Two more levels meant two more points in every stat and six free points for me to spend. Looking at my stat sheet made me want to grin. My stats were coming along very well, at least from my perspective. It was hard to judge without a proper frame of reference. I already suspected as well that monsters simply didn't have the same stat distribution as people, likely specializing heavily in a single stat, whereas my stats at least were much more spread out. If they even had stats like they did.

  Looking over my stats, I found that my charisma was lagging horribly behind my other stats by a wide margin. A margin that would only grow wider with time, the way things looked right now. Truthfully, I wasn't at all sure that having a stat lag behind the others like this was actually an issue, but thanks to the way my stats were being distributed due to the [Soul-Sheer], I was leaning towards taking a balanced approach since I had no idea what my class was or rather would be. Following that vein, I dumped all six of my free points into charisma to bring it up to parity with my other lower stats.

  Progress had been made. That much was beyond contest; compared to where I had started, I wasn't the same being, not in the least. Though that did make me wonder how long I had spent here. At this point, I had completely lost track of the days I had been here. It could have been days, or weeks, honestly, it could even have been months, though I didn't think it had been quite that long. Over that time, I had undergone a fundamental shift. There wasn't a person born who wouldn't go through at least some changes being dumped in the middle of a hostile environment where one had to kill to advance and survive.

  I was no exception to this.

  I could already notice I was becoming significantly more inclined to have violence be my knee-jerk reaction to solving a problem, and I could only imagine what the consequences of such a thing would be if I ever made it back home. That was a worry that echoed constantly in the back of my mind. Would my family even recognize the man I'd become anymore? I wasn't sure.

  What would I even do if I made it back home? Go back to my job? My friends? My life? I wasn't the same man who worked that job or lived that life anymore. Deep down in my bones, I knew things wouldn't go back to how they were before. They couldn't; that was simple reality.

  I shook myself, my entire carapace vibrating; such things weren't worth thinking about until I actually made it out of this place, and I still had one more thing to look at.

  I accepted the prompt that appeared in front of me. A familiar sounded interesting. In games, a familiar was a companion of sorts, that usually took the form of an animal or smaller monster that assisted its handler either in battle or in regards to certain skills and activities. Hopefully, it wouldn't be something like a big bug, or a cat, the latter sounded kind of boring, possibly annoying, while the former just didn't appeal to me at all. I checked my inventory to find a new item had been deposited, presumably I needed to use this new item to summon my familiar, at least for the first time and maybe even afterwards.

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  Removing the token from my inventory, I triggered the prompt in the affirmative. The small silver disk I held balanced on the tips of my two forelegs immediately began to crumble into dust. I stood still as a stone, watching in wonder as the last of the token crumbled away; instead, it left a cloud of silver that glittered as it hung in the air for a brief moment before it rapidly began to swirl as if it were alive. Which, I suppose in a way it was, it did contain a soul or at least a spirit. The cloud whirled faster and faster before flying directly into my face.

  There was a very slight burning sensation where the dust touched me, but it was rapidly washed away by a cooling sensation.

  What followed was a sensation I'm not sure I could ever explain properly. If the feeling of someone walking on your grave was a physical sensation, it might feel like this, only this was worse, much, much worse. It felt as if something was digging into the core of my being; it felt invasive, almost, leaving me feeling rather exposed even as the feeling retreated.

  I dragged in a deep shuddering breath, forcing myself to relax somewhat, as I looked inward to see what the token had done. There was little that had been changed; there was a new node in my internal map of bloodline skills and other things, however. Looking more deeply at it, I could sense it was my new familiar; I could also sense it wasn't quite ready to wake up yet. The bonding process was still cementing itself, and trying to drag it out right now could hurt it or me, or both of us.

  I decided to leave it alone. The last thing I wanted to do was injure my new companion; we were going to be together for a long, long time if I had anything to say about it. So we were going to need to look after each other. Interestingly, there was a new screen to look at as well.

  Well, that was shockingly vague, unhelpful and obvious to boot, but I was beginning to accept that the System, whatever it was, simply wasn't going to ever give me answers or information. At least not for free. If I wanted more information, I'd have to look for it or figure it out; either way, I'd be doing it myself. Oh well, such was life, everyone figured it out as they went, and if anyone ever claimed they had it all figured out or had an answer for everything, they were lying or selling something. Probably both.

  At any rate, it wasn't helping me to sit around and wait for my familiar to 'wake up'. I'd completed the quest, so now it was time to make the long trek back to the outer edge of the cavern and find the passage that had been blocked by roots before. While the quest didn't come right out and say it, it was implied that now that it was complete, the way forward would be clear.

  At least that was the hope.

  If there wasn't a way through the blockage, I honestly wasn't quite sure what I would do going forward.

  The jungle flew by as I leapt from trunk to trunk, sometimes firing lines of webbing to change directions in mid-air. I was getting pretty good at it. The key really had been to stop trying to swing around like a certain wall crawler would. Instead, I used raw Strength and Dexterity to pull myself in a specific direction. Of course, it helped that I actually had the stats to do so; the bulk of this spider body was not light.

  Where I had spent days or weeks combing this section of the jungle before, now I was moving at a pace that would have me at the cavern edge in a matter of hours, if it even took that long. Granted, I wasn't searching for something the way I had been initially, nor was I stopping to hunt everything that moved, either. There was little point to that; nothing in the area would give me much XP anymore. Not unless I killed hordes of lower-level mobs. I kept moving; I was simply going in as straight a line as possible at my best speed. Which, as it turned out, was pretty quick.

  A couple of hours later, I stood before the root growth that had halted my progress before, where I had battled the [Serpent Root Sentinel]. Or rather, where that blockage had been. Since I'd been here last, the roots that blocked the way forward had withered, almost ridiculously so. It looked like they'd been dead for a long time and had shrunken down to little more than a lattice of dead twigs. All of the blue that had laced the roots in patterns that defied tracking, the energy that had seemed to fill was long gone. The almost pristine black that had made up the rest of the surface was dull and much closer to a dark grey, all the luster sucked from it. Approaching the mess of dead wood, I swiped at it with one of my forelegs and found the dead wood shattered easily under the force of the blow, leaving a gaping rent in the lattice.

  Rather than proceed directly onward, I figured it was time I tried something I hadn't in a while, changing back to my human form. For quite a while after I'd first swapped to my spider form, I'd felt that I simply couldn't change back. Like it wasn't ready, or something was preventing it. Even when that feeling had gone away while I was out roaming the jungle, by that point I'd adjusted to the idea of being a giant spider, at least temporarily, and it wasn't as if it didn't have its advantages. At that point, I'd decided it would be worthwhile to spend the time to learn more about my spider form, how to hunt, move, and stalk my prey as a spider.

  It had been time well spent, but I was ready to be back on two legs instead of eight. Particularly since the tunnel on the other side of the dead root lattice looked a little tight for my spider body, not impassable, but certainly not comfortable either. So now was as good a time as any.

  I turned my senses inward to my internal map of nodes that represented both my bloodline and my other abilities. I focused on [Hollow Web Metamorphosis], it felt ready, the feeling of inability was long since gone, and I wondered not for the first time if there was some sort of cool down. Or if perhaps it was more to do with it being the first time I'd changed shape like that? I'd have to experiment with it in the future to learn more. I pressed my will into the ability, and it responded, flooding my body with energy, just like before, though this time it felt like I had much more control over the process.

  I blinked; my perspective had shifted. Suddenly, I felt very vulnerable. I was in soft flesh again, I couldn't see everything around me, or feel the vibrations. I stood there disoriented from the sudden shift for a long moment, just adjusting to being back in the flesh, so to speak.

  "Well fuck, that'll take some getting used to," I said out loud, thinking of the way it felt coming back to my limited human senses, even if they were much improved thanks to bringing up my perception stat. For a long moment, I stood there marvelling at the first words I'd spoken out loud in what seemed like forever.

  "First thing I can say in months, and of course it includes the word fuck." I laughed aloud. "Yep, that tracks."

  I'd often been chastised for having potty mouth throughout my school years, and it had never changed. I checked myself over, finding that after finishing my transformation, I was wearing all the gear that had been slotted into my gear menu, which was nice. It would have really sucked to have to change forms somewhere unpleasant and then find out I'd be butt ass naked when I did. I could see that going poorly.

  Very poorly.