The Bone Mantis didn't move.
It didn't need to.
Its towering frame loomed over the clearing, long skeletal limbs arranged in a geometry that made my instincts recoil. Its presence alone felt like gravity pressing down on me, forcing my small armored body deeper into the black moss.
The green slit in its smooth dome pulsed slowly.
Watching.
Calculating.
The system flickered across my vision.
[WARNING: Biomass Reserves Critical]
[STABILITY: 83%]
The blue interface sputtered at the edges like a dying signal.
I had almost nothing left.
Every scrap of the vulture's biomass had been burned to create the heavy chitin plates along my spine. Those plates had saved me but they had also crippled me.
They made me slow.
They made me heavy.
They made escape impossible.
The mantis produced a dry clicking sound, bone striking bone somewhere inside its thorax.
Then it moved.
One long limb descended toward me.
The jointed leg stabbed into the ground beside my body like a needle, missing my side by less than an inch.
Not an attack.
A probe.
The creature was studying me.
It had seen the transformation. It had watched a soft larva suddenly sprout armor in the middle of a hunt.
Now it wanted to understand what I was.
My gaze shifted toward the vulture's corpse.
It lay only three feet away.
Half consumed.
Grey flesh sagged along its neck where I had drained it earlier, but the rest of the body remained intact.
There was still biomass there.
Enough to survive.
Enough to evolve.
But the mantis stood directly between me and the carcass.
Running was impossible.
Fighting was suicide.
Something stirred deep inside my mind, not the system this time, but something older.
Human memory.
Strategy.
I couldn't outrun a Level 4 predator.
I couldn't overpower it.
But maybe I could make myself dangerous enough to hesitate over.
The idea formed instantly.
Desperate.
Insane.
The command pulsed through my core.
GENE STRIP ACTIVE: INTERNAL RECONFIGURATION
Instead of targeting prey, I directed the system inward.
My digestive glands spasmed as the Gene Strip process began tearing apart the enzymes stored inside them. The proteins broke down and reassembled into something new, something far more volatile.
System text appeared rapidly.
[INTERNAL CORROSIVE SYNTHESIS INITIATED]
[TRAIT CREATED: BILE SPATTER]
[Cost: 0.4kg Biomass]
[Duration: Temporary]
My reserves dropped again.
[REMAINING BIOMASS: 0.6kg]
The mantis leaned closer.
The vertical slit in its head slowly widened.
Inside, green bioluminescence churned like liquid fire.
One serrated forelimb extended downward.
The curved bone hook slid beneath my body.
It was going to flip me over.
Expose the soft underside my armor couldn't protect.
The hook touched my skin.
I didn't pull away.
I pushed.
A violent surge of fluid erupted from my primary pore.
The bile struck the mantis directly across the dome of its head.
The reaction was immediate.
The bleached surface of its skull began to hiss and bubble as the corrosive fluid burned through the outer layer of bone.
The green glow inside its head flickered violently.
The creature screamed.
The sound wasn't animal.
It was crystalline.
A high pitched vibration that cracked the bark of the nearby trees and sent spores bursting into the air like yellow smoke.
The mantis recoiled in a blur of pale limbs.
I didn't wait to see if the attack had worked.
I ran.
Or at least the slow, dragging version of running my heavy body could manage.
My claws dug into the moss as I hauled myself toward the vulture's carcass.
The mantis thrashed behind me, scraping acid from its face with frantic movements.
I reached the bird's ruined neck.
My claws sank into the flesh.
The Gene Strip activated again.
[FORCED DIGESTION ACTIVE]
The remaining life in the carcass poured into me.
System messages flashed rapidly.
[BIOMASS ABSORBED: +2.3kg]
[BIOMASS ABSORBED: +1.9kg]
Energy surged through my body like lightning.
[CURRENT BIOMASS: 4.8kg]
My core pulsed violently.
The sudden influx was too much for my unstable biology.
The system responded instantly.
[BIOMASS OVERLOAD DETECTED]
[RAPID MUTATION TRIGGERED]
Two new options appeared in my vision.
Select Evolution Path
Reaper Limb
Serrated bone blade optimized for high speed strikes.
Void Lung
Gas-based propulsion organ for rapid escape.
Behind me, the mantis was recovering.
The sizzling sound of acid dissolving bone had stopped.
The creature lowered its limbs again, the green light inside its head now pulsing with furious intensity.
It turned toward me.
The slit narrowed.
Then the glow shifted from green to a deep, violent red.
The mantis lunged.