Chrysalis

I take more time to play with my new mental setup, slowly growing accustomed to the strange feeling of having more mental power than my physical brains should be able to provide. The more I mess around with it, weaving multiple threads of mana by having one brain concentrate on two things at the same time, the more I feel that my connection to being human really is vanishing a long way behind me. I couldn’t even imagine being a giant ant with multiple brains and giant mandibles whilst running around an underground, globe spanning Dungeon packed full of monsters that I fight and eat whilst covered in a shiny, glowing carapace of diamond. But hey, here we are.

Eventually I notice that the glow surrounding the hatchling has started to dim, a sure sign that her evolution is coming to an end. Calling the group together, we surround the little one, ready to greet her when she finally regains consciousness. Or tries to run. Either one.

Only a few minutes later, she wakes up to see all of us looming over her and jumps to her feet.

"Ah! What's wrong?!"

"Just waiting to greet you upon awakening," I tell her. "Nothing suspicious at all."

She doesn't appear convinced, and her scent definitely marks her as suspicious of me, but I pay it no mind, instead taking this moment to examine her a little more closely to get a few clues as to how her evolution has gone. She hasn't increased in size all that much, which obviously means she either invested heavily in mental stats or organs. Considering her origins as a champion of the species, she has a boosted stat baseline to begin with, so I'd be intrigued to see what path she went down.

"You've now become a tier three monster," I congratulate her, "how does it feel?"

"Good! I think… there's still a few things I need to get used to… this change was more severe than the last one…"

She keeps lifting her legs and shifting her body from side to side, still unaccustomed to her current size and strength.

"Considering you went from a hatchling to a hatchling last time, this is obviously going to have a greater impact on you. I can already see you didn't choose any of the normal templates of the nine castes, so I assume you were able to find a few things that caught your interest?"

She nods.

"I did. I think I'll be able to grow along these lines and serve the Colony in a way that is unique to myself!"

"Interesting… you wouldn't mind me taking a look then would you?"

"What?"

a Skill that I have," I explain, "I can use it to look at your status in much the same way that you can. I won't use it without your permission,

antennae forward to rest against her carapace, activating Core Crafting in the process. When I filter through the onslaught of data and arrive at the status window, what I see

Name: 'Hatchling'

Level: 1 (core)

Might: 35

Toughness: 30

Cunning: 30

Will: 30

HP: 60/60

MP: 0/55

Skills:

4; Crushing Bite (II) Level 3; Dash (I) Level 4;

Mutations:

+10; Mana Sensitive Antennae +10; Sizzling Acid Gland +10;

Species: Juvenile Seer (Formica)

Skill points: 17

Biomass: 6

some stuff here that I've never seen

chuckles to

to produce an effect. In this case, it'll make her more attuned to mana in the most pure sense. But this Dungeon Oracle… An organ that references the Dungeon itself? Is that a good or bad thing? Then there's her stats. An interesting mix that seems fairly even, but when your mental stats are on par with your physical, it means you went hard on beefing up the brain. Even so, her numbers are a little lower than mine when I reached tier three, which seems odd, since I didn't have the benefit of a special evolution the first time around, nor did I have the bonus from max mutations. Which means she must have dumped evolutionary energy, a lot of it, into

much as possible about everything!" the hatchling declares, “whether or not that information is hidden with mana or

regard the still small ant before

one, aren't

"The cleverest!" she beams.

to