Chapter 116: Spy Centipedes
Chapter 116: Spy Centipedes
The ants moved with their bellies flat on the wall as they crawled towards me, undulating their bodies with the grace of a lizard. Their mouths opened wide, and soon a bright light could be seen on their abdomen as it seemed to peek out from the cracks of their scales.
The light worked its way up their body before it shot out their mouths. A powerful ball of flames shot from their mouths. The heats from their blast had no effect on me since my obsidian exoskeleton was resistant to fire.
Without wasting a second, I covered myself in sharp obsidian spikes and charged at them. Fighting with magic is good and all, but it’s still practice for my close-combat skills. The movents from these monsters were predictable.
They go wherever their eyes darted to, and by looking at their mana signature, I could tell what spells they were going to use and where they were going to impact before they even released them.
I could also analyze even the slightest movements and predict how they would attack. I had multiple consciousnesses playing real-time data on predictions of the future. It was as if I were living different variations of the future inside my head before it even happened.
I’ve seen multiple variations of the future of how I would rescue Amanda and leave for the next strata. I’ve also seen variations of myself falling.
Of course those predictions weren’t accurate since there were many things that I didn’t know and couldn’t calculate for. Like the cause of that scent, for example or why the weaker ants were being dragged off.
I didn’t even know how powerful the ant queen was. For all I know, the higher generation of ants was much more powerful than me.
I predicted that there was a 7% chance of me beating the Phoenix King in a fight. And the only reason it was so high was because of how unpredictable my magic was.
This meant I couldn’t face him in a head-on battle. I’ll have to find a way to outsmart him.
The capabilities of my evolved brain were outstanding, truly, but it would work better if I had a way of collecting intel so I had more data to work with.
I’ve been playing with the idea of creating my own monsters and evolving them in a way that was perfect for reconnaissance. I already started on their features.
[You have slain 89 Slicer Void ants.]
[You have gained 22,250 biomass!]
As I finished absorbing the ants, I held one of their cores underneath my leg. I didn’t want the monster I created to retain traits of the ants; instead, I wanted to give them traits of my own.
First of all was their size. These new monsters wouldn’t be used in combat, so they didn’t need to be huge. I made them roughly the size of a fly.
-Choose Exoskeleton->
Exoskeleton?
I decided to give them an obsidian exoskeleton like me.
Now for the main thing, which was their senses. I completely maxed out their senses. They have a 360-degree field of vision and the eyes of a hawk, allowing them to see up to 3 kilometres away. That’s 30 football pitches lined up from goal to goal.
Their sense of smell was higher than a dog’s, and they could hear as far as they could see. And the best part, each of them will have one of my consciousnesses inside of them, so they are basically part of me.
I could see what they saw in real time. And that was all. Looking at them, you would just see a centipede the size of a fly. I was disappointed in myself that I didn’t think of this earlier.
Each spy centipede cost 500 biomass to create. I ended up purchasing 70 of them, costing 35,000 biomass and 1 core per centipede. This used up most of the biomass I had on me, but I figured it was worth it.
Without hesitation, I released them and watched as they spread throughout the nest. I could see and sense everything they were sensing. If I wanted to explore a specific area of my nest, then I didn’t have to go there myself.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to create other such monsters. Monsters with very specific evolutions created to do one specific task.
I watched in real time as the centipedes moved through the nest. They could scout and tell me what kind of monsters are up ahead. They were just small enough not to attract the ants’ attention.
For now that was my main objective for them. To show me the type of monsters I would be facing and also to help locate Amanda.
I already had Dracule searching for the queen.
Huh, what is this?
After a few minutes, I finally located something strange.
"Are those... roots?"
At the mention of roots, Lily was quick to take a look and respond from inside my storage space.
"Hey, wait, you’re right! Those are the roots of a tree."
I quickly let Lily out of my storage space, seeing how excited she was. The root was noticed by one of my spy centipedes, so we quickly went to its location.
The first thing I noticed was the sheer amount of mana coming from it. It was incredible.
The only time I’ve ever seen or felt mana this dense was from the giant albino crocodile!
Whatever tree these roots are from must be comparable to that monster.
"Does this mean that there is a tree somewhere in here?" I asked Lily who was hesitantly approaching the root.
"Yeah, I think so, though it is strange. I never expected a tree here of all places."
The plants and trees in this strata developed special evolutions to kill the ants, so why would one be here of all places?
Lily gently touched the room, and immediately her body froze as if she were touching a live wire.
Immediately I could sense that something was wrong and pulled her from the root, but it was too late.
Her exoskeleton split in half and was immediately repelled. I shot out a thick strand of goo and caught her before she hit the wall.
"Lily! Are you alright?"
Slowly, beautiful flowers slowly began sprouting from the ground and wrapped around. The crack on her exoskeleton and the damage done to her immediately began to heal.
"I’m fine. The mana from the root was simply too much to handle." For some reason her voice held a hint of excitement. "Never have I imagined that I would encounter a Celestial Tree."
"Celestial Tree?"
It sounded powerful and important, but this was the first time I was hearing of such a tree.
Lily bobbed her head excitedly.
"This tree was made from a drop of ichor! No wonder all the other trees are out to get the ants. They built their nest on a celestial tree! Something like this could..."
BONG!
Raising my leg, I boinked her on the head.
"Slow down!"
Lily rubbed the top of her head, tears lining her eyes.
"I’m sorry."
"First explain to me what ichor is and why this tree is so important."
"Oh right!" She nodded her head, her earlier excitement slowly returning. "Ichor is a golden fluid that comes from a powerful group known as ’celestial’. No one knows much about celestials except that they once lived thousands of years ago. The fluid known as ichor is their blood. It is important because it contains a lot of magic. Trees naturally absorb magic, and when they absorb the magic from an ichor, they become a celestial tree."
I was slowly beginning to understand the importance of this root. If it contains that much magic, then I’m guessing it could be used in various ways.
"The wood from a celestial tree is used to make some of the most powerful items in the world."
Interesting...
"Can the power from the tree be syphoned?" I asked.
Lily thought for a moment.
"I suppose it could, but not just any creature can syphon the power from a celestial tree. As you can see, just a brief contact with it is enough to severely injure me."
"I see."
If I had to guess, the queen was using the tree to enhance her own power.
"Lily, how are the trees I asked you to create coming along?"
I asked Lily to create some of the plants and trees found outside the nest since they were specially adapted to combat the ants.
"It took a while, but I think I know how to recreate them."
Immediately a magenta plant sprouted before me, shooting up various weeds.
"This is good; I’ll use the spy centipedes to spread the seeds around the nest."
I recalled around half of the centipedes and sent them out and gave them the seeds to spread throughout the nest.
For now since I couldn’t do anything with it, I decided to leave the root. Plus, the centipedes I sent out found something that managed to draw my attention.
The Phoenix King.