Lia looked at the block of bait on the ground in front of her. It was…well, it looked just like a normal bait block that would be put in a mouse trap, a small rectangular cyan block of some sort of…bait stuff.
Now, to poison it. She maneuvered herself so she was positioned closer to the bait, then stung it, and began using her stinger to pump as much venom as possible into the block. Once the venom stopped being absorbed and was visibly leaking, she stopped, withdrawing her stinger and surveying her handiwork.
It was…slightly larger and now had a hole on the top, but that probably didn’t compromise the effectiveness of it. So, she put it into Dimensional Storage, and set off for the marketplace once more.
It didn’t take her long to find another patrol. It was the as same the others she’d seen since her first kill, two goblins, one of which had a lantern. Fortunately, things weren’t quite as bad as she had first thought. The goblin that held a lantern had no weapon, and the lantern wasn’t a particularly good one, only shedding light about fifteen feet away from the goblin.
She maneuvered herself to the front of the goblins, and placed the bait block about thirty meters in front of them. She then proceeded to hide a short distance away, choosing not to activate Active Camouflage until the light reached her.
It never did. Once the goblins reached the bait block’s area of affect, they both dropped what they were holding and rushed for the bait block. They clambered over each other, and, once they got to the bait block, turned on each other. It turned into a full-blown fistfight as they tried to take the bait for themselves.
Lia moved to take advantage of their scuffle, but by the time she had reached them, the result had been decided. They split the bait evenly, and both bit in. The result was immediate and striking – both goblins fell to the ground, the poison taking hold and numbing their bodies.
Sensing her opportunity, Lia struck. She climbed onto the nearest goblin and stung its eye while taking a bite out of its face, watching in satisfaction as it just sort of…stopped moving.
You have dealt 28 damage to Goblin Sentry! You have envenomed Goblin Sentry for 15 seconds!
You have dealt 14 damage to Goblin Sentry!
You have killed Goblin Sentry! You gain 35 EXP and 2.5 Blood Money! 2.5 Blood Money is automatically spent to pay off your loan!
You have leveled up! You have gained 8 HP and Stamina, 5 Mana, 3 Strength, Defense, Dexterity, and Mental Fortitude, and 1 in all of your other stats!
The other goblin struggled to get up, but Lia was there first. She latched onto it and was about to let the modeling wax flow, but her instincts told her that she didn’t have enough of it to fully convert the goblin.
So, she instead delivered another killing blow, watching in satisfaction as the experience came.
You have killed Goblin Sentry! You gain 30 EXP and 2.5 Blood Money! 2.5 Blood Money is automatically spent to pay off your loan!
You have leveled up! You have gained 8 HP and Stamina, 5 Mana, 3 Strength, Defense, Dexterity, and Mental Fortitude, and 1 in all of your other stats!
You have reached the maximum level for your species of monster! Please select an evolution from the list below:
Juvenile Lesser Swarm Battlemaster:
A Lesser Swarm Battlemaster that has survived her young stage and is on the path to adulthood. Offers minor increases to all stats and a moderate increase to Strength, Defense and Dexterity, as well as several Skills that boost nearby members of her swarm.
Young Lesser Swarm War Magus:
The Swarm War Magus offers a middle ground between the Swarm Battlemaster and the Swarm Magocrat, as an excellent well-rounded fighter. While it has less Strength, Defense, and Dexterity than the Swarm Battlemaster, it makes up for it by having increased Magic and Magic Defense.
???:
The system has detected that you have potential to evolve into a hitherto unknown elite race. Conditions for this evolution are only partially met.
Partially met condition: Make ??? rats into part of your swarm: 2/???
Met condition: Obtain a rat-related Title
Met condition: Obtain a Skill that assists with commanding subordinates
Met condition: Kill 25 rats
That was…an elite race sounded really cool, but it…had to do with rats? Was that something she really wanted to make part of her identity?
She paused to think that over for a moment. Yes, if it led to power, it was absolutely something she wanted to make part of her identity. She could…probably jump ship if it ended up being bad, but for now she didn’t see the harm in delaying her evolution until she could unlock whatever that was. She needed a safe place to evolve anyway, and having more members of her swarm would speed up that process.
So, she sprinted out of the marketplace and back towards what was rapidly becoming her home base. Her swarm was still obediently working at making a burrow, and by this point it was large enough that she could probably begin moving the rat corpses inside.
She set the drone to doing that, while she began to look for more rats. And, like last time she had been searching for rats, once Amelia caught on, she started to find a lot of rats very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that she wasn’t able to produce modeling wax fast enough to keep up with the rats she caught. She had to take a break as she consumed the rat corpse from her storage and waited for it to convert into modeling wax.
She split her conversions equally between drones and burrowers, and, eight rats later, she was informed that the conditions to evolve had been met.
You have met the conditions to evolve into a Lesser Swarm Rat Queen!
Young Lesser Swarm Rat Queen:
The rat king is an ancient and mystical creature composed of multiple rats with their tails tied together. Not much is known about rat kings, as few survive creation and fewer survive for more than a day beyond that, but it is said that they are able to command lesser rats and have a frightening degree of intelligence.
As leader of a swarm that has obtained a large amount of information on rats, you have become able to tap into this mystical phenomenon for yourself. Compared to a Swarm Battlemaster, the Swarm Rat Queen has slightly lower Dexterity and somewhat lower Defense, but provides a massive increase in all other stats.
Furthermore, the Swarm Rat Queen vastly strengthens her rat and rat-like minions, and gains access to powerful innate mental magic.
This evolution represents a significant shift in biology, providing the following changes:
You change from an insectoid monster to a mammalian monster, with a rat as the base.
You lose your stinger and wings, but gain sharp claws. Venomous Sting will rank down and transform into Venomous Bite.
You lose your carapace but gain fur.
You are reduced to four legs.
You gain a rat-like tail, knotted at the end.
Insectoid Skills will become harder (but not impossible) to obtain and level, but “prey” Skills will become much easier to obtain and level.
She thought about that as she made her way back to her burrow. Ranking Venomous Sting down was a huge blow, but innate mental magic was incredibly alluring to her. Innate magic was far, far easier to use than its learned counterpart at the expense of being more limited in scope.
And goblins were notoriously weak to mental manipulation. They weren’t very bright to begin with, and even the magic of a novice would take a goblin out of commission for a while. If she gained access to something that would let her knock the goblins out easily, she would be able to convert them without much issue, and grow her forces quickly.
Losing wings was also kind of disappointing, but she hadn’t been able to make good use of them so far and Spiderclimb would fill the role of allowing her into high places, so it wasn’t as bad as it would otherwise be.
And, finally, she wouldn’t be some sort of weird bug-thing anymore, she would be one step closer to becoming close to a foxkin again, and that was a huge plus in her book. She didn’t even have to totally sacrifice the Skill benefits of being insectoid, meaning she’d still be able to gain things like Active Camouflage. “Prey” Skills would get easier to obtain too, and while she wasn’t totally sure what that entailed, she could guess it benefited things like Presence Detection and maybe even Active Camouflage if she was lucky.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Yeah, she was totally taking this evolution. She reached her burrow, now a bustling space where ten rat-ish creatures were hard at work expanding a living area. She lowered herself into the burrow for the first time, and was surprised to find that the floor wasn’t actually dirt. It looked like dirt, and it felt like dirt, but, somehow, she could tell that it was actually hardened modeling wax.
Curious, she prodded at it with a leg. The top layer of the stuff moved around slightly, to give the feel of loose particles of dirt, but remained almost magnetically attached to the harder layer, preventing it from moving away from the harder layer.
Interesting. It appeared that modeling wax made from different materials behaved in different ways. She’d have to look into that later. But, for now, it was time to evolve. So, she sat herself in a distant part of the burrow, and began her evolution.
----------------------------------------
When Lia awoke, she was ravenous, much like she had been the last time she had evolved. Fortunately, the rat corpses she had made earlier that day had been neatly stacked next to her, and she began to dig in, savoring the taste as she did. Fortunately, it seemed her evolution hadn’t changed her tastebuds, so the corpses were still just as tasty as they had been before.
While she was eating, she took some time to check over her body. The wings were gone, yes, but everything else just felt so much more…familiar. She had ears, a nose, a mouth that wasn’t just a set of insectoid mandibles…and she had feet! Well, paws, but they were much closer to feet than the stubs she had had as a Swarm Battlemaster.
And she had a tail, too! A glance behind her showed that she did indeed have a rat’s tail, though it ended in a sort of…knotted ball of tails, with several stubs protruding, looking like the severed ends of other tails. Actually…she was sort of a rat now, right? Did that make eating the rats cannibalism?
She paused, then dismissed the idea. She hadn’t received any sort of Title when she began eating, so it seemed she wasn’t close enough to a real rat for that. She finished her meal, then took a moment to look at her new status.
Name: Lia Mios
Race: Young Lesser Swarm Rat Queen
Level: 1/15, 0/5 EXP
HP: 20/20
Stamina: 20/20
Mana: 20/20
Strength: 10
Defense: 7
Dexterity: 7
Magic: 10
Magic Defense: 10
Mental Fortitude: 17
Title: Conqueror of Death
You have died and lived to tell the tale. Your life signature becomes undetectable by effects that only search for living or undead creatures, though you may still be sensed by effects that sense both. Provides immunity to instant-kill effects, and any blow that would bring you to 0 HP instead brings you to 1 if you had more than 1 HP.
Titles:
List truncated. Open ‘Titles” for more.
Skills:
List truncated. Open “Skills” for more.
It really hadn’t been kidding when it said there was going to be a massive boost to all her other stats; her Magic and Magic Defense were higher than they were before she had evolved, even though her other stats had fallen a great deal.
That did kind of hurt, but now she had more tools she could use to level up again. Or, should, anyway. She took a moment to check her Skills, scanning for anything new. And, to her delight, there was not one new Skill, but three!
Prey’s Panic
Level 1: 0/1000 EXP
Induces the fear of being predated into a target.
Level 1: For 10 Mana, induce sheer panic in a target you can see within 60m. For so long as the creature is within 60m of you, and for 60 seconds afterwards, it is overcome by a blind panic and fear of being eaten. If a creature leaves the radius of this effect and re-enters before it is free from the effect, the effect is refreshed. For every rat (or swarm creature made from a rat) within 5m of you, your Magic is considered to be 1.1x higher (additive) for the purposes of overcoming Mental Fortitude.
FLEE
A Cornered Rat
Level 1: 0/1000 EXP
Instills the need to fight and survive into a target.
Level 1: For 10 Mana, instill the need to fight in a target you can see within 60m. For so long as the creature is within 60m of you, and for 60 seconds afterwards, it is overcome by the desire to fight back and survive. If a creature leaves the radius of this effect and re-enters before it is free from the effect, the effect is refreshed. While under the effect of this ability, a creature’s Strength is increased by 50%. For every rat (or swarm creature made from a rat) within 5m of you, your Magic is considered to be 1.1x higher (additive) for the purposes of overcoming Mental Fortitude.
FIGHT
Gnawing Hunger
Level 1: 0/1000 EXP
Induces overwhelming hunger in a target.
Level 1: For 10 Mana, induce hunger in a target you can see within 60m. For so long as the creature is within 60m of you, and for 60 seconds afterwards, it is overcome by a ravenous hunger, regardless of how full it actually is. If a creature leaves the radius of this effect and re-enters before it is free from the effect, the effect is refreshed. For every rat (or swarm creature made from a rat) within 5m of you, your Magic is considered to be 1.1x higher (additive) for the purposes of overcoming Mental Fortitude.
FEED
Lia smiled, though she guessed the effect was likely lost due to not really possessing a mouth that worked quite that way. Though…she did have a much more expressive mouth now, so that was definitely a step up from what she had before.
Ruminations on smiles aside, those abilities would be quite handy when it came to dealing with the goblins. She only had two uses of them before her Mana ran out, but two uses would be more than enough to cripple any goblin. Now she just needed a way to level up a couple of times, so she would have the raw stats necessary to take down a goblin before its cries drew the attention of other goblins.
That probably meant converting more rats. Which wasn’t nearly as much of a waste as it had been before, since she apparently “vastly” strengthened her rat-based subordinates now. Actually…
She called over a drone, and began to inspect it. There had to be some way to see the status of her drones, right?
Name: None
Race: Lesser Swarm Drone (Rat)
Level: 1/3, 0/2 EXP
HP: 5/5
Stamina: 5/5
Mana: 5/5
Strength: 1
Defense: 1
Dexterity: 5
Magic: 1
Magic Defense: 1
Mental Fortitude: 1
Title: None
You have not yet obtained a Title. Information on your currently equipped Title will appear here when you obtain a Title.
Titles:
None
Skills:
None
Oh, it was as simple as that. As expected, the rats were pretty weak. That wasn’t anything surprising, they weren’t even monsters when they had been converted, so expecting more than that would be unreasonable. Still, she was supposed to strengthen the rat members of her swarm, so, why was it still so…bad?
Lesser Swarm Drone (Rat) is eligible for evolution into Swarm Drone (Rat) due to the effects of your race!
Ah, it was bad because she needed to evolve it. She set that process in motion and watched in fascination the drone dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, and its flesh began to writhe and change. Was that how she looked when she evolved? It was kind of gross, but she supposed there really wasn’t a pretty way to completely restructure a body, so she’d just have to live with it.
She called the rest of her swarm to her and set them to evolving before she left in search of more rats to convert. Soon, very soon, she would have a swarm worthy of actually being called a swarm.