TALES OF A WITCHER - Season 9 Episode 45

“It hurts!”

“It hurts a lot!”

“I can’t bear it!”

The monster beat its tentacles against the seawater in vexation. The “blade” and “foot” hiding inside its body were shivering, apparently frightened by the overwhelming anger.

For the monster, pains were not unfamiliar.

From the moment of its birth to the life as an Eye of Sectional Nest, the monster had fought numerous battles against enemies. All that it had experienced—injuries, annexations, evolutions, and pains— enhanced and sharpen its senses. They were necessary sacrifices for absorbing magic power.

But it was not the pain that annoyed the monster. It was… a feeling that the monster had never had before.

The monster tried to match the emotion with other reactions of life but soon found it unnecessary—the feeling lay in the instincts of most species. No matter how considerably the species varied, they all had, without an exception, this kind of feeling.

Fear.

A kind of feeling the monster had experienced for the first time of its life.

The feeling somehow bewildered the monster, and the anger rose before it noticed it.

“kill!”

“Kill her!”

“How very much I want to kill her!”

“How dare her, a tiny bug, to break into my body and challenge me with the speck of magic power? One day I’ll tear her to pieces and put her head on her skeleton, in a way red mist insects have done.”

Yet, neither anger nor fear was a necessary emotion that the monster had to experience in order to grow up. The monster had never been scared of pain, nor had it been upset by a momentary defeat. To be honest, it had never thought of such kind of thing before.

The monster had thought of nothing except the evolution.

Evolution was more important than mere survival, for the former represented the sublimation of the species, whereas the latter only stood for the interest of individuals.

The monster realized that there was something wrong with its body.

But what was it?

Even thinking about the question gave it a serious headache. The hot flames had not only taken away one-third of its body but also made its head swimming.

“I need time.”

“Time to regenerate a new body.”

“And time to find the answer.”

The monster suppressed the fear, anger, and all sorts of various subtle feelings that it had never experienced before and sank to the bottom of the ocean.

…

Over 10 days later, the monster crept out of the hiding place and released all the “blades” and “feet” locked within its body.

The monster had suffered great losses in the battle, but it did not care much, for as long as it recovered completely, it would regenerate new parts of its body.

Now the food was more urgent for the hungry monster.

Meanwhile, it had come up with some conclusions to the problems.

Firstly, the monster found that it had lost many pheromones that it had taken from various types of bugs before. The pheromones could help to indicate the evolution direction of its group, so collecting them was the chief task for every eye of the branch nest. The monster’s loss was understandable—with a huge blast, the monster lost the control of its body in the hot flames and heat waves, its body parts twisted and broken, and among them, some were the brains that stored pheromones. Even though most parts of its body were healed, the pheromones in these brains were gone. This was like when you popped water bags. Repairing them would not help with the matter.

“That’s not a big deal. There’re bugs everywhere for me to recollect.”

“And I’ve succeeded in keeping the most important red mist multi-eyed insect, so the loss is acceptable.”

“But the problem is I’ve lost the connection with the mother of the nest.”

“I can’t believe it!”

Since the monster was born, its connection with its own kind was so close and inextricable that as long as they were in the same water area, it could always sense the central nest, no matter how far distance was laid between them. Through the water waves, it could deliver the collected pheromones, as well as share the evolution instructions among its kind.

But now all of them were gone.

The monster had scarcely concerned about this kind of problem since it got wounded. By the time its mind was clear enough to smoothly deliver the pheromone of the multi-eyed insect, it suddenly realized that where the indescribable feeling came from.

It could not catch the voice of the central nest even when the tide fell and waters became one.

At first, the monster wonder if the problem lay in its incomplete regenerated body. Then it thought of the fact that any individuals separated from the central nest would never lose the connection as long as they were not utterly dead. The monster checked its body over and over again and finally noticed a part of its brain had blended with the red mist multi-eyed insect, rather than engulfed it

“That tiny insect must have taken advantage of my fragile moment and had a desperate struggle.”

Aware of the truth, the monster was scared and angry at first but soon calmed down.

In its eyes, a less evolved insect was merely a lesser creature, nothing more.

The insect did not benefit much from its behavior even though it indeed made some difference.

Now the monster could not sense even a little bit of the multi-eyed insect inside its body. Instead, it had taken over all its queer eyes, through which the monster could “see” many primal creatures looking at it.

After a long thought, the monster finally found the answer to its problem.

The reason why it could not reach the central nest lay in the merging, which involuntarily made it have some of the weird feelings of the insect.

For example, fear.

And anger.

And… egoism.

Under the circumstances, the monster should have returned to Zenith Sea first and informed Mother of the Nest what had happened here. After that, it should hand itself over to the Mother of the Nest, for when the message could not be passed through water waves, annexation would be a perfect way for the group to retain all the pheromones and thereby obtain useful evolutionary instructions.

Of course, the monster knew that evolution was more important than survival, a very basic understanding among the whole group.

But now it hesitated.

The monster found that it had pondered over more things in recent 10-odd days than what it had done in the past 100 years altogether. Back then, fighting, annexing, collecting, and growing were like its instincts, yet now it seemed to lose such instincts…

In addition, the monster was aware that the restrictions on using pheromones were lifted.

Every step of evolution was a choice made out of an abundance of caution. The pheromones collected by every nest eye must be passed to the central nest, where it would analyze them and then sort out the valuable parts that would be reconstructed and turned into evolution instructions. Evolution did not only involve the change in nest eyes but also involved every part of the group, from the central nest to “blade” and “foot”. All of them grew up in this way little by little.

Therefore, there were not many differences between each eye of the branch nest.

But during the time of recovery, the monster had accidentally used a pheromone coming from a primal creature with a self-healing ability. That was why its serious wound, which would have taken months to heal up, faded away so quickly within merely a dozen days. The monster also noticed something unusual about itself.

It was no longer a usual nest eye.

Its “foot” quickly hauled plenty of food—the primal aquatic creatures nearby, or what insects normally referred to as fish. The “blade” neatly cut off their heads, which then gave off a fishy smell that would soon attract more fish. In this way, it would not be long before the monster filled itself up.

The monster did not know why those primal aquatic creatures, which enjoyed the same resource as them, still lived as the weakest among all. Somehow, as the monster watched the foolish fish gathered, it thought of itself.

Since the monster had developed an emotion called “fear”, it no longer wanted to go back to Zenith Sea. The red mist insect’s feelings had influenced the monster. It now realized that survival was more important than anything.

The monster was afraid of being swallowed up by Mother of the Nest and being disturbed again by the erratic little bug.

It also wanted a revenge. The anger was still there, but it hid it temporarily.

As the monster continuously felt both anger and fear, it found itself yearn for more. This was something it had never considered before.

Evolution would be the only way to get what it wanted.

The monster hastily engulfs a pack of fish and then started to take action.

The monster had never been so impatient before. Back then, every nest eye did the same job, and it did not matter whether the monster was quick or slow.

But things had changed now.

The pheromones the monster was going to collect and the evolution it would make had nothing to do with the group.

This time, those tasks would be done for its own sake.