Evolve Read online

  Drawing back once more, he tried to launch the spit like he would if he were a human. As he tried to do so, two membranes in the top of his mouth opened and acid was launched from the orifices. With a bit of study, Jon could see that these membranes connected to two organs within his skull that Jon had previously identified with his vision. The spit landed on the spider and immediately began to hiss.

  Congratulations! You have slain a level 5 Giant Stone Spider. You have been awarded 200 experience.

  Jon did a little snake-shaped dance. He wasn’t quite sure what experience could be used for but all of a sudden, the world was looking a lot more positive. Now he just needed to eat. Jon chowed down on his liquid diet with fervor. He couldn’t taste what he was drinking, but it didn’t much matter. He wasn’t sure that tasting the liquified remains of a spider appealed to him very much. He had once eaten a cricket after a dare and the struggling, unfamiliar creature in his mouth had been vomit-inducing. At least this bug was clearly dead. He just had to pretend it was a protein shake. After a few moments, another system message crossed his vision:

  Congratulations! You have consumed a Giant Stone Spider! You have been awarded 1 biomass.

  Jon stopped eating, in shock. The message was in the bottom corner of his vision like a chat log in a video game. After a few moments, the message disappeared.

  Wait, come back! Jon thought. As if summoned, the message returned to its previous state. Jon’s mind worked overtime to consider the ramifications of what had just happened. He wasn’t completely familiar with videogames. It had never been something that he had been interested in. Maybe it was his generation or his lifestyle, but he had always believed that people who play videogames simply did so because they couldn’t accomplish anything in their actual lives. It was a sort of fantasy escapism that Jon attributed to a lack of motivation.

  It wasn’t until his daughter, Autumn, had started playing massive multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft that Jon began to see the value. He had always lived a high-profile life, and his daughter had suffered the brunt of that exposure. Being online had allowed her to pretend to be a different person and make friendships that were outside the strictly regimented realm of politics. Once he realized that these relationships made her feel just as fulfilled, if not more so than the ones in real life, Jon decided that he should make it a priority to understand where she was coming from, even if just from a safety perspective.

  As a result of his diligence, he had learned the basics of the games that she had loved to play. He didn’t embed himself any further for fear of becoming the kind of dad that embarrassed his kid because he wanted so badly to relate. Instead, he just asked Autumn questions about it and allowed her to show him on her own terms.

  The messages that had appeared in his vision brought up a host of questions. Even more so, the way that it was presented hinted more to its function than the message itself. He wasn’t sure what the context of experience or biomass meant. He wasn’t sure if it was significant that he had one. But the fact that he could use his mind to control the game-like interface was more important than anything else that had happened in this world so far.

  What had God said to him? That he would need to evolve to survive in this world. At the time, Jon had merely taken it as an odd form of phrasing, but perhaps it needed more consideration. What if God meant that he would actually need to evolve his physical body? If that was the case, then Jon would need to be exceedingly careful about how to develop so that he wouldn’t make any mistakes that would affect his long term goals.

  After all, his true long-term goal was to survive for as long as possible, and it looked like the way to do that was performing as he was told. What that meant precisely, John wasn’t sure. The first step was mastering his interface and then figuring out if everyone else in this world operated by the same rules. If he could figure out the rules to this game, he could win it. He was sure about that fact. Competition was what he was born for.

  Finding his resolve, Jon paused in the act of eating to try and control other common aspects of a videogame. He had already discovered that it was mentally controllable. Now he just had to see what was available to control.

  Status. He thought.

  A large screen appeared in his vision.

  Jon was astounded at the new information presented to him. He discovered that if he focused on a particular subject that a description for each one would appear in his vision. Looking at his information, most of the things were pretty standard in games that he had learned about. The items of particular interest to him were his faction and race.

  It seems that the Lord wasn’t kidding when he said I would be her Scourge. Who knew deities take such things literally. He mused.

  Jon figured that this was the first step in unlocking the reason he was here. If he was to be the beginning of a new faction, then he would need to evolve his abilities intelligently. The mutations portion of his status made sense after his fight with the stone spider. These were inherent qualities of his current form. The acid was self-explanatory. Additionally, if he had a paralytic hide that must mean that it excreted some sort of substance that paralyzed the spider.

  It must have been extremely potent if just brushing the spider caused the spider to become affected. Mana vision was the most unfamiliar term, but there was an Earthly equivalent in some animals. Jon knew that sharks, fish, and platypuses could sense the electric current of other creatures. It didn’t work in the air because the air couldn’t conduct an electrical charge, but if mana was a form of energy that was all around this world, then mana vision was a hugely beneficial evolutionary adaptation.

  Satisfied, Jon considered his status in its totality. It seemed to Jon that he was some sort of ambush hunter. The hide would be extremely useful on someone unaware he was there, the acid spit would be helpful for an ambush, and the sharpness of his skin would be useful for straight-up combat. He realized that he wasn’t quite as helpless as he had thought. The problem was that he was a six-foot-long-snake thing and there’s no way he could start a movement on this world that will give God what she wanted.

  I’m missing a piece of the puzzle, he mused. Right now, my best bet would be to continue attacking creatures within this forest in the hopes that I can unlock more of my strength and find the missing link between this body and the form I am going to have to take to conquer this world. Feeling better now that he had a plan, Jon went back to finish his spider meal.

  Chapter 2: Bug Hunt

  Jon was sufficiently impressed with his acid-enabled digestion. He had used his abilities to quickly dispose of the rest of the spider. It seemed that his acid had a limited capacity. After using the ability ten times, he seemed to run out. Fortunately, it refilled at an even pace that appeared to be augmented when actively consuming something. It would make sense that his health would restore more quickly after consuming food. Otherwise, he would have to take substantial breaks between meals, and that would slow down the evolution process significantly. After wholly finishing the spider, Jon was rewarded with a total of 2 biomass and 200 experience. Based on the size of the spider, which probably took up about a fifth of an average-sized man, Jon estimated that eating a fully grown adult would provide him around 10 biomass.

  In his excitement earlier, he hadn’t extensively thought about the effects of experience. When he had resummoned the biomass notification, he hadn’t realized he had dismissed the experience notification. It had taken him a quick glance at his status page, and a mental question before an experience bar popped into his vision like a heads up display.

  The system showed him that he had 200 out of the 500 experience required for the next level. That didn’t seem bad, but if Jon were a betting man, he would assume that leveling was a progressively more difficult advancement process. Additionally, he wasn’t sure what levels actually meant. It didn’t seem to reward him with anything, but seeing as his whole goal on this world was to evolve, he could safely assume that level
s were connected in some way. Regardless, Jon intimated he would need to find more prey for his consumption. If victims meant more experience and biomass and those two things were related to evolution, then he needed more of them so he could stop making his way around the world as a serpentine predator.

  Jon decided to stick with his earlier plan to gather more information about the world around him. He slithered his way to the tree in front of where he had initially spawned. He found that his microscopically ridged hide easily let him wind his way up the tree. The roughness of his exterior gripped the softness of the bark and gave him the traction to scale the tree as smoothly as he would slithering along the ground. He wryly noted that looking like a tryst between a flatworm and a snake at least had its positives. Navigating up the tree was actually less exerting than it would’ve been in his original body.

  Once he reached the top branches of the tree. He cursed himself for being an idiot. He was still operating as if his new body worked the same way his old one did. Getting a higher vantage point would have been better if he had actual working eyes. However, his mana sensing organs were merely hampered by him being in a tree. Height didn’t increase his range of observation. His senses now had a firm distance cap. At the end of his field of vision, his ability to see simply stopped. This was a more frightening prospect than Jon had realized. Human vision was meant to give them the ability to see predators from a distance, and this was just the opposite. He could study anything happening within his immediate surroundings but was blind to happenings outside of them. Now that he had positioned himself in the tree, he couldn’t even sense what was lying on the ground beneath it. There was a fifteen-foot sphere of vision in all directions, but now he had left himself vulnerable to someone attacking outside of his sensory capabilities. He would have to be more careful in the future not to let himself move in such a way that he left an opening for attack.

  This is a tall fucking tree, Jon groused, taking his anger at himself out on the tree.

  If he had his human mouth, he would’ve sighed. His ability to see distances, or lack thereof, would be necessary to improve in the future if he could somehow evolve the way the Lord had implied. Until then, he would have to make do with what he had. There was no use crying over spilled milk and missing eyeballs.

  Jon wound his way back down the tree and remained alert. He didn’t think there would be a predator waiting at the bottom in the short time he had been up in the boughs of the tree, but a Marine didn’t stay alive without a healthy amount of suspicion and paranoia. Once he reached the bottom, he used his vision to remain as much in the tall grass as he could. He was increasingly worried that something more lethal than a spider would find him before he could see it. The smart thing to do would be to find a place to hide and wait for prey to come in. His whole body had been optimized for ambush hunting. As his thoughts manifested, his vision lit up with a mana signature at his 2 o’clock position. He slowed as he focused his senses, and tried to determine what he was seeing.

  In the roots of a massive tree before him, a pulsing blue-white light was resonating with his mana vision, revealing its location. As his vision focused on the area, Jon began to make out the details of the tree. He could see how the gnarled and twisted roots created a space within them. He couldn’t make out what was in the burrow, but he could tell by the strength of the pulsing mana that it was smaller than himself. He couldn’t take size for granted, every time he had received a brief about respecting the wildlife, it had always been emphasized that the smaller creatures often killed you faster than their more substantial counterparts.

  Jonathan made his way forward. He had no need to try to be silent. His form made nary a whisper as it slid under, over, or around obstructions without any conscious desire to remain quiet. Part of that was his natural form, snakes tended to be quiet. However, he recognized that the softness of his hide actually worked in his favor in this regard. Instead of remaining rigid and disturbing the natural detritus of the forest, it tended to flex and bend around objects, making him more stealthy. He’ didn’t have any hearing organs to make sure, but as he watched his victim hiding in the sanctuary of the tree roots, he knew his movements hadn’t alerted it at all.

  As he reached the burrow, he pulled back slightly to give his senses a chance to penetrate the den. Unfortunately, his sight didn’t provide any more clues. Something about the wood of the tree prevented a more in-depth perusal of his prey. Slate didn’t mind this series of events. It would have been nice to gather more information on his opponent before engaging with them, but it was more important to learn the limits of his new physique. The quickest way for him to die would be to become overconfident of his body than he should be; finding himself the midnight snack of a predator much more developed than him. Luckily, whatever it was, hadn’t moved at all since he had spotted it.

  Jonathan made his way above the den and then slunk toward the ground intending to surprise his enemy from the ceiling. From his time in the Marine Corps, he knew that the entrance to a domicile was always the most dangerous position. If he could approach his target from any unsuspected angle, it would rapidly increase his chances of surviving this encounter. Since he didn’t have sight in the traditional sense, and the ridges on his scales allowed him to grip the wooden ceiling of the burrow, he could hopefully ambush the opponent and kill it before it had a chance to do significant damage to him.

  Adrenaline, or whatever the snake approximation of adrenaline was pumped through Jon’s body. It had been decades since he had felt so alive. Political debates, campaign rallies, and donor luncheons couldn’t compare with the primal feeling of crushing one’s enemies through sheer determination and physical effort. The last time he had felt this way was when he had been in actual combat.

  With one last breath to steady his nerves, and put him in that magical zone between panic and alertness that allowed one to accomplish extraordinary things, Jon explosively shot into the burrow and blasted acid from his mouth at the same time. The acid struck accurately and hit a gigantic beetle lying in a state of torpor below him. The acid immediately started to emit caustic smoke once it landed on its carapace and the startling stimuli were enough to shake the creature from its restful state. The burrow was large enough for the beetle to gather its six legs underneath it. It was round and had a sizeable defensive shell on its back, but it turned toward Jon to present savage-looking mandibles.

  He didn’t know much about insects, but he knew that if those mandibles were to surround his form, the beetle would have enough power to slice through his flesh with little resistance. These implements had been designed to eat wood, a much harder substance than his hide. Jon launched another attack at his enemy's face, trying to let some splash onto the beetle’s primary offensive weapons. If he could degrade them in some way, it would dramatically increase his chance for victory.

  The first acid attack seemed like it was doing little to actually hurt the beetle, but with the latest attack, it let out a high-pitched squeal and tried to use its front legs to slash at Jon. The size of the burrow didn’t allow the beetle to lean purely on its hind legs and so it couldn’t get the range to let its claw-tipped legs reach Jon. He was able to twist to avoid the swipe and felt the natural impulse to capitalize on his momentum. The predator in his heart cheered him on to attack.

  Going entirely inside of the burrow would give the advantage to the beetle because Jon was significantly longer, but there was no guarantee what kind of powers the beetle possessed if Jon gave it operating room. After all, the last enemy he found had been a weird amalgamation of rock and arachnid, and this enemy could have some other elemental augmentation. Jon really did not want to get his ass fried by a bolt of lightning if he could help it.

  His mind worked overtime to run through various permutations of the following action. It was a blessing and a curse for him. In situations such as these, his devious mind kept him alive, but when he had still been human, the adrenaline and plotting did little to allow him a res
tful night’s sleep.

  Selecting a strategy from amongst many, he launched himself into the burrow at the awkwardly positioned beetle. As he did so, a wild swipe from the creature’s mandibles connected with his side. Jon thought that initially, the blow wouldn’t be so bad, but he was quickly disabused of that notion. He could feel with exquisite agony as the mandible rebounded slightly from his supple skin and then catch in one of the junctions between two different sized scales.

  The claws easily shredded through the keratin armor and into the soft musculature below. Jon hissed and tackled the beetle through the pain by massing the front third of his body into a dense object. The movement brought the claws through his flesh as the insect flailed wildly, still screaming from its melting eyes.