Now that a huge thing had grown behind this little hole, Rowan finally understood what the hole was for.
He could use it to send the food he ate into the huge thing. His abdomen was now compressed like a hardtack biscuit, leaving much less room to store food.
So most of the food he ate would be sent into the new organ, where it would be converted into energy. As for what it might do after absorbing that energy, Rowan had no desire to find out.
If it really laid an egg, that would be disastrous.
If he didn't try and pretended he knew nothing, there'd still be room to fix things later. But if curiosity turned his guess into reality, he couldn't accept the consequences.
As he let his mind wander, time flew by, and he finally fell asleep.
In his dream, Rowan saw the huge thing behind him open a hole at its end, then spray out little bugs with a series of puffs. He was watching them with a kindly smile.
It felt as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water over him. Frozen from head to toe, Rowan woke up with a look of horror on his face.
The scene in his dream had been far too terrifying. If that really happened, he'd have to kill himself to prove his resolve.
It took a while for him to get over the lingering fear, but his body still felt extremely tired. That was a sign his energy reserves were running low.
Rowan was delighted rather than worried. It meant his body had changed again!
He first checked his head, chest, and back. There were no changes, and he hadn't grown any larger.
He let out a soft breath of relief. Good. The energy he'd lost hadn't been wasted on anything else.
Then he looked at his abdomen expectantly. What met his eyes was an abdomen that had returned to normal from its hardtack-like state.
But what made Rowan both angry and alarmed was that the new organ was still attached behind him.
A question mark appeared above his head. What was this supposed to be? Had his belly simply been restored? Apart from making him longer and clumsier, what was the point? Did this thing want him to die even faster?
But then he noticed a subtle difference.
With a thought, the new organ detached from his rear and became a separate entity, resting on the ground.
Then he lined his rear up with the hole on the new organ and moved toward it. With a squelch, it reattached itself to his body.
Rowan was stunned. All he could do was marvel at the sheer imagination behind his evolutionary ability!
To keep him from having a self-destructive urge while still granting him the power of a group, it had found a compromise: the new organ had been made detachable.
At that moment, Rowan just wanted to shout, "Amazing!"
From now on, he could use the new organ like a machine. In an emergency, he could even haul it away like a cart.
That meant his dignity was safe after all.
No matter what anyone else thought, Rowan believed it himself. He kept brainwashing himself until he was thoroughly convinced.
Now that his most pressing concern—his dignity—was settled, his curiosity about the new organ burst forth.
He eagerly investigated its functions.
After some exploration, he had a general understanding.
First, it was still alive and needed a steady supply of energy to survive.
It had its own digestive system and energy conversion system.
He could feed it by connecting the little hole on his rear to it and sending food inside. Alternatively, he could put food directly into a funnel-shaped receiver on its upper side.
Rowan decided to forget the first option. There was only one way to feed the new organ.
It had no independent will. Its every rule of conduct followed Rowan's, and Rowan's will was its will. That made sense, since it belonged to him in the first place—it had detached from his body.
Rowan decided that this information would have to remain strictly confidential.
Any part of Rowan's body could operate some of its functions by touching it: his head, his limbs, even his rear.
Its function was just as he'd guessed: it produced little bugs. It shared all of Rowan's gene fragments except those related to his evolutionary ability, and could combine them as it pleased to produce bugs with corresponding traits.
This function had another advantage: it gave him a way to inspect the gene fragments inside his body. For instance, he discovered that he really had gained some gene fragments from the Black Beetle. That was a pleasant little surprise.
Of course, the new organ couldn't hunt. Rowan had to provide all its energy himself.
Even so, Rowan couldn't help shouting, "Badass!"
Before long, he'd be a bug with underlings, too.
But he couldn't keep calling it "the new organ" forever. That might give away certain secrets. It needed a new name.
After giving it some thought, Rowan decided to call it "Mother Nest."
It was a very fitting name.
With the name settled, it was time to test its capabilities.
Rowan was raring to go, but his belly was empty, so he went to get some food first.
He didn't feel comfortable leaving the Mother Nest alone in the cave.
The Mother Nest had no ability to attack or defend itself. If something happened to wander in while he was out foraging and took a couple of bites out of it, damaging it, he'd have nowhere to cry.
In the end, he had no choice but to shamefully attach the Mother Nest behind himself and drag it along.
He climbed up the passage he'd used to forage earlier. It had been dug as a temporary route, and quite a few sections had collapsed, but it was still easier than digging a new one.
When he reached the roots of the unknown plant, Rowan began to replenish his food.
Once he was full, he started figuring out how to feed the Mother Nest. In fact, there was a quick, convenient, and highly efficient option—but he wouldn't choose to do that.
He had no choice but to bite open the root, suck up a little juice, and spit it into the Mother Nest's funnel-shaped receiver. The whole process was hard to describe, so there was no need to go into detail.
This method was terribly inefficient. After all that effort, the Mother Nest had barely collected any energy, while Rowan was exhausted.
During this time, Rowan kept touching the Mother Nest to check whether the stored-up material was enough to produce a bug.
He'd originally designed the bug based on himself, with some of the Black Beetle's strength genes added.
The Black Beetle's oxygen supply system wasn't much more advanced than Rowan's, but its muscles were far more developed. They could push oxygen farther through its body, allowing it to support its massive size.
But after thinking it over, he realized he might as well just make an enhanced Black Beetle instead.
Unfortunately, the amount of material needed to make one was simply astonishing.
And the ratio of convertible energy in the juice was very low. At Rowan's current rate, he'd have to keep at it for an extremely long time to gather enough energy.
This was completely different from what he'd imagined. If things stayed this way, the Mother Nest wouldn't just fail to help him—it would also slow down his own growth.
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