Mutation
It's been about 4 years and the worm army has grown a lot more, on the mother tree some nests, that look like bird nests, are placed up to the top of the mother tree with ramps in between each of them, and in the ground, there are mazes of tunnels that lead to different places, the worm civilization was bustling.
'Why is gathering qi so difficult, of course, it's difficult the only way for me to gather qi is to kill my worm brethren, and in a place where war can break out at any time it is very difficult to do that, who knows if that one worm you just killed could be the deciding factor of a war between insects. Well, no matter, let me see how close I am to breaking through.'
'Status, Cultivation.'
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3rd Spirit Beginner Realm(Next Breakthrough, 2500 QI)
Total Qi - 3235
Cultivation Methods - Worm Conversion(Active)
Qi Techniques - Worm Attack(Active)
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'Well I might have gone a little overboard with how many worms I killed, but not like I can go in the past and undo that.'
'Status.'
Luke only looked at his gene points since there hasn't been a change to any of that.
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Gene Points - 98/100
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'I'm so close good thing that breaking through to the next realm gives me an extra gene point, I'm ever so close just about one more month and ill be there.'
'Since I'm looking at all of my status, might as well look at my general tab.'
'Status, General.'
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Construction Workers - 1308
Elite Construction Workers - 382
Scavengers - 2043
Elite Scavengers - 821
Basic Soldiers - 1605
Elite Soldiers - 573
Leaders - 1
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'Ahh, it feels good looking at those big numbers, just gives satisfaction, proving that I am a great leader.'
While Luke was looking over his status, again, he noticed something.
'Oh, yea I can use my worm growth again might as well, although it doesn't add much to the population it's still something.'
Luke then thought deeply about his skill and then, once again, a lot of plopping sounds came into his mind.
Plop, Plop, Plop, Plop, Plop, Plop, Plop, Plop, Plop.
'Hmm? How come there are only nine worms that came out.'
'The host will now go through a luck check, processing...Done, the host has succeeded in the luck check.'
'YES, I was not expecting that last time I this message I failed, It only proves that hard work and not give-'
Luke was then cut off by the horrible pain that followed the system message.
"AHHHHHH, AHHHHHH, IT HURTS, EVERY GOD DAMN TIME WITH THIS SYSTEM, AHHHHH."
Luke continued screaming and every worm was interrupted with what they were doing and gathered next to the tree to see what was wrong with the mother tree.
"MOVE ASIDE THE ELITES ARE HERE.", someone yelled out, and almost exactly after he said that a huge movement began in the crowd, and then a big walkway was provided for the elites to move to the mother tree. Almost like a royal army, the elites were at the 2nd highest position in the worm society, they moved like a wave toward the mother tree, one of the elites stood forward and asked what was wrong.
"Mother tree what is wrong with you we are all here to assist you", but all he got was a lot more screams. Suddenly, the screams stopped and a worm as big as the elite worms popped out, but instead of the usual blue color, this one was red.
'The host has completed a successful mutation, congratulations.'
The worm spoke its first words, "What is this trash, why aren't the nests plated with a protective material, why aren't the holes leading into the underground closely secured, why don't we have guards on duty next to the mother tree? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WORMS!"
This took everyone, including Luke, by surprise. The worms were surprised at first, then they got angry, but at the end of their inner thoughts, they started to agree with the red worm's statements and started questioning why they didn't think about that.
Luke's train of thought was different though, he was surprised at first, then he was, even more, surprised the more he thought of it.
'Although I have thought about doing some of these things we didn't act on them because some of them were unreasonable, the worm was bringing these questions up the moment it was born. How the hell is the worm so smart?"
'System what is this worm?'
'This worm is an elite mechanic worm, it is born with supreme intelligence sometimes even surpassing humans.'
'A mechanic worm huh, this could be useful...very useful. As long as I put this guy to work, we could rule the whole forest.'
"Worm come here, I like the ideas you are coming up with and I wonder if you could help create things to make this possible because I have a lot of ideas of what you could make to make certain things possible."
"I will hear you out mother tree."
The worm crawled right next to the mother tree and started to listen to his ideas, and it took him by surprise, they were amazing ideas that would take him years to come up with. Luke could only laugh mentally.
'Hahaha, of course, the only reason I know most of these things is that I have come from the earth that was in the middle of the technological era.'
"Your intelligence shocks me mother tree, with this knowledge we can make even the weakest of worms a strong beast, the problem is I don't have the materials nor the tools to make these things but fret not mother tree for I have come up with a plan."
"Ahem, worms I wonder if you have any metals that I can use to create useful tools that will bring us to the top of the food chain."
An elite scavenger worm then stood up and walked over to him.
"We do have these metals, but we have a very little amount of them mostly because it is very hard to find metal on the surface, are you sure us giving that to you will be a good idea and you won't waste them?"
"I do, the mother tree agreed to me doing this."
The worms exclaimed, "THE MOTHER TREE DID?"
"I did? I mean, Ahem I did agree to this red worm using up our metal supply."
The worms started talking among themselves until the red worm started to speak again.
"I will need my private room to conduct my experiments with the metal, construction team find me an empty room, and when it is found I will give you more precise instructions on what I want in there. It's time that I get to work."