Chapter 11 - Leaving The Cave

Time flew by without the patients to wait for anyone— the seasons changed and a new one took reign.

Around four months, or so, had passed since she first arrived in this world and settled down in the cave, and throughout those months a lot had happened.

The first major change is that her hive had grown a decent amount, with her using the mass she had collected to make 30 worker units all similar to the first one in form, and 10 hunter units that looked similar to a large cat with multiple whip-like tails in form.

After making all of those she had a little over 1000 mass points to use remaining, mainly because she decided to implement the climbing skill into the creation of some of the workers to test it out.

With the skill working quite well, being especially useful for digging out a complicated cave system in all directions— without the need to worry about slipping.

With the remaining 1000 she decided to spend 300 to make a scout unit that was capable of flight using the form of a bat— which she had the DNA information from thanks to eating all the bats before.

The reason it took so much even though a scout would only cost 150 mass at best, was because she gave it a capability she didn't already have herself, so the mass had to make up for the difference.

But thanks to this one scout she was able to freely explore the forest around her without once leaving the cave throughout this entire four-month period.

Well, that would be a lie— she did leave occasionally to wash her body in the river because she was used to taking showers.

However, now that she was a different race, her body didn't produce any waste, only using saved mass to create more. Thanks to that she had no need to do a lot of things a normal human would need to do, such as shower, unless dirtied, or use the washroom.

But she decided to shower anyways, as, she preferred to do it over remaining filthy with dirt and blood. Maybe it was the little things that reminded her that she was once human, and made her different from the others of her species that existed.

But that didn't matter, she would still do what they did if she had to— or what she would need to do.

'I should finally leave this forest today.'

That's right, over the course of the four months, she found out that the forest she was located in was surrounded by plains, with multiple human settlements not too far from it.

She sent out the scout to check out each of them, and found out from the signs that she was located rather close to New Mexico— a place she had never been to before.

Which meant she had a large area to explore.

Plus she wanted to leave the forest and see if the world had changed much in her absence, especially since she now knew the universe was much larger than she thought, with alien species she never knew existed.

It wouldn't be surprising if the world was much different than she once thought it was— maybe so many things existed hidden from the common people that she was never truly aware of.

She also wanted to get some proper clothing, because only wearing leaves and fur from the creatures she killed wasn't suitable nor did she enjoy them.

So today was the day she decided to finally leave the forest and head towards a place that was close by.

She had made preparations for this day ahead of time, having her hive create tunnels underground that would lead her in and out of the forest easily.

In the process, they created a large system of tunnels under the forest that could be used for transportation and moving without being seen, which aided in their hunting and gathering.

Easily being able to travel to any end of the forest without once leaving the comfort of the cave system she was in— however she never did leave, opting to focus on growing her hive over the collection of skills.

Something inside of her told her that it was the preferred option— her instincts.

Now was the time for her to leave— heading towards the exit with 5 workers, and 5 warriors following her in the dirt so that they wouldn't be seen.

Digging, a skill she naturally learned due to their efforts in creating large tunnels under the forest.

Thanks to these tunnels she was able to get to the edge of the forest without worry, heading out from it near what seemed like a dirt path.

She decided to go towards a place that wasn't too far from here, for her at least, and see what it had to offer.

So she started walking.

Eventually, after a few days— time of which she lost track of because of how irrelevant it was to her new body— she found the town in the blurred distance.

Approaching the town she found that it wasn't overpopulated, which was good for her since a half-naked girl dressed in leaves and fur would definitely attract attention.

The fact that it was night aided her— as most of the people were either asleep or in their houses, unbothered by the outside world.

But the few people that were walking around during the night glanced at her with a mixture of emotions, from curiosity to even confusion.

Finally, she saw a sign as she approached the entrance, one that read— Puente Antiguo.

'Puente Antiguo? Never heard of it.'

She wasn't very good with locations since she never really traveled a lot— outside of her area that is— so she didn't know the name of a lot of places.

But something about the place was familiar— the look that is— but she couldn't quite put her finger on what, it just felt like she had seen it somewhere before.

Ignoring that she walked into town and looked for the nearest newspapers— her goal was obvious. She wanted to know the date and year and; hopefully get an update on current events.

What she found out when she finally got her hands on a newspaper, however, wasn't something she was expecting.

'2008? Did I go back in time on top of being reborn in a new body— how interesting— maybe I can use this to my advantage.'

She thought as she decided to flip through the paper, seeing some oddly familiar names in them.