1 Eve
The blessing.
The fateful day.
The end of days.
The dusk.
The rebirth.
The great remodeling.
We use many different names to call what we experience that day. The day our very fabric of reality is changed forever. Gone were the days of peace, the apocalypse has come.
Unknown structure containing untold horrors burst out of the very ground we stood. Monstrosity comes into being, they are the agents of death and torture.
Helpless and powerless, we watch as they brutally slaughtered and butchered our loved ones. I thought it was the end for us, humans. But it all came to an abrupt end, for he has come for us. The one true God.
The Almighty, Akashic Records.
We hear his word as we enter his warm embrace.
He gives us power. It is by his will that we can fight back and rise above the accursed spawn of darkness. Reclaiming our rightful place in this world.
-extracted from the diary of an unknown author.
In the deep recesses of space, where silence and darkness reigns. An asteroid drifts along aimlessly along the endless seas of stars. It floats unobstructed until it collides with another asteroid. The rock cracks and shatters.
The collision pushes it to drift too close to a small planet. Caught by the planet's gravity, the asteroid is pulled into the planet. The asteroid is set ablaze as it enters the atmosphere.
Visible from the ground, the creatures below see a big ball of fire coming their way. They all running helter-skelter, only some slow or stupid creatures standing still, watching the asteroid.
Parts of the asteroid break off and turn to dust shortly. Leaving only a few meters size scorched black ball hidden inside the asteroid.
BOOOOM!
Dust and rock filled the air, trees fell. The creatures near the crash site either already run away or are killed by the explosion. Small fires still burn around the crash area.
Lying in the middle of a small crater is the black ball still emitting smoke. The ball is not smooth, it is covered by some kind of yellow veins. The veins twitch now and then before the black ball cracks open.
A large amount of black sludge flows out and drench the ground. Then a slim hand comes out followed by a tall silhouette. Except for the long yellow-colored thick tendrils as hair, the figure is black all over.
The silhouette figure is slim and has a feminine body shape but without any female parts. Her black skin shines like it is made of metal. She only had four fingers including the thumb each equipped with sharp claws. Her feet are reverse joint like a lizard with a long slender tail. She has two eyes, her sclera is red and her yellow vertical iris is long like snakes. She had no nose or genitalia. Her ears are pointed. Six pipes-like things extend out from her back like wings.
When she opens her eyes and sees the unfamiliar surroundings, confusion and agitation filled her eyes.
Where... is this?
Where am I?
She turns her head left and right but nothing she is familiar with can be seen, it is a completely alien place.
The ground is copper-red, the trees had weird-shaped yellow leaves and brown trunks. The weather is hot and humid, there are mountains all around her, from small to big. The mountains are all white-colored. There are barely any clouds.
Very different from the landscape of the ruined city, cracked earth, torn building, abandoned vehicles, she was familiar with.
Just what...
The settlement…
Yes, the settlement!
The monsters broke in and started a massacre.
The event replayed in her head. A flood of monsters charges straight at the settlement. The wall collapsed and many died under the monster's assault.
I was fighting.
Gripping her spear and handgun, she was at the forefront with the others. They hold down the monster's advance. Buying time for the others to run. She fought desperately, many monsters fell under her spear and bullets.
But one by one, her comrades fell, and ultimately, she fell too. Her body was full of injuries and tired after all the fighting. While many monsters fell, they kept coming.
Her body shuddered when she recalled the gaping red mouth full of sharp teeth.
Then her sight falls to her hand. It's black with one less finger, the sharp claws are something she never has. It feels foreign. Her heart tightens.
Wha… what is this?
This is… not my hand…
She tries to clench her hand and it does. She rubs her body in panic and finds every touch unfamiliar. It is not her body. Her brain and heart go into high gear instantly as panic and fear flood her mind.
This… this isn't real…
This must be a dream…
I… I'm Eve Smith, a human…
How can I be a monster?
On the verge of a breakdown, her mind is about to shut down when a massive amount of knowledge storms in. Coming with knowledge is another self, another ego, another soul.
"AAAAHHH!!!"
In a dark space, deep inside her psyche. A blue translucent woman in her birth suit is screaming. She was holding her face while kneeling. Yellow light glows in front of her and materializes out, it is her but at the same time not, it is a different soul in the form of her current monster body.
A body can only hold one soul. Still deep in a manic state, Eve moves driven by her instinct. The human self that is Eve clashes with the new self, the monster self. They fight fiercely for dominance. The two collide for God knows how long but barely a minute passes in the real world. With each collision, the line between the two blurs. In the end, the monster's side comes on top, the two souls blend with the monster one as the dominant one.
When Eve opens her eyes for the second time, gone are the confusion and panic. Her eyes are cold and calm. She calmly reviews the memory and knowledge in her head.
Her past, the memory of her human life. Surprisingly, she just reviews it like it was someone else's memory. Her parents, friends, comrades, nothing stirs her heart. She still has her human memories and thinking but with her mind now dominated by her monster side, it is nothing more than a reference for her now.
I… am Eve…
The Queen of the Brood, Eve...
Her brain already contained information about what she is and what she is supposed to do. She steps out of the black ball and proceeds to consume it. As she eats, she brings out her status.
Name: Eve
Species: Brood Queen
Core LV: 1
Strength: 31
Vitality: 33
Intelligence: 45
Agility: 30
HP: 95/95
EN: 0/100
Strain: Eyes LV1, Claws LV1, Tail LV1, Legs LV1, Body LV1, Tendril LV1, Psionic Gland LV1, Core Processing Gland LV1, Black Sludge Gland LV1
BioMass: 0
Maybe it is the influence of her human memories, her intelligence is vastly superior.
After the first bite, Eve hears the system's voice in her head and a stream of information appears in her mind, even though she already knows about it.
[You gain 1 biomass!]
[You have devoured the Egg of the Queen.]
[Egg of the Queen]
[Egg containing the Queen of the brood. No one knows where it came from or how it came to be. No one knows except the Queens themselves.]
The black ball is an egg. Eve is consuming the egg to get energy and biomass. The crips sound of eggs breaking lasted for about a few hours before she fully consumed the egg. The egg is processed into energy and stored inside the core in her chest.
When the egg is fully digested, Eve rises and turns her attention to the mountain behind her. The white-colored mountain is the smallest compared to the mountains near it. A sliver of energy left her core and entered the Psionic Gland, turning into Psionic energy.
Her gland is empty and waiting for it to fill is too long, so she just directly sends her energy in and converts it. The gland itself is capable of absorbing energy from outside and converting that energy to Psionic energy automatically. Just it takes time.
Eve's eyes glowed as she sends out a weak psionic wave that sweeps a small part of the mountain. A clear image of the part of the psionic wave sweep appeared in her head. She can only scan the surface of the mountain at the moment. A small number of creatures are also hit but she ignores them.
In her memory, there is a piece of knowledge on how to use her biomass. She can use it to upgrade her strains. She acquired 10 biomass from the eggs and she spends it to level up her Psionic Gland.
[Use 5 biomass to upgrade Psionic Gland to LV3?]
After her confirmation, the Psionic Gland in her was engulfed in a cold sensation for a brief amount of time before fading. She can feel her psionic power is much stronger, the capacity is larger and the speed when converting energy to psionic energy is better, both manually and automatically. Her scan radius is bigger now.
After seeing the image, Eve walks around the mountain sweeping every part of it with the psionic wave. After a while, she finds a section of the bottom of the mountain that was more brittle than the rest.
Eve sends more energy to her Psionic Gland, this time it was not just a psionic wave. Her Psionic energy clumps together forming balls of psionic energy. By her will, the balls rammed into the mountain.
Eve keeps up the attack until her energy is reduced to more than half. The result is a cave opened up on the bottom of the mountain.
While she rests while waiting for her energy to recover, she sweeps the surrounding with a psionic wave. The position of all creatures around her appeared in her mind with their silhouettes. She first chooses the small creature near her before forming a tiny psionic arrow and shoots it at the creature.
Unlike the psionic ball that essentially just a clump of psionic energy in which she conjures without much process. To make the psionic arrow, she needs to shape the psionic energy and make it so it can fly straight. So it is more difficult than the psionic ball, she can only create three of them at one time at the moment.
Caught unaware, the psionic arrow pierce the creature's body. She walks toward the creature and sees a white furry ball lying on its own blue blood. The creature is as big as an adult's head. It was breathing weakly. She picks it up with one hand and looks at the creature's face.
Unlike its white furry appearance, its mouth is full of sharp teeth. The Queen takes a bite and eats the creature alive. Another announcement and information appear in her head. The Pringos don't have a core in them. The Queen gazed at the Pringos with disdain.
[You have slain a Pringos, you gain EXP!]
[You have devoured Pringos]
[Pringos]
[A creature with a ball-shaped body. They have many different colored furs. Despite their cute exterior, they are savage little things with a mean bite. Beware of their bite.]
[You gain 1 biomass!]
[You gain 1 biomass!]
When she's done devouring the Pringos, she gains two biomass. Blue blood stained her mouth and covered her hand. It was not enough. Although she gains biomass and a bit of energy back, it was far from enough for what she is about to do.
The Queen launches another psionic wave and detects a cluster of Pringos not too far away from her. She walks toward them and launches another psionic wave. There are five Pringos crowdings close to each other, munching on what seems to be a carcass of a creature. The poor Pringos are too engrossed in eating, they don't realize that a predator has locked onto them.
Eve forms three psionic arrows and aimed at the farthest Pringos. The moment she launches the psionic arrows, she also rushes at the Pringos.
The three arrows struck true and killed three Pringos. Taken aback, the last two Pringos froze and were taken out before they could react by being beheaded by the Queen's claw. She then devoured the five Pringos with pauses in between and gained more biomass but it is still not enough. She needs more. She ignores her bulging stomach and searches for more prey.
Eve walked around again and devoured four more Pringos and amassed 25 biomass. Eve is stuffed but She still isn't satisfied with the amount of biomass. She waits until her food is completely digested before she continues.
Now, she set her sights on bigger prey. She walks toward it, her prey is a creature standing on two legs with hunched back.
Its whole body is muscular with smooth blue skin, its face is ugly with a big nose, crooked mouth, and asymmetry eye size. The Queen is running low on energy, so she just rushes at it. She attacks the creature from behind.
Eve catches it by surprise and gets a hit in but the creature is faster than it looks. It dodges in the last second and the Queen's claw misses its neck and pierces the creature's shoulder from the back.
The creature screams and swings its arm backward, the Queen kicks it and pushes it forward. Freeing her hand and got another hit at the same time. She then dashes at the creature once more.
The creature already turns around and sees Eve running toward it, the creature pulls its arm and swings it at Eve. She easily dodges the first and slipped in front of it, her claws stab forward.
Blood drips down.
Her claw is deep in the creature's neck. Maybe it has a tougher and tenacious body, the creature doesn't die in an instant, it raises its arm trying to hit Eve. But will the Queen let it?
Eve puts more power in her arm and slams the creature to the ground. She withdrew her claw and took a big bite of the creature's head, killing it. She then devours it while reading the information in her head.
[You have slain LV1 Broon, you gain EXP!]
[You have devoured LV1 Broon]
[Broon]
[A violent monster with tenacious vitality and a strong pair of arms. Its legs, on the other hand, are weaker. A dim monster that only functions a bit better when fighting, a complete meathead]
[You gain 1 biomass!]
Eve digs around the body and finds the core, it is a ball the size of a fist. She swallows it in one bite.
[You gain 2 biomass! You gain EXP!]
She then continues devouring the carcass clean and gains another biomass, getting a total of four biomass. She rests for a while, waiting for the Broon to be digested. After that, she searches and devours four more Broons.
She stops after devouring the third Broon, feeling 45 biomass is enough. She walks back to the cave. The dust already settled and the cave didn't crumble. It was a small cave, the size of two rooms.
She walks in and stands in the middle of the cave. Energy rushes to the Black Sludge Gland in her, she then regurgitates a large amount of thick black sludge. The black sludge also gushes out of the pipe-like things on her back and reaches the ceiling of the cave. The sludge is very thick and sticky, it looks heavy like liquid gold.
After quite an amount of time, she stops expelling black sludge, almost the entirety of the cave surface is covered by the black sludge. Her energy is almost depleted. Eve stops and rests, waiting for her energy to recover.
After a long while, her energy is full. Her yellow tendril hair extends and touches the ground covered with sludge. Her hair spreads like roots all over the cave. Her energy flows through her tendril and into the sludge. The hair is controlling the sludge and condensing it, forming a rubber surface with yellow veins, just like the surface of the black egg.
Her tendrils have many uses. Her hair becomes an energy vein that doubles as a control center of the black sludge. It's also the bridge that connects Eve and black sludge. Eve will need to recharge it from time to time before it can sustain itself.
The cave now glows with eerie yellow light. Her hair detaches from the surface when the transformation is done. Now, the cave is completely and truly her nest, her domain. She can control everything in the nest with her mind. She walks to the end of the cave and with an order from her mind, ten giant black eggs that reach her waist begin to form.
The eggs are black with yellow veins and empty. The size of the eggs is far smaller than her egg and its shape is oval with an opening at the top. The Queen bends down and once again lets out black sludge from her mouth into the egg, filling it. This time, she includes biomass into the mix when she creates the black sludge.
Different from the previous sludge, the sludge is thinner and clearer. It is made from the processed biomass from the Pringos she ate. It is an important nutrient. It cost her 20 biomass to fill the ten eggs. After she is done filling the eggs with liquid biomass, she stops for a while.
It took a lot of her to create the liquid biomass, much more tiring than creating the black sludge. After a quick rest, She moves the black sludge to cover the cave opening so that nothing will disturb her. Eve is about to start the most important part after creating her nest. Creating the backbone of her brood, the worker. She first needs to make the original core of her workers.
Their body, strains, stats, she must consider it very carefully. She also needs to think about the evolution tree. Her core trembled as she began constructing the image of her worker. She uses her strain and the strains left on her eggs. Also, strains from Akashic Records.
The Akashic Records impose a limit on the stats and strain of the worker but provide everything else. The Queen has two chances to make two original cores at the first level and is given only one chance to make a new original core of a member of the brood every two levels after that. For the second original core, it is already reserved.
The information in her head tells her that the first batch of workers is the most important member of her brood. Being the oldest member of the Brood beside the Queen, they enjoy more resources than the members of the Brood that would come after them. As such, the most powerful member of the brood usually comes from this first group, there is even a high chance a champion will rise.
She thinks hard about what she wants and expects from her worker. The workers don't specialize in anything, they need to be able to do everything and become everything. And more importantly, they need to be cheap. After all, their number is their biggest advantage. She wants them to be strong but she doesn't want them to just be strong. She also wants them to be smart. She is torn until she finally chooses to put more points in Intelligence.
Eve feels that being smart will be more favorable in the long run. After all, from her human memories, she can tell that while weak, humans are extremely resourceful. That trait separates them from the monsters and beasts, which rely solely on their body. And that makes humans dangerous.
But unfortunately, she can't put much in Intelligence. Intelligence stats are far more expensive than the other three stats. She can only put as many as possible in intelligence without weakening the workers too much.
Then comes the worker's shape and strains, she gives them a strong jaw to make sure they can devour anything and gain biomass more efficiently. Strong stomach so they can digest things faster. She gave them two eyes in front so that they could see their prey. Ears so they can hear. Tendrils as hair and the Black Sludge Gland, the trademarks of the Brood. No nose as they don't need it, energy will replace their need for oxygen.
Vigorous body with tough skin for survival. Agile reverse joint legs for speed and limber tail for balance. They can stand and run on two legs but they can still run on four for more speed.
The worker's arms have four supple fingers including a thumb. Then she adds another pair of appendages on the worker's back. The appendage length has three joints and is longer than the worker's arm, at the end of the appendage is a single bone blade. It is at least 30cm long. The bone is tough and sharp, the Queen intended for it to be used as their main weapon or as a tool to help the worker climb hard surfaces.
With this form, the workers can hunt and do menial tasks with no trouble.
For the evolution options, she creates three templates to follow, a soldier, engineer, broodtender, and medic. She can't make many paths as the first evolution is still early for any advance alterations. Eve only picks four paths that she feels the most important and useful. She can improve the evolution tree later and it will be automatically updated by the Akashic Record. The Akashic Record will also give additional evolution options when the worker satisfies certain criteria.
With the worker creation is done, comes the hard part. Inserting the information into the core, the source of a monster's life. She drives 2 biomass into her Core Processing Gland with her energy and compresses it to the limit with her energy mixed in, forming an original core. She put the information into it according to her image, it was an arduous process. Modifying information inside a core is incredibly hard and requires strong and vast energy, modifying a blank core is not an exception. Of course, Eve doesn't have the means to modify a core yet. Creating two original cores is the only thing she can do at the moment.
But once she's done, she can create a copy of that core and does not have to repeat the grueling process.
After a while, the new worker's original core detached from her Core Processing Gland and came out from her stomach. A slit opens in a place where her navel is supposed to be and the core comes out from there. Looking at the core, her cold expression warms up as a warm smile appears. She feels warm looking at the core. She carefully puts the core into the egg and it closes up automatically. The Queen repeats the process and makes nine more cores, putting them inside the eggs.
Now, she only needs to wait for the core to absorb the biomass and create the flesh. A throne made of black sludge and yellow vein rise in front of the eggs. The Queen sits down and rests her weary body. Waiting for her brood to emerge.
