Martin’s scream died down in his throat.

He pressed himself against the cavern wall, knee-deep in the blood-darkened water, staring at the thing in front of him.

Even the pain from his amputated legs was ignored, eclipsed by sheer terror. Where Ayla’s head had been, there was now a blue slime, soft and luminous, pulsing faintly in the dark.

The tentacles that had erupted from it retracted slowly, pulling back into her skull as her face sealed shut again.

She straightened. Her expression was the same as before. Calm. Faintly curious.

Martin made a sound that was not quite a word.

Ayla ignored him. She was looking at the notification still hovering in her vision.

[Biomass Consumed: Feral Bloodnet Spider Mother]

[Racial Form Acquired: Feral Bloodnet Spider Mother]

[Trait Acquired: Bloodnet (B-Grade)]

[Bloodnet: Allows the host to extend blood threads from any available blood source within range. Corpses of creatures killed by the host can be reanimated as permanent puppets so long as their blood remains. Puppet count scales with the available blood.]

"A B-grade trait," Ayla muttered happily as she summoned her status screen.

Name: Ayla

Traits: Perfect Assimilation, Pyromancy (C), Bloodnet (B)

Rank: Iron

Level: 4 (100/400)

Available Forms:

Form 001: Human (Equipped)

Form 002: Bloodnet Spider (Equip? Y/N)

"Yes."

[Biomass consumed...]

[Constructing perfect Bloodnet Spider body...]

The process was faster now. Her body did not fight the shift the way it had the first time; it understood what it was doing.

The familiar heat and pressure came and went in seconds, and when it passed, Ayla stood on eight legs in the shallow water of the cavern.

She was enormous. Her body filled much of the open space, her abdomen large and smooth, her legs long and arched with precision.

But where the Spider Mother had been a grotesque thing, bloated and veined and foul, Ayla was not.

Her carapace was the deep blue-black of still water at night, edged faintly with silver where the bioluminescence of the pool caught it.

Her abdomen was smooth and tapered, not swollen, the surface holding a faint iridescent sheen that shifted between deep violet and cold silver as she moved.

Her legs were long and elegant, tapering to fine points, each joint articulated cleanly without the dragging heaviness of the Spider Mother.

Where the original had eight clusters of crimson eyes, Ayla had eight eyes as well, but they were gold, set evenly across her face, each one bright and focused.

She was, as her Trait promised, perfect for the race.

She moved one leg experimentally. Then another. The motion was intuitive in a way that surprised her.

The spider body did not feel unnatural; it felt precise, like a tool made to fit her hand exactly. She turned her attention inward, checking what still functioned.

Pyromancy was there.

She reached for it the way she always did, pulling at the ambient heat of the cavern. It responded, but weakly.

The warmth she gathered felt thin and distant, like trying to hear a sound through water. She pushed harder and managed to form a single Fire Bolt, small and guttering, before it faded.

She let it go and considered this. The spider body was cold-natured. It produced almost no internal warmth of its own.

The Spider Mother had generated heat only when it funneled mana through its body, using energy to compensate for what it lacked by nature.

Pyromancy in this form was still hers. It was not gone. But without the natural warmth of a human body to draw from, she had to supply the source herself.

That was mana. It was a significant limitation. She filed it away.

She looked around the cavern. Blood sat everywhere. It pooled in the shallow water, soaked into the cracks of the stone, and coated the piled husks of dead spiders in a thick, dark film.

Then she reached for the Bloodnet. Here, the difference was immediate. Thin lines of dark red blood slipped free from the water and rose like needles in the air.

They answered her the way heat answered her: instinctively and willingly.

She pushed the feeling outward. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The first spider corpse twitched. Then a second. Then a dozen more all at once, legs scraping against the stone as they lurched upright.

Their broken bodies moved wrong, joints bending at angles that did not match how they had moved in life, but they moved. They stood in a loose circle around her and waited.

Ayla turned one of her legs upward, and they stopped. She turned it down, and they sank back into the water in unison. She did it again. Up, they rose. Down, they sank.

"Satisfying."

Then she shifted back to her human form. The warmth returned with it, flooding into her skin from every direction.

Her Pyromancy stretched out immediately, comfortable and wide, filling the full twenty meters around her without effort.

She stood in the center of her silent army and folded her arms. The arrangement was clear to her now. The human form was better for Pyromancy.

The spider form amplified Bloodnet considerably. Both forms kept both traits. She simply had to choose which tool the situation required.

She was still thinking through the implications when a ragged sound broke the silence. The human. She had almost forgotten him.

He was still pressed to the cavern wall where she had last seen him. His legs had been severed at the knee by the Spider Mother, and the healing potion he had taken had sealed the wounds but not regrown what was lost.

His face was pale and slick with sweat.

Ayla sniffed at the air, smelling a strange scent. It was the scent of mating hormones. She glanced toward his crotch.

A noticeable bulge had formed at his crotch. It was a clear sign of his need to mate. Yet, his expression held no desire, only raw terror.

Why?

Ayla blinked several times, searching through Jaxon’s memories for an answer. She stepped closer. Her confusion deepened as the color drained from his face the nearer she got.

"Do you want to mate with me?" she asked.

"Wha...?"