“She’s not the boss’s boss, and she needs to learn that she can’t always get her way,” Bonnie said. “If she wants to get her way, she needs to pay accordingly. It’s the golden rule, after all.”

“The golden rule?” Nick asked.

“Yeah,” Bonnie laughed, “he who gives me gold, makes the rules.”

“I like that rule,” Lucas said. “Suits me just fine.”

“Nnn . . . good rule,” Katie added as she slithered along behind him, carefully avoiding sloshing water as she made her way across the terrain. Interestingly enough, the Naga chose to carry around pails of water with her anywhere she went in order to keep her scales wet. Apparently, it was incredibly uncomfortable whenever they started drying up, which also decreased her stats and movement speed a small bit. As such, while traveling with Lucas overland for such an extended period of time, she kept buckets of water with her that she held with the end of her very long, strong tail.

“Lucas, you’re just saying that because you have the most money,” Nick countered.

“Poor person say what?” Bonnie asked, following her statement up by sticking out her tongue at the man.

“I haven’t been poor for a while,” Nick shot back.

“Right. ‘Cause the boss has been taking care of you, so learn to abide by the golden rule and stop grumbling so much!”

“Golden rule, schmolden rule—whatever happened to people committing to their roles?! What villain lets two people get eaten by a giant spider for betraying him and then doesn’t even get an audience to watch it! Our Lucas is the star of this show, and as a viewer, I can attest that it was horrifying to see a giant monster consume the bodies of two people and then morph into an even stronger and more menacing-looking spider. If we had gotten people to see that, they’d have been terrified of Lucas! It’d have been great!” Viola protested.

In truth, the changes in Saba’a had been far greater than what Lucas had expected after choosing the evolution Lighter and Tighter. The monstrous spider’s previously tarantula-like exterior had slowly folded in on itself and condensed until its abdomen was half the volume of its previous size. The change also opened up a few new evolutionary paths: Even Lighter and Even Tighter (4 Evolution Points), Jumping Legs (4 Evolution Points), and Hooking Feet (2 Evolution Points), the last of which seemed to be an upgrade that would let Saba’a hang from ceilings. Combined with how fast she was now, the ability to drop in on her prey would certainly make her a more formidable adversary. He could just imagine how many players might be completely caught off guard when she fell on them from above while they focused on killing her minions.