Ignoring the woman Lily made her way down the street in the other direction, towards the general direction of her house. She made sure she wasn't being followed— her paranoia making her wary about the woman due to her association with the X-Men.
Only stopping when she had walked quite a distance away, in an empty alleyway.
She glanced at her status to see how much Mass she had collected, feeling the relative amount due to the fact that the System she held was merely an extension of herself.
'500.'
It was a lot more than when she ate a normal human, and that was from eating three mutants. Three weak mutants to boot.
'Could it be mutants offer more mass depending on how strong they are?'
It was a logical assumption— Mass, while it was called mass, was more like a form of energy that things held within them.
She was able to devour and store this energy within herself for later use. The more she absorb this energy from the same source, the more her body adapted to it and the less energy it would give her— less mass.
That was why dirt and such no longer benefitted her, and why her species eventually ran out of things to devour and grow.
They had eaten so much of the same thing for millions of years that they had adapted to it— they could no longer grow.
If mutants, and super beings in general gave her more Mass then it would be yet another reason to devour them— an increase in her growth.
She wasn't worried about her body adapting to eating humans, mutants, or other races, because things like those had a variety of energy in them, and adapting to it would take a long time.
Hundreds, maybe even thousands of years before she could no longer gain from them— but that didn't matter now.
She had enough mass to do what she had planned to do. Create new units.
The units she had in mind for her hive this time were rather simple, a small yet capable flying unit that she could use to scout a wide area without it being seen.
It wouldn't take much mass, and she didn't need to put a lot of different capabilities into them, so she could create a bunch and cover a wide area, maybe even the entire city if she was lucky.
She got to work in the empty alleyway, the black liquid dripping from her body as they took the form of the small fly-like creatures made out of flesh and covered in hundreds of tiny eyes.
Each one was around the size of half a fingernail, maybe even smaller. They were so small that they could easily be overlooked as normal flies unless you use something to look at them closely— or had special abilities.
Thousands, that was how much she made.
Each one didn't even take a single point of mass to make, for each mass she used she could make 5, and as such she was able to make over two thousand five hundred after spending all the points she had.
All five hundred.
That wasn't all, she wanted them to be useful scouts so she gave each of them some alterations to make them better. Enhanced senses, eyes that could see in the dark, eyes that could see heat and generally good eyes.
They were the perfect scouts in a city such as this, they could cover miles at a time, seeing and transferring all the knowledge back to her.
Once she had finished making all, she told them to split up and spread out, cover the widest area they could without interfering with each other— and they did.
Miles were covered, the sewers, the rooftops, the buildings, alleyways, streets, and even parks— they made sure to spread out the best they could and scout everything they could.
All the information that was sent to the hivemind was disorienting at first, but her mental capabilities had since improved. She could sort through them and get a good layout of what each was doing.
Most were normal, people doing things, eating, sleeping, gaming, working, reading, people doing things you would expect them to do, even some things you wouldn't like seeing people do.
But she also saw some other things, things hidden in the darkness of the city. Crimes— robberies, break-ins, assaults, drug deals, and even murder.
So many things were happening, so many things to observe. She was even able to locate some figures she remembered from the Marvel series and comics using the scouts, minor figures, ones she could watch from a distance without them noticing the bugs.
But that wasn't a matter for now.
Her main concern was currently finding someone she could use to make a fake ID for her so that she didn't have to hold off on acting for a long period of time.
She needed a fake ID to get some of her business plans in motion, at least the plans that required money.
And while she could rob a bank and get a ton of money, that would make things complicated and she didn't like complicated. So she planned to invest, and do dark market dealings to get a foothold in the world, then she will start her own companies and earn from them.
But ID comes first.
Thankfully after searching for a while, she found a man that seemed like he was the right fit, selling fake IDs to people as a side hustle while he was at college.
It wasn't hard to find him, she had scouts covering at least half the city at this point in time, and more will be made soon enough as long as she ate.