Chrysalis

Dispersed Mind Ant? +20 to mental stats AND a free sub-brain? The sub-brain is probably another five Cunning worth of brain matter on its own! With this level of mental boost the things I’ve been hoping to achieve, mana transformation, working on the cores, all of these could be realised in one fell swoop!

Not to mention this ... Coordination Cortex? I’m intrigued by the possibilities of this name. What is exactly will this new organ do?

The only two options I’m looking at are Ant Sage or Dispersed Mind Ant. These choices will both further enhance my magical and mental strength to the point where I’ll be satisfied. These two options will bring my current goals closer!

The Ant Sage will allow me to choose another magical affinity gland and it isn’t as if I’m not tempted by this. There are so many options I could choose that would make a real difference to my magical flexibility. I could straight up choose the mind magic gland, or take something else crazy like the space or time gland. Not to mention the gland that’ll increase the efficiency of the mana conversion, making my glands even more effective!

Combined with the bottomless gravitational gland it might be enough to almost have infinite gravitational mana! Or close enough to it! With my huge reserves, if I were to add a faster recovery speed, it would take ages for me to actually run out!

I would become a spell slinging powerhouse!

The Dispersed Mind Ant on the other hand... those juicy stats, that extra brain! This is power of a different sort. With a mind that strong, with an extra sub brain on board to help handle the laborious tasks of moving and shaping mana I’ll be able to cast in combat even more effectively. If the brains are strong enough then maybe they’ll enable me to quickly transform mana during a fight! Even if I could only succeed in the more basic transformations like fire and water, it’ll dramatically increase my spell casting options!

And the cortex, I’m not sure exactly what it does but I can only imagine positive things. Let’s see what Gandalf has to say about it.

[Coordination Cortex. An organ designed to control and coordinate the efforts of multiple sub brains, increasing their efficiency when handling tasks separately or working together]

Oho! This organ is specifically designed to help manage multiple sub brains?! So that means that I won’t even have to direct them with own main mind, further freeing it for other things! Perhaps I wouldn’t even have unlocked this evolution if I hadn’t crafted myself a Sub-Brain during my last evolution. This is good stuff.

Also key here is the Will upgrade. Will can be considered the force of the mind and it has many effects, like making mana easier to move as well as providing defence against mental attacks, something I suspect will become more prevalent the deeper we go into the Dungeon.

I’m going for it! The Dispersed Mind Ant it is!

Having made that selection I enter the next layer of the evolution menu. My core has more than double the energy of the last evolution to spend and I’m going to cash in! First I check in on my two sub brains and as I suspected the new freebie isn’t quite as beefy as the one I crafted myself. I decide to spend a chunk of energy building them both up and ensuring they are equally capable. I hit the wall numerous times already with what my sub brain could handle so I want it to be a bit more capable.

Now that I have the Coordination Cortex, I’ll be able to task both brains with a single job and the cortex will do the heavy lifting of coordinating the efforts, which means I don’t need to make the sub brains strong enough to handle the big jobs on their own, just good enough so that they can handle it when they work together.

free +10 Cunning on shaping up the sub brains with the remainder spend on my own mind. I draw on a little of surplus energy to give my main mind a further boost for a total of +13

three brains, increasing the capacity of each and spend a little extra pumping the main

boost. Cunning has gone from 32 to 45 and Will

plenty of

can’t help but flick through the options available. There are certainly a ton of new organs and body parts available. I’m tempted by the wings, I mean, REALLY tempted by the wings

gender but there doesn’t seem to be that particular item in the list

...

Maybe next time...

on buffing my physical stats like I did last time or I could try and find an affordable organ I can purchase with the remainder of the

so many options! I could get an extra set of legs? NOPE. The correct number of legs is clearly six, eight would make me an arachnid and that is simply no

quite a few ants with stingers that I know of, fire ants probably the most common of those. This is due to ants

I’ll skip the stinger for now, my back zone is clearly dangerous

expensive for me as tasty as they are. Those will have to wait until further

interesting glands or organs that can help me out in this department. For the short term future I will

hearts and such to increase survivability. Since I’m an invertebrate, with my skeleton on the outside, I don’t think the back-up organs are that necessary for me. For a soft, spongy creature those parts are quite vulnerable and may need to

defence even further. I can purchase a second healing gland but I’ll pass on that.

Aha!

This looks tasty!

additional set of bone plating will increase

Muahaha!

Nice!

and more like a web of criss crossing carapace wires underneath my outer skeleton. That’s probably why it’s cheap enough for me

I spend it modifying my Inner Plating to add more wires around my head to marginally increase the

and done my final status will

Name: Anthony

Level: 1 (core)