Chapter 54 – Evolution of Egg Monsters and Crystal
'This can be troublesome. But it's also a chance.'
Misha took a deep breath to calm down. She also tried not to fantasize about the mech that she could pilot.
Unfortunately, her desire overwhelmed her.
'It said that I can design my mech? I'm not a mecha expert, but I can ask my grandma to design me a mech that can be crafted in this game. Can I build an Esper Robot? Will the tech tree stop me from building it? Will …'
"MISSY!"
"YES, SIR!"
Thorn screamed into Misha's ears as she was in a daze, and Misha replied in reflex.
"I'll teach you about guns and special ammo for now. Listen carefully, I don't want you to die out there on the first day on the job!"
"O-Okay!"
Thorn explained about the types of bullets, explosives, and weaknesses of zombies and queen eggs, just like what the MWG taught the other students. However, Thorn's version came from his experiences, and it contained more in-depth information.
Misha sat down and listened to the lecture for hours. Surprisingly, Thorn had a lot of patience as he did not stop speaking at all.
Then, Thorn spoke about the most interesting part of the egg monsters, which related to Tama and Kai.
"Egg monsters have three evolution paths. The first one is the queen type. When a zombie eats skins of a matured queen's egg, it will be further infected into green zombies. Little children eggs will eat the zombie from the inside and eventually burst out of its body. Once it leaves the body of the host zombie, it will find a place to grow into a new queen egg, which will reproduce more viruses. The matured queens are our jelly factories, so do not kill them. Tame them or notify the base if you meet one outside."
"The second type of these eggs are our partners, your Tama and my Kai. Remember the first type? Sometimes a queen egg will take the zombie that gave birth to mini eggs into its womb to breed for the third type. The newborn eggs won't be able to find food from the outside, and it will get stuck in the womb for years. During that time, they will kill their siblings to eat each other to the last egg."
"However, when they grow to the size of a meter-tall or higher, they can cast away their alpha tongues. Once they abandon the alpha tongues, it will shrink to the size of a chicken egg. These little chicken eggs are the losers of its race, so it changes from its violent nature into a trait of a cowardly parasite. It will hide in the corner of the womb until the queen launches the mature cocoon outside of its body. You have been in the womb, so you should be able to guess what happens inside."
"This is the tricky part. If a second type egg finds a human host, the host will eventually turn into one of us. But if they pick an animal or a tree as a host, they will turn into weird monsters that you can find on the wasteland. Some of them can be a threat to humans and us. For example, snakes, lizards, and all reptile creatures are so compatible with these eggs to the point that even a lizard can transform into a freaking dragon. Don't look down on these scaredy-eggcats."
*Meh-Heh Mew!*
*Myah-Hah Ong!*
"Don't get cocky, you silly tentacle cats! Alright, the last type of this egg is the alpha evolution, the most dangerous one of the three kinds. It happens when the egg eats the other sibling competitors to the last one and emerges out of the queen egg's cocoon. These eggs are untamable, and they were more ferocious than the other type. They will continue to wander the wasteland to find food until it grows into a red egg, which will eventually hatch into a fucking baby hydra!"
Misha's mouth turned into an "O" when she heard about dragons and hydra.
"Dragon? Hydra?"
Thorn sighed and poked at Kai's tentacle, "Why do you think we keep calling this virus [Hydra]? It's freaking genes of a dragon subspecies! We have a weakened dragon's egg inside our body."
"WHAT!?"
"Yup, you heard me right. We're freaking dovahkiin. Too bad, we can't Fus-Ro-Dah like in the game, but we can enjoy our extra longevity and extra arms of our partner. Don't use them to masturbate though. Once your partner gets addicted to sex, you will never get free time. I've heard one of the girls in the other base got …"
*DONG*
A hammer fist came out of nowhere. Crystal, who stood behind his back, gave Thorn a good punch on the top of his head with her reinforced scale fist, which knocked him unconscious.
"Don't give her bad influence, you junkie!"
Crystal turned to Misha and passed her a sealed plastic container. There were yellow gels inside.
Misha received it with a confused look.
"It's your advanced pay. The rest will come later on the payday. Since you're new, your current food won't be enough to last the first month. There are 10 yellow gels inside. Exchange them into green gels and buy food in our base's wet market for the time being. I suggest you not to eat all of the gels, or you'll starve before the end of the month."
"T-Thank you!"
Misha stared at the scales of Crystal in curiosity. She wondered if these were the effects of the hydra's cells or genes.
Crystal noticed Misha's eyes. She chuckled, "Are you wondering about my skin?"
"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!"
"No harm. Every new infected are like you. I don't mind."
"Is that another evolution path humans can take? Are you turning into a hydra?"
Crystal had a sad smile on her face, "I don't think so. I see it more like a curse."
"A curse?"
"Do you know what's the difference between infected with the scaled skin and the infected with tentacles?"
Misha widened her eyes. Now that she thought about it, she saw many people with scales, but all of the scale people did not have tentacles or a sign of a partner.
Crystal gently touched the tentacle of Tama while her eyes did not hide her sadness.
"When my partner died, my skins hardened to the point that all soft tissues abandoned my body. I went into a comatose for a month. When I came back to my sense, my body has become like this."
Misha held her mouth, and her eyes became watery.
Crystal patted Misha's head, "Treasure your partner. You must never become like me."