At this very moment.
The spider beauty Naisela had curled her eight legs beneath her abdomen into a ball, lying on the ground in despair, waiting to die. Even thoughts of suicide had flashed through her mind. She had mentally prepared herself to be tortured and have her body toyed with. But now, she was utterly bewildered.
Where was this?
What mysterious existence had sent her here?
Wasn't it supposed to covet my beauty? Though she was imprisoned within a mysterious membrane and had lost all her power, she could still see the strange, intricate square characters lining both sides of the street.
The place bustled with people and noise.
It was summer.
Girls in short skirts and stockings, their beautiful legs exposed, walked down the streets in twos and threes, carrying small handbags and cups of milk tea as they held their boyfriends' hands. Part-time students handed out flyers, delivery drivers weaved through the traffic on their vehicles, and little cars passed one after another.
Farther away, beneath the overpass, someone was singing for money, drawing a scattered crowd.
"A perfectly ordinary Lower Civilization."
Under the blazing summer sun, the earth had been baked into a small furnace. She watched these mortal beings walking in the low-dimensional spacetime, moving as slowly as statues.
As she listened to their bustling conversations, she instinctively began rapidly sorting and learning.
For an existence of her level, who had spent years descending upon planets of various civilizations, learning a language was simply too easy.
Gathering the speech patterns, expressions, and movements of the entire city, she processed and organized the endless stream of conversational data arriving every moment. Before long, she could understand their words.
"Did you hear? The mall next door is having a sale."
"When I have time, I need to