Eight days later, the lair had gotten quiet.
Other than some skirmishes with humans and mutants, there had been nothing much of consequence.
Blaze wasn’t focused on his evolution anymore.
Instead, he had given the order to the horde to evolve fast, as he knew a war was about to break out.
Fester, with Chimera’s help, was one of the first to get to grade-4. It wasn’t surprising since there were more mutants in the city than humans.
However, it didn’t grow any bigger. Instead, it turned relatively smaller. It seemed the little rat had once again embraced the role of recon expert.
Breaker, on the other hand, did the opposite. For him, bigger was better, and so he grew twice in size. His traits became deadlier to the point Blaze assumed there wasn’t any barrier he couldn’t destroy.
However, Raven’s evolution surprised him the most. It didn’t alter its size or shape, but grew two more heads, one on each shoulder!
Blaze suspected it was because the zombie was getting lonely. So, it made two heads to talk with them.
It seemed the loneliness epidemic ran rampant even among the zombies.
Saturn remained fairly the same even after reaching grade-4. However, thanks to his control over the frogkins, they seemed to have evolved.
They were faster, bigger, and most importantly, became pack hunters. While they behaved like that before, Saturn had to command them to work together.
But after evolving, they formed independent groups under Saturn’s command. This greatly helped Blaze in resource procurement.
As for Myrme, her evolution was perhaps the strangest.
Unlike with Saturn, where the frogkins evolved because their king evolved, Myrme evolved when her colony did.
New types of ants appeared from the undead larvae who restructured the entire colony in a matter of hours.
Myrme was still the queen, but she preferred her new children over the others. This led to a civil war-like situation where countless old ants died, only to be recycled as food.
Blaze had to step in at some point because he needed more soldiers for the impending war. The ants weren’t helping him in that.
So, he taught Myrme a lesson by almost killing her.
"I need a queen to ease my burden, not to make it worse. I don’t need such a colony. Either get things under control, or I’ll do it for you."
Those were his exact words.
He wouldn’t have reacted in such a manner before, but something had put him in a bad mood.
The situation came to a point where only Fester dared to approach him without fear.
It was also the reason Blaze had sent away all the humans to the second lair.
The research institute had been renamed the Fortress of Pain by Alaric.
Painful screams could be heard throughout the fortress as Alaric and Voss experimented on the humans with Blightspore.
Their aim was to use their immunity to make Blightspore stronger.
Usually, Blaze would have been all over the project. Yet, he remained in a closed room, staring at the cocoon before him.
"How slow can you be?" Blaze groaned, resting his head on his hands. "Everyone evolved within a week. Everyone but you."
Yet, Marrow didn’t respond. Even if she did, Blaze didn’t hear a word.
Out of the entire horde, Marrow was the only one who wrapped herself in a cocoon to evolve. Only one apart from Blaze, of course.
It wasn’t strange considering they both were anomalies.
The strange part was how long she was taking to evolve. Blaze took three days, while Marrow had been inside the cocoon for about a week.
"I’ll be back later."
Blaze got up and left the room.
From one glance, everyone knew their master was troubled.
He was worried about Marrow, because she was the only counter he had for the humans’ zombie-eradicating power. Without her, his first plan was in danger of falling apart.
However, being holed up in a room wasn’t doing him any good. He needed to prepare another strategy.
Fester jumped out of the hole, startling Blaze.
"I see, thanks for your hard work."
Fester enthusiastically nodded and was about to skitter away, but stopped and pointed at Marrow’s room.
Blaze looked over his shoulder before shaking his head. Fester shook its head before running away again.
Finally, he headed towards Myrme’s nest.
The Cult of Absolutes had strange abilities. All of which were linked to their strange cloaks. At least, that’s what Blaze’s spies had informed him.
The spies who were physically on the side of humans, but mentally, they were loyal to him. To make things even better, the humans had no clue about it.
Yet Blaze knew everything they heard and saw after getting rescued. It was all thanks to his evolved trait of taming humans. That was also how he learned about the cult and their plan to attack him.
Obviously, the ones he had infected were low-ranking members. Hence, they didn’t know the intricacies of the plan. They were only informed about the part they’d have to play, and were prohibited from sharing it among their peers.
It made Blaze regret not having taken action himself.
If he had been there and captured the so-called Enforcers, he’d know much more about their plan. Unfortunately, there was no point in beating himself about it.
Instead, he had a solution for them. One that would work no matter what the cult had planned for him.
The servants of the Blightlord... I wonder what you’ll do when you face the real blight.
Myrme sensed Blaze’s presence as soon as he entered the nest. Instead of her usual reaction, she immediately cowered away.
At least that’s what it seemed at first glance.
In reality, she was just showing off her swollen belly to him.
"You’re about to lay more eggs?" Blaze asked, raising his eyebrows. "You haven’t stopped laying eggs ever since fusing with the spawner."
Myrme clanked her mandibles as if saying it was all his fault.
Well, no man, dead or alive, wanted to hear those words from a pregnant ant. Blaze wasn’t different from them, and his face twitched at her words.
He would have scolded her, but then again, he was there for work.
"I’ll be borrowing some of your children," he said, instructing a dozen small ants to follow him.