Chapter 16: Sunscreen anyone?

Ethan moved into the desert "First things first. Time to find a place to hunker down next to food." Ethan cloaked himself and he skulked his way to the center of the desert, sneaking his way past larger monsters until he found a shallow cave. " This could work. I could dig this out and layer it with webs and traps and then send out the swarm-lings to find and kill food."

With that Ethan moved further into the cave and began producing the swarm-lings. They were going to help with the digging, as soon as he had 40 of them they got to work and began digging.

After an hour or so, they had the cave dug out and it was tapered in and out throughout the cave creating multiple choke points. With that, Ethan began laying webs and setting pitfall traps throughout the cave.

"Okay, now that is done I need to make an escape route that is well hidden and only accessible from the farthest reaches of the cave. Ethan dug a small tunnel that winded its way to the side of a cliff face not far from the cave. He positioned it so that unless you were hanging off of the cliff you would not be able to see it.

"Now it's time to hunt. Okay swarm-lings! Ten Hut!" 40 swarm-lings rushed to the front all chittering and swarming over each other. "Listen well little ones, I need you to go out and hunt. Work together to bring down the monsters, if you can't bring them down. Lure back here so that I can.

Soon we will be unstoppable! Muahahaha! Now go to my pretties!... I always wanted to say that" Ethan cackled as the swarm-lings swarmed out of the cave. After about 30 minutes or so the first team came back with a barely alive monster that was being dragged by 15 swarm-lings. It looked like some sort of lizard, like a gila monster just... bigger.

"Oh room service, you shouldn't have... okay! Dig in!" Ethan yelled as he and his swarm-lings began ripping and tearing the monster to shreds and consuming every morsel. Ethan got a nice lil bump of 500 mutogene from Lizzy the monster mash. Not bad!

Ethan will need to be doing a lot of farming though and at a slow careful pace. With that said Ethan sent that team back out just as another was returning with another catch.

Just as the swarm-lings got back with another catch Ethan met them outside to help them drag it in while avoiding the traps. Once in the back of the cave Ethan devoured the critter with the help of his swarm-lings. Ethan burped loudly... in his mind as spiders can't burp "I miss burping " Ethan said as he chuckled.

"One more meal, another 500 mutogene!" Now just to do some upgrades while another catch is brought back to me.

After about a week of rinsing and repeating this process ...Ethan had a chunk of mutogene totaling in at 7000 mutogene. "Okay, I should be good now. Time to focus on my personal growth and do some upgrades!"

With that Ethan opened the menu and began looking at upgrade options. First let's get my other skills up to 15 so that I can unlock my next evolution. With that said. Ethan brought the rest of his skills to 15 and focused on the same mutations to make sure they stuck around. So now his stats look like this.

Ethan

Species: Cheiracanthium inclusum (swarm queen)

Gender: Female

Power level 11

Strength: 80

Agility: 70

Intelligence: 80

Luck: 55

Vitality: 110

Mutations:

Sparking Mandibles +15

Armored legs+15

Paralytic Webbing +15

Mind control Venom+15

Rapid Swarm-ling hatchery +15

Compressed swarm-ling ducts+15

"Congratulations! You unlocked your evolution! Time to pick your poison!"

A menu dropped open. Congratulations on your second evolution! The screen said and a confetti flew everywhere from the screen before disappearing.

The first choice looked interesting!

Assassin spider: "if you see them first? You win!" 10 percent buff to all stats, increased backstab damage by 100 percent. You unlock multiple stealth skills from this evolution as well as gain sharper mandibles and legs to facilitate backstabs and stealth attacks.

The second choice was odd

Immolation arachnid: "fire cleans flesh from bone and any mess you make will be cleaned up by your flames.... and mama didn't raise no dirty boy" 10 percent buff to all stats, increased damage and protection from fire abilities. You gain fire mana as well as several fire abilities and spells.

Lastly the final option

Swarm queen adept: "never be alone" 20 percent buff to all stats, increased swarm-ling count from 40 to 60 and increased stats for all swarm-lings, mutation options for swarm-lings, swarm-lings get the same buffs you get whenever you get or give a buff.

"Well, we all know what I'm picking... right my babies?" Ethan said to the swarm-lings in the cave as they jumped around him to show their approval.

With that Ethan chose the swarm queen adept. As he went under, another menu popped up. "Choose your swarm-ling mutation!" The menu said Ethan scrolled through the list for at least 30 minutes. Then he found what he was looking for to help his build, "self replicating swarm-lings" swarm-lings now split when killed into two weaker versions of themselves, this can happen once per swarm-ling. On top of this the swarm-lings can now infect the targets they attack with eggs that will hatch inside the target creating more swarm-lings.

With that, Ethan went under fully and the evolution began. A cocoon formed around Ethan and began pulsing with dark energy as the changes started to take hold, Ethan began growing in size and power while another entity chuckled as his plans were coming to fruition.

Zaggoth was extremely happy with Ethan's progress not only physically, but mentally. He leaned towards the viewing portal that he had conjured in a realm of swirling darkness and lost souls. He grabbed one as it floated by and slurped it down for a quick snack as he pondered over Ethan's progress.

"Yes, keep growing and getting stronger and stronger, be my perfect champion. Soon I will have everything I ever wanted. All with a little manipulation of emotions. Humans are so EASY"