Thinking

Rowan went over everything in detail again. Fortunately, his "bug life" hadn't been very long. Even counting from his "birth," not much time had passed, so he could review it all in a moment.

Could the genes already in his body have been activated? Like the Digging Leg? It wasn't impossible, but what use would this be?

Not being able to choose which gene fragments to activate was a real pain. It had given him something that made his head spin. Right now, Rowan desperately wanted to grow up, to reach maturity, but that was impossible for now. It would take a long time and a lot of accumulation.

Going over his "bug life" again, he had encountered only a handful of kinds of bugs, and the variety of food he'd eaten was pitifully small. Root sap, White Grub, Black Algae, ants, Black Beetle, Camouflage Bug...

Wait. Rowan rewound his thoughts a little and noticed something new. Ants?

Then he remembered that he'd also eaten a bite of Stinky Earthworm. He'd spat most of it out, but who knew if he'd absorbed some weird gene fragments from it?

But that didn't seem right. Stinky Earthworm didn't have this kind of abdomen. They were obviously two different species, so he could rule it out.

But ants didn't have one either. The trail had led him into another dead end.

Rowan refused to believe it. There was no way this huge butt had appeared for no reason. There had to be a clue.

He remembered that every time he evolved, he gained whatever he needed most. So what did he need most right now? A huge butt? That was ridiculous.

Suddenly, Rowan thought of the time he'd watched the Camouflage Bug ambush and kill the Black Beetle. He seemed to have spent a long time pondering a philosophical question then. Could the answer lie there?

Could an individual reach the ultimate peak of strength all on its own, becoming invincible? But on the road to becoming the strongest, before reaching that point, there would always be some kind of weakness that could be exploited. So, before reaching the ultimate peak, would one need the strength of a collective?

Those questions had tied his brain in knots at the time. He'd thought about them for ages without finding an answer.

But if he took them as a starting point and followed the implications, Rowan came up with a terrifying answer.

Deep down, he already knew the answer: the strength of a collective.

But Rowan was alone, without a single member of his own kind in sight. Where was he supposed to find the strength of a collective?

The answer was obvious...

But Rowan didn't want to accept it. This wasn't what he wanted.

Thinking of how his predecessors seemed to have all followed the path of individual strength, he realized that, without any bugs to teach or guide him, he'd been left to figure things out on his own—and had clearly gone astray.

His predecessors hadn't followed this path, so they naturally wouldn't have left behind any gene fragments for it. That meant the root of the problem still lay with him.

He figured the most likely culprit was that ant. First, he'd picked up the body nearest to him. Then, the second time he'd gone over, he'd taken a head. The third time, which was also the last, he'd carefully chosen the biggest one...

Could that have been the body of an Ant Queen? Rowan didn't know much about them, but he knew Ant Queens usually hid deep in their nests and never came out.

But he'd also heard that all ants carried the Ant Queen's genes. After the queen died, without certain pheromones to suppress them, some could mutate into Ant Queens.

It was also possible that a departing Ant Queen had just led her followers out of the nest when the black-armored "War God" had clamped down and cut her in half. Maybe that was why the ants had attacked so frantically and fought to the death. Damn, this plot could've been a whole novel.

But that was how the ants back home behaved. These ones looked similar, but he still had no idea what they actually were.

After thinking about it for ages, he still couldn't figure it out. And even if he did, it had already happened. It was too late to change anything.

Deep down, he'd chosen the strength of a collective, and had even thoughtfully solved his problem of being all alone...

But the solution had been to give him a reproductive organ and make him produce offspring himself!

What Rowan truly rejected wasn't the choice of collective strength. To be honest, he'd been living cautiously these past few days, as if walking on thin ice, and he wanted a few companions too. At the very least, they could keep watch or something.

But he couldn't accept this method. Didn't it mean he'd become a female bug? This was a matter of male dignity. He absolutely couldn't give in!

But now that it had happened, what was he supposed to do?

Rowan was bewildered all over again.

Thinking about it made his head ache, and mental work seemed to drain a lot of energy too. Besides, he'd only just woken up. He needed to replenish his food quickly.

"I'll go find something to eat first. I'll be able to think better once I'm full."

He said he'd think about it after eating, but it wasn't easy to control what went through his mind. Sometimes, the harder you tried not to think about something, the more you couldn't help thinking about it.

So, all along the way, Rowan dug absentmindedly, his mind never stopping.

This problem would've been easy to solve if Rowan were mature: he could simply have it regress. But he was only a larva right now and didn't have that ability.

Still, the successful case of replacing his sucking mouthparts with chewing mouthparts had given him new hope and a possible solution.

Back then, he'd strongly resented and complained about those mushroom-shaped sucking mouthparts. Later, as soon as he got a new gene fragment, he'd replaced them immediately.

So now, if he strongly resisted the reproductive organ on his rear end, could he get it to regress and return to its original state?

The line of thought was clear, and the goal was obvious. Rowan's eyes lit up, and he dug with much more energy.

He didn't go to the surface. With his swollen, clumsy body, going up there to wander around would be tantamount to asking for trouble. He'd get reported.

So he just found some plant roots underground. With his belly shrunk, he didn't eat much. After hurriedly filling his stomach, he immediately returned to the little cave he'd dug out as a temporary shelter.

He'd only been awake for a short while, so Rowan couldn't fall asleep again just yet, even as he lay on the ground.

Even now, he still didn't know how this evolution ability worked. Did he have to be asleep for it to activate? Couldn't he trigger it while awake? In an instant, a whole host of questions popped into his head again.

As the saying went, one sentence could convey a true teaching, while a thousand books could be filled with false ones.

He had a whole pile of questions that urgently needed answers. If someone could come along and give him a few pointers, he wouldn't be in such a sorry state. He'd even managed to turn himself into the opposite sex...

There wasn't much to do besides think, so he decided to examine the new organ a little. If he couldn't make it regress, at least he'd know what he was dealing with.

Actually, he was quite curious about it.

Curiosity was the foremost driving force behind progress. The first step in a girl falling for a boy was becoming curious about him.

And what kind of sparks would fly if a bug became curious about an organ on its own body?

Curiosity led to exploration. Rowan sensed the new organ slightly. It was connected to the end of his abdomen.

There was a small hole there. He'd always thought it was an excretory opening, but after a fight, he'd lost the last three segments, and that little hole had gone with them.

After he healed, the hole—which had disappeared—had somehow grown back at some point.

But so far, Rowan had only ever excreted water, and that had come from a hidden little hole in the middle of his abdomen. So he'd never used the one on his rear end and had no idea what it was for.