"Roar—!!"
The desolate, ruined streets in the center of Clear Spring City were shrouded in gray-green fog, presenting a bleak and mournful scene.
A monster covered in wounds struggled furiously, but the iron hand mottled with scarlet fungal patches pressed against its head did not budge in the slightest.
An eerie red glow shone through the crack in the center of its helmet, like the pupil of a devil.
Out of fear and reverence, those noisy two-legged animals called it an "evolved form" or a "Decayed Knight."
However, to the mother nest that controlled every slime mold cell in the city, this tiny billionth was merely an insignificant atom composing Its existence. It had no need for a name of its own.
Xia was actually the same.
But unlike the other slime molds, when It created Xia, It had poured extra care into it.
The newborn mother body had not only inherited the essence and nourishment It had accumulated over two centuries of studying evolution, but also inherited Its will.
At the same time, the one called Xia bore even greater expectations from It—
Namely, to spread the footsteps of their species farther away.
To places Its tendrils could not yet reach!
That "little fellow" that had wandered into Its territory was still struggling and roaring in vain, trying to defy the fruits of Its two centuries of evolution with nothing but savage muscles.
It silently watched the uncivilized organism. Rather than commanding Its billionth to devour and assimilate it as usual, It glanced down at Xia standing in the middle of the ruined street.
"Eat it."
Pheromones spread through the mingling spores.
Sensing her mother's call, Xia slowly nodded, then raised scarlet tendrils that resembled rotten mud.
Those tendrils were like her arms.
The cilia at their tips issued