Enhancement

When Rowan regained consciousness, he had no idea how much time had passed.

He hadn't moved, but the fine hairs on his body told him that the White Grub beside him was still tirelessly gnawing at the roots.

"Still a bug? How am I not dead yet?"

He'd still been clinging to a tiny bit of hope, wishing he might start a third life after death or return to his previous one.

He hadn't expected this bug, whose species sounded pretty damn impressive, to be so tough. His guts had been ripped open, and the food he ate had flowed straight out the other end, yet he'd still managed to come back to life.

It was incredible.

But there wasn't much point in marveling at it now. He checked his body and found that the third-tier segment hanging from his abdomen had dried up and fallen off beside him.

The wound had healed, but no new segment had grown back, leaving him looking a little shorter.

He couldn't see the injury on his back, but it probably wasn't serious. The wound where his hind leg had been severed had healed too, but no new leg had grown.

He was starving. Now that his rear end had healed, it meant he could keep food down.

Dragging his feeble body, he struggled back to the roots. The White Grub was contentedly drinking the tree sap. There was nothing to say: he kicked it away and crawled up to the spot himself.

Once he was done licking up the sap, he dragged the White Grub back and had it open another wound. After a few rounds of this, his belly finally felt full.

As soon as he'd eaten, exhaustion began to weigh on him again. Without worrying about anything else, Rowan moved back to his hiding place and passed out once more.

And so it went: wake up, kick the White Grub aside, eat, then pass out. After repeating this an unknown number of times, Rowan finally felt better. Several shed shells lay scattered around him.

By then, his appearance had changed dramatically.

First, he noticed that his eyes had grown much larger. Together, they took up half his head. His field of vision was also much wider, like a 360-degree wide-angle camera. He could even see his own back.

It was the first time he'd ever seen his back. He didn't know what it had looked like before, but he could feel that there had been a small patch of hard shell there, while the rest of his long abdomen had been exposed. That was why the ants had been able to attack his belly directly.

Now, however, the shoulder shell behind his neck had grown larger, extending out to both sides and covering his flanks as well. His body was much better protected.

And that wasn't all. Farther back from the shoulder shell, a semicircular carapace had grown over the short section of his abdomen. His back now looked like that of a seven-spotted ladybug, except that his carapace was one solid piece of pure black, covered in fine hairs.

His crippled hind leg had fallen off at the root, and a new one had grown in its place. It was thicker than before and covered in sharp barbs.

He also discovered that his two new hind legs could bend backward to push against the ground. If he lay on his back now, his rounder body would probably make it even harder to turn over.

But the opposite was true. In that position, he could plant both hind legs against the ground and push himself upright.

Then there were his mouthparts. His original lapping-sucking mouthparts hadn't disappeared, but they'd gotten much smaller. Perhaps deep down, he didn't want to keep inconveniencing the tool bug. A pair of large mandibles he'd dreamed of had grown from the corners of his mouth. At last, he could drink tree sap on his own.

All sorts of problems he'd encountered in his life had been remedied or improved in this round of evolution. Rowan could only silently exclaim, "Efiash, you're incredible!"

Though he'd been enhanced in every way, Rowan had no intention of going after the ants for revenge just yet. Two fists couldn't beat four hands, and the ants had far more than four.

After this intensive, all-around evolutionary enhancement, he'd gained at least some understanding of his body.

First, evolution had to obey the law of conservation of energy. That explained why he'd had to eat several times along the way.

Also, when he encountered certain difficulties, his body would instinctively select and activate the genes best suited to deal with them from its internal gene bank. Having plenty of energy sped up the activation process. For example, when he'd realized he was digging too slowly, he'd just replenished his food and had plenty of energy. Then a pair of digging legs had grown.

Rowan had a feeling that as he continued to grow and develop, he might eventually be able to choose certain gene segments to activate on his own.

The size of this gene bank depended on the insect's mother. If she had enough time to develop her offspring, she'd naturally prepare a large reserve. If not, the opposite was true.

But Efiash had almost always laid an egg in a hurry when she was on the verge of death, with no other choice. As a result, most eggs didn't carry much of a reserve.

Unfortunately, Rowan fell into that majority. He could even say that he had almost no reserve at all. He had only a few basic genes for digging, eating, and increasing heat or cold resistance—enough to get a larva through its early stages.

Still, that was enough. After getting through their vulnerable early stage, larvae would surely encounter all kinds of creatures, see their many talents and abilities, and then choose the ones best suited to arm themselves with.

Rowan came to a realization. Perhaps his initial understanding had been wrong. Maybe insects left only basic genes to their offspring not because they were rushed, but because they'd deliberately chosen to do so after careful consideration.

Every Efiash had a different environment to grow up in and encountered all kinds of strange creatures. If they activated a gene segment without ever having seen the creature it came from, they might merely waste energy—or, worse, grow something unsuitable.

Perhaps a long, long time ago, an Efiash had faced a difficulty and rashly activated an unfamiliar gene segment. In the end, not only had it failed to solve the problem, it had lost its life.

Perhaps the decision to leave only basic gene segments was itself the result of evolution.

After thinking it over, Rowan decided that this made a great deal of sense.

For instance, what if some lousy ancestor had put a Self-Destruct Bug gene segment in the gene bank?

One day, he might face a life-or-death situation and need to fight with everything he had. He'd only want a way to unleash his potential for a short time, boost his strength, and avoid overly serious side effects.

But the gene bank had no intelligence and couldn't understand complicated thoughts. It would instinctively recommend this method of fighting to the death. If he didn't know how it worked and chose to activate it, he might wake up one day and find himself turned into a bomb...

Rowan made a malicious guess: perhaps some ancestor really had run into something like that.

Now he could finally sleep soundly, without worrying that he'd overthink things and accidentally get himself killed.