-DING-DONG!
<You have met the requirements.>
<Evolving into a higher species>
▶Kraken 'Growth Form': Blade-Tentacle Ghost Severer
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Thousand-Year-Rock Cast-Iron Heavy-Armor Scale
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Giant-Balloon Weird-Tooth
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Transparent-Spine Luminous Lightning
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Ship-Sail Skewer Dash
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Vampire Bloodsucking Sucker
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Slick-Flesh Sulfur Oilfish
A whole crowd of selection windows popped up before my eyes.
Unlike before, the evolution routes were extremely varied.
No fewer than 7 kinds of higher evolution routes were waiting for me.
'Hmm.'
I carefully looked over the options floating before my eyes.
Having been an expert at the game <Raising a Hungry Kraken>, I naturally knew the features, strengths and weaknesses of all these evolved forms by heart.
'『Blade-Tentacle Ghost Severer』...... the higher species of the Blade Madam I just ate. Looks like by eating the Blade Madam I stole even her evolved form?'
'『Thousand-Year-Rock Cast-Iron Heavy-Armor Scale』...... and this one's the higher species of the Ironclad Scale I just ate, too. The Severer and the Heavy-Armor Scale aren't higher species my original morph can evolve into. Must be a perk of Cannibalism.'
'『Giant-Balloon Weird-Tooth』...... this is a form modeled on the balloon eel, one of the deep-sea fish. It can hold water and air to puff its body up enormously, and as I remember it was a meta that swallowed prey far bigger than its own body with no trouble.'
'『Transparent-Spine Luminous Lightning』...... that was a very favorable evolution route for survival, if I remember right? It had an invisibility skill that could make its body unseen for a few seconds, and it was a special attack type that could shoot out powerful electricity from the tip of its tail.'
'『Ship-Sail Skewer Dash』...... a meta where a big horn grows on the forehead and it turns into something like a sailfish. The fins grow huge too, so its swimming speed becomes extremely fast. Movement speed goes up by a lot, so I think it was pretty decent.'
'『Vampire Bloodsucking Sucker』...... the path of evolving into a vampire squid that sucks the blood of others. This one's useful in its own way too. Because it gets to enjoy every advantage of a vampire as is.'
'『Slick-Flesh Sulfur Oilfish』...... a morph with the trait of spouting oil from its body. In the early game its efficiency is extremely bad, but once it gets traits related to flame, it packs a punch.'
This time, choosing was a bit hard.
I compared the options extremely carefully.
'......Let's skip the higher species of the Blade Madam and the Ironclad Scale. It'd be a shame to stoop to those metas at this point.'
Then there were five evolved forms left.
Morphs modeled on the balloon eel, the electric eel, the sailfish, the vampire squid and the oilfish, respectively.
I coolly analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of each morph.
'The balloon eel. Useful in the upper layer, but there's not much use for it in the Great Deep Sea I'm aiming for. You can't even use the body-inflating ability inside narrow caves, so its versatility at this point is far too lacking.'
'The electric eel has invisibility and even an electricity-generating ability, so at first glance it looks good, but each skill's duration is too short. And in the deep sea there are lots of bastards that detect enemies with sense organs other than eyes, so it's a stretch to call invisibility simply good. Its power output is a little iffy too.'
'The sailfish. This one's good. Fast and powerful. But an attack pattern of charging and piercing only works in the upper layer; it's a bit hard to get results with it in the lower layers, where there are lots of obstacles. Also, a spearman's thrust is only powerful at the scale of a legion; for an individual roaming alone, hmm.......'
'A vampire squid, huh. Not bad. A meta with almost no weaknesses. Its racial stats are decent and its trait values are excellent too. But there's just one thing, the fact that it burns to death if it gets hit by sunlight, how should I put it. It puts me off a little. If I evolve down this route, I can never set foot on land my whole life. Nobody knows how things will turn out later, so having my way onto land blocked is a pretty big burden.'
'......And last is the oilfish? Quite a random one's mixed in here. An oilfish, at this timing.'
After much deliberation, I picked an option.
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Blade-Tentacle Ghost Severer
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Thousand-Year-Rock Cast-Iron Heavy-Armor Scale
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Giant-Balloon Weird-Tooth
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Transparent-Spine Luminous Lightning
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Ship-Sail Skewer Dash
▷Kraken 'Growth Form': Vampire Bloodsucking Sucker
▶Kraken 'Growth Form': Slick-Flesh Sulfur Oilfish
-DING-DONG!
<You have selected the higher species 'Kraken Growth Form: Slick-Flesh Sulfur Oilfish.'>
***
I dug a separate burrow in one corner of my hideout.
Around it I had stacked rocks stuck together with ink adhesive into a dome, so to anyone looking it would just seem like ordinary rocks.
Inside the hastily made makeshift nest, I fell into the sleep of evolution.
......Ah, one moment before I sleep? Why did I pick the oilfish morph, you ask?
The answer is simple.
Because it's a meta that's not bad in the early game, comes into its own from the middle game, and becomes a great success in the late game.
'.......'
In my fading consciousness, I recalled the strengths of the 'Slick-Flesh Sulfur Oilfish.'
The 'Slick-Flesh Sulfur Oilfish' is a late-bloomer monster whose power and utility can grow infinitely stronger as it evolves into higher species.
In the game too, depending on how the player handled it, it was rated junk tier by some and high performance by others.
For reference, the fish this morph is modeled on, the 'oilfish,' is a kind of deep-sea fish, a harmful fish that people cannot eat.
It belongs to the mackerel order and does not taste half bad, but why can't it be eaten?
That's because there is an insane amount of oil in the oilfish's flesh.
What's more, the oil soaked into the oilfish's flesh is not an edible oil but something close to the components of wax, so if you eat it, you're bound to pour out a stream of oily poop from your anus.
So it was a species of fish harmful enough that if you ate it even by mistake, you would have to wear a diaper for a week.
'......The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety didn't ban its distribution for nothing, you know.'
And now I was about to evolve into a morph modeled on that very species.
GURGLE—
Cold sweat was pouring out like mad.
The sweat running down my skin was slippery and sticky.
At some point, a greasy smell of oil had started to mingle into the fishy stench that stung my nose.
Before long.
FLA-SH!
The evolution began.
My trunk grew bigger and my tentacles grew thicker.
A thin film of oil covered my whole skin, and my flesh turned white and hard, like set candle wax.
My eyes grew big and round, and my fins changed into the shape of pointed wings.
-<Kraken 'Growth Form': Slick-Flesh Sulfur Oilfish>
-The growth form of some cephalopod.
The predator that hatched from the egg has reached its prime growing season.
The sulfur oil secreted from its skin is extremely flammable and ignites at even a small impact.
-Grade: ★ (1-Star)
-Combat Power: 20,000
-Traits: <Absorption>, <Basic Poison Resistance>, <Cannibalism>, <Powerful Luminescence>, <Ironclad Skin>, <Sticky Ink>, <Deadly Poison Stinger>, <Faint Flame Resistance>, <Burrowing>, <Parasite>, [+]<Scalding Blast>, [+]<Hell Bite>, [+]<Impregnable Fortress>
'Evolution complete!'
I bent my white, plump tentacles this way and that.
Sticky sweat streamed from my body.
Maybe because these beads of sweat were oil, they were bobbing up toward the surface of the water.
Anyone who saw me floating sticky oil upward might be horrified, but I was very pleased with the way I looked now.
'I've always had pretty high self-esteem.'
I had gotten the traits I wanted, so I was very satisfied.
I checked the three newly gained traits.
-<Trait: Hell Bite>
-Wraps around the enemy and attacks with the sharp teeth on the suckers. Has a low chance of piercing the enemy's armor.
-<Trait: Impregnable Fortress>
-Coats every corner of the body with scales as hard as iron armor. Defense rises greatly and movement speed drops greatly.
-<Trait: Scalding Blast>
-Raises body temperature to boil the water inside the body. Then shoots it out at very high speed.
The first two traits were the ones I had stolen from the Blade Madam and the Ironclad Scale, respectively.
Stealing 'Hell Bite' from the Blade Madam instead of 'High-Speed Grinding' was a very disappointing result.
On the other hand, stealing 'Impregnable Fortress' from the Ironclad Scale could be called a fairly decent result.
......And.
'Scalding Blast. To think I could get this one early on!'
The third trait I had gained, Scalding Blast, was a powerful attack skill that could deal fatal damage to every monster living in the water.
You might think monsters living in the water would generally nullify fire-attribute attacks, but surprisingly, that is not so.
Think about it.
Among the creatures living in the sea, could there be one that could take boiling water and stay fine?
Fish, crustaceans, mammals, whatever sea predator it may be, nobody can beat hot water.
'This skill is a perk you get at a low chance when you evolve into the oilfish meta, and I got lucky.'
If I had evolved into the oilfish meta and still failed to get this trait...... I would probably have had to obtain a downgraded version of the trait separately, even if by acquired means.
For example, grinding for the trait by eating small-fry mobs that live in scalding water, or something like that.
But by evolving into a higher species I had gained this trait, so there was no need to go through that kind of pointless hardship.
The attack skill I had been lacking all this time was perfectly filled in.
'......Now I can live in the upper layer swaggering around quite a bit.'
In this vast undersea cave where I was born, there would no longer be many creatures that could beat me 1-on-1.
Except for some of the zone bosses, like the Scissor-Claw King hermit crab, that is.
'Good. My Combat Power has gone up quite a bit and the attack skills I was missing are filled in too, so it's about time I got ready to go down to the middle layer......'
While I was mapping out my plans from here on.
RUSTLE—
I sensed a suspicious presence from above.
RUSTLE— RUSTLE—
I raised my head.
Something was passing over my makeshift nest, which I had camouflaged by covering it with dirt and rock.
RUSTLE— RUSTLE— RUSTLE—
The sound of something sharp and hard scraping the surface of the rock.
I stretched out a tentacle, pushed the rock above aside slightly and peeked outside.
'......!'
An astonishing sight unfolded there.
SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER, SKITTER......
So many crabs that it felt creepy were rummaging through my hideout.
-<Worker Crant-Nauplius>
-A bizarre creature with the appearance of a crab and the habits of an ant.
It endures its present weak period, waiting for the day it will evolve into a higher species.
-Combat Power: 991
-Traits: <Nest>, <Servant>, <Burrowing>, <Scissor Cut>, <Pincer Hammer>, <Crab-Foam Bullet>, <Ironclad Skin>
Suddenly, the face of the Work-Crant I had dealt with the other day came to mind.
'It has to be that...... yeah....... That's the only thing it could be. The reason for this mess.'
It seemed the guy had called his companions together before he died.