Chrysalis
chapter-936

The delicious sensation of new and powerful spells is one thing, but now that it's done I have to turn to another experience, one that is perhaps less pleasant. Mutation time! Gotta improve that body and push my limits to beyond the… limit. Or something. I've managed to gather around six hundred Biomass, not a bad effort given the fact I've been at a higher tier than almost all my food. The penalty reduction from upgrading my stomach is definitely paying dividends right now. Imagine if I had to go against monsters as strong as I am constantly… no thanks.

It's nice to have a challenge every now and again, but for real, beating up on weaker monsters is by far the more relaxing way of levelling up. It just takes longer. Good thing I'm a very patient and restrained person.

…

I barely managed to keep a straight face when I said that and my face is literally part of my skeleton.

Where to turn now? I've actually managed to mutate quite a few of the big ticket items by this stage and now it's time to move onto the more niche things. My brains are still only at fifteen and they definitely need to go to thirty as a priority, considering how excellent my new magic is, any little bit of help casting will make all the difference.

So let's take a look at what we have going on right now. The three sub-brains are all specialising in mind magic, which makes perfect sense as it allows them to better utilise the mind constructs. The multiplicative effect of being able to focus on so many things at once is certainly a powerful feature and precisely the reason I was able to pepper my enemies with so many spells in the defensive battle against the termites. It also helped me rank up my elemental magic at such a prodigious speed since I've been practicing a minimum of three different elemental magics constantly.

The question is, do I go all the way to thirty with the mind magic speciality or do I slide something else in there to nestle alongside. Browsing through the options doesn't really help me, despite the absurd plethora on offer, since my focus has finally started to narrow down, the vast majority of options simply don't apply to me. Light or dark? Nope. Life? I guess now that I've encountered life mana it would make sense for the option to pop up, but nope. There's a ton of upgrades for better cognition that might come in handy. Better memory, faster thinking, more adaptive thought processes.

You really can just straight up make yourself a faster and better thinker through mutation. Almost feels like cheating.

But no. That is not my path! I have always left the thinking to the Colony and I shall continue to do so! I can be honest and say that even if I reset my brains all the way back to 0 and focused on nothing but pumping up my cognitive abilities, I'd still be less capable of making good decisions than the Colony as a whole. More brains is better, and even if I have four, there are hundreds of thousands in the Colony by now, probably. I'll put my trust in them. Besides, mutating my brains does provide a background improvement to all of their functions. Every +1 has a strengthening effect to the organ or body part being mutated. It doesn't have as big an effect as the big ticket mutations that land every five levels, but it adds up over time.

To take one of my brains from +15 to +30 is going to take… three hundred and forty five biomass… you can't be serious. Geez this is getting expensive. Damn you Gandalf! Does your greed know no limits?!

So I suppose that means I'm only going to mutate one brain up to +30, and if that's the case then it's obviously going to be my main one. I'm pretty comfortable mutating along the same lines that I employed the last time. Improve my handling of gravity mana, and improve my ability to condense mana. The last gravity bomb I threw out is all the evidence that I need to show the effectiveness of this strategy. I was able to pump just about all of the mana in my organ into that beast, though part of that was the spell literally pulling the mana out of me outside of my control.

So with that, my main brain goes from the Condensing Gravity Main Brain +15 to Crushing Gravity Well Main Brain +30.

Sounds like a black hole factory to me. I like it!

With that done, and the massive cost involved, I can take two organs from +25 to +30 with what I have remaining. The stomach is probably a good option, finally. I'll pump that up to 30 and reap the benefits of further reducing the tier penalty.

Next on the list is musculature. Normally I'd want to mutate this and my nervous system at the same time, but unfortunately I can't bear the cost of that right now. Don't mind, nervous system, your time will come soon!

As I check my status, I feel a warm sense of pride as I see my progress. The goal of +30 across the board is almost within reach and I look forward to the day when my body is once again pristine and maxed out, securing that sweet, sweet evolution bonus.

All in all, this is going to cost six hundred and twenty five Biomass, leaving me with very little savings. Ah well, let's confirm it!

BRAZZINATH!

Dammit! Why!? WHY?!

It takes quite a while for the itch to finally fade. The length of the mutation seems to take longer the higher up the tiers I go. I can only imagine what it must be like to go from +50 to +55 or something. Part of me hopes I'll never find out.

With that all done, I'm ready to emerge from my little hibernation chamber and with my friends by my side I emerge to find ants, so many ants, crawling all over each other as they rush about the place.

What the heck is going on?

Sharpened Perimeter Eyes +25 -> Focal Compound Eyes +30

Vast Hungering Stomach +25 -> Discerning Stomach +30

Lock Hyper-Twitch Musculature +25 -> Coiling Hyper-Twitch Musculature +30

Coordinating Instant Transmission Sub-Neural Network +25 -> Distributed Instantaneous Sub-Neural Network +30