My Evolution was complete.
Unfortunately, the Evolution didn't grant me any additional Skills.
On top of that, since integrating the Queen had already pushed my Skills to pretty high levels, I felt like there were fewer Skill level-ups compared to before.
Well, it can't be helped.
A bunch of my Skills were already maxed out, and honestly, I'd already entered the endgame when it came to Skills.
So anyway, this time's Evolution was the biggest visual change I'd ever had.
First off, my body got a size bigger.
It was still smaller compared to the adult Taratect I'd seen when Ark attacked me, but it was definitely larger than my previous compact size.
But honestly, that kind of change is whatever.
The real change was, without a doubt, the part that sprouted on top of my head.
A human upper body had grown there.
It gave me this strange sensation, like I had two separate consciousnesses.
It was similar to, yet different from, Parallel Will.
It was like thinking about things simultaneously with two brains — or rather, that was probably exactly what was happening.
Two fields of vision existed at once.
One was the same as before — my field of view was slightly higher due to my larger body, but otherwise unchanged.
The other was from a vantage point even higher up.
I looked around from that viewpoint.
Incredible.
Before, since my neck and torso were connected, I had to rotate my entire body just to look around. Now, just moving my neck gave me access to a wide field of view.
Queen was visible in my field of vision.
She'd gotten considerably bigger.
Old man.
Why is this guy praying?
Hero-kun.
He still hadn't woken up.
I'd prefer him to stay asleep — things would get complicated if he woke up.
I looked down.
Chest, huh.
So I really was female after all.
Males don't have these swollen bumps on their chest, do they.
Besides, I was only like two years old or so, yet I was a full-on adult.
I held my hand in front of my face.
Five fingers — a human hand.
I clenched it lightly and opened it.
I tried moving each finger individually.
They worked perfectly.
I bent over slightly to look further down.
My human body connected to the spider body around the waist area.
The seam was hidden by the spider's body hair so you couldn't see it.
Driven by curiosity, I moved the hair aside and took a look.
Nothing particularly interesting — it was just seamlessly connected.
My current body was stark white, so the junction with the white spider body didn't look jarring at all.
I bent over even further.
My spider eyes met my human eyes.
Meeting your own eyes without a mirror — talk about dexterity.
My spider eyes still had eight of them, as always.
Combined with the human eyes, that made ten total.
Who would've thought I'd end up with more eyes, not fewer.
That was one worry from before my Evolution taken care of.
But man, I was white.
My humanoid part was insanely white.
I'd been white in my previous life too, but I think it was a healthier kind of whiteness.
Now it was more of a plaster-like, artificial-looking white.
And to make matters worse, my hair was completely white too, which made it even whiter.
Speaking of which, my hair was quite long.
Among all that white, only my eyes were red.
My lips were pale as well, which made the red of my eyes stand out even more.
A white body with red eyes.
Humanoid in shape, but even a casual glance made it clear this was something other than human.
However, this — it hit me.
This humanoid body looked strikingly like my previous life's self.
Striking, but not identical.
The color was white and the eyes were red.
The facial features had changed slightly too.
What was it?
The base was definitely from my previous life, but there were traces of a face I'd seen somewhere before mixed in.
Hmm?
Oh.
It was the Demon King.
The Demon King's face — that was mixed into my previous life's face.
Ah.
Come to think of it, I was basically that person's descendant, so it wouldn't be strange for our faces to be similar.
Although "descendant" was maybe less accurate than "clone."
But if that was the case, then the fact that my previous life's face also blended in was the real mystery.
Well, probably best not to overthink it.
It could've been some weird result of science and occultism blending together — like my previous life's face reconstructed from memory getting mixed with genetic information, or something like that.
"You're... beautiful."
The old man murmured softly.
Ah, sure, sure.
Flattery still makes me happy.
Oh wait, I'm completely naked right now.
It wasn't like anything was going to disappear if someone looked, so I didn't really care, but continuing like this might earn me the Title of Exhibitionist.
A Title like that probably doesn't exist, though.
Well, wandering around naked felt like it killed my femininity points, so I should probably do something about it.
Since I was at it anyway, I'd use this as an experiment — I channeled power into my newly formed human hands.
White thread extended from my fingertips.
Yep.
So I could produce thread not just from my spider butt, but from my fingertips too.
Actually, ever since the Divine Weaving Skill had evolved, I could produce thread from anywhere on my body if I concentrated.
But producing it from my rear was still more efficient in terms of consumption and all that.
In that sense, producing from the fingertips was inefficient, but it was incredibly useful in other ways.
Even though I could say the rear-produced thread was "freely movable," it came with plenty of inconveniences.
From the fingers, I could leverage the fine movements of my fingertips for even greater dexterity, and there were probably tons of uses.
For now, I used the thread from my fingertips to weave something like clothing.
I just needed a quick stopgap — something to cover my chest, like a bra.
Done.
I was pretty handy with this stuff.
While I was at it, I gathered my long hair and braided it into a single braid to tie it back.
Apparently my hair counted as thread too, since I could manipulate it easily with Thread Manipulation.
Maybe Divine Weaving had absorbed that Skill, but I might still be able to use Slashing Thread if I tried.
I'd experiment with that sometime.
Now then, time to finally talk to the old man.
Could I actually produce a voice?
A quick vocal warm-up.
"Ah, ah—"
Yep, it worked.
Perfect.