How do we get into these situations?! Adon screamed inside his own mind.

  He hoped the words did not leak telepathically, but in the moment, he knew his self-control was not the best. He had no notion of how he and the two spiders could deal with the Mystic Iron Bear that had locked onto them.

  Even as a part of him was freaking out, however, his body was moving almost on autopilot. He had survived so many life or death situations by now that he could only panic down to a certain point. A part of him remained always engaged in problem-solving.

  As the bear charged, foaming slightly at the mouth, Adon instantly released the elf-like Transformation he had been holding. In a fraction of a second, he snapped, rubber band-like, back to his standard butterfly form.

  Then Adon sprang into combat-oriented motion.

  His wings took him streaking down toward the ground, his other limbs stretched and changed their stiff texture to a longer and more supple, whip-like form, and his eyes focused on tracking the movements of all three of the creatures he was concerned with below—both the spiders he was worried about and the rabid, charging bear that raced toward them.

  His staring confirmed that the bear was moving straight toward the spiders, no mistaking it, and the beast seemed to be moving even faster than Adon at the moment, despite the fact that it was running through a shallow lake to reach them.

  Fortunately, Adon was closer.

  Samson was still clinging to Goldie’s back, while Goldie stood her ground firmly.

  Run, you guys! Adon exclaimed telepathically. Run, and I’ll distract him.

  How he would distract the bear, he did not know yet, but something would come to him in a pinch. That was frequently how things unfolded.

  I have a plan, Adon, Goldie sent back. You do not need to distract the bear. Please just be ready to pick me and Samson up and flee as soon as you see the signal. You will know it when you see it.

  Her voice shook slightly, but she sounded resolute at the same time. It was perhaps the most courageous that Adon had ever experienced her under pressure.

  He wanted to tell her, This bear is a Goddess damned mystic beast! It can probably use Mana, and it’s a hundred times your size. What plan could you possibly have that would mitigate those disadvantages?

  But he hesitated to say anything to break her focus.

  His friend seemed so certain of her intentions. She wasn’t shaking physically or retreating even a single inch. There was Mana gathering near the front of her head, but it looked slightly off position to be the Mana ball.

  Perhaps the difference in her demeanor was because she was protecting her son this time. Adon had never seen her in full mama spider mode in a fight before.

  Adon had no idea what she intended to do, but some instinct told him to let her go ahead with it. After a moment, he made a snap decision to just respect her resolve.

  Goldie had wanted to follow him into war, after all. Fighting a bear was no worse than fighting an army, and she wasn’t even arguing that they should stand and fight. She just wanted Adon to trust her plan for their retreat.

  All right, he sent, altering his trajectory slightly. Instead of trying to aim for a place between the bear and the spiders, he dropped at an angle much closer to the spiders themselves. He was still racing the beast toward them, but now he had to move slightly faster to get further away from the rabid beast.

  Damn this bear, he thought uselessly. You really want to go after these little spiders?!

  Goldie was the biggest spider Adon had ever seen, of course. As a result of her Evolutions and repeated large meals, she was a bit bigger than a large dinner plate at this point.

  And the rabid bear seemed to be tearing into anything that moved within its field of vision, from the trail of carnage Adon had followed to find it. Even small and fast-moving animals had been splattered in its path, while larger and more robust creatures had been left maimed.

  Still, the spiders were not a natural prey item or threat from a normal bear’s point of view.

  It had to be the rabies. It was as if anything alive around the bear irritated its diseased brain.

  Adon had only a few seconds to consider what was happening and why, though.

  The bear was closing in fast, splashing through the last two feet of the lake’s surface area before he reached the shore with Goldie and Samson; Adon was almost within reach of the spiders with his extended limbs; and Goldie held her ground, Samson silent and still on her back. The Mana inside her body had dimmed as if what she had been doing with it was done—or perhaps as if she had run out.

  Adon desperately hoped it was the former, but no reassuring words or signs came from the spiders. Their focus was understandably locked onto the bear.

  The moment of impact was almost upon them.

  What’s the plan, Goldie? Adon thought nervously, but carefully did not send telepathically. Distracting her at the last key moment was the furthest thing from what he wanted.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The bear closed to within a few feet and made a great leap forward, and then Adon found out what the plan was.

  A sudden burst of fluid shot out of Goldie’s front. The sheer volume of liquid matter seemed almost like too much to have fit inside the spider’s body. Adon recognized in the massive flood that there was a mixture of ominously dark-colored venom and spider silk.

  He thought that perhaps Goldie had concentrated her entire stock of Biomass into this one attack.

  As the bear barreled forward, the black, gray, and green stew flew in multiple thick streams toward the beast. It wasn’t especially precisely targeted. It was more like the bear had accidentally leaped into the path of a grotesquely contaminated fountain’s waters.

  Adon observed that Goldie had clearly gone for quantity over precision. Fortunately, as he saw it, that also meant that this attack would be completely unavoidable, no matter how good the bear’s reflexes were.

  I’m glad she’s on my side! he thought, somewhat relieved.

  As the streams of liquid gushed forward, Adon whipped his rope-like limbs down toward the spiders, flapping his wings for a last bit of acceleration to hopefully make contact with his friends just a little bit faster. He didn’t need to ask if this explosion of mixed venom and silk was the signal Goldie had mentioned.

  In the same moment that the ends of his limbs touched the spiders’ bodies, one of the streams of venom spray struck the Mystic Iron Bear in the side of its head.

  The rabid beast, unable to break its momentum and dodge the fluids, had turned its left side away from the liquid onslaught. For all its blind, mad rage, it apparently still retained sufficient intelligence to mitigate the damage from this attack.

  Only half its head would be doused in the vile chemical mix, and its jaw was clenched tightly shut, to avoid swallowing any of the material.

  This guy must have been smart before he got sick, Adon thought. Was he like us? Oh, Goddess…

  As he was reflecting on the enemy’s condition, the butterfly’s extended limbs wrapped around the two spiders, looping around their pedicels like two belts and then further winding around their limbs to form a sort of an exoskeletal harness. With his friends secured in his grasp, Adon poured Mana throughout his frame, then flapped his wings and gave a sharp upward yank.

  Fortunately, Goldie and Samson were both relatively lightweight, especially with Adon enhancing his body to better carry them off. Goldie, in particular, was lighter than Adon remembered; she really must have used up a lot of Biomass in that attack.

  It was a good thing for now, though. The spiders separated from the ground easily enough.

  Adon turned to flee, quickly pulling his friends in closer by contracting his limbs inward as he tried to gain altitude.

  That was amazing, Goldie, he sent. The words were rushed and barely contained inflection—he was in too much of a hurry to fully express how impressed he was.

  But then Goldie spoke up telepathically from behind him.

  Adon, I have an ability that lets me monitor the condition of an enemy I have used my venom on, she sent in a rush. The good news is that I think I blinded him in one eye with that attack. But he is doing something with his Mana right now—

  Her telepathic voice was cut off as a horrendous roar emanated from behind them.

  The sound waves shook the air, and then something more than that happened. Adon felt the ripples of sound strike his body harder and harder as the roar continued, and he quickly realized that his nervous system was beginning to malfunction.

  At each place where the terrible noise infiltrated, his body quickly turned numb.

  He pushed Mana into his voice, Adon thought. I didn’t know you could use it that way…

  He tried whipping his long, tentacle-like legs up above his head to pull the spiders out of reach of the attack, but it was no use. Adon was fast, but he still wasn’t as fast as the Golden Eagle he had hunted in the mountains before. And he was far slower than the speed of sound.

  As the sound waves rippled up his lower body, the strength left the base of his limbs, and he involuntarily lowered the spiders.

  As the sound spread to the lower parts of his legs, they went limp, and the spiders were paralyzed at the same time. The makeshift harness unraveled, and Adon’s grip on the spiders suddenly released.

  The butterfly saw them drop toward the ground, spinning as they went, and he wondered anxiously how far away the bear was now.

  But he did not have much time to worry about his friends. The horrendous sound spread through his wings next, those wings stopped flapping, and Adon spiraled down after the spiders.

  As the butterfly fell, dropping in a falling kite twister motion, he got a full on view of the bear for a moment. Surprisingly, it had seemingly not moved beyond where it had stopped after the venom spray struck it.

  But a quick look made it obvious why the bear had not continued to advance.

  The image was striking.

  Half the beast’s head and large chunks of its body were now covered in irritated pink flesh rather than fur, as the spider spray had apparently melted away some of its protective covering. One eye—the one that had been turned toward the spray—appeared to be partially melted out the creature’s skull. A brown-white liquid oozed, jelly-like, from the socket and down the side of the bear’s muzzle, mingling with the foam around its lips. The foam was dyed crimson now with traces of the bear’s blood; its mouth appeared to be bleeding slightly from contact with Goldie’s ultimate attack.

  Adon’s friend seemed to have done a number on this beast. That was gratifying at least, though it would be cold comfort if the bear ripped her in half.

  The bear bared its fangs, and Adon thought its body shook slightly with rage. The butterfly understood. Those injuries were horrific.

  Now it had an actual reason for wanting to kill them.

  The beast let out another, non-Mana-infused roar, and it resumed charging toward the three helpless, falling arthropods.

  No no no…

  Save yourself, Adon! Goldie sent, her body still tumbling downward helplessly. She sounded afraid, yet resolute, as she had earlier.

  Time seemed to Adon to slow down slightly as they fell, as if to give him the opportunity to recognize how foolish he had been to question Goldie’s resolve when she said she wanted to follow him into war before.

  Get out of here, bro, Samson agreed. He sounded oddly more at peace with imminent death than Goldie. Maybe he was satisfied to be dying in a cool way.

  Of course, Adon did not actually consider leaving his friends behind. It would mean certain death for the spiders, and the idea was unthinkable to him.

  The bear had closed to within a couple of feet of the spiders again, and Adon did not think they had any means of defending themselves left in reserve.

  No!