I enjoyed the positive emotions that her words filled me with. Seeing as I still couldn’t see anything properly, and my limbs were still in the process of regaining sensation, I decided to look at what I could get to know about my final evolution. For some reason, I could always clearly see the blue square, no matter what was going on with my eyes.

Name: Kealyna

Race: Iridescent Queen Kizerain

Level: 1/10

Experience: 0/200

Evolution Points: 972

Iridescent Queen Arachne*

Evolution that grants the Devour (Evolving) skill. The skill assimilates parts of consumed creatures’ bodies, giving a small chance to gain either more evolution points, or access to new enhancements based on the creatures consumed. In addition, grants communication skills such as speech and additional body enhancements.

*Requires currently unearned achievements.

You must kill the creatures yourself in order for the Devour effect to work.

That was all? It literally listed everything I already knew about this final evolution. Elysa, can you tell me more?

…

Silence… again…

Just great.

I decided I might as well look at the achievements that were required. Hopefully, nothing impossible showed up…

Achievements required for Iridescent Queen Arachne:

Annihilation

Kill 1000 creatures with a single attack or spell. (Complete)

Who’s the boss now?

Kill a dungeon floor boss. (Complete)

A Name

Have somebody else say your name. (Complete)

I thought you were supposed to be smart?

Kill a higher sapient being.

A nest for a queen

Build a nest.

Queen?

I suppose I was a queen now. It felt odd, though. I never was anything special. To suddenly be called a queen just… it wasn’t for me. I’d prefer to just be called by my actual name.

If it wasn’t for Cellestra that name achievement would probably have been nigh impossible.

This nest achievement shouldn’t be too hard. I had already started with my shelter. I just didn’t know when my blessing would consider the shelter I made to be an actual nest. Would I need to cover all sides with webs or something?

Affirmative.

You’re just playing with me, aren’t you? Suddenly responding now. Instead of the actual answers I’m looking for, I get an answer about this stupid achievement requirement.

The sapient being, though…

I didn’t want to kill anything that didn’t deserve it. What even counted as a “higher sapient being?”

…

Another moment of silence. What was wrong with this blessing?

I figured I should just stick to my plans and try to get experience in the short time that I had left before setting out to find out what was going on with these elves and humans. Now that I’d gone through my evolution, I could also try to find out more about who had been near that ant-heap.

It seemed to me, and it was made clear from that earlier conversation between the humans that I’d observed, that there were more groups of them spread out in this forest.

If they were here for shady reasons, as in, murdering innocents, should I take them out when I encountered them?

I felt like my mind was jumping around all the time between two choices. Take them out before they did anything, or find them in the act and take them out. I truly didn’t know what to do. In my old life, it was as simple as following orders. Most of the time, others had already confirmed that our targets were the worst kind of people. Now, I was left to do it on my own.

Would I make a good judgment call? Would I endanger anyone if I went about this recklessly?

I heard a sigh coming from beside me. Cellestra’s voice broke my train of thoughts and brought me back to the present.

“I guess you’re almost finished with regards to power gains then, aren’t you? Will you be heading out immediately after reaching your final evolution?”

She didn’t sound too happy, but I couldn’t yet read her facial expression to work out if she was speaking out of sadness. I bet she was at least a little bit sad. She had seemed overjoyed at having someone to talk to.

I mean, I wanted to head out as soon as possible, but it would break my heart to leave Cellestra behind. I figured a few days to sort things out wouldn’t hurt, right? This speech skill would make things a lot easier in that regard. If I had speech, and no more evolutions to push myself towards, I could use the time to talk things through.

Maybe it would be a good idea to ask how she felt about joining me then…

As odd as she may be, she was still an elf, purple eyes and curse or not. She would still be easier to talk to than a massively oversized spider.

My vision started to clear up, albeit slowly. To answer her question, I slowly shook my pedipalps from the left to the right and back, indicating no.

“I see,” Cellestra responded, with a sigh.

I’d grown too attached to the elf to simply leave her so soon. In fact, I felt like I’d completely fallen for her. These happy emotions overcame me whenever I was close to her.

And I loved every second of it.

With the bit of time I had remaining before I’d be able to see and move properly again, I decided to look at my enhancements to see if anything had changed.

Enhancement

Cost in EP

Language Comprehension - Dwarven

5

Language Comprehension - Orcish

5

Language Comprehension - Demonic

10

Language Comprehension - Goblin

5

Language Comprehension - Troll

5

Very Strong Jaws and Teeth

50

Strong Healing Light

35

Very Strong Healing Light

50

Strong Magic Resistance

70

Very Strong Magic Resistance

150

Healing Tides

100

Spawn Spiderlings

200

Spiderling Upgrade - Basic Exoskeleton

100

Spiderling Upgrade - Basic Resistance

100

Spiderling Upgrade - Basic Venom

100

Well, not much more had shown up. I saw there was the Troll language comprehension and some new spells that mostly seemed to have to do with a very specific skill called spawn spiderlings. What was this spell exactly?

Spawn Spiderlings:

Allows you to lay eggs that hatch into spiderlings that follow your commands. The strength of the spiderlings can be improved through other enhancements.

NOPE.

There was no way I was going to lay eggs. No way. I may be a queen now, but there was no way I’d do that. Elysa, what were you thinking?

It was time to ignore that part completely. I’d probably upgrade the other spells that I had remaining, just to get a few more additions to my arsenal, and then merge any spells that I could. I hoped there were a few more options now that I had evolved.

In fact, I might just do that now.

Elysa, go ahead.

The information for all remaining skills, besides the language comprehension and the skills that had to do with my… offspring entered my mind. One by one, the abilities were upgraded to their maximum ranks. At the end of all that, I was left with 517 evolution points. I’d likely increase that number a fair bit before my final evolution.

Then, the spell merges happened. I was already aware healing tides and spider lightning would merge, but, in addition to that, there was a fire cyclone spell, and an odd combination of fireball, ice lance, and wind gust called Elemental Blast. While the fire cyclone was simple enough in that it was a cyclone that did damage at the same time as incapacitating, the purpose and effects of elemental blast were less obvious, so I asked Elysa to explain it.

Elemental Blast

Combine Fire, Air, and Ice magic into a devastating blast that combines properties of all three schools of magic. The resulting blast will strike quickly, pierce, and explode. Has a significant mana cost, but penetrates physical and some magical barriers.

That looked like a powerful spell. I’d have to try sometime to see exactly what this blessing meant when it talked about significant mana cost. I had immense reserves right now.

My vision finally cleared up, and I inspected my new body.

It was as Cellestra had said, my entire body had become white… and fluffy?

It appeared the hairs on my entire body had grown to a significant length. I could feel they were very soft as well. What was up with that? Actually, I didn’t mind it.

I moved a pedipalp and used it to touch the top of my head. The hairs were very soft indeed. Touching them felt… nice.

I also noticed the pattern on my abdomen that the elf had talked about. There was a giant snowflake pattern in the center that appeared to be transparent. Beneath it, I could see swirls of red, green, yellow, and, well, basically any color that I could imagine. They blended together to create new colors and then changed again and again. It was mesmerizing to look at…

Cellestra was right.

I was beautiful.