1.6 Evolution

I saw a floating square with text appear, but I immediately forced it to disappear as I was not in the safest place to read through all that text. I decided to make my way over to the nearby nook and webbed the entrance off. I should be safe in here to go over my evolution options and then look into the new options that should appear for my Evolution Points.

Alright Elysa, how exactly do these evolutions work?

Unconscious, huh? I guess it was a good idea to seal myself off.

And what are my current evolution options?

I chuckled, as much as a spider could.

My inner knight leaned towards the brown cave spider for increased defense. However, my eyesight had bothered me since the beginning. I had already picked the jumping spider in my mind. The jumping part would be extremely useful to evade stronger enemies, too.

I think?

I confirmed the option in my mind and felt a wave of drowsiness wash over me. Pain started building in my head as I fell to the ground and lost consciousness.

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I felt groggy as I came to, with a headache to boot.

I saw my vision had cleared up, and I could see things clearly now, but this massive headache took everything away from the joy that I would have otherwise felt.

What a disaster…

Elysa, what are we looking at here?

I was glad Elysa, or rather, this blessing, understood what I meant.

What are my possible options regarding Evolution points?

I felt my headache slowly dissipate and my focus return, as I went over the text before me.

All of these skills seemed to be upgrades to already acquired skills. My spider thread had actually weakened as far as I could tell, but that was a sacrifice I’d gladly make. I could see everything around me very, very clearly.

I couldn’t look at myself in a mirror, but I did get a much better idea of what I looked like. My legs emerged from under my head and behind it. My last two sets of legs seemed to emerge from behind my head. Further to my back was my abdomen. My pedipalps seemed to have shortened compared to earlier, and now stuck out of my body at the sides of my fangs.

I would guess I had to hold prey with those as I injected venom.

My entire body was covered in brown hair.

I was amazed at how many details I could now take in, despite the darkness in this cave. Even with the slightest light coming in from the entrance of the cave, I could still make out my own, new body.

I then looked at my Enhancement options again.

Almost immediately, I picked the Excellent Spider Vision option. Partly because I was curious how much it would improve, and partly because I wanted to be as prepared as I could when I headed out in the forest. If I could see predators coming from further away, I would have more time to get to safety.

With my remaining seven points I picked a stronger venom and better exoskeleton, just in case I would take a hit.

I was used to taking hits as a knight.

I didn’t want my habits to accidentally kill me…

I took a mental note to strengthen my legs as soon as I’d acquired five points. They had been a useful weapon for when my venom reserves had run dry.

I felt pain blossom behind my many, many eyes and felt my fangs burn up slightly before the pain dissipated. I then felt my strength get drawn from my core into my carapace as I’d felt before.

The grogginess from before had also disappeared. After going through the processes of enhancements and the evolution, I felt… great?

This sight felt so much better. Before, I felt like I was constantly trying to adjust focus, only to utterly fail as my eyes were simply that bad, but now…

I could see the smallest details on the rocks in front of me.

I also noticed that the world around me had become… smaller. Though, that was probably me just getting bigger.

Not by a lot, but enough for it to be noticeable.

I would have to find something out in the forest that I could use as a good measurement of exactly how large I was.

Confidence filled me as I thought about going out into the forest.

I was going to get stronger. I was going to pull this off.

Most of all, I was going to spit in the faces of the gods that had put me here. I would show them.

But first…

I walked up to the webs that covered my hole and removed them.

I was going to practice jumping. It would be an important aspect of this evolution that I’d picked.

As I walked, I already felt a good increase of strength in my legs. It had been one of the bonuses that came with this evolution. I had used them to hack away at certain creatures, after all.

I exited the hole and walked over to where I had killed my last two enemies, the spider, and snail. When I was a decent distance away from their corpses, I locked my sight on their location, reared up… and jumped.

I missed, barely, by what I imagined was less than an inch. A quite impressive feat if I did say so myself.

I walked back to where I had jumped from and practiced jumping again a few times. It did not take me long to figure out exactly how much force to exert upon my hind legs in order to jump to where I wanted to be. It was as if this body knew by itself and my elven mind was just a liability. I had to clear my mind and simply trust my body.

Once I mastered that part, the rest was easy.

Jumping on prey was an interesting style of fighting. I wondered if I’d be able to take out that large spider from before?

I should be able to accurately identify its size now. If I could get on its abdomen, it would probably be defenseless.

That’s what I thought at least. I would be out of range of its fangs, but I didn’t know if spiders could do weird things with their legs, like kicking something that was on their behind.

I tried lifting my own rear legs above my abdomen but found that I could not bend them that far. I knew I was most likely a different species of spider, but I was confident that I could make it work if I could jump on it without being caught beforehand.

Besides, I imagined larger prey would give more experience.

I started my crawl along the cave walls and jumped to the other side of the cave entrance when I saw the light, just to see how far I could get.

I easily made it beyond the rays of light entering the cave and looked back at where I jumped from.

I estimated that jump was about fifty times my own size.

Quite impressive…

I found that I could skitter much faster as well, probably due to the added strength in my legs. Not only had my strength increased, it seemed my control over them had drastically improved as well.

I mused some more over my improvements as I walked until I found myself back in the corner of the cave where I had hatched. I observed the area and noticed that several small spiders crawled about. They had likely just hatched.

I also noticed that a creature, about three times my current size, sat at the back behind the furthest away eggs.

That had to be the spider from before.

I was going to take it out.