Vigorous Body Acquired!

Pain Resistance Acquired!

To change your General Skills, simply open your Status!

Ada wasn't stupid. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew something had gone terribly wrong in the world. The only problem was her world had been wrong for a long time, and she was well practiced in ignoring it. A habit she continued with ease, as flashing notifications were dismissed before most people would have even been able to acknowledge them, nevermind read them. It was so easy to keep laying in her bed. It was incomparably hard to leave it. So she didn't, until her body forced her up for brief moments of biological necessity.

Her body wasn't doing well with her current lifestyle. Her ribs protruded, her hair sheened with grease, and sores dotted her back. However, all those were so much easier to ignore compared to the jagged tear opened up by the thing still in her bedroom. The pain blinded any thought she might have dredged from her mind, it filled her whole being. The only thing she felt beyond its all consuming sensation was a mild relief. She couldn't survive something like this. So she did as her habits had taught her, and she curled into her bed and waited for the end.

Lesser Regeneration Acquired!

###

The hiveling shook itself to wakefulness, exiting the mutation torpor. It chittered softly, and it flexed a muscle it hadn't had before, watching as a small drop of clear liquid gathered at the end of its fangs. This would work perfectly. It exited the small burrow it had made out of the detritus of the prey-nest, seeing with excitement that its prey had not fled. It decided that this place would make a fine nest for its purposes, and ensuring it had exclusive access to the corpse of its prey when it perished would be a welcome boon. Thankfully, the Hive had equipped it well for this. It skittered around the room, using Organic Processing to gather the detritus and reworking it into proper nest material, and Construction (Hive) to map out its planned hive. It longed for the superstructures of its home Hive, but this place would make a perfect staging ground. Elevated, remote enough for safety, and even had water found running in the walls, which it quickly began to reroute. Things were coming together nicely.

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###

Things were going badly. She woke up, which was the first bad sign. Then, she noticed all the activity around her. That was the second bad sign, considering she had gotten very good at not noticing anything. Not calls, not her name, not her body, and not the screams. The third sign was the room itself. Some kind of pulped paper mache substance was covering the edges of the room, around her window, in the cracks in the floor. The bathroom walls were gone, replaced by several pools made of the hardened pulp, centered on her bathtub, which was overflowing into the smaller pools.

The pain in her side had dulled significantly, but she didn't look to see how it had healed into a jagged scar. Her languid gaze wandered onto the architect of these changes instead. Glossy chitin, a squat, beetle-like body with vaguely ant-like features. It was hanging onto the doorframe, chewing at the wood, but it stilled at her gaze. Instead, it crawled down onto the floor and approached her bed. Something in the back of her mind begged, for what she didn't quite know, but she didn't move as it approached. Her gut coiled in anticipation of pain. Its fangs, more spider-like than anything, slid into her leg with a pinch. Then a cool numbness spread. It poised itself over her leg, and even with the numbness in her mind and flowing through her veins, she looked away from what happened next. She was good at ignoring things. This was easy, without sensation, as long as she relegated the wet sounds of tearing flesh to the background.

“So little Roach, at least I got to help someone on the way out,” she said, her voice raspy with disuse. It was the most she’d spoken in months. “Enjoy your meal.”

She laughed, voice cracking and breaking.

###

The newly acquired Numbing Venom worked exactly as hoped. Its prey wasn't even throwing it around this time, electing to make strange sounds before laying back, seemingly unbothered. Interestingly enough, it seemed even more nutritious than before, not that it had been particularly bursting with vitality with its initial attack. What truly surprised it however was a notification it had not expected to get for some time yet.

Named Achievement Unlocked!

Roach was unsure what its name meant, as it had hoped that its name would come from recognition from the Queens, or perhaps after it had shown this new world the might of the Hive. However being named so soon opened doors for it, and for now it quickly slotted its new stat points into Intelligence, the same as all the other points it had earned. It chewed thoughtfully on the bloody flesh in its jaws. It knew some Hives kept farms of organisms that Evolved alongside the Hive, to provide nutrients to the growing swarm in exchange for protection. However, it had been sure that this particular creature was a member of the dominant race on this planet, seen fighting against the Hive vanguard. Perhaps it was a more docile subspecies? Nevertheless, Roach decided that this being could be an even longer term boon than it originally thought. It could see the flesh taken already beginning to mend itself in front of its faceted eyes. If it managed correctly, this creature could be a unique advantage to its Hive that other prospective Queens would be hard pressed to match.

It scuttled away from its meal, towards a small hollow in the wall. Kept inside were varied vegetable matter and processed nutrients, found around the prey-nest. It gathered them in its jaws, mashing them together in a nutritious paste with Organic Processing before returning to its unmoving cattle. It lowered its jaws over its mouth, drip feeding the paste into the sputtering prey beneath it. The creature was so lucky to have been found by Roach.