. Adon attempted to push his Mana into Red’s brain without touching him directly this time, and quickly learned that using this power did not require direct physical contact. A few brief experiments—transmitting Mana from right beside Red, several inches away, and different ends of the web—established that the closer they were, the easier it was, and the less Mana seemed to be lost in transition.
But the only actual requirement was a constant, steady flow of Mana from Adon’s core into Red’s brain.
Based on the trial from different ends of the web, it seemed that as long as Adon was within Telepathy range, he would be able to reach Red with mental magic.
The negative side of the lesson was when Adon realized that Red did not remember virtually any of what Adon had taught him the previous day.
It took Adon time to figure this out. Red seemed to catch on quickly at first. He clearly remembered the foundational concept of words and images, and he understood that the words and images Adon sent were connected.
Red was familiar with the rules of what must have seemed to him the repetition game they were playing. But he took time to learn the words again that day. Roughly the same amount of time he had needed on the previous day, though of course Adon had no clock.
It was difficult to tell at first if Red’s Intelligence dropping back to normal meant that his verbal memory was insufficient to remember bits of language, or if he simply needed more repetition.
So Adon tried over several days to teach Red language by repetition.
Each day, he would give Red the same vocabulary to learn and spend as much time as he could sustain working on those words with him.
The rest of the time, Adon was killing the bugs that his dead crow attracted—an increasing number, despite how the carcass shrank with his repeated visits to the body to feed himself and his friends.
If I knew I could attract so many scavengers for Goldie to eat, I wouldn’t have worried so much about making sure I got almost the whole crow here, he thought.
But the language instruction program made no meaningful headway.
Each day was like rolling a boulder uphill, only to find it at the bottom again the next day. Exhausting and demoralizing. More importantly, Adon knew that both of his friends would be hurt if this did not succeed.
And it became gradually clearer and clearer that progress was not on the horizon.
Maybe if I had a hundred years to repeat this process, I’d eventually succeed, he thought. But Red didn’t have that kind of time. Neither did Adon, as far as he knew. Butterflies were not typically long-lived, at least not on Earth.
Adon eventually had to admit to Goldie that he had failed.
He climbed up to where she lay resting near the top of the web at the end of the last session.
I’m sorry, he transmitted. I don’t think I can get through to Red with Telepathy. Even with mental magic, he doesn’t seem to be able to remember words. I don’t know what the problem is, exactly, but it’s beyond me to solve it. I shouldn’t have acted so confident that I could make this happen.
Goldie had spent most of the last several days in a semi-conscious state, but she had been increasingly aware and awake over the last day or so. She was obviously getting better. Her figure was filling back out, and Adon was proud that he had provided the nutrition she needed at the time she needed it.
But all the same, the body language of disappointment that he saw from her when he told her that the attempt had failed was incredibly painful.
I never really thought it possible, Goldie thought finally.
Adon tried not to get more upset. He could tell she was lying to him. Trying to minimize her sadness.
Do not worry about it, she added. I do not want you to feel bad.
Thank you for understanding, was all he could say.
Adon didn’t want to try to excuse what he considered the greatest failure of his short lifetime. And he didn’t want to argue with Goldie. That would just force her into trying to convince him that it was okay.
Do not feel bad, Goldie thought again, more insistent this time. It felt as if she could read his innermost thoughts and feelings. As if she was the one with mental magic.
I really can’t help it, he admitted. I wanted to do this for you more than anything.
Adon, thanks to you, I will have chance to Evolve again. My eggs are safe. My life is different and so much better because you are in it. I will never blame you for anything like this. For trying again to make our lives better. She paused and looked at him carefully. You should have something to eat. Keep your strength up. Tomorrow, I will be strong enough to remain conscious all day and defend my eggs myself. You can begin hunting, so you can make your Evolution.
That’s right, Adon thought. He began climbing down the side of the web to carve up some more of the crow the three of them had been eating the last few days.
The bird carcass was almost gone, and the trio had harvested almost all of the Evolution Points possible from eating it. Adon had noticed he was getting diminishing returns now each time he consumed a little more flesh from that same body.
Of course, that was after he had already earned a phenomenal Evolution Points reward over the last several days.
He could finally afford the Specialized Chrysalis Evolution, which he had learned cost 2000 Evolution Points—ten times more than the Standard Chrysalis Evolution option!
The description was almost the same as that for the Standard Chrysalis Evolution, but unambiguously better.
Specialized Chrysalis Evolution: Activates the mechanisms that will cause your body to proceed through specialized caterpillar evolution and become a butterfly after you create your chrysalis. Your new form will reflect the specialized strengths that you have developed over the course of your life as a caterpillar.
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.
With well over 2000 Evolution Points saved, almost entirely thanks to the crow, Adon was technically ready to move on to the next phase of his life cycle, but he wanted to enhance and add to his Skills and Adaptations as much as he could before he left his caterpillar stage behind. It was something Goldie had said in one of their earlier conversations that made that decision for him. She had mentioned options that were closed off to her after her Evolution, including Telepathy.
If something that he now took for granted as much as Telepathy could become unavailable, Adon was going to develop every ability and trait that he valued as far as he reasonably could before he finalized his Evolution. He thought he should still be able to harness new forms of magic, but he was going to look for at least one or two more. And he was going to spend every Evolution Point he could gather on every single item that caught his eye.
If we gather enough Evolution Points between the three of us, hopefully Red will figure out what we’re doing, take the hint, and do the same himself, Adon thought.
It was hard to really believe that, but it was better to imagine the unlikely scenario than to think of leaving Red behind. He had stuck by Goldie through thick and thin, and even Adon had grown to care about the little spider.
Red certainly had at least close to enough Evolution Points to purchase his next stage. Goldie had told Adon that she only needed a few hundred more points, despite the fact that her next Evolution was more expensive than his. And Goldie and Red were eating the same things.
Thank you for the support, Goldie, Adon sent.
We have to stick together, Goldie thought. We only have each other, after all.