Re: Evolution Online-Novel

"This… seems to be the same everywhere?" Liam and Luna walked into the maze-like corridors that twisted and turned just like the ones back inside the first hive hill. 

There were sticky, stinking goo-like fluids smeared here and there, and once again, there were a bunch of eggs huddled up in the corners. There really wasn't any difference at all.

"Ok. Let's just take care of these eggs." Liam mumbled pensively as he bent down and collected a few for his own personal use and chucked them away in the spatial artifact.

As for the other eggs, the little fox ran amok inside the hive hill and took care of every last one of the unhatched isons. 

With her [Blur] skill, it did not take long for her to cover the entire structure from the top to bottom, and she smashed everything in sight without leaving a single egg out.

While she was busy with that, Liam started hacking away at the Orichalcum walls of the hive hill to get to the big interior chamber of the pyramid. 

​ If this follows a similar structure to the other hive hill, then the exterior was simply a bunch of extensive corridor networks while the interior was a giant hollow chamber.

Clatter Clatter

A minute later, a clean path was created, and Liam jumped down through the hole, landing at the bottom of the hive hill.

However, the moment he landed, he saw something strange. For the first time, something really was different between the two hive hills.

The ground that was almost untouched in the first one had now, for some reason, sunken quite low. There was a huge crater at the center of the inner chamber of the hive hill.

Moreover, the entire area was filled with giant fissures that spread everywhere, along with gaping holes in between these fissures.

"Hmmm…" Liam observed this, wondering what could have possibly caused something like this. He definitely hadn't done anything, and neither had Luna.

Perhaps the impact of the hive hill itself created these fissures when the structure first emerged?

Just as he was thinking about this, suddenly, a slight cracking sound echoed behind him, and when Liam turned around to look, there were some more isons hatching out of the eggs.

The shells of these eggs had a very visible silver pattern on them, and they were definitely from the other ordinary eggs. 

Liam had, in fact, collected a few of these eggs and stored them away back in the first pyramid. So now that they were actually hatching, he was quite curious to see just what sort of creature emerged from these eggs. "Inspect"

Liam's eyes widened in surprise as he observed these newly arrived creatures one after the other. Each one of these isons was almost twice his size, and their exoskeleton had a silver luster to it.

Moreover, their speed…

Whoosh!

<Evolved Ison; Level 55>

<Evolved Ison; Level 57>

<Elite Ison; Level 65>

<Elite Ison; Level 70>

Before Liam could take a good look at these guys, one by one, the isons dashed toward him at an incredible speed and surrounded him from all sides. Their silver limbs glinted in the darkness of the inner core, and their vicious visages were neither too visible nor invisible.

Slash! Slash! Slash!

The dozen isons moved at the same time, creating a hurricane of wind blades with their sharpened silver limbs and their cutting wings. These creatures distinctively had ten wings compared to the normal six-winged isons.

"So strong." Liam mouthed. However…

Though he was piqued by how diverse these creatures were and how strong they were able to evolve, that was where everything ended.

They still weren't strong enough to pose an actual threat to him.

As the wild hurricane moved toward Liam, wanting to swallow him whole, he calmly lifted his black dragon sword. 

While the attack appeared to be a hurricane that a normal human being couldn't possibly decipher or block or parry against, to Liam, everything was in slow motion. 

Clang! Clang! He casually blocked every single one of the attacks, and when the cold metal of the black dragon sword struck the silver limbs, the latter was completely shattered on impact.

Green blood splashed everywhere as the isons were skewered left and right. Liam did not even have to use any special moves and simply relied on his pure physical skills to take care of these pests.

The entire fight barely lasted for a couple of seconds before the isons were all smeared on the ground, no different than their cracked eggshells.

<Ding. You have gained one experience point>

<Ding. You have gained one experience point>

…

…

…

Liam shook his head helplessly at the miserable numbers that popped up after the fight. Since all of his soul minions were outside busily working their menial tasks, the experience points were shared amongst everyone.

He quickly swiped away the useless notifications and bent down to personally carve out the mana cores from the triangular heads of the isons.

"That was interesting." He mumbled after pocketing all the cores. 

His gaze then darted across the rest of the inner chamber to see if there were more surprises waiting for him. But it looked like all of the eggs had now completely hatched, save for one that was still whole at the far north corner.

Liam walked toward this one, and he could already see a faint golden luster on this particular egg. Not to mention the size of it was obviously bigger than the rest.

"Now, what is there inside this one?"

He was almost tempted to leave this one alone and wait for it to hatch just to see what came out of it. If he was not wrong… then this one should have something similar to a boss elite or a <Queen Ison> in this setting.

This was not his first rodeo, and Liam had faced several such insect monsters back in the tutorial world, and every single time these types of creatures had a Queen as their main head.