The shadow loomed larger and larger in Adon’s grainy vision.

Long legs that seemed ready to stride across the world. A surprisingly big, bulky body shaped like a figure eight with an elongated bottom. If Adon wasn’t so terrified, he’d think she had the arachnid version of “junk in the trunk.” Probably helpful for attracting mates.

But he was, in fact, thoroughly petrified with fear.

There was something else strange about the spider’s look, but Adon didn’t focus too much on it. If he didn’t stare at the spider, maybe she wouldn’t sense his gaze.

Adon held as still as he could and tried to make himself as small as he could. This mostly consisted of trying to suck in his stomach. Difficult, since he’d just consumed over a dozen ants. And he felt certain that if he could see the spider, she could easily see him. Adon’s eyes were bottom of the barrel quality, after all.

I really need to improve my vision. Then I’d see threats like this one coming. But besides berating himself about it, there wasn’t time to do much now. Need to make a plan if she comes down here to fight. His best option was to go in slashing away with his mandibles, probably. He didn’t have other weapons yet.

Against a spider who might have venom as well as her obvious silk, though, that seemed like no plan at all. One bite from him would probably hurt her. One bite from her might end him.

Adon couldn’t help but swallow nervously as the monster passed overhead. I always thought spiders were all legs. This one looks like she has a lot of muscle to her…

He thought she looked down at him as she crossed above his trembling body. But he couldn’t be sure, since he was trying not to stare. The moment had passed far too quickly.

She approached the ant nearest to Adon, and she very matter-of-factly dipped down and plunged her fangs into its back. Then she quickly withdrew and walked over to the next ant to repeat the exercise. The ant she’d injected spasmed for a few seconds and then grew still.

Oh, Goddess, she does have venom! Adon thought. Maybe now was the moment to run away. While she was distracted, walking from ant to ant and killing them. It wasn’t as if Adon was going to steal her food. Even if he was bold enough to rob this creature that was twice his size, in her own home, he wasn’t sure if he could survive eating the venom-infused ant corpses.

But something kept him from moving. Instead, he looked over at the spider. What she was doing was enthralling. Such an efficient hunting method.

Adon thought he remembered Silk Spinning being one of the adaptations available to him, though he hadn’t been able to afford it when he first looked. But that was then. He had since gained a lot of Evolution Points from leading the pursuing ants into this clever trap of his.

He also realized what had stood out about her appearance when the spider passed overhead. She had a thin glow around her body. A kind of yellow halo effect. He hadn’t noticed that in any other insects he’d seen thus far. He dismissed it without thinking too much about it. Maybe she’d grabbed some sort of bioluminescence Adaptation to better attract mates.

He went back to thinking about his own Adaptation options. He’d been thinking about getting better vision, not Silk Spinning. But now that he saw how effectively this spider used her silk…

I have to at least consider it, he decided. He would look at all the options available to him—if he could find a safe place to do that—before he chose his next Evolution Points expenditure. And he would understand his whole Status before he did anything else. He’d only read halfway through the material before, and it really felt as if he was approaching this whole world half-ready.

First things first, though. He wanted to at least get a slightly better understanding of what kinds of threats he faced in his immediate environment. He used Identify on the spider as she injected venom into yet another ant.

Golden Silk Orb-Weaver Spider (Female).

Next, he used Identify on one of the ants.

Vendetta Ant (Sentry).

Hm. For the spider, it gave me the sex, and for the ant, it gave me the creature’s role in the ant society. I wonder why that is.

He focused on the names the System had given him for the two creatures, but no additional information appeared.

He returned his attention to the spider. No, the Golden Silk Orb-Weaver. No, that was too long. He decided to call her “Goldie,” at least in his own mind. The nickname would make her seem a little less intimidating, at least. Plus it fit with her species name and the yellow glow around her body. Even with the internal nickname, of course, she was still far too intimidating for comfort.

As he watched, she dragged the bodies of the ants away from where she’d injected her venom. Toward the center of the web. She was able to move several at once, since she had secured their limp forms to herself with more of her silk.

The spider—“Goldie,” in Adon’s mind—was graceful, swift and smooth in her movements, which seemed especially noteworthy to Adon, since he felt that he, the ants, and the Ladybug Larva were all pretty clumsy. The only sound she made as she moved was a slight musical noise as the silk strung around the ants occasionally brushed the silk that composed the web.

Right, she’s done killing them, now she’s moving them. Now is the time for me to leave. Now… Right now!

But it was inexplicably hard to make himself move. Everything about the situation conspired to keep him where he was. Predominantly fear, but it was very mingled with other sensations. Continued admiration for the shimmery beauty of the web, which was attractive even to Adon’s terrible eyes. A similar appreciation for the pretty glow around the spider’s body, though he dimly realized that might be intended to draw in prey, as the web’s shimmer surely was.

And a general fascination with the methods of this clearly very successful predator. Her web was even well constructed; though he’d felt it shake when the piles of ants threw themselves onto it, it hardly moved at all under the spider’s quick, sure steps.

While he lay in his position under the web, trying to make himself move but divided about that decision, something happened on the web itself that drew his complete attention. The spider dragged the last of the ants into the center of her web.

Then she walked back over to just above where Adon lay. Her movements were slower this time. Not striding. Almost tentative. As if—was she worried about scaring him away?

When Goldie was positioned directly above Adon, the tension in his body reached its zenith. Have to run away, he thought, barely able to control the cold fear in his stomach. Have to escape right now… Is it too late? Did I miss my chance? Crap!

Still, he lingered, unmoving and indecisive. He had failed at fight or flight. It was undeniable now that Goldie had seen him. The spider stared down at him with several of her eight eyes—he could see her well enough now to count them, she was so close—and the two just looked at each other for a long, intense moment.

Adon wished he could communicate. Say something like, I promise I’m not a threat, please don’t kill me, you’re my hero, thank you for killing all those ants, could you maybe spare one for me? Just in case I can digest the venom?

But he couldn’t speak any of those thoughts. He didn’t have the ability to talk or to communicate in any way he could expect the spider would understand. Anyway, he had no reason to expect she would be any smarter than the ants had been. The ants had shown what seemed to Adon normal levels of insect intelligence. If the spider was a normal spider like the ones he’d encountered when he was human, it should be slightly smarter than an ant, just by nature of being a more developed and complex species. But not smart enough for language.

The caterpillar and the spider remained locked in their staring contest for a very brief window. Although Adon hadn’t thought of himself as a threat, it occurred to him that perhaps Goldie thought that he would be a problem for her. Just as he’d be at an obvious disadvantage if he wandered into her web, maybe she would be worried about fighting him on the ground.

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It was only speculation, but the idea gave him a little courage. Maybe he wasn’t completely helpless. But regardless, he needed to get out of here.

Finally, Adon managed to make himself move. He stepped back with one leg. Then the other. And then he was in full retreat, running away with his face still turned to the spider. Eyes still irresistibly locked onto hers. She continued to stare after him for as long as he could see her. Once he was out of view of her, he turned and ran facing to the front, the normal way. He kept going until he thought he was a safe distance away.

Surely she wouldn’t be as fast as he was if she chased him outside of her web, right?

And although she was an arachnid—so like Adon’s face, hers was unreadable—he wanted to imagine that she wasn’t hostile. He had brought a bunch of food into her web, after all.

I need to be like her, Adon thought when he finally stopped running for long enough to think. She adapted to this harsh environment. So perfectly that if she’d wanted to, she definitely could have eaten me, even though I had no trouble taking out a dozen of those ants.

He smelled the air with a new appreciation as he fully grasped how lucky he was to be alive. There was a rich soil odor everywhere, perhaps because he was so close to the ground. Above that, he could smell grass. And something sweet, under the other smells. In the distance, he thought, there must be flowers, more than one kind.

In his mind, he smiled. In his last life, he’d hardly ever seen anything green except through a screen. This was such a different life. It’s a beautiful world I’m in now. It’s good to be alive here. Now, how to stay that way…

He tried to think about next steps as he walked. Need to find the dead ants I left behind earlier, to start with, he thought. Free food was not to be refused in this life. He’d already learned that the hard way, when his body came close to shutting down from hunger while he was running from the ants. As he retraced his steps, he remembered his mantra.

Do everything, and you’ll win. Do everything, and you’ll get what you want. Don’t fall back into old habits. Don’t live another shameful sham of a life.

In this case, finding the dead ants constituted part of “Do everything,” as far as he was concerned.

After a little bit of walking, he managed to find the closest ant corpses. They weren’t within sight of the spider’s web, so he was pleasantly surprised that he’d located them at all.

Maybe in this life, my sense of direction is pretty good, he thought optimistically as he consumed the pork-like ant flesh.

There was a slight ripping sound as he swallowed the second ant, and Adon looked around for a few seconds before he realized the sound came from his own body. He looked down, and the gash he’d suffered earlier was opening up a bit more.

Weirdly, blood—or whatever weird fluid was his closest parallel to blood—wasn’t coming out. Instead, the space underneath the cut looked dry and empty. The torn shreds of skin around the gash looked loose and flappy.

That’s it! he realized. He opened up his Status.

User: Unnamed Butterfly Larva

Age: 10 hours

Sex: Male

Status

Health: 10/10

Strength: 4

Agility: 6

Perception: 3

Dexterity: 5

Constitution: 7

Intelligence: 85(!)

Will: 90(!)

Charisma: 1

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

Evolution Points: 36

Biomass: 17/15

He confirmed it. His Biomass was overly full. Based on what he’d read earlier, that could trigger unspecified changes in his body. His body was probably already trying to make those changes. Hopefully they would include healing.

Let’s go through the Status screen and figure out what everything means, then pick the new Adaptations, he thought. All the numerical values next to his first five Stats spoke for themselves. He had pitifully low Strength, slightly less embarrassing Agility, and Perception that was his second-weakest Stat, perhaps explaining why he felt his eyesight was barely better than blindness. His Dexterity was higher than the other Stats, except for the Agility and Constitution that he’d already enhanced with his previously invested Evolution Points. And the Intelligence and Will that had exclamation marks next to them. Those seemed to require investigation.

Then there was Charisma, and the less said about his apparent dump Stat, the better.

Some things, even reincarnation might not cure, he thought.

Then he focused on the exclamation marks in parentheses next to Intelligence and Will. A System explanation popped up immediately.

(!): This symbol indicates that a noteworthy development occurred relating to the Status feature in question. In this specific case, these Stats were altered by the user. The user directed his development within the egg shell. As a result of the user’s interference with biological and System processes, these Stats were artificially increased at the expense of other attributes.

Holy shit! Adon thought. The Goddess let me change my own Status while I was pre-born. I guess this is why I retained my humanoid mind and memories. And possibly also why my Charisma Stat ended up so low. His other Stats besides Intelligence and Will were also pretty low, but that didn’t bother him as much, since he was fairly certain Charisma was correlated with attractiveness.

I’ll increase all of them over time as I get more Evolution Points, anyway, he reminded himself.

He was glad he’d chosen this time to focus on understanding his Status a bit better.

He looked at his Skills next. Focused on Identify first.

Identify: A Skill that allows the user to ascertain very basic information about other living things at a glance.

Of course.

Impeccable Memory: A Skill that allows the user to remember information beyond the level that should be possible for a given level of Intelligence and Will.

That explains the sense of direction I was just feeling so proud of. Maybe that was something else he’d altered by focusing so much on remembering details of his past lives when he was in the egg.

Past Life Connection: A Skill that reflects that the user retains a stronger than normal connection to his past lives. The threads of karma run through every life and connect the individual’s journey from its beginning to its end.

That’s just a little too deep for me, Goddess. Adon didn’t know what any of that meant, and it was hard for him to be sure if he ever would.

Shed Skin: A Skill that allows the user to sacrifice a set amount of Biomass to quickly recover from superficial injuries and shed the old layer of damaged skin. This Skill may automatically activate if the user’s Biomass exceeds the maximum, causing the user’s body to outgrow its previous skin. This Skill hastens the implementation of Adaptations and is essential to Evolution.

That’s important information for sure, Adon thought. His mind was still partly trying to untangle Past Life Connection, but that didn’t keep him from appreciating the sheer value that Shed Skin would probably provide in the future.

Spiritual Sight: A Skill allowing the user to visually perceive another life form’s karmic essence. More effective with practice. More effective if the user has a preexisting karmic tie to the other life form. More effective if the user is fated to forge a karmic tie with the other life form.

That must have been the glow I saw, Adon decided immediately. He’d never heard of bioluminescent spiders before. This would make more sense. Unfortunate that it wasn’t something he could use to more reliably perceive predators in general; the ants hadn’t glowed at all. So many souls I snuffed out, though.

If the vague spiritual understanding he was developing by reading these Skill descriptions was correct at all, then Adon had destroyed a number of life forms that were, on some level, equally valuable and individual to himself. Even if they didn’t act or seem that way. The ants felt like replaceable cogs in a machine to him.

I can’t let it stop me from eating, he thought. But he hoped it wasn’t ruining the thread of his karma that the Past Life Connection description had alluded to. He felt a little bad about not understanding the full consequences of what he was doing.

It’s time to be practical, though. He couldn’t see the sun from his lowly position on the ground, but he could feel the quality of the light had changed. Sunset must be sometime soon.

He would choose his Adaptations now, and then he would decide what to do about a place to rest for the night. He wasn’t sure it would be safe to stay on the ground tonight. Usually, based on his understanding of nature, a whole different breed of predator stalked the earth after dark than during the day.

With his poor sight, and lack of any night vision, he didn’t want to mess with them just yet. Maybe not ever. He was a caterpillar after all.

But that left him with a difficult decision about where to go next.