Ex-Human Morphus [A Mutant Evolution Apocalypse LitRPG]
Chapter 308

Chapter 308

While the ten-legged spider could reach any spot in his lair, it lacked the ability to scale regular surfaces that weren’t covered by Corruption. So Jake took the spider in his hands and carried it to the roof.

He didn’t know if the crawler was immune to fall damage, so instead of letting it drop from the roof, he kept it in his hands as he jumped down. Once he landed, he released the creature, gently placing it on the ground.

He then gave the crawler a mental command to go explore the city. As the spider scuttled off, Jake climbed back onto the roof, crouching down below the parapet to avoid being seen from the street below.

He established a vision link with the ten-legged crawler and immediately perceived the world through the spider’s eyes. Once again, he couldn’t help but notice how narrower the vision of his creatures was compared to his own. It definitely put them at a disadvantage.

He made a mental note to increase the size of the ten-legged crawler’s eyes during the next cycle of evolution. He was sure that its current form wasn’t final and that he would be able to evolve it further.

The crawler roamed the streets, its ten long, powerful legs carrying the creature at surprisingly high speed. At some point, the spider heard sounds coming from a nearby building.

The spider halted, peering into the building. Being quite small, it was completely hidden by the tall grass bursting from the cracks in the asphalt. For a few seconds, it remained still, gazing into the building through the shattered front doors.

A group of ex-humans milled around inside, unaware they were being watched. There were several of them, but from the spider’s position, which offered a limited view of the inside of the building, it was hard to determine exactly how many mutants there were.

The crawler turned away from the building and continued to roam the streets, which left Jake very pleased. His spider must have analyzed the situation and decided that getting into a fight with several ex-humans wasn’t wise, opting to leave undetected.

For half an hour, the crawler roamed the streets, avoiding detection and staying out of sight. At one point, a wandering group of walkers spotted it, but the crawler decided to flee instead of confronting the outnumbering, overpowering foes. Being fast and agile, the crawler eluded its pursuers with little trouble.

Then the crawler encountered a single walker standing right in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. The spider halted for a moment, staring at the mutant as if trying to decide whether to give it a wide berth or initiate an attack. With no commands from Jake, it was left to make its own decision.

In the end, the crawler must have decided that engaging in a fight with an enemy so much taller wasn’t a good idea, as it began to maneuver around the ex-human. What surprised Jake was that the crawler actually tried to avoid disturbing the grass to minimize its chances of attracting the walker’s attention.

The ten-legged crawler displayed remarkable intelligence, far surpassing that of its simpler counterparts, even though it was still in the early stages of its evolutionary path.

The crawler was moving slowly but couldn’t completely avoid disturbing the grass around it. This motion caught the walker’s attention, prompting it to spin around and search for the source of the disturbance. The spider went perfectly still, and for a brief moment, the walker failed to detect it.

However, as the walker took a few steps closer, it caught sight of the crawler through the grass. Emitting a snarl, the walker gazed down at the ten-legged creature. The spider realized it had been detected, and now had to choose: flee or stay and confront the threat.

Given how stealthy it had behaved before, Jake was certain his spider would try to flee. However, the crawler surprised him again by turning to face the walker and charging at the enemy. It moved so swiftly that it reached the mutant before it even had a chance to react.

The crawler sank its two front fangs into the walker’s ankle, burying its teeth in the mutant’s flesh as well. The mutant let out an angry hiss as it leaned in to reach for the spider gnawing on its leg. Before it could grab the small creature, the spider let go of its leg and darted to the side.

Jake was very pleased to see how agile his spider was. Its reaction time and speed were definitely impressive, but it lacked strength. Although it had bitten the walker, it hardly dealt any significant damage.

The walker lurched at the spider, leaning in and attempting to grab it with its clawed hand. The crawler easily evaded the claws and leaped. Although it couldn’t jump high, the walker was bent close to the ground, allowing the spider to reach its shoulder.

The crawler immediately clung to the walker, sinking its sharp teeth into the side of the mutant’s neck. The walker froze for a moment, surprised by this turn of events. Then, it grabbed the spider with both hands, yanking it from its neck, tearing off a huge chunk of its own flesh in the process.

The spider was trapped in the walker’s firm two-handed grip. The walker snarled victoriously, pleased to have finally caught the spider. It was bleeding profusely from the ragged gash in its neck, but the walker seemed oblivious to it, completely focused on the spider in its hands.

The ex-human then leaned in, plunging its teeth into the body of the spider. Not without some effort, but the walker managed to tear a large chunk of pitch-black flesh from the spider, causing mana to freely pour out from the large ragged wound. The crawler’s legs twitched as the creature died.

Losing interest in the dying spider, the walker dropped it. However, the ex-human didn’t have long to savor its victory, as the massive blood loss began to take a toll on its body. The walker collapsed onto the ground, crumpling the grass beneath it. The crawler lived long enough to witness the walker’s death. Although the spider didn’t survive, it took its enemy down with it.

When the crawler died, the metal link with the spider ended, and Jake saw the world through his own eyes again. He felt a pang of sorrow upon witnessing his spider being killed by the walker.

While watching the fight unfold, a strong urge to leap down and rush to his little creature’s aid surged within him. Still, he managed to resist the impulse and remain still.

While it was painful to passively watch his spider being killed, he needed to learn as much as possible about the crawler’s current evolutionary form. This knowledge would help him make the necessary adjustments in the next evolution cycle, ensuring that the next form of the ten-legged crawler would be more powerful.

For a few minutes, Jake pondered what he had learned. The crawler was definitely smarter than his basic creatures and surprisingly agile. However, it had two significant weaknesses: a lack of strength and poor resistance to damage.

Despite its weaknesses, the crawler had shown impressive results. Although it died, it still succeeded in killing the walker—and not just any walker, but the beefed-up version following the city upgrade, which made the crawler’s achievement all the more impressive.

And it was just one spider in its very first evolutionary form. Several such crawlers would have no difficulty taking down a walker at all. When he upgraded the ten-legged crawler’s genetic code and evolved the creature several more times, a group of those spiders would become a force to be reckoned with.

And it was the very first creature he had ever created. The range of creatures he could develop and evolve was constrained only by his imagination.

Jake pondered his next move. He wanted to grant the ten-legged crawler special abilities, but how? Currently, he couldn’t do it. He felt he needed to create an additional structure to grant his creatures special abilities. One of the future buildings was a Bio-Fusion Chamber, and Jake believed that this structure would actually allow him to give his creatures special abilities.

But before he could create a Bio-Fusion Chamber, he needed to evolve the Mana Core to Rank IV. He remembered that he initially hadn’t wanted to build any additional structures until he resolved the issue of insufficient mana for his lair. However, he decided that creating one more structure wouldn’t make much of a difference.

So he needed to accumulate some more GP before he could evolve the Mana Core to the next rank. With this plan established, he set off.