I startled awake, thrashing around in my web. Eyes rapidly whipped in every direction searching for attackers, more damn ants, more snakes, more sentient roots. Adrenaline surged in my veins, and my heart pounded; my breath came fast and heavy. An edge of mania roared through my stuttering, Half-awake mind.

  There was nothing.

  Just me.

  Alone in the big web I spun to be my little hidey-hole. A moment later, the pain reminded me I should be resting as bolts of it clawed their way up from my limbs to my brain. I slumped down on the web, releasing a rasping groan, waiting for the waves of agony to subside. Taking inventory of myself, I wasn't in as rough a condition as I was before I had rested. As a matter of point, I had no idea at all how long I'd been out. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you wanted to look at it, I'd always slept like the dead. Getting to sleep had always been the issue, not staying asleep. That had proven even more true here, where there was normally no need for sleep. It was apparent that I could still push hard enough that my body required rest to heal and recover. Though that was significantly more difficult to do now, between the nature of this place and my vastly increased stats. It was an interesting point of consideration: how much sleep or rest did I actually need now? What would it be like when I had over a hundred points in Endurance? Would I even need to sleep at all?

  I couldn't feel the burning pain in my abdomen any longer as I shifted around on the web. It seemed that my innards were all now back in place as they should be. As I lay on the web high above the cavern floor, I tentatively pushed out several strands of web. There was no pain, no brutal screaming agony in my guts that followed, for which I was very thankful.

  Definitely makes me appreciate how fast I heal now.

  It seemed I really was on the way to healing, which left only one true concern at this point. My missing legs. If I thought about it and focused on them, I could feel an itchy feeling around the stumps, almost like they were, in fact, actually healing, but I wasn't sure that was the case, and I wasn't quite willing to bet on it. A larger part of me was terrified of the idea of returning to human form. I wasn't at all sure how my currently fragile psyche would handle it if I returned to being human and was missing an arm or a leg. Certainly, that would be much more crippling for me than losing a couple of legs as a spider. The edge of mania and panic returned to my thoughts. Only by an effort of will, and a strange calm settling over my thoughts, did I force it back down.

  I wasn't willing to push it at the moment, not when I still held a faint hope that my itching legs might actually grow back on their own. That hope sent me off on a tangent, however, when I realized there might be things I could do to help the process along. For instance, there was the loot from the royal guards to go over, and I never did check on the rest of those potions I picked up on the previous floor. I could feel the buzzing in the back of my mind that indicated several system notifications wanted my attention, but I wanted to hold off on looking at them for the moment; the prospect of loot was much more interesting.

  A mental command opened my [Inventory] and I began sifting through my spoils, both new and old.

  I stared at the other two potions I had picked up from the root nexus back in the first chamber with wide eyes. That regeneration potion could help; it could help quite a bit. In theory, at least, it should work in tandem with my necklace [Totem of Regrowth]. Perhaps that would explain the itching I felt in my severed limbs. If my natural healing and my necklace were working together to restore my limbs. For now, I wanted to finish going through the rest of the loot; I could slug back the bright red liquid in the vial later. The other potion I was sure would be useful to me at some point, but was somewhat overshadowed by the idea of the [Regeneration Potion].

  The loot from those two royal guards should be interesting. Now that I thought of it, I had to wonder if that third royal guard had escaped the web it'd been caught in. If it hadn't escaped, I'd have to go and finish it off once I was healed, both for the loot and because I was unwilling to leave an enemy like that at my back. The last thing I needed was to engage the Queen and have another royal guard ambush me from behind. For the moment, I tossed both potions back into my inventory and began looking for the drops from the guards. It took a moment to find them; unfortunately, there wasn't any easy way to call the loot screen for them back up, so I was left with searching manually.

  Unless…

  A few quick flashes of will and [Inventory] reorganized itself to suit my desires, with the most recent items at the top.

  Well damn.

  That was an upgrade, not a small one either. Just the ring on its own would be a huge boon to me, especially in my spider form, where I had a hardened carapace to help ward off attacks. The cuirass wouldn't help my spider form but would make me significantly less squishy while I was human. Anything that made me less likely to have holes poked in me was good in my books. As I equipped the loot, shoving it into a hastily opened gear screen, I couldn't help but feel something was missing. Almost like I hadn't finished the encounter and gotten all the loot, or I'd finished a stage in a game, but hadn't achieved the highest rank. The feeling gnawed at my insides in a way that was both familiar and not at the same time. I shook my head in annoyance, the third royal guard. It had to be. I'd left the third royal guard hanging in a web, in my mind, at least the encounter wasn't finished until I went back and killed the damn thing. Perhaps I was being paranoid, or applying entirely too much game logic to the situation, but as soon as I touched on the idea, it felt correct.

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  I pulled out the pair of potions I'd been looking at earlier. It was time to get moving, and the [Regeneration potion] seemed like just the thing I needed to get me up and moving again. Carefully manipulating the small vial with my spider limbs, I popped out the cork and dumped the contents down my open maw. The effect was instantaneous. If I'd had skin at the moment, it surely would have felt like an army of insects was crawling underneath it. The stumps of my severed limbs itched in a way that could drive a man to madness, and I could feel my guts roiling and rearranging themselves. Seems not everything on the inside was fully healed, even if it had stopped being painful. I stood there braced on my web, hanging above the cavern for what felt like an eternity, twitching in discomfort. The discomfort turned into an itch that was nearly a burning along the stumps of my severed limbs.

  Gah, that ain't right. It's like bugs are crawling under my skin.

  It continued right up until the moment I felt two newly formed legs touch the surface of my web. As the itching began to fade, I marveled at the two shiny new limbs. They looked as good as new, and I couldn't resist testing the limbs, placing weight on them, and moving around. They felt a bit soft, spongy, like when a crustacean molted and grew their new shell, and the new one was soft for a time before hardening. My new limbs weren't quite that soft, but I could feel that they were a bit softer than my other limbs. Still, joy surged through me; I had my limbs back, and I wasn't a cripple. It was very much a case of not knowing what you had until you lost it. Like most people, I took my body for granted, which is what made the prospect of losing limbs such a harrowing one.

  I grinned as I skittered across my web high above the cavern floor, rushing back and forth across the strands that made up the web with an unnatural grace. Well, as much as a spider twice the size of a human could grin at any rate.

  Potions, all the potions. Gonna horde all of them like a miser.

  That potion had saved my hide here, and I resolved right then and there to make sure I kept a solid stock and added to it when I had the chance.

  I moved towards the edge of my web, looking out of the cavern. I felt like I was mostly recovered thanks to that potion I'd just taken. My new limbs still felt a little soft, but nothing that would impair me much. Now, there was a hefty helping of revenge waiting for me. Another round of manipulating a small object with my legs saw the potion of haste dumped down my gullet.

  Energy surged through my veins, and I was filled with a desire to run, to move. I leapt from my web, firing off lines of webbing. I soared through the air as if I belonged there. The fight with the royal guards had taught me many things, but none more so than the ability to move freely in any environment. I traversed the cavern at a high rate of speed, leaping from place to place, using my web lines to navigate sharp corners at high speed. My heart pounded with joy and excitement. This was fun. The most fun I'd had in ages, even before this weird Soul-Sheer thing that was going on. I weaved through the array of roots without a care, flipping and spinning like a massive spider-shaped gymnast. Every movement felt right; it had a purpose. A touch to a root as I passed, I rotated my body the correct way to land legs first on a root column, and I leapt upwards to the next section. A web line fired as I passed halted my ascent, instead whipping around the root like a pendulum swung too hard, I used the momentum to send myself rocketing upward.

  The joy surging in my veins faded when the remaining royal guard came into sight. The poor bastard hung limply from a handful of web lines, seemingly completely exhausted from the struggle to free itself. It'd gotten close by the look of things, but not quite enough to get free of the lines of webbing. Apparently, my aim had been better than I thought, and I'd managed to catch one of its pincer-like hands as well. Its remaining free hand hadn't been enough to shear through the webbing by the look of things. I settled on a nearby root structure, watching the trapped ant. It swayed gently back and forth, suspended by the web lines. It didn't seem to have the energy to move at all, but I wasn't about to take any chances with it. I could already feel the energy of the potion fading from my limbs.

  Get it done quick, like, one and done. I thought to myself as I coiled my legs like springs underneath me, preparing to pounce.

  My legs uncoiled like springs as I flexed my Strength. I rocketed away from the root structure and towards my prey. As I sailed through the air, my legs pointed towards the trapped ant, poised like deadly spears, ready and waiting to impale my target.

  The royal guard's antennae twitched as I approached, a final flicker of awareness before impact. My legs struck true, piercing through its chitinous armour with sickening crunches. The ant's body convulsed, its remaining free limb flailing wildly as it thrashed in agony.

  I clung to the dying creature, feeling its life ebb away. Taking no chances, my fangs plunged into the creature, delivering a payload of lethal venom. Its struggles weakened, a surge of satisfaction, and vicious glee washed over me. This was retribution for the pain and fear they had inflicted. Yet beneath that primal triumph, a flicker of unease stirred. How easily I had slipped into this predatory mindset, reveling in the kill. Yet it was needed, it wasn't a part of me I could discard, and that willingness to inflict misery, to kill, and take life had kept me alive time and time again. Yet it begged the question: what was this place making me into?

  What was I becoming?

  The ant's movements ceased, its body going limp in my grasp. A faint chime sounded, signalling the completion of my grisly task.

  I made sure to touch the body, confirming the prompt to loot the body, before launching myself from its limp corpse to another root structure assisted by a well-placed web line. I leapt again and again, weaving through the network of roots. I wanted a bit of privacy to check on the loot and my remaining notifications. The new notification for experience from killing the royal guard drew attention to the buzzing in the back of my mind that indicated other unchecked notifications.

  I settled on a root structure near the ceiling of the cavern, away from prying eyes and away from the smaller worker drone ants that scurried about below.

  Notifications, then loot.

  Screens popped open in front of me; they were not what I had expected to see. At least not quite.

  I felt something stir deep within me. It wasn’t physical. It was as if someone had tugged on something deep within my soul.

  That’s worrying.