When Sage awoke once more, the world was dark. He blinked a few times, or he intended to at least.

Oh right. First thing I’ll have to get used to. No eyelids.

Just like he was climbing out of bed, his body moved on instinct to throw back the covers and climb out. Though in this case, the ‘covers’ were layers of silk spun into a cocoon along with some sloughed off organic material. Most of it was reabsorbed by the power of the transformation technique, but many cast off pieces were still present among the shreds of the cocoon. He pulled himself out of the silk and it wasn’t as sticky as he imagined, he instantly knew just how to handle it. Just like he also seemed to easily adapt to walking on eight limbs. He was not just Lang Sheng, Sage, or the Swamp Genesis Spider, he was all of them at the same time.

At this time he felt thankful for the gift of the Silver Liberator Butterfly once more as it ensured he remained intact despite so many different minds coming together as one. The first order of business was to understand his capabilities and he leapt into the air. The eight limbs contracted as one to launch him upwards. Without even thinking about it, his abdomen touched against the ground as he launched and a line of silk was instantly anchored, creating a dragline behind him as he flew through the air.

Surprisingly, he landed on the peak of one of the large towers, which to his new body were only small pillars. His eight limbs closed around the top of the tower and he balanced upon it quite effortlessly. He was also somewhat surprised by the weight of his new body. Not only did it show how strong the towers were, but also that this spider form was not as heavy as he imagined. Before the merge, he had been worried that moving around in this shape would remove all semblance of stealth, and that he might cause quakes everywhere he went. When he had first encountered the Swamp Genesis Spider it was battling with the Living Disaster and that giant tortoise was making such a racket that he had no idea whether the spider was also as heavy.

Thankfully, he found himself to be quite experienced at carefully controlling his new size. Of course, he would only be considered quiet on the scale of such giant beings. He still made quite a bit of noise with each step, but it was nothing like the constant earthquake the tortoise caused. Without even thinking about it, his limbs stretched out and the small claws on the end of them grasped the many lines that were stretched between the buildings and he skittered out into the space between the buildings with a grace that he had never had in the past. He moved from building to building and then jumped in the air again. His legs reached back and grasped the dragline hanging from behind him and gave a pull, making him dart back to the position of his first leap. There was a muffled bang and some of the nearby foliage was blasted away when his huge body landed upon the ground from such a height. Sage was also quite pleased to see that his exoskeleton was strong enough to handle a drop from such a height, while accelerating, and still not sustain any damage.

After a few minutes he felt a bit better accustomed to moving on multiple limbs, quite a change from his prior body without any limbs at all. Next, he couldn’t help but focus upon the strange way he was seeing the world now. He had six black featureless eyes, each of them fixed in place. By combining what he’d seen when building the body and also with a bit of experimentation, he learned that even if they couldn’t move, they could change focus and he thought of a telescope. In essence, he had six telescopes pointing to the sides and back to give him a full 360 degrees of vision. The problem being that such vision only applied when the eyes were left somewhat out of focus. If he wanted to see something at a distance he had to tilt his body to bring one of those telescopic eyes in line with the far target.

From what he remembered, most hunting spiders took their vision a bit further and their two front eyes were much larger and focused in the same direction. That improved their telescope into a set of binoculars, letting them accurately judge distance like a human could. The Swamp Genesis Spider was not a species of hunting spider, so it had eight smaller eyes, but in Sage’s case his dabbling had completely changed the two forward facing eyes into something much different. He had large spherical compound eyes mounted on the ends of two short stalks, and those large eyes were divided with three horizontal lines and with a single pseudopupil upon each zone. The sections weren’t circular and appeared more hemispherical. There were also no iris or other human-like traits to these eyes.

They also greatly altered the way he saw the world. The colors he saw seemed to be a bit more muted than in the past, losing some of their gradiance, but at the same time he saw many other things. There was an entirely new layer of colors that he’d never seen before. Simple flowers with yellow petals had vibrant patterns upon them. Birds with drab brown feathers had bright and vibrant patterns upon them, which were only visible to this new layer. He looked down and the featureless dirt had glowing trails of tiny footprints.

This must be ultraviolet. A whole world of vision that birds, and insects use. Oh, and sea creatures as well, like the one these eyes came from.

Sage had chosen to pursue the bloodline from the strange crustacean. He’d tossed aside the web weaving spider and the fishing spider merely because he was curious about the seas and lakes of the 10,000 Wave Province. In the past, his serpent bodies had been somewhat capable of traveling underwater, but he wasn’t a true aquatic being. He took the gamble that he might find some useful water related powers. In this world, the human civilization that he knew of was confined to the land and he’d heard that the Demonic Beasts of the sea were much more powerful than those on the land. As always he was curious, and so he took the path that might enable more exploration in the future. Even if he had to get revenge upon many others, he couldn’t help but look beyond that.

Along with the new layer of colors, his eyes still contained more marvels. He found another layer of vision and without much thought he immediately realized what it was. Thermal vision. He was able to pick out warmer things from among the colder things, which he recognized from Earth as a type of Infrared vision. Yet, even as he saw this, he realized that he could shift his vision into an even greater range one way or the other. He looked up and saw some strange things rumbling at the limit of the sky, just beyond the thick mist that outlined his territory in the Universe Ring. He had no idea what that was, but he could only set it aside for now.

Pleased by the strange abilities of his eyes, he then moved on to trying to use his eye techniques. Both the Timeless Eyes and the Hypnotic Eyes were put through their paces with each of his eight eyes. With a bit of experimenting, he confirmed that the Timeless Eyes worked only in pairs, and only one at a time. He wasn’t able to use Hindsight or Foresight on multiple eyes at the same time. The Hypnotic Eyes on the other hand, could be used with as many eyes as he wished, though when he used them with his larger compound eyes the power felt scattered and he also grew dizzy.

The many faceted compound eyes do not seem to go well with the focused gaze of the Hypnotic Eye.

With those findings it was easy for him to determine that he would use the Timeless Eyes with his main compound eyes and the Hypnotic Eyes with the other six. When he eventually examined himself in front of a mirror, he also enjoyed the strange sight. His compound eye would transform, the many facets looking like small window panes looking at a field of stars. Like a geodesic dome greenhouse with a whole star system inside it.