Chrysalis

This evolution is going to make the Call worse, I can already tell. Stupid Ancients and their dumb… whatever it is they’re all about. Do whatever you want, just leave me and my family out of it.

But taking this much power into myself is definitely going to make them more interested, rather than less. Although, I’ll be much weaker when away from the Colony. Maybe they won’t like that so much? Bah, who am I kidding, I’ll be a beast once this evolution goes through. The stat gain alone is insane, everything else is just gravy.

Speaking of everything else, it’s time to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of my evolutionary energy! You know what that means, resets baby!

Let me at ‘em!

I’ve got them at a discounted price, which naturally means I’m going straight to the expensive stuff and poking my antennae where they don’t belong. Don’t hold back on me, Gandalf! I want to see your finest materials, straight from the top shelf.

If I’m going to reset my carapace and mandibles, then I want only the best. It’d be a ridiculous waste to reset them again, so whatever I pick will need to be good enough to carry me through the rest of my monstrous life. It has to be incredible! And shiny!

The first thing I do, naturally, is go and take a look at the Golden-Diamond Silk. From what the trio had to say, it’s incredibly valuable, and rare. I need to check it out. I have to poke back and forth a bit before I find a version that will apply to my carapace, but I get there in the end.

[Golden-Diamond Silk Woven Carapace: A clear diamond Chitin threaded with a complex network of Golden-Diamond Silk thread. The lustre of this material is only matched by its tensile strength. Against physical damage, this material is nigh unbreakable.]

Holy moly! An almost unbreakable carapace that is shiny in the extreme?! This is going to be hard to pass up!

And it’s expeeeeeeensive… sweet mackerel of malfeasance, that is pricey. Just how much evolutionary energy are you going to charge for one reset? This is larceny! Even paying half feels like I’d be carving out my own liver. If I even have a liver….

I kind of want to confirm it anyway. This is exactly the kind of upgrade I want. Even if I flick through and look at the other upgrades that Granin and I discussed, fourth stratum stuff like the ‘Living Diamond’ just doesn’t measure up. They’re good and all, but a self regenerating crystal carapace just doesn’t sound as nice as being woven through with the toughest and most valuable material in the entire planet.

Come to think of it, do I really want to be a walking sack of cash money? Being a highly evolved monster is already painting a target on my back, goodness knows what a mythic core sells for, but I’m sure it's a lot. Do I really need to make my body parts even more marketable? That’s worth contemplating….

Still, I better look more thoroughly through the options, just to be sure I don’t miss something that would work for me.

the less expensive side, but I don’t find anything I want more. There’s tons of nice stuff, all sorts of cool diamond variants that perform some powerful and bizarre functions. The Living Diamond is just the tip of the iceberg in that department. Resonating Diamond that oscillates at high speeds when activated is cool, as is the Liquid Diamond,

over and gander at the options even more expensive than the Golden-Diamond Silk. I immediately regret

my poor little heart can’t take this level

Diamond has been forged in the most crushing environment imaginable. This material holds a natural affinity to the force of

mean, yesssssss,

precious lustre?! This could be the key I need to push myself over the edge and get the Gravity Mana affinity, but the

You get it half-price this evolution, and judging by this extravagant price tag, this material is some deep-dungeon stuff. You won’t get a chance like this again anytime soon! You wanted to be a

incredibly expensive diamond, then it's likely also

see what we have. There’s all sorts of cool stuff in here, including some pretty neat looking options that would have tempted me were I not on a quest for synergy. The plating needs

I go, I eventually find

to gravity, I need an inner plating that will raise its toughness to even

the incredible hardness, the weakness is its lack of flexibility. I can’t directly give the diamond more bend, it’s diamond, it’ll just crack, but what I can do is influence it through

A material that generates manipulable gravity fields in a small radius around it. A mesh of tiny, hardened

may even allow me to shape it, depending

will convert both to Gravity Compressed Diamond and the plating reset.

all, but after considering it for a moment, I

The Gravity Mana Gland.

going all in on pushing for the speciality, then I can’t overlook this little gem! Currently, it’s my only source of the stuff, and if I

gravity mana myself. It’s a delicate balancing act, and if I don’t

do spend way too much time reading these

more quickly, compress it more readily or make it easier to use. I’m not overly worried about that, I have an absolutely stacked set

get more and more expensive and I (metaphorically) sweat more and more. Obviously, when I reset, I want to get the best… but I don’t want to have to pay for the best! Don’t be dissuaded, Anthony, you have to commit. What

way past the point where I’m happy with the cost, I find what

to harmonise and accentuate gravitational energy. It will convert a portion of that energy back into