I could finally look at a living tal-eater with my system sight. Their secrets were going to be revealed to , and dozens of my daughters watched this with impatience and curiosity.
Most of them were soldiers standing by to protect and the hive, or Researchers and Physicians that were called in to make notes and examined the tal-eater with .
Without pomp, the soldiers that carried the creature opened the wriggling cloth sack and let the beast inside get out. It had nowhere to run, anyway—we were inside a spacious holding cell, and it was surrounded by ard bees.
The living tal-eater looked sohow even more ugly than the dead one—probably because of its flailing short limbs—but it wasn’t what shocked the most.
〔Beetle larva〕
〔Health〕: 14 / 26
〔Stamina〕: 8 / 25
〔Species〕: Spotted Mountainboring Beetle
The destructive and dangerous tal-eaters were just so beetle larva. Not even adult beetles, larva! This felt a little pathetic.
The creature’s genes were the opposite of pathetic, though.
There were various stat enhancents and things I expected like "Camouflage X" and "Weak Sll IX". The larva had 70 intelligence thanks to "Enhanced Intelligence VII"!
70 intelligence! These creatures were almost as smart as bees and humans. Perhaps on the level of a dog or a gorilla... However, although I pried into the larva’s head, I couldn’t hear anything from its thoughts besides so white noise.
Besides the familiar things, there was an entire list of genes that made my brows rise.
"Acid Saliva V", "Absolute Omnivore", "Empathic Hiding III", "Destructive Instinct", "Guided Instinct"...
I had no idea what half of them even did! The other half just looked like powerful genes full of requirents and which would cost soone like a shitton of points to buy.
Soone must’ve spent a lot of effort on these creatures.
"Do you understand sothing, Father?" Tabletina asked, quietly approaching .
The larva tried to crawl away from the bees, but the soldiers encircled it. Realizing that it had nowhere to run, it curled into a ball, as if trying to beco smaller. My girls were watching it tensely, expecting the larva to attack at any mont—it wasn’t even tied up, after all.
Instead, we all saw how the larva’s skin began changing colors with incredible speed and precision. In a blink of an eye, it started to look almost as if I was staring at an empty floor! The illusion was only broken by a few open gashes on the creature’s skin, as well as other bits of dirt on it.
"Wow! That’s a great show of what a high tier of camouflage can do!" I exclaid, turning toward Tabletina. "Makes almost be sad that I didn’t evolve in this direction. No way you or anyone cos up with a way to imitate *this* anyti soon, hm?"
She nodded, but smiled.
"Yes, Father. No Artist can draw camouflage paint on anyone this fast. However, I’m glad that our theories proved correct. And the creature has almost no scent when it doesn’t rot. It could hide from our scouts and cha crew mbers with ease."
I shook my head.
"No, this isn’t enough. Not for chas. Even here—"
I turned around toward the larva and paused.
It wasn’t there! No... No, of course it was—but it took at least a dozen seconds to spot one of its wounded, which looked almost floating in the air.
After I refocused my eyes, the rest of the larva beca visible again. I let out a breath.
This was beyond simple camouflage! Before I looked away from it, I had no problems finding it thanks to the bloody gashes. The larva was too quiet compared to all the bees to search for it by sound, too.
Around , other bees seed to have no problems like mine—probably because none of them looked away? Even Tabletina’s eyes were turned toward it at all tis.
Everybody was either too tense or too curious.
"Hm. Girls!" I clapped my hands together. "I need a few volunteers to test sothing..."
I got them imdiately, of course. The puzzled Tabletina had to make sure that most of the bees present were still dutifully guarding the larva.
I made the volunteers look at the larva and away, then back at the larva. After a few turns like that, with different iterations of people looking, I had a pretty clear idea of what was going on.
And not only .
"Sothing makes it hard to focus your eyes on the larva even when you know it’s here! When soone is already looking at the larva, they are immune to this, but as soon as they look away and back, they have to find it with their eyes all over again," Tabletina summarized with palpable excitent. She was smiling and gesturing with her scalpel in the air. "Could this result from its advanced camouflage? The study of these patterns might help in making our own camouflage costus even better if so."
I shook my head.
"No. But I think I know the answer now!"
’Empathic Hiding’—this had to be it. Although the na of the gene could an a different thing, I was almost sure that it allowed the tal-eaters to hide better.
The effect, based on its na, was probably telepathic. That other creatures used so of these "magical" genes was already disturbing to .
Things were worse because I didn’t know what its two other genes—"Destructive Instinct" and "Guided Instinct"—were doing.
However, now that I knew how the larva was hiding, I had at least an idea about how they could be caught, which I imdiately explained to the bees present.
"And we can test this idea imdiately!" I added, smiling. "Release this tal-eater outside sowhere and catch it using my instructions."
A bee gasped.
"Father, but what if we can’t?!" she asked pitifully. "This tal-eater can still be dangerous!"
I chuckled.
)
"Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure we have hundreds more like them right under our feet, anyway..."
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