Sage’s previous level of power had been what he classified as level 63. Rank 6, Stage 3. Progress after the fifth rank was reliant upon comprehension of the Laws, but those above didn’t want to distribute such knowledge so Sage’s own understanding of the later path was hazy at best. What he did know was that he’d progressed a Primal Law to the 2nd degree, and he had felt no current bottleneck in his progress. After combining with the Swamp Genesis Spider, it seemed to reach the 5th degree in its Minor Law. While it was at the same level as Sage, it had hit a bottleneck in the improvement of its strength. He wasn’t sure how these two things lined up, but he would note this all down later as research data.

While it had reached a bottleneck, there was power to spare in its body, and when its core and soul merged with Sage’s Nascent Soul, he felt that strength entering him. He started breaking through stages rapidly: 64, 65, 66. Finally coming to a stop only when he reached the peak of level 67. At the same time, his soul and mind were also upgraded, his Nascent Soul improved a few sizes and the castle in his Spiritual Sea shimmered with strength. Unlike the other times he’d merged, merely to acquire physical traits, this time he had combined with something at equal level to his own and the result was an overall improvement.

The body he was working on was far too much snake. The huge spider was far greater of an influence on his mind now than the serpent or the toad and his decisions immediately reflected that change. The body in front of him was changed back to that of the Swamp Genesis Spider. A huge black spider with thicker than normal limbs, each of them bearing vent-like openings that connected to a sort of internal pipe system that it could use to filter water for nutrients or draw in air from the surface. Sage found it quite ingenious, a single system that could gather food, act as a snorkel, provide ballast or floatation, and even be used as a weapon.

As the Swamp Genesis Spider’s most iconic ability, Sage couldn’t get rid of it. Nor did he want to. Instead, he was going to make it into his new centerpiece. Just like he’d focused upon the Hypnotic Eyes with the cobra, he decided to shift to this new power instead. Not only would it appease the part of him that was the spider, but his recent troubles highlighted his weaknesses. While the enhancements of the cobra’s physique were able to push the Hypnotic Eyes to mesmerize targets of his own rank, he still had to basically lock eyes with them. Just like this current battle had shown, once he was outnumbered there was little he could do. While he had many other tools to make up for being overwhelmed, they were all for facing off weaker opponents in large numbers. The Blacksilver Pawns and Dragoons could face off against armies of weaker enemies, but they couldn’t do much against other Nascent Souls.

With the Inner World, his lower level forces would only ever increase in quantity. The Hypnotic Eyes were very powerful against those weaker than him, but it was very difficult for it to work on those more powerful. It was just too overbearing otherwise, such that Sage felt he was breaking some unseen rules of the universe. He had tried to make it into his trump card, but at this moment he chose to change paths. Of course, he wasn’t ditching the ability and planned to include it. In fact, while its upper level power might drop, he was sure that it would gain far more versatility.

Spiders didn’t just have two eyes. Most of them had eight. With the Swamp Genesis Spider as a model, his new body wouldn’t be as limited as he was in the past. Even if he didn’t focus around them, his enemies would be in for trouble when he fixed a half dozen Hypnotic Eyes upon them. He also sought this change because of the Timeless Eyes. That technique required two dedicated eyes, and in the past while he maintained it, he couldn’t utilize the Hypnotic Eye at the same time.

Yet, the eyes were only a secondary concern. After seeing the Swamp Genesis Spider release giant blasts of water as an attack method, Sage was inspired. Its huge body could move a massive volume of liquid and with its strength, release it with a devastating amount of pressure. Now that he’d combined with it, he had come to a new ‘build’ that hadn’t been on the board in the past. Living artillery. Sage had more tools than the spider did and he wasn’t shy about including them. There’s no way he would leave out his Poison Meridians and his self-improved technique, Blood of the Nine Pits, that relied upon them. With them, he could introduce poisons into the high pressure blasts.

Next, he added the unnatural toughness of the Warp Worms internal body. The Warp Worm was based on another filter feeding type of creature like the Spider. The Refinery Worm consumed raw minerals and then excreted them in a more refined state, gaining energy from the castoffs in the process. The Warp Worm was a larger version of this beast, not used for refining minerals, but swallowing energy attacks and shooting them back. Sage was not its inventor, but had acquired it long ago and used it to help him tunnel often. Sage wasn’t going to include it for its tunneling ability, but because of its ability to swallow energy attacks. It had a sort of warping characteristic to its inner body to keep it from being harmed by what it swallowed and Sage used that to further strengthen the Spider’s internals.

He contemplated using Qi Nozzles again like his older bodies, but without having a third meridian system dedicated to them, they would completely burn up his energy supply without end. He experimented with adding that third meridian system again, but they seemed to stretch the rest of its abilities thin and as he learned before, it was better to maintain focus. The more he tried to jam in, the more scattered the end result.

With that in mind, he still couldn’t leave out a few powers at a more minor level. He was sure to include the ability to heal at a faster rate, along with adding diverse pheromone production and receptors. He also altered the spider’s carapace to have a slow color changing ability, and he couldn’t forget the modifications that allowed him to access his many ancestral memory techniques, like Cosmic Traction, Soul Fragments, and the Hypnotic Eyes.

Last, and not least, silk. What sort of spider would he be without webs? For this he expended extra effort, combining the Steel Silk from his many earlier creations, the cable like silk of the Swamp Genesis Spider, and also digging into the spider ancestral line to try and craft the strongest and most versatile silks he could. The spinnerets of this new spider were also tuned to be the most dexterous and capable. Most web-spinning spiders could create many different types of web, some for strength, others for stickiness, or focused upon flexibility. On the other hand, large hunting spiders didn’t spin webs, only using their silk like climbing lines or to build protective nests. Others, like bola spiders, could form large sticky balls and hurl them like a lasso. Sage wanted the full range of options so he paid attention to the silk glands as he infused all these ancestral spider traits.

The end result was basically the same as the Swamp Genesis Spider from before, but with internal upgrades to those pipes, and the silk glands, along with a change to its physiology to allow faster healing and color changing. There was also a more sensitive set of pheromone organs, but at the last moment, Sage moved that addition to be part of its silk glands. Pheromones were a bit too subtle to go along with the extreme force he was going to use the pipe system for, so he changed tack and wondered if it would be able to affect the webbing.

Haha, that could either be a brilliant move, or do absolutely nothing. I rarely use the pheromones anyways, so no big deal.