Other Soldiers?

It turns out the nest was even bigger than Shara had previously thought.

Since the nest was built underground, the inside was pitch black from the lack of sunlight. But she didn't need vision to be able to perfectly sense the nests' structure around her and where certain areas were located. Since she was bigger, she needed to crouch and crawl to fit through the tunnels. Shara briefly wondered how the Caretaker shrimp could easily breeze through these narrow tunnels when they were only a bit different in size.

Before, she wasn't able to closely examine herself because of the danger she was put in. But now, she could feel the difference in her body structure and experience the different functions her body could do. Her multiple limbs and uropods in particular she was very interested in. A human being able to function normally inside a completely different body was an amazing feeling.

As she followed the caretaker, many shrimps were also passing by them, all doing their jobs diligently. She could hear many 'voices' all around her, encouraging each other energetically and greeting every shrimp they meet along the way.

She took this as an opportunity to take a look at the nest. When she was still human, she didn't bother staying in the nest and just ventured out to do whatever she wanted, so she didn't know much about the shrimp colony.

Besides from a few big shrimps here and there, almost every shrimp she's seen were midget size smaller than her. It wasn't that they were small because they were only newborn hatchlings, no. They were small because they were weak.

This surprised Shara. It wasn't like she was underestimating them. With a name as imposing as the Reaper Shrimp, she didn't expect the majority of the colony to be so fragile.

Chirp!

Shara stopped abruptly at hearing the caretaker shrimp. It seems that they have arrived to the place that she wanted to take her in. After a few encouraging chirps, the caretaker left to do her business.

She watched the leaving figure of the caretaker before looking back at the dark entrance and going in.

Inside were many Soldier shrimps gathering together and forming their own groups. The majority of them were new batches of hatchlings much smaller than her with only a few exceptions of shrimps with upgraded bodies.

Sensing a new powerful presence in the room, all the shrimps turned around to look at the newcomer. Shara also looked at them.

After she had mutated herself with a Body Part, she could feel a large increase in her power. She didn't know what this unknown power was, but it made her able to know who was weaker or stronger than her.

After a quick look over everyone in the room, she found that she was the only one who was the strongest in the bunch.

Shara shuffled around uncomfortably at the amount of stares she was getting. 'System, mind explaining what's up with them?' she clacked her mandibles subconsciously from anxiety. The big shrimps in particular felt like they were assessing her.

[As the strongest of all the Soldiers, your power and authority stands higher than the other big Soldiers. With this authority, you've been granted the right to take control over them.]

'Oh, so it's an instinct kind of thing. Okay then.' This explanation made her a bit relieved. So they weren't staring because they thought there was something wrong with her like the Caretaker shrimp did. Cool.

Ding!

[A new task has been issued.]

+

[Task: Form your group]

Difficulty: D (mediocre)

Conditions: Since you already have experience with leading a group, you are now qualified to form your own group of Soldiers.

This task will be completed when every individual in your group gets 20 BUP.

Time limit: NONE.

Reward: 60 Body Upgrade Points

Failure: NO ISSUED PUNISHMENT

+

[Will you accept this task?]

Shara swooshed her tail in confusion. 'I've lead a group before? With who?'

"Ah, wait." She then remembered the eel and lobster. Well, technically speaking, she did kind of become their leader, didn't she?

"This..." Shara hesitated. She was a Single Player who liked to play alone. Even trying to keep the eel and lobster alive was a total nightmare for her to do. Being a leader needed both fast brain power and communication skills to do, and she was absolute crap when it came to these two. So her answer was...

"You can put away this Task for now. I'll be doing it later." Shara told the System.

[Task has been stored. You can view stored tasks at the Task Interface.]

She would be finishing this Task later. While she was inexperienced, or just downright bad, at being a leader, it wasn't like she couldn't at least try to improve.

To improve as a leader, she needed to improve herself first. This means that she needed more BUP to upgrade a body part that focus primarily on the Attack and Defense stat. In order to get more BUP, she needed more sacrifices. And quite a lot of them too...

Oh, and maybe form a battle style for her to work with? With the intelligence of a human and her new body of a monster shrimp, she thought it would be a bit interesting to try a type of battle style that could make her kill targets more easier and efficiently rather than just blindly swinging her scythe around and unnecessarily wasting her strength and stamina.

It was highly unlikely for her to leave the nest any time sooner. With the protection of the colony on her side, she would be much more safer here on the nest than going out to venture all by herself. It was better to play it safe.

If she could train some of the Soldiers and let them upgrade their body parts a few times, they would become stronger and more capable of taking the blunt of the damage from attackers. Which means, stronger Soldiers, stronger meat shields for her to hide behind. Just in case something goes wrong.

Besides, she was getting 60 BUP from this task. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

With this in mind, she nodded to herself and crawled out the room with no intentions of taking anyone with her.

First, level herself up. Then take a small group of Soldiers to train. Yup, that sounded like a good plan.

Meanwhile, the other shrimps in the room saw that Shara didn't want to join any groups or take anyone with her and returned to their own matters as she exits the room.