Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 755 - 753
After throwing the miscellaneous items into the shredder, Li Ang stepped out of the Alchemy Workshop. The Automated Pet Box was as peaceful as ever, bathed in sunshine and shaded by green trees, with swarms of Bees fluttering above the canopy, feeding on tree sap. Meanwhile, Brain Worms and Worker Bugs labored in the cultivated fields, sowing seeds, spraying water, harvesting mature Magic Potions, and crudely processing them in a temporary workshop beside the fields.
It feels a bit cramped. Li Ang glanced around the Breeding Box, frowning slightly.
The swarm's reproduction now mainly relied on the Queen Bee and the Beehive. The bee colony Li Ang had originally purchased from an online shopping platform was just the most common Chinese Honey Bee, but after hundreds of iterations, the bee colony had changed completely. It was no longer limited to the order Hymenoptera, suborder Apocrita, or class Insecta; some had even evolved beyond the phylum Arthropoda.
There was no other way. Although insects like the Balawan Giant Flat Shovel Bug and Long Beetle were unbeatable among creatures of the same size, having evolved their combat capabilities to the extreme, the limitations of arthropods were still too significant. The chitinous exoskeleton limited their size and required them to molt periodically. Their open circulatory system meant that the transport of nutrients and metabolic products was slow. Additionally, their inefficient respiratory and locomotion systems all dictated that insects could not be freely scaled up in size.
If the bee colony were to be adapted for combat between Transcendents, they had to be modified. Evolving their open circulatory system into a closed one would allow blood to flow constantly within the loop formed by blood vessels and the heart, improving circulation efficiency and speed. The chitinous exoskeleton would be retained but divided into multiple components, allowing it to be shed periodically without affecting immediate combat capability. More spiracles would be developed at the joints of this exoskeleton, connecting to the closed circulatory system to enhance respiratory efficiency.
A skeletal system would be evolved, featuring light bones in the limbs to increase muscle density and a spine. Based on this spine, their concentrated chain-like nervous system would be transformed into a tubular central nervous system to improve nerve signal transmission speed. (The original arthropod nervous system, inherited from the annelids' more primitive and inefficient ladder-like system, meant that larger insects would have extremely slow reaction times.)
After such a series of transformations, many "chimeric" species had appeared within the bee colony. Some Scout Soldier Bees now resembled birds covered in chitinous armor more than insects.
The bee colony still retained its three previous castes: Queen Bee, Soldier Bees, and Worker Bees.
Queen Bees, averaging nearly one meter in length, resided in the tree canopies and laid thousands of eggs each day. These eggs would be carried by Worker Bees to the southeast corner of the Automated Pet Box and placed around the Abyssal Magic Mirror. The newly laid eggs were exposed to the Abyssal Magic Mirror's radiation. The Magic Mirror possessed the Special Effect "Compensation Alienation," which induced mutations in nearby living organisms. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂
Of the thousands of eggs, about nine hundred would die directly from excessive mutation, while only about one hundred would hatch normally. These hundred newborn larvae would be taken by Worker Bees to a simple, nearby Beehive to be fed and raised, allowing their mutations to be observed. After some time, once the mutations had mostly stabilized, the surviving larvae would be inspected by Li Ang or a Brain Worm. If the mutated traits were advantageous, the larvae would be kept for further observation. If the traits showed no potential, they would be raised into common Worker Bees or directly eliminated and recycled to conserve biomass and save space within the Breeding Box.
The same process applied to the Worker Bugs. Under the influence of Li Ang and the Abyssal Magic Mirror, they had transcended the limitations of the phylum Nemertea, gaining stronger locomotive, circulatory, and respiratory systems. Originally, Nemertean Worms could reproduce asexually through fission, with one splitting into two, and those two splitting further. However, after they evolved advanced traits like a skeletal system, this method of asexual reproduction became somewhat unsuitable.
Eventually, Li Ang decided to use the Abyssal Magic Mirror's "Compensation Alienation" Special Effect to evolve a non-sentient, structure-like organ for the swarm, named the Swarm Mother-Hive. It resembled a semi-open biological factory, complete with assembly lines and Worker Bugs performing tasks inside. The Swarm Mother-Hive retained the Nemertean Worms' ability to reproduce through fission, periodically producing egg-like worm ova. A portion of these ova would be placed by Worker Bugs next to the Abyssal Magic Mirror, alongside the bee eggs, to receive radiation. Another portion would undergo genetic adjustment by a Brain Worm. Using genetic information from other organisms—collected by Worker Bugs—and the Alchemy Workshop's Chimeric Beast Assembly Bench, the Brain Worm could adjust the ova's genetic sequences, causing newborn larvae to manifest traits of other species from the outset.
A bit like Aliens and Gene Thieves.
But with all this, space was becoming quite tight.
The Automated Pet Box had a volume of 1,000 m x 1,000 m x 1,000 m. Besides the water and soil essential for a complete ecosystem, a large amount of space also had to be allocated for constructing Temples, cultivating land, and planting trees. Thanks to the Breeding Box's miraculous ability to create a habitable environment, tree growth was largely independent of light and nutrient limitations. Li Ang had expended a great deal of Divine Power to cultivate many giant trees within the Breeding Box—some a hundred meters tall, others over two hundred—to provide habitats for the swarm. Even so, the ever-expanding swarm was steadily consuming the remaining space in the Automated Pet Box.
