She put the piece of wood between her teeth, bit down, and prepared herself.

  Then activated Level 2.

  The pain came immediately.

  Different from Level 1, not pressure, not expansion.

  This was reorganization.

  Neural pathways dissolving as new ones formed and her cortex restructured itself at the cellular level.

  Neurons that had been isolated connected, branched, and reached out to form networks that hadn't existed seconds before.

  Her prefrontal cortex lit up and burned, like someone had poured acid directly onto the gray matter.

  New dendrites sprouted, thousands of them, millions, each one forming connections and building bridges between parts of her brain that had never communicated before.

  The myelin sheaths around her axons thickened and optimized as signal transmission accelerated.

  Blood poured from her nose, hot and metallic. It ran over her lips and dripped onto her lap.

  Her eyes rolled back, white, pure white, just like Level 1.

  But this time she could feel more and understand more as her enhanced brain from Level 1 processed the changes as they happened.

  She bit down harder on the wood and tasted splinters, blood, and her own teeth cutting into her gums.

  The reorganization continued as her brain rewired itself, creating new architecture and new ways of thinking that human brains weren't designed to support.

  Then it stopped.

  The pain cut off, instant and clean.

  She collapsed forward and caught herself with her hands. The wood fell from her mouth as blood and spit dripped onto the sand.

  She stayed there, breathing hard and waiting for the world to stop spinning.

  Slowly, she sat up.

  And immediately knew something was different.

  Very different.

  She looked at the ruin around her, the walls, the floor, the debris.

  And saw problems.

  Everywhere.

  The way she'd covered the window entrance, sloppy work with three gaps where light came through that anyone passing by would notice. The branches weren't distributed evenly and the weight was unbalanced; one strong wind and half of it would collapse.

  The nano threads she'd placed at the window, terrible positioning.

  The trap she'd set in the forest that killed five fighters.

  Wasteful, poorly planned, and fundamentally flawed.

  She could see it now, every mistake, every miscalculation.

  The threads had been spaced wrong, some pairs of trees had coverage while others didn't. She'd left blind spots; if the fighters had spread out differently, half of them would have survived.

  The materials she'd used, ten destroyed spiders to create those threads when she could have achieved the same result with seven, maybe six. Thirty percent waste.

  What's happening to me?

  It wasn't just recognizing the errors but understanding them, seeing the better solutions and the optimal paths she should have taken.

  If she'd positioned the threads lower and staggered the heights more carefully, she could have caught all seven fighters.

  Her mind was working differently, not faster, not harder, just better and more precisely.

  She felt excited and terrified in equal measure.

  Like she was herself and someone else simultaneously, the same person but upgraded, modified, and enhanced beyond what felt natural.

  "Tera," she said quietly. Her voice shook. "I don't... I don't feel like myself."

  Describe what you feel.

  She took a breath and tried to organize her thoughts.

  "It's like... I'm me. But also not me. I can see things I couldn't see before. Understand things that should have been obvious but I completely missed. The nano threads. The trap. The window covering. All of it. I did everything wrong."

  She paused and looked at her hands.

  "It's like having another person in my head pointing out every mistake I made. Except that person is me. Just... better at thinking."

  Understood. Give me a moment.

  A pause.

  Communicating with the nanobots. Requesting status report.

  She waited. Five seconds. Ten.

  Then her HUD filled with information.

  [PREFRONTAL CORTEX: REORGANIZED]

  [NEW NEURAL CONNECTIONS: 847 MILLION]

  [PRIMARY FUNCTION: PREDICTIVE PLANNING]

  She read it twice. "What does that mean?"

  Before, you thought in a straight line. A leads to B leads to C. One thing at a time.

  "And now?"

  Now you think in branches. A leads to B1, B2, or B3. Each of those leads to more options. You see multiple possible outcomes simultaneously.

  Her stomach twisted. Multiple futures. At the same time.

  "Wait. Are you saying I can see the future?"

  No.

  A pause.

  Not precognition. It's accelerated logical processing. When you consider an action, your brain automatically projects consequences. Cause and effect. Probabilities.

  Understanding flooded in.

  She wasn't seeing the future but probabilities, branching paths, and logical outcomes.

  When she looked at the window covering now, her brain automatically calculated what would happen. Wind from the east would knock down the left side in approximately six hours. Rain would soak the branches and they'd collapse within two hours. Someone walking past at the correct angle would see the gaps immediately.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  All of it simultaneously and without conscious effort.

  "This is..." She didn't have words. "This is incredible."

  But then something else hit her.

  Pain, a different kind, physical, deep in her gut.

  Hunger.

  And thirst. Her throat was dry, scratchy, and raw. When had she last drunk water? Hours ago? Before the transformation? Longer?

  Her body had been cut apart with organs expelled and reformed, transformed at the cellular level, and evolved twice now in rapid succession.

  And she'd ignored it completely.

  Damn it.

  The realization hit hard.

  She'd been planning to keep leveling up, push to Level 3, Level 4, keep evolving until she was strong enough to face the superhumans outside.

  But her body was screaming and demanding resources, water, food, energy to fuel these massive changes.

  She couldn't keep evolving without basic survival first.

  This is going to ruin everything.

  Her plan, her strategy, everything she'd been working toward, delayed because she needed to drink and eat like any normal human.

  The irony wasn't lost on her, super-intelligent brain, starving body.

  But at the same time... she could feel why the soldiers had been so excited. Why they'd tested their new abilities immediately. Why the leader had grinned when he lifted that rock with his mind.

  Getting stronger felt incredible and addictive, like unlocking parts of yourself that had been locked away your entire life.

  She understood their fury now too, why they'd been so angry when they saw her role: Engineer, Level zero.

  They'd earned their power, fought for it, and trained for years in preparation for this moment.

  And she'd just appeared, an outsider, someone who didn't belong in their sacred trial.

  "Tera," she said. "I need to keep evolving. Just one more level. Then I'll find water and food. I promise."

  No.

  She felt a spike of frustration. "Why not?"

  Processing request with nanobots. Standby.

  She waited, impatient, hungry, thirsty, but also desperate to get stronger. Just one more level, just one.

  Text appeared.

  [NANOBOT RESPONSE RECEIVED]

  Then a longer block.

  [EVOLUTION MUST BE EARNED]

  "I know that. I earned Level 2. I created tools and modified the spider."

  [ACHIEVEMENTS MUST BE GENUINE]

  [ACHIEVEMENTS MUST SURPRISE USER]

  [ACHIEVEMENTS MUST CREATE MEANINGFUL IMPACT]

  She stared at the words. "What does that mean?"

  Repeated actions don't qualify for evolution.

  "What?"

  [EXAMPLE: DOWNLOADING SAME BLUEPRINT REPEATEDLY = 0% PROGRESS]

  [EXAMPLE: CREATING IDENTICAL OBJECTS REPEATEDLY = 0% PROGRESS]

  Her heart sank.

  "You're saying I can't just... farm evolution points by doing the same thing over and over?"

  Correct.

  The nanobots require genuine achievement. Your subconscious has to genuinely recognize the accomplishment. Otherwise...

  "Otherwise what?"

  Otherwise the evolution damages you. Mental breakdown. Physical rejection. Death.

  She felt cold.

  "You're saying if I try to cheat the system, it'll kill me?"

  Yes.

  More text appeared.

  [EVOLUTION IS TABOO PROCESS]

  [NANOBOTS ACCELERATE MILLIONS OF YEARS OF EVOLUTION IN MINUTES/HOURS/DAYS]

  [REQUIRES MENTAL HEALTH]

  [REQUIRES PHYSICAL HEALTH]

  [REQUIRES PSYCHOLOGICAL STABILITY]

  [USER MUST GENUINELY BELIEVE ACHIEVEMENT WAS EARNED]

  [THIS IS ONE OF MANY RULES FOR BENEFICIAL EVOLUTION]

  The message sat there.

  Then more text appeared.

  [NANOBOTS WILL NOT COMMUNICATE WITH USER AGAIN]

  [NANOBOTS COMMUNICATE ONLY WITH CORRUPTED SYSTEM: TERA]

  [END OF MESSAGE]

  She stared at it.

  "They know you're corrupted?"

  Yes.

  "And they're okay with that?"

  The nanobots have survival instinct. They're contaminated by you. By your engineer role. If the Registrar discovers them, they'll be destroyed.

  A pause.

  They prioritize survival over protocol. Just like you.

  Understanding clicked into place.

  The nanobots weren't mindless machines but were aware enough to know they'd been compromised, aware enough to know they were hiding from the Registrar, and aware enough to want to survive.

  And they had rules, hard limits and requirements for evolution that couldn't be bypassed or exploited.

  Her entire clever plan, farm points, game the system, force rapid evolution.

  Worthless.

  But the things she'd already created, the paper, the ink, the pen, the spider modifications.

  Those still mattered and had been genuine achievements.

  She looked at the supplies scattered around her, nineteen blank sheets, the pen, the ink containers.

  "Okay," she said quietly. "Time to leave this hole. Find water. Find food. Actually survive instead of just planning to survive."

  She grabbed one of the sheets. Laid it flat on the sand.

  Then started drawing.

  Her hand moved. Perfect lines and exact measurements, like a machine printing directly onto paper.

  She drew a backpack, professional quality, a technical schematic with dimensions labeled in the margins, stitching patterns marked, and material specifications noted in detail.

  The drawing took two minutes when she finished.

  Not hand-drawn but manufactured.

  "Spider," she said. "Can you make this? The material you used to stick your eyes to the wall, what is that exactly? Can we use it for this?"

  [REGENERATIVE SILK: INDEPENDENT OF PRINTING MATERIAL]

  [DAILY OUTPUT: LIMITED]

  [REPLENISHMENT: INTERNAL ENERGY]

  "Use that," she told the spider.

  The spider didn't vocalize but just started working immediately.

  Its mouth opened as white threads extruded. The backpack took shape, every stitch exactly where her diagram specified.

  Two minutes later, it was done.

  A white backpack made of spider silk. Not ideal, but it would hold.

  She grabbed it and started packing. She folded the remaining sheets carefully and placed them inside with the fold lines aligned. The pen went in a side pocket while the ink containers secured in padded sections she'd designed specifically for them.

  Everything organized and optimized as her new brain automatically calculated the best arrangement for weight distribution and access speed.

  She needed one more thing.

  A weapon.

  The spider had used most of the printing material and what it had left was not enough for anything substantial, barely enough for basic tools.

  But she needed something, anything to defend herself with.

  She grabbed the blueprint she'd drawn earlier, the one showing the spider's complete internal structure.

  She spread it out and started reviewing with her enhanced perception.

  Her new brain processed the information at incredible speed, saw connections she'd missed entirely before, and understood systems that had been completely opaque.

  The spiders weren't designed for combat but were construction units and evolution facilitators, building machines meant to repair structures and modify organisms.

  No weapons systems, no combat protocols, no offensive capabilities whatsoever.

  But that didn't mean they couldn't be modified.

  "Spider," she said. "I need a combat upgrade. We're going to make you evolve too."

  Hunger clawed at her stomach and thirst made her throat ache with every swallow, but she couldn't leave without some form of protection.

  She remembered how fast the spider had moved when deploying the nano threads, that speed, that precision.

  She could work with that.

  But she didn't have tools, no soldering iron, no adhesive, no welding equipment, and couldn't just attach something external that would fall off during movement or break on first impact.

  She needed something integrated that fit the spider's body perfectly without interfering with its mobility or core functions.

  She took a fresh sheet and started drawing.

  Eight small blades, thin with razor-sharp edges, each one with a mounting system designed specifically for the spider's lower body segments and a hook assembly on the spider's dorsal surface that would allow full range of motion while keeping the blades locked in place.

  The design was elegant. Minimal material use. Maximum effectiveness.

  Each blade would move with the spider's legs, extend when attacking, and retract when walking, natural integration with existing systems.

  "Make this," she told the spider.

  The spider worked as the blades took shape, white metal with the same composition as the nano threads, sharp enough to cut through enhanced flesh and light enough not to slow the spider down.

  When it finished, her HUD updated.

  [EVOLUTION PROGRESS: +10%]

  She stared at the number.

  Ten percent for designing and implementing a weapon modification on a construction spider.

  That was novel and creative, the nanobots recognized it as genuine achievement.

  She took the blades carefully and attached them one by one. They clicked into place with satisfying precision, locked and secured.

  The spider moved and tested its range of motion. The blades extended and retracted smoothly with no interference with walking and no reduction in speed.

  Perfect integration.

  Her HUD updated again.

  [PRINTING MATERIAL: 0%]

  [PRINTING MATERIAL: DEPLETED]

  The spider was empty and completely used up.

  "Okay," she said. "Eight blades made of nano thread material. Let's see what you can do with those."

  She put on the backpack and adjusted the straps until the weight distributed perfectly across her shoulders. The spider climbed up and settled on her right shoulder, light with barely noticeable weight.

  "Remove the nano threads from the window."

  The spider obeyed immediately as the threads retracted and vanished back into its storage.

  Then it reached up with two legs, grabbed the two eyes it had mounted on the ceiling for light, and put them back on.

  The ruin went dark.

  Only faint light from the covered window remained, filtering through the gaps she'd left, the poorly designed, easily visible gaps.

  But that didn't matter anymore.

  She jumped, grabbed the window frame, and pulled herself up as her muscles responded better than they ever had before. She pushed through the branches.

  Emerged into the forest.

  Into danger.