*( mood song: "Los Bravos - Black is Black")

Two weeks had gone by and the base was like a sauna, with only the third floor barely livable.

The first week had been fine, they had repaired the kitchen on the first floor, and in the morning they ate slug, in the evenings they ate slug, and for dinner they ate more slugs, three times a day, day after day after day, but... at the second week, it was a struggle just getting to the kitchen.

Erik and Inky had butchered the giant truck sized slug after it had bled out, they had saved the mutagen liquid and pearl like eggs in small separate barrels, they had eaten quite a bit of its electric organs as sashimi, and Erik had blended and chewed down parts of its inner armor, forcing himself and Inky to also eat it as it was like eating car tires or fresh sinew, tough and tasteless, no matter how much they chew it felt like nothing changed.

Inky: "isn't there anything else to eat?"

Erik: "We can eat the slimy muscles too"

Inky: "those looked chewy too"

Erik: "then the organs?"

Inky: "I don't know... they smell weird..."

Erik: "were you always this picky with food before meeting me?"

Inky: "I've followed you to an almost certain death down here, fought monsters, it's super hot and I feel tired and sweaty, at least... I wanna eat something tasty... sigh..."

Erik stood up from the floor "sigh... I know... I will blend the sinew armor too" his curvy and toned body sweaty as he put the swimsuit and power armor on.

Inky: "you can't go up, it's too hot, can't we just go somewhere else? I'm sure the monster will be dead already"

Erik shook his head "can't... Rose said two weeks minimum, and we can't go out or we would boil to death..."

Inky then pointed at the nearby Amanda bot who was coding on a small tablet connected to herself "then let's send a robot!"

Amanda: *hey! I have a name now, and I don't wanna go alone there, who knows what I would find, send Rose to look for food if you want*

The multiple Rose bots were walking around repairing things and one stopped *No, I'm busy repairing the forge, electricity is connected but still I need to restore the flow of materials to the base in the surface, the tube seems to be stuck but the nanobots should be able to fix it in a week more*

Erik: "...stuck... with monsters?"

Rose bot: *huh? no, just dust... probably, my tunnels are hidden to living beings and possess vaporizers, any unauthorized organic matter gets reduced to atoms*

Erik: "vaporizers? what is that?"

Rose bot: *just imagine super microwaves, if you are going up to the first floor remember to be back in at most one hour, or the power armor cooling system will overheat*

Erik sighed as he opened the door to the second floor "sigh... alright, I will be back..." going upstairs as the steam clouded his visor, closing the door behind him, reaching the second floor he could see some struggling slugs on the floor and grabbed some, soon coming up to the first floor, the air there so hot he could feel the small slugs in his hand start to cook, so he quickly came into the oversized kitchen and grabbed the smallest cooking pot he could find and opened the faucet, as boiling water came out along with steam "well, boiled baby slugs it is then...." and just thoroughly boiled them for 30 minutes as they changed colors becoming pale and went back down with them to eat with Inky.

As they were eating, he asked "better like this?"

Inky ripped a boiled gray slug with her sharp teeth, the insides also cooked "yeah..., it's less chewy than the big one, the texture was the most annoying part..."

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Erik finished eating one himself "yeah, boiling it made it more tender and washed the sliminess away... I do want a steak though..."

Inky salivated as she used her forearm to clean the saliva "...shut up, don't remind me..."

The second week went by, and after the two weeks of the horrible diet, Erik certainly felt like his skin was a bit thicker, and his back had grown even more muscle in his already muscled body, but this wasn't normal muscle, it was his body's own version of the slug's bio batteries, and he could feel it all over his nervous system, his movements felt faster, and he could create faint sparks out of his fingers if he so desired but it only lasted a moment before needing hours to recover, and he wouldn't electrocute himself to try.

Right now Erik was laying down on the floor of the third floor, the room at at least 40°C making him sweat, as he tried to chew on a piece of mildly dried mother lightning slug, but... it was tougher than rubber tires to chew.

Erik: [Rose....]

Rose: [yes?]

Erik: [...isn't there anything else to eat? I'm really hungry... maybe I could eat that dead lizard...]

Rose: [...Erik, it's a desiccated mummy]

Erik: [well, like jerky then, maybe hydrating it like dried cod fish..., I just can't take this slimy, hard chewy texture, even the taste is awful, like rotten algae and rotten barnacles together...]

Rose: [...don't overreact, it should be over soon]

Erik: [well I'm eating for my daughter's too, and not having myostatin also makes me hungrier... sigh...]

By the side, Inky woke up also on the floor and asked "Erik... can we go home now? two weeks already passed" some hope in her voice.

Erik: "I don't know, when Rose believes that monster is dead or at least went away sufficiently"

Inky: "...but I'm hungry.... hu...."

Erik: "...me too... those slugs are disgusting and really hard to eat... maybe smoking them could change the taste... I hope".

Amanda: *it ain't so bad right? it should have the necessary nutrition and your bodies should be able to endure higher temperatures*

Erik: "...che, fucking robot..."

Inky: "hmph, a machine can't understand"

Amanda shrugged: *I don't need to eat or sleep, I just don't have those organic weaknesses*

Erik: "ugh... I'm too tired to argue..."

As they were laying on the floor, one of Rose's bots came *Good news everyone! the basic repairs are done, and... I found the secret door~ (･ิω･ิ)*

Erik and Inky quickly stood up excited.

Erik quickly took out the green card from an ammunition pocket "where is it?! let's go right now!" Inky nodding beside him, as they were both dying of boredom.

Rose bot: *...well then follow me*

She guided them to a 5 by 5 meters storage room, small considering the size of lizard people, shelves with transparent containers with what should have been biological samples long ago, now just contained dirt, after whatever was inside had thoroughly rotted away.

The bot then moved a heavy shelf to the side and then pried off a panel from the wall, revealing a hidden door behind.

Rose bot: *there you have it, satisfied?*

Erik got close to it and saw a panel to the right, he swiped the card on it, and there were unlocking and gear sounds, with the door soon opening to a long dark hallway with barely some flickering lights on.

Erik and Inky shared a look and charged their new railgun weapons pointing forward with their helmet lights on.

The bot stopped them as the other bots and Amanda came inside too.

Rose bot: *let us inorganics go first, your bodies are delicate after all* her bots advancing forward carrying the big railguns, as well as the big power armor carrying the drill sword and railgun in each hand as it advanced down the poorly illuminated tunnel.

--- Greenhouse lab ---

Meanwhile, back at the surface and as all this was going on, an old monster crab man, Beritkan was undergoing major changes, his research had gone well, and as a former sage his thirst for knowledge was quite high, so he had taught himself the languages from planet Earth and learned how to use the diverse lab equipment from the centrifuge to the evaporations and other refining processes, and then applied that knowledge to his own potion formulas, refining them and making them more effective, and right now he was testing his master opus creation on himself. First, he had learned to lab grow cells and had grown some taken from a guard from making her reluctantly shake hands, a very scary looking hybrid crab woman, he had cultivated her cells and extracted the DNA in a new super growth potion that took him more than a week to make.

The first effect was obvious as his tumors reduced considerably in size but still somewhat remained, his caparace color became more uniform, and his head became humanlike again but still with caparace around the head and neck, and lastly his claws lost their talons and became humanoid hands again.

Beritkan: "finally... with this... I'm one step closer.... now if only I could get some tissue samples from the true queen... hmmm... but I need to make myself useful for that to happen... what could the queen even want? she just brought me here... some potions maybe? yeah... that should work" quickly going inside the lab.

--- Forge ---

Meanwhile, Erik and the rest had arrived at a pair of big silver doors with lots of now dim glowing engravings of lizard people stabbing a big eye.

Erik: "I guess you are that eye right?"

Rose bot: *... Don't say nonsense"

Erik: "so you arent?"

Rose: "in their view, I might just be a control system, but... I'm much more... and I will make sure they all know in time the mistake they did...."