As Jon returned from his vision, the area was nearly unrecognizable.

  The river was diverting into a new channel the width of a car, dug from where Jon stood and continuing for fifty meters into the opposing river bank.

  The den mother’s remnants lay in two portions, the front half of her head on one side of the channel and her femurs on the other. The femurs remained connected by a burning scrap of her sacrum and hips. There were smoldering fragments of bone scattered about the area, and Jon presumed these belonged to the lesser rabbits.

  Oregano was looking about, and dashed towards Jon as he saw him.

  Jon felt a query coming in from the rat: he saw an image of the den mother roaring, the other rabbits surrounding, and then felt a great blast of heat an instant later. The next image was the current scene.

  The rat was trying to figure out what had happened.

  “I don’t really know either,” Jon said.

  He focused on Loo’s presence, and was surprised to find it faint and weak. He prodded at the voice with no response. Loo was seemingly down for the count.

  Jon ran forward and grabbed what remained of the den mother’s head with his palps and front legs. The half that was remaining was still roughly as large as a small desk, and it was quite heavy.

  He managed to lift it with significant effort, and began running as fast as his awkward steps could carry him towards the forest and the path back to the cavern entrance.

  It was time to be done with this place.

  As he reached the forest’s edge, he heard a splash behind him. Some lucky salamander had collected the other half of the den mother and dove back beneath the water.

  Jon knew he had to get further away from the scene. Loo had indicated there was some sort of quest to destroy him in place, and they needed to get the hell out of here. He talked over the next moves with Oregano.

  The rat sent him an image of the entrance to the column. The space felt safe to the rat, as only Jon could open it.

  “Bad idea, there’s only one way out and we were already found there once. Loo said he can’t help anymore, so we’re toast if another group comes looking for us.”

  The rat sent another image, this time of a rat stumbling in the dark, barely able to tell up from down.

  “Yeah, it’s confusing,” Jon said. He continued,

  “I think our best chance is to find a spot to eat this thing, and then get the hell out of this place. The whole arrangement was seemingly a trap.”

  Oregano sent one more image: it was the cavern around them, but filled with bones.

  “Yeah, it does feel more like a grave. We need to go.”

  Jon was tired, but he felt like he could move for a while longer, even carrying the den mother’s heavy remains.

  He examined his magic reserves with his inner sight, which felt much easier since Loo had shown him the gate back in the column.

  The majority of Jon’s general magic energy was gone, though the psionic energy remained at about a third of his maximum. He could manage at least one or two psionic assaults, though that felt crude after witnessing Loo at work.

  They walked a while along the path, and Jon was surprised to notice the whole forest felt still. It was the first time he had felt no vibrations in the ground since they left the falls, and the quiet made him feel unsettled. Jon quested out with his mental senses, but got nothing more.

  “Spooky,” he sent to Oregano.

  The rat sent back a feeling of agreement.

  They came to a large tree, its trunk wide enough that three men could not have joined hands around it. Jon wrapped the den-mother’s head in silk multiple times before climbing up the tree while leaving a rope-like trail of silk behind. He made his way over to a branch ten meters up, then dropped back to the earth. He repeated this process several times, leaving another line attached to the den-mother’s head on each occasion.

  Jon then used the branch as a makeshift pulley, gradually hauling the den mother’s head up into the air until it rested against the branch. Jon made his way up a final time, and slowly managed to rock the head onto the broad branch. Jon popped out one of the eyes and passed it to Oregano.

  The rat looked up at him, doing a little tip-tapping dance. Jon received an image of the rat, sitting on the branch, looking out at the forest below with his prize in his paws. As Jon watched, the spider behind the rat woke up, and the rat immediately began eating the eye before curling up for a nap.

  “First watch is all yours buddy. Thanks,” Jon replied.

  Jon pictured his route home, his need to survive, and began to feed. A system prompt flashed in his mind,

  “Fresh game: cuniculus spinae. Den mother”

  His breath caught in his abdomen as the energy burned through him. It was many times more than he had received from all the prior kills combined.

  Once more, Jon felt he had three choices on how to proceed: he could siphon the energy towards Loo, he could build another upgrade structure for his body, or he could step towards something greater. What exactly that ‘greater’ thing was was not at all clear.

  Jon continued to feed as he pondered the choices.

  Loo’s presence felt extremely faint, and was fading further with every passing moment. Jon wasn’t sure, but he thought Loo might fade altogether if he gave it a little while.

  Jon pondered his friendly contract with Loo: had he actually promised to help him with anything besides finding a body? He felt instinctively that he had no obligation to give the energy to Loo. The wording of their contract obligated Jon to find Loo a body if possible, carry him into the wider world, and prevented Jon from trying to remove him.

  None of these obligated Jon to save Loo if he was dying, which surprised Jon. He felt it would violate the spirit of the agreement, but he was not going to argue with the system if it gave him looser terms than he expected.

  He did not feel he had to save Loo from an ethical standpoint. The creature had essentially forced itself into their little party by threatening Jon after hijacking his body.

  However, Loo had also just saved Jon’s ass, and was clearly a treasure trove of information. Jon was not passing on this opportunity, and he felt it would be foolish to do so. He thought for a few more moments, but ultimately made what he felt was the only reasonable decision.

  Jon poured the den mother’s energy towards Loo, and as he did so, the consciousness stopped fading. After a few minutes, Jon heard Loo’s voice groan,

  “Stop that. Not that way. Put me here.”

  Jon felt Loo indicating a metaphysical space near his psionic reservoir. In the physical world, Jon felt like this space was near the base of his brain.

  Loo followed up with schematics a second later. The design included the energy paths Jon could redirect to flow by the new home for Loo. The system looked similar to a placenta. There was exchange of materials down a concentration gradient over a membrane, but no true mixing.

  Jon began the work. He carved out a bubble which sat where the energy from his brain returned to the circulation. There was another filter system in place, but different from the one in his psionic pulse generator. Energy would circulate right up to the edge of Loo’s home, and then a tiny amount of it would enrich the energy inside the bubble. Another parallel stream of energy would run by the bubble, taking impurities away and out into Jon’s wider circulation.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  The entire process took very little of the den mother’s energy. Jon finished in just a few minutes. After, he felt Loo’s presence vanish before reappearing in the bubble.

  Jon began working on his next project, finishing his filter for the psionic energy.

  He turned his inner vision to the psionic pulse generator, following the river of energy from his heart into the brain, watching it course into the reservoir. He felt the initial filter he had placed here.

  It was crude, but was effectively removing sixty to seventy percent of the non-mental energy moving towards Jon’s psionic pulse generator. If this energy weren’t removed, it would reduce the potency of Jon’s mental attacks, though he didn’t completely understand why.

  Jon started to create a series of channels behind the initial filter, creating long paired loops which ran down to the bottom of the lake of energy.

  As the first loop ran to the bottom of the lake, Jon noticed the psionic energy forcing its way into the tube, pushing out the remaining non-psionic energy into the second loop. There was a powerful force returning the non-psionic energy back to the circulation from here.

  As the loops reached the bottom of the lake with the most concentrated energy, pumps along the first loop extruded the purified psionic energy into the reservoir.

  As Jon finished the first loops, he realized what was coming next. He had to repeat this at least a few hundred times. The structure he was making felt an awful lot like a less elegant loop of henle, one of the structures the body used to filter water and electrolytes from the blood in the kidneys.

  Loo interjected at this point, seemingly recovered:

  “Look, we all know that new intelligence bump has caused some changes, but please don’t make me suffer any more than you have to. I’m half-dead already, and if I have to listen to the endless musings of your monkey brain then you’re going to bore me the rest of the way to the afterlife. When you inevitably decide to describe this to someone else, just say ‘more strong down low than top, big sieve with lots tubes does job.’ It won’t even make you use more than one syllable at a time.”

  Jon ignored the parasite, and continued having his fun, finishing hundreds of loops, one at a time. He grew so engrossed in the work it was hard to be sure how much time went by. He did notice when he ran out of food though, and was unsurprised to feel the hunger scream for more immediately. Jon ignored the feeling.

  After he finished the loops, he made the sluice gate to open his pulse generator wider when needed, and this process was much simpler. He decided to make Loo happy, and just summarized the process for himself as,

  “Door can now go big, then pulse go big too. Cost more though.”

  There was a contented sigh from the bubble,

  “Thank all that is holy, you can occasionally string a sentence that is less than fifty words of over-wrought biological similes together. Maybe life will be worth living after all.”

  When this failed to get a reaction, Loo continued,

  “Listen, do your thing, but now that you’re basically done with that upgrade you have the ability to level up with the remaining energy. You should really take this opportunity before the energy dissipates any further. If you fail to do so, the next time will take more energy and more effort. As your energy circulates during the level up you will also complete the sieve automatically. It’s ultimately your path, but I strongly recommend a focus on agility. Agility is limiting your power output and your ability to take advantage of the intelligence stat. If you must do something else, toughness would not be a terrible choice either.”

  Jon gave the mental equivalent of a blank stare,

  “You really don’t have a system interface? I thought you just managed to hide it from me like the communications with the rat. It must be part of the bestial transformation. Here:” A window popped up in Jon’s vision,

  “Name: Jon Walton

  Level: 1

  Class: Spider, Bard Nerd

  Subspecies: Salticidae”

  ”

  “Did Herman give you any additional information from the selection suite?” Loo asked.

  Jon thought for a minute before answering, managing to recall the words of the Terrapene,

  “Power is basically strength: running, jumping, spell-casting. Agility is finesse, fine motor control and applying power in intricate ways. Discernment is what you can perceive, and your intuition. Intelligence impacts memory and application of concepts. Toughness is a combination of how you withstand punishment and how much endurance you have. Presence involves how you are perceived by others, and can impact some spells and resistances.”

  Louis made a noise of lukewarm agreement,

  “Ehhh, sure. Basic, but no significant omissions in that. There’s a lot more to it that we can’t get into right now. We can have a big gab session once we’re out of here, and we can talk about that, our tragic backstories, all the memories you stole from me, what you’ll pay me for them and (my personal favorite) how you were considering leaving me to die.”

  There was a few moments of silence. Loo continued in a chipper tone,

  “But for right now, just understand the stats don’t exist in a vacuum. Every one of them impacts the others. Having a 10 in power is great, but you’re as apt to melt your own face off as your opponent’s if you shoot a fireball off with an agility of 2, or just explode if your toughness is too low. In your case, you should take agility because your racial and class abilities are both being limited by it. Your movements and your spell-casting are both clumsy. Some of that is practice, but some of it is also your middling agility stat. The crappy agility is also impacted by starting out as a human.”

  “You mean my stats aren’t based on the creature type I turned into but the one I started out as?” Jon asked.

  “Not really. Your stats are a weird mish mash that will prove difficult to interpret outside of your own progression. Your intelligence and some aspects of your discernment definitely exceed most spider-type monsters of your own level. Your agility and power are lagging by comparison. Don’t worry too much about the exact numbers, now or ever. You don’t need to know everything about stats. They are ultimately just a measurement of your own progression, not a measuring stick for comparison to others. The most critical thing to understand is the system that gives the information is not omniscient. We made it. The thing that gives the power is the tree. It doesn’t give a damn about our little labeling system, it just does what it does.”

  “Who is the ‘we’ in ‘we made it.’”

  “Not important right now. Choose your stat progression and level up. The process doesn’t take long but we have to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  Jon dropped the matter, turning to the energy still burning in his system.

  “It feels like the energy is beginning to destabilize, like its getting ready to burn me or blast one of my limbs off. Did I miss my window?”

  “Nope. That’s always how it feels when you hit a level up. That den mother had enough energy in a dew claw to level you up, and you ate half her head. Just concentrate on what you are hoping to improve in. The system and the tree will do the rest.”

  Jon pictured himself, walking clumsily on the initial path, then gaining coordination and speed. He pictured Loo weaving a tapestry in the air with his mental threads, focusing on this as a goal. He thought of his own jumps and attacks, and pictured each of them hitting a little closer to the mark, the fine motions coming smoothly. The energy thrummed within as he pictured his goal. He felt a sort of mania begin to impact his thinking.

  When Jon made an upgrade, each step felt like something on the tip of his tongue, with each realization leading to another. It was like jumping from one stepping stone to another across a stream, with the next one falling into the water just before each jump.

  This felt more like sprinting along a path, leaping into chasms as they appeared and simply expecting the path to form beneath your feet. Weirdly though, it worked out. Relationships between different body parts and movements spun before him in an intricate pattern. Jon felt he could touch the pattern, he could know the fundamentals of the universe, he could find the path to godhood, he could…..

  “Advance one level, +1 to agility Y/N?”

  Sobriety hit him like a brick to the head.

  “First time coming down always sucks. Not to worry, many more times to come. Assuming you survive that is,” Loo chimed in.

  “Advance one level, +1 to agility Y/N?”

  “Yes” Jon said sheepishly.

  “Advancement complete. +1 agility granted. New status:

  Name: Jon Walton

  Level: 2

  Class: Spider, Bard Nerd

  Subspecies: Salticidae

  “And now you can finally see why Herman told you about having a strong start. I think he undersold it a bit, and I think you’ll agree after you feel how that agility impacts you. You functionally started off about two levels ahead of the average Joe with that stat role. You had +2 intelligence, +1 presence, and +1 power, with only -1 agility.”

  “Shouldn’t it be three levels ahead if I only gain one stat per level?”

  “No. It’s not a linear process, I’ll explain later. Just know your starting bonus will lose some impact after your next level, and the differences will be even smaller after level 5. However, those stats made the difference between life and death multiple times already. Which brings us to our next point:”

  Loo paused for a moment:

  “You need to get the hell out of here.”