Egg sacs filled the water, drifting in on the current like the spoiled wreckage of a massive ship dashed into a thousand pieces.

Lucy wondered where they were coming from as she looked around herself at the dozens of gelatinous sacs floating by the alcove.

Curious but wary of getting lost, she swam out into the open water. Swimming head-on, she would be able to reverse her course without too much deviation now that the current flowed straight into the cliff face.

After a full minute of swimming hard, nothing had changed. If anything, the clusters of egg sacs were more numerous out in the open water, some clustered together in large amalgams that broke up and split apart as the current carried them on.

They filled the water, forming an endless drift around her, and for a moment she held the image of a spaceship carefully navigating through a belt of asteroids.

Another minute of swimming, and then she was forced to turn around. The current began to shift here, and she knew if she kept going, she would likely never find her way back.

The clusters had only grown more frequent as she swam, and she found herself squishing up against one as she turned around. The black dots of embryonic worms inside wriggled and stared at her like a hundred maddened eyes, and she quickly pushed herself away from the gooey mass and hurried back to the alcove.

When she made it back to the cliff face she swam for a long time before she found the alcove and her trail of symbols.

As she followed the trail in the direction of her own cave, she saw more and more of the eggs coming in, skidding along the cliff face until caught and held by ridges and grooves in the stone. By the time the alcove she was leaving behind faded from her Awareness, two more slimy clumps of eggs had joined the one that was already there, congealing into a great blob that partially blocked the tunnel at the rear of the alcove.

In her hand, Lucy still held the little piece of treasure she had taken from that tunnel: a magical shard of glowing blue stone, now encased in a dark green shell of hardened goo. The possibilities it held that felt so close only a few moments ago were now pushed to the back of her mind as she prepared to deal with the problem before her.

The water everywhere was thick with the gelatinous clumps, and as she took it in, she felt her initial fear and unease start to morph into something else.

The landscape was quickly filling up with slimy sacs that sooner or later would turn into vicious worms, each of which would happily tear her apart if it got the chance.

Despite the danger promised by the sudden incursion of eggs, Lucy’s mind focused more and more on one thing.

Points.

She knew from experience that each clump of eggs awarded only 1 or 2 points, but with dozens laying around and hundreds more coming in, Lucy found her perspective suddenly changing.

After quickly dropping off her magical stone and telling Rikorlak and Sam that something very strange indeed was going on and to probably get ready to seal off the cave if needed, Lucy rushed back out to the cliff-face.

For the next few minutes, she ran herself ragged, emptying vacuole after vacuole of enzymes until her cilia ached and her cytoplasm felt thin and watery, as though she’d eaten nothing but thin soup for weeks.

There was plenty of potential energy in the water around her in the form of sulfur. The issue was her metabolism, which could only take in so much at a time before it reached the limit of its production capabilities.

For the first time since her days in the sulfur-pits, Lucy felt her reserves dipping dangerously low, a fact confirmed when she checked her energy level in her System.

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Less than 20 percent, she thought wearily, spraying yet another blast of white liquid onto a cluster of eggs. Her enzymes attacked with all the fervor of a catalyzed reaction, consuming the eggs in moments.

But it didn’t matter how strong her enzymes were. Going around destroying cluster after cluster was like doing a continuous sprint, and in just a few minutes, her membrane was heaving from the effort.

She realized that the strength of her enzymes was working against her. She hadn’t considered them particularly resource-intensive before, but she had never used more than a couple vacuoles’ worth at a time, and now she found herself confronted with the cost of heavy, continuous use.

Even spraying the smallest amount necessary and making liberal use of her dagger and hands to destroy the eggs, it was an unbalanced equation.

Before long, as eggs continued to shower the cliff face from the open water beyond, Lucy was forced to admit that she needed a different strategy.

She didn’t know how long it would be before the eggs began to hatch, but she didn’t intend to waste any of the time she had before they did.

And the more of them she could destroy now, the safer she and her friends would be.

Lucy opened up the Shop.

The Fungal Web ability had been her first choice of next major upgrade, but given the situation, the Arm of Slivius was too good of an option to ignore.

The mitochondria probably would’ve worked well too in terms of keeping her going, but if she could improve her combat strength at the same time as she increased her ability to take in resources, the benefit was clear.

Adapt to your environment, right?

Making her selection, Lucy felt a shiver of nervousness pass through her body as her System somehow grafted the large, tentacled arm onto her body, slotting in organically and fusing with her membrane.

She tried to pay attention to how exactly it happened, but like during her first Evolution, the power at work was far beyond her understanding, and all she could feel was the deadly appendage itself as it slowly became a part of her.

When the upgrade was complete, Lucy flexed her new arm. It had grown from the place where she’d been accustomed to forming her left arm.

Unlike the monstrosity that had been a part of the mad doctor-larvae, the tentacle-mouthed arm was relatively proportional to the rest of her body. It still bulged out of her membrane and significantly increased her overall size, but it wasn’t so large that it would hinder her swimming or access to tight spaces too much.

She tested it immediately, carefully lowering the arm to a clutch of eggs. With a feeling like she was wriggling her fingers, her tentacles began to rip apart the eggs, and organic material began to flow into her body from the opening at their center.

The arm may not have increased the amount of points she gained, but it did give her access to more resources. With the sharp tentacles at the end of her arm, she would finally be able to consume the actual physical structure of the organisms she killed, assuming she had the strength to tear them into small enough bits.

Fatigued from her earlier expenditure but excited to keep trying out this new weapon in her arsenal, Lucy moved along the face of the cliff, leaving only scoured stone behind her as she devoured cluster after cluster of eggs.

Her energy got an immediate boost as her metabolism got to work on the organic material she consumed, and for the first time in her new life, Lucy felt the satisfaction of feasting on solid matter.

But even with the arm, she couldn’t feed endlessly.

Her metabolism needed time to catch up to the amount of organic material she was feeding it, and as she continued to feast she felt her body getting sluggish as it coped to deal with the demands she made upon it.

Taking a moment to rest, Lucy saw that she had already gained 26 more points, bringing her total available up to 36, already close to enough for the Fungal Web as well.

Not bad, she thought, for tasty work.

But as she rested, the current continued to bring down clusters of eggs. They fell in an endless stream, and Lucy felt her enthusiasm begin to wane, replaced by a growing dread of what exactly would happen if all the eggs hatched at once.

Already the clusters had piled up in places, accumulating into large mounds.

If it continues like this, this whole area will be completely covered, she realized, as eggs that had managed to get a hold on the stone formed places for more to accumulate.

She hadn’t strayed far from her trail of carved symbols, but soon the eggs covered enough of the stone that it was difficult to make out, and Lucy decided her hunting trip had reached its end.

Half expecting to find her own cave choked with eggs, she hurried her way back, resisting the impulse to continue feasting.

First, make sure the cave is secure.

When she did make it back to her cave, she found that Rikorlak and Sam had already formed a sludgy blockage that could be squished into place at a moment’s notice to block off the entrance.

Relieved, she slowed her pace and drifted smoothly over to the two of them.

After confirming that there was no immediate danger, Lucy found herself drifting back out of the cave.

She knew their tactics would have to change when the worms started hatching en masse.

But for now, she had a deadly new arm and a cave to protect, and she was going to destroy as many eggs as she could.