Chapter 47: Broodhouse
The once teenager-looking girl had transformed into a young adult. Her height was similar to that of Mitch, around 180 cm, with the body shape of a model back on Tellus.
Her face remained that of a bug-human hybrid, but her eyes had become more accentuated. The amber shone in the slightly dim forest, calling for attention from everyone in the vicinity.
Mitch stopped playing and just stared at Madeline in awe. Although the fact that her body was similar to that of a cockroach was hard to look past, he had to admit that she was gorgeous.
Of course, he would forever look at her like a little sister, especially considering that she was barely one month old.
Looking around to grasp the situation, Madeline saw Mitch sitting on the ground with the furry little creatures in his palms. Her eyes started gleaming, and she ran towards him.
"Michael, are those little thingies snacks to greet me?" She might have been asleep the entire time, but the fact that time had passed was not lost on her.
"No, Madeline. These are friends! The big one is Hailey, and she is the queen of these creatures called rats. The little ones are the most pious ones among the rats, so the Lord has decided to reward them."
He presented the rats to Madeline, after which he gave her a quick rundown of what had happened in the month she had been hibernating.
"Is a month a long time?" She might know what the word meant, but she lacked understanding of how long it actually was.
"For a month to pass, the big yellow ball in the sky has to disappear and return thirty times," Mitch explained calmly. He didn’t blame Madeline for not knowing how long a month was. Her mental age was still only a few days old, after all.
Realization quickly spread across her face, terrifying her of how long she had been in hibernation—of how long she hadn’t eaten.
Madeline was still inexperienced in concealing her thoughts, leading to Mitch and Katherine easily perceiving them.
"This glutton and Hailey will make a splendid team."
’Truly.’
Shaking his head in disbelief, Mitch directed her and the rats’ attention towards the high-level ant corpses.
"With the blessing of the Lord, I have prepared a feast for this joyous occasion. May you all be blessed." Returning to his noble mannerism, Mitch gave the group the go-ahead to eat.
"Tell me the truth, you just want to see them go through the same suffering you did, don’t you?" Katherine questioned Mitch’s intentions, and for good reason.
He had become more calculative after killing the queen, more cruel. Of course, they wouldn’t become injured from breaking through the bottleneck, but the pain they would experience might as well permanently traumatize them.
’I will not disagree on the fact that I look forward to seeing it, but that is not the main reason for me doing this. I am doing it for the sole purpose of fostering a stronger future generation.’
Among the rats Hailey had brought with her, three were male and one was female. The ratio might be a little off, but it worked better in Mitch’s favor.
One mutation available from the ants was [Bigger Bodies]. The principle behind this was removing the regulations that kept the fetuses smaller in the mother’s uterus.
In most cases, the father’s genes would promote the growth while the mother’s would inhibit it. Then, what if he upregulated how much the father’s genes increased the growth rate?
One of three things would happen.
Either the mother goes through a lot of pain but still gives birth to several offspring.
Or the mother would only birth one child as a result of it taking all the space and nutrition in the uterus.
Or, they would die. Even the first alternative would most of the time lead to the mother dying.
However, if their bodies were stronger than what was normal for their species, they might actually survive.
Regardless, that was why having more males was preferred. They were the safer alternative for this mutation.
Of the males, two were pure believers while one was brainwashed. The female was also a noble.
This led him to his current plan.
One of the noble males would become Hailey’s mate, which she agreed to since the male was smarter than his parents.
The other noble male would pair up with the noble female, creating a noble house consisting of bigger rats.
He also made sure that they weren’t siblings, which Hailey confirmed.
The brainwashed rat would have the same mission as his predecessor: impregnating as many older females as possible.
Mitch had indeed become more ruthless, but he didn’t care.
Rather some of the non-believer rats die while providing him an army than all the rats dying to a random aggressor deciding to turn the rat nest into an all-you-can-eat buffet.
He locked in the [Bigger Bodies] germline mutation for the males and the [Extreme Strength] one for the females, the latter being both somatic and germline.
Of course, Hailey couldn’t mutate yet. But Mitch still chose it, anticipating that she would break through with the food available.
Finally, a new era was about to start for the rats.
With the rats settled for the foreseeable future, Mitch returned his attention back to Madeline.
He felt that her mutation was not as simple as it seemed.
In the one month that she had been hibernating, Mitch had realized just how little one queen mattered. It shouldn’t have been even close to enough genetic material for Madeline’s mutation. Even the "diversity" he spoke of with the regular ants seemed to be a lie.
There was one major reason for him to think this way.
The main queen’s ability to birth more advanced versions of ants.
The smaller queens lacked that trait.
Meaning, one queen should not have been enough for Madeline to gain that trait.
With only one way to find out what mutation Madeline had actually gained, Mitch opened his skill window with her as the target.
[Broodhouse]
[With the care and help of the Khad of her world, this organism has combined the {Blessing of Language}, her title of "All-Mother," and the birthing trait of the @#!&. The result is the unique passive trait "Broodhouse." Any brood raised under the shelter of the All-Mother shall become eternally bound to her, even through generations.]
[Khad could not be everywhere, and therefore he made the All-Mother.]
"???"
