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When Yeoman exited the dark dimension, the first thing he saw was Cody and Ella. He was back on the rooftop of Cody’s apartment, and the sunrays nearly blinded him. Yeoman frowned and squinted, taking a good look at his teammates. Cody hadn’t changed much, but there was something different about him. “Did you modify your face?”
“Handsome, right?” Cody asked, tilting his head back at an angle and crossing his arms. “Plastic surgeons are going to be out of a job.”
Ella rolled her eyes. “Is that really something you should spend points on?”
Yeoman glanced at the old lady. He felt like it was no longer correct to call her an old lady. She no longer looked like she had shrunken in on herself: her back was less hunched, her shoulders broader. She was even a little taller. Instead of looking like she was in her seventies or eighties, she appeared to be a woman in her thirties. However, her youthful appearance wasn’t the most noticeable thing about her that had changed. It was her hair. Her hair wasn’t white anymore; it was brownish-black, but it was as if thousands of tiny diamonds had been embedded at the end of each strand, shining in the sun.
Cody glared at Ella. “Hypocrite. I understand turning younger will make you stronger, but what did you do to your hair?”
Ella snorted. A clump of her hair rose up and twined around each other, forming a miniature arm. It reached over and punched Cody’s cheek, leaving him stunned. Ella cackled at the Asian man’s expression. “Do you know what a cone snail is? I converted my hair into tiny proboscises, and each one contains a venomous harpoon.” She sighed. “You don’t know how many points I spent on different venoms.”
Cody rubbed his cheek. “You didn’t inject me with anything weird just now, did you?”
“If I did, you’d be on the ground crying or dead,” Ella said. She glanced at her body before looking around. “It feels weird not having any armor.”
“Yeah,” Cody said and frowned. “At least we can bring them out after the next stage.”
Huh? “Wait. What do you mean?” Yeoman asked.
“You didn’t ask?” Cody raised an eyebrow. “I asked the system if we could take our equipment back to Earth, and it said that privilege only unlocks for the people who’ve cleared the fourth stage.”
Yeoman scratched his head. The aliens actually responded to Cody? What the hell? Whenever Yeoman asked it any questions, it’d just repeat whatever text was already on display. Did the aliens hate him or something? “Is that so….”
“Damn,” Cody said, his eyes widening. “The hell is that?”
Yeoman turned around. A giant bug was walking on the grey material of the apartment’s roof. It looked like a cockroach, but it was the size of a large puppy. Suddenly, Yeoman remembered Red, the pet black widow he had caught. He promised to bring it something to eat on his way back. Yeoman furrowed his brow, and one of the vines on his back raised itself up, flipping onto his shoulder, pointing at the bug. A cockroach was the perfect target to test out his new skill. The tip of the vine was ejected, landing on the cockroach’s back in an instant. The vine tip expanded and wrapped around the insect. Yeoman was a bit perturbed. Controlling the vine was as natural as controlling an arm, but it felt so strange to have an arm that was disconnected from his body. As for the vine that ejected part of itself, Yeoman felt like it’d grow back after a few days, and until it did, he wouldn’t be able to shoot a grasping vine from it. It was a good thing he had over a hundred vines growing from his back.
“What the hell kind of animal does that?” Cody asked. “Spitting spider? That’s not quite right.”
The cockroach’s legs were twitching, but the vine easily held it in place. The thorns on the vines weren’t sinking into the bug’s carapace. Yeoman knew the vine could suck the cockroach’s blood to sustain itself, but he was catching the bug as a meal for Red. If he let the vine drain the insect, wouldn’t that be the same as a meal-delivery driver taking a bite from the meal before delivering it? “It’s a dryad skill,” Yeoman said. “I told you how I was imprinted by a dryad, remember?”
Cody clicked his tongue. “Yeah,” he said. “How could we forget your harem of tree-women? Did you learn anything else?”
Yeoman shook his head. “There were some other skills I could’ve learned, but it’s a bit costly, and I bought an (Epic) necklace. I wasn’t left with many points, so I spent it the rest on muscle and bone density upgrades.”
Ella walked over to Yeoman and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. Yeoman turned his head. “Uh. What are you doing?”
Without warning, the ground left Yeoman’s feet, and Ella let out a grunt. “Goddamn. You’re heavy.”
A moment later, Yeoman was back on the ground. Ella walked away with her hand on her back, acting as if she had sprained it. “I thought I became young again, but who knew my back would still be so old?” She sighed. “Maybe I should start over as an infant.”
“How did you become younger?” Cody asked. “As far as I know, only the immortal jellyfish can do that, but you’re obviously not a baby.”
“Use your brain,” Ella said and crossed her arms over her chest. “I merely added on the lifespan of a Greenland shark. They can easily live up to four hundred years. In shark years, I’m less than twenty-five years old!”
Could the aliens’ upgrades work like that? As an engineer, Yeoman was supposed to be smart, but his thinking was always stuck inside a box. How did Ella and Cody come up with such wild ideas? Perhaps it was due to their personalities. Yeoman sighed before walking over to the cockroach. He squatted down and observed the vine. It was attached to the roof by a sticky substance, and the same substance was smeared on the cockroach’s shell. Even if Yeoman completely relaxed the vine, the cockroach wouldn’t be able to get away. It was like it was stuck in a spider’s web. However, Yeoman felt like he could easily remove the vine from the roof, so he gave the feeling a try. Like a snake, the vine shed its outer layer, coming free with ease. Yeoman grabbed the cockroach before it could run away.
“What are you going to do with that?” Cody asked.
“I’ll feed it to my pet spider,” Yeoman said. One of the vines on his back wrapped around the cockroach’s midsection, suspending it in the air. It seemed like everything the grasping vines could do, the vines on his back could do as well. He could manipulate them as easily as a dolphin could manipulate its penis.
Ella raised her eyebrow. “Must be a big spider.”
Yeoman grunted. He wondered how big Red had grown. The third stage awarded quite a large number of points. This cockroach clearly wasn’t this large before the stage began, or the group would’ve seen it earlier. At least, Yeoman didn’t remember seeing it. “It’s hard to believe no time has passed at all despite spending a year in a different world.”
Cody nodded. “Things are about to get hectic. Speaking of which, take a look at your fleshwatch.”
Yeoman looked down.
[Stage 4 will begin in 8759:54:36]
Yeoman stared at the large number of hours. “Anyone have a calculator?”
“It’s a year,” Cody said. “I guess it’ll be a while before we see each other again, huh?”
Ella grunted. “We can start a group chat. It’ll be fine.”
“Right,” Cody said, taking out his phone. He tapped away at it for a minute or so.
There was a vibration, and Yeoman took his phone out of his pocket. Cody had sent a message to him, and in the chat, there were three unidentified numbers. Yeoman assumed they belonged to his party members. He was supposed to memorize them before leaving the stage, but seeing as Cody and Ella were there, he decided to let them do it instead. The cockroach squirmed, and Yeoman put his phone away. “I’ll head off now. I need to check on my spider and see if anything else has changed.”
“I’ll get going as well,” Ella said and walked to the edge of the roof. She peered over and frowned. Right when Yeoman was about to ask how she was going to get home, Ella raised her shirt over her back, and a pair of wings sprouted out along her spine. They were massive compared to her body, and Yeoman wondered how they fit inside. Even if they were retractable like claws, they still had to occupy space! However, he didn’t have the chance to ask how she did it. Ella leapt off the roof and flew away.
Yeoman and Cody exchanged glances. Cody cleared his throat. “I can do that too.”
Yeoman shook his head and spread his wings. They had more than doubled in size. It was a good thing there weren’t any vines growing off their backs, or they might’ve prevented him from being able to fly. Luckily, they weren’t too noticeable while they were folded against his body, mostly thanks to the vines draping over them. Yeoman leapt into the air, and his wings flapped down hard, sending gusts of wind at Cody. There was nothing stealthy about Yeoman’s flying. Before, he had made some noise, but now, it sounded like he was playing a bass drum. Since his bone density had increased by so much, the force needed to lift his body had increased as well.
After a bit of flying, Yeoman ended up outside his apartment window. It was at that point he discovered another disadvantage of having such large wings. He couldn’t fit inside. It’d be easy to tear the wall down, but the landlord probably wouldn’t be too happy about that, and despite having a decent-sized bank account, Yeoman still wanted his security deposit back. Instead, Yeoman landed on the ground at the entrance to his apartment. A few people gasped when they saw him. Compared to him, they looked relatively normal. He ignored them and went straight up to his apartment, turning sideways to enter through the door.
Yeoman froze upon entering. Red had … grown. The spider was as large as a tiger, and it was staring at Yeoman with big, glossy eyes that looked like the black semi-spheres that covered cameras to prevent people from knowing which direction they were pointing at. At least, that’s what Yeoman assumed the coverings were for. “Hey there, Red,” Yeoman said and grabbed the cockroach with both hands. He held it out towards the spider. “Somehow, I don’t think this is enough to satisfy you.” He looked around and found that a corner of the room had been completely covered in white silk. He tossed the cockroach at it, and the poor insect was trapped once more.
Yeoman frowned as he examined Red. The spider was way too big. Insects couldn’t grow that large thanks to the square-cube law. However, even though the whole alien abduction seemed unscientific, everything could be explained in a semi-scientific way. Perhaps Red had added bones to its body, using them to support its new size. Was it smart enough to do that though? Then again, Yeoman didn’t have to do any calculations for his wing size, and he could still fly despite the change in his weight. If the aliens could automatically do that for him, he didn’t see why they couldn’t do that for a spider. Red stared at Yeoman for a little longer before slowly walking towards its webbed corner. It didn’t even bother wrapping the dog-sized cockroach in silk. It merely tore the insect apart with its mandibles and stuffed it into its mouth.
Watching Red eat gave Yeoman a helpless feeling. If every animal and plant in the world had a chance at evolving this rapidly, he wasn’t sure if humans could maintain their position at the top of the food chain. If Red left his apartment, its preferred food supply would probably be humans thanks to how many people there were in the city. How many other spiders like Red were out there? What about marine animals? Were boats even safe anymore? A lot of human trade was done through boats. Yeoman sighed and shook his head. No matter how much the world changed, he was just one person. It didn’t seem like he could do much in the grand scheme of things.