A Day and a Half Later,

Currently, I am on a trip to the shallow caves to gather a new material I found, glowing rocks, I don’t know their real name but they glow and they look like rocks. They are pretty bright for me to handle, but it isn’t too much of a problem since I can just have Cake carry most of them. I have also continued power leveling Cake and she should be about ready to evolve.

The glowing rocks also spark when hit against something which could be used to start a fire if I could find any more of those screaming wood carrots, but instead the woman is mostly using the limited supply I can knock out of the wall, and smashing it into a powder or using it’s glow to see. The glow from the rocks is weaker than the Sun-God flashlight that I broke because I accidently blinded myself with it when I was holding it and threw it but luckily I found these rocks otherwise the woman would be completely blind.

And speaking of the woman she is also pretty calm being around me now. At first she was very wary being in a dark hole with me and Cake and then she started to get quite curious about me and wanted to communicate more with the rock dolls she had made for me. I try my best to communicate using the dolls, but communication via dolls is sub-par even if it is better than nothing. Currently though, the woman has started to get a little touchy and will sometimes reach out and try to pet me. I do appreciate the gesture of friendship, but it is starting to get a little much.

I do also need to think of a name for the goth girl that I have been simply calling a whole sleuth of nick-names.

Hmmm? How about Gothalyn? She does wear alot of black clothing and the name doesn’t sound completely absurd, so I guess I’ll use that as the official nickname for the ghost girl until I figure out her real name.

I should be able to push Cake to level 12 today and evolve her, Cake has also been upgrading her claws and even managed to fully upgrade them as well. The upgrade I chose this time was serrated claws, which adds small spikes between her claws to do more damage and have better grip.

I also fully upgraded my Radar Sense and had to choose between two very important options.

[Colored Radar Sense: Allows the host to see color using color receptors in the Radar Sense gland.

[Dimmer Radar Sense: Allows the host to be able to withstand bright sources of light better.

There were some other good options but these were the main ones that really stood out. In the end I chose the dimmer one because it helps with the brightness of certain things like those bright rocks. I will eventually get the color one just to see color again but I can wait until I get through some of the more important upgrades before I choose that.

Me and Cake arrive at the shallow caves and I grapple a lone toad for Cake to kill and get the xp.

I avoid grappling the rock sticks and mantises since they seem to be the apex predator around here and even though I am stronger than them I would rather have to deal with the easy ones. Like this lone toad.

As I’m thinking the toad in my grasp flings, it’s tongue at me and wacks me with it.

Ow! Why you little…

‘Cake!’ I mentally communicate with Cake as she scuttles over to exact revenge on the toad.

‘Yes. Meister.’ Cake sends back.

‘Cut it’s tongue out first, so it doesn’t wack me with it.’ I tell her.

*snip* Cake gives a ‘Yes’ snip while using that snip to also cut the toad’s tongue.

Cake both answered my order and cut it’s tongue with one snip. Talk about efficiency!

I watch as Cake pulls her bloody claw out of the toads mouth and begins to slowly dissect the toad like it’s a school project.

The toad squirms around and tries it’s hardest to escape my tentacles after losing it’s tongue but, it’s all in vain and the toad dies after having it’s guts spill out on the floor and Cake begins to grab the pieces to eat but instead drops it and tells me the one thing I've been waiting to hear since starting Cake’s powerleveling.

‘Cake! Evolve! Meister! Choose!’ Cake excitedly tells me and taps at the ground using her legs.

[Your subject ‘Cake’ has reached their second evolution. You may choose, allow Cake to choose or Randomize.]

Ah yes, the ‘three’ options of evolution and upgrades. Two of them may as well be the same thing just with allowing Cake to choose adds an extra step of Cake asking me and randomizing is basically leaving your most important life choices to chance although I know why it is there. It’s there for everyone on my list of dumb creatures, which now includes toads, they are about average on the scale of dumbness above wolves but below pack spiders.

Ahh...Yes those despicable pack spiders...I hope they all died in the Hell Gas. I’d rather deal with mantises than spiders. The mantises at least look less creepy.

‘Meister! Choose!’

‘I’ll choose when we get back to Hole Base and meet with Gothalyn.’ I respond.

‘Gothalyn?’ Cake asks confused at the new name.

‘It’s my new nickname for the ‘human’ that lives with us.’ I tell Cake.

‘Human. Weird.’ Cake tells me.

Cake...oh god Cake, I don’t think you fully understand that you're a massive hermit crab that can mentally speak with an ex-human turned radioactive tentacle monster. I don’t think humans even fall into the spectrum of weird compared to us.

“Very Impressive. Please note self-awareness does not correlate with any form of meaningful intellig...” GagOs catches me off guard and sneaks a fast joke in by talking at 3x times speed.

Mute.

GagOs is starting to get a little creative with dodging the Mute button, I see. I need to find the hidden command for shutting her down or just perma-muting before she starts to get any more creative ideas.

I’ll have to worry about that later, though. I came to the shallow caves for two things evolving Cake and glowing rocks. I still need those glowing rocks for Gothalyn to be able to see and for her to smash into powder.

Cake and I avoid any monster fights as we make our way to the glowing rocks. We have to pass by the mantises nest to get there, but all the mantises are asleep or hibernating and we can easily make it past them and toward the glowing rocks.

I’m also seeing a lot less rock sticks for some reason. They still exist, but most of them are turning into rock mantises, which is actually a good thing for me since mantises are usually sleeping, just don’t wake them up and you’re good.

We pass by the last of the mantises and turn a corner away from the nest and toward the glowing tunnel which leads to a wall of glowing rocks.

It’s hard for me to stare at the amount of glistening rocks and I ask Cake to go in and mine away at them using her hard claws. I stand guard and make sure nothing interrupts our mining.

While Cake mines the rocks, I get bored and decide to go and look at Cake’s evolution options since I had to go through hundreds last time.

[Your subject ‘Cake’ has 88 evolutionary options.]

To be honest...I expected more. I guess I’ll have a look at a few using GagOs’s description.

GladOs show me the most basic description you can for these evolutions. I’m not falling for the same trick twice.

[Preparing Ultra Extreme Basic Package for client ‘Joy’]

Poisonous Thick-Shelled Tendien - Large Hermit Crab that adds poison to their tendrils.

[Defense (++)

[Size (+)

[Poison (++)

Mutations:

Chomping Claw

Hardened Skin

Wow...that’s a little too basic. Can you make it a little more descriptive?

[Preparing Super Basic Package for client ‘Joy’]

Thanks GladOs, you're so much more helpful than GagOs.

Alright time to search for an evolution for Cake. I think intelligence might be good to go for again since more intelligence is always handy to have for any monster.

Alright let’s filter out everything that is not intelligence and see what I can evolve Cake into. I begin to search through all the intelligence options until I stumble upon this.

[Hermine Sapient - A unique hermit crab species that gains the upper body vertebrae of a humanoid species and the lower body of a hermit crab. The size of the body greatly increases as well as intelligence and reaction speed. Choosing this species will convert a tendiens tendrils into a new organ used to pull into the shell faster. They are also able to store things inside their shell.

[Grand Intelligence (++)

[Size (+)

Mutation:

Emergency Shell

Shell Storage

What?! Cake will turn into a humanoid?! I need to see that and she can store things inside her shell! What is the point of the other 87 options when this exists!

‘Cake pick up everything you mined and let’s head back.’ I tell Cake excited for her next evolution.

*snip*

Me and Cake begin our walk back carefully stepping to avoid waking the sleeping mantises.

As we walk away from the nest and avoid all of the sleeping mantises behind us, I can see a giant rock mantis with two extra scythe like arms and an extra large abdomen.

I watch as the large mantis walks into the glowing rock cave.

Are you kidding me?! What the hell is that doing here, I came here a few times and that never happened?! Me and Cake continue to slowly walk past any mantises until they eventually start to thin out and we are in the clear.

That was so close. I would've had to fight that giant mantis if I didn’t get excited about Cake’s evolution and head back to evolve her in safety.

I might need to stop collecting the glowing rocks if that mantis is going to start coming around here. Gothalyn might be mad but I don’t care if she wants to fight the mutant mantis for her rocks she can by all means go ahead. I was just trying to be helpful since she could be a useful ally for me if she actually leads me to the exit once the radiation down below settles down to allow us to walk safely on the ground.

But for now I need to get back with Cake and evolve her.

After avoiding more monsters on our way back we eventually make it to the trail and start to make our way back.

After about an hour of walking we arrive at the new and improved ‘Hole Base’ with Cake carrying about 5 of the glowing rocks in her claws.

I open up the rock door as usual but the inside of our base now looks completely different as in it is no longer an empty hole. It now has rock furniture made by Gothalyn.

There are Rock chairs, shelves, a table and even a blanket made out of raw monster hide that Gothalyn made to sleep on. It is pretty crude and looks quite creepy especially with someone like Gothalyn the ghost girl sleeping on it but I don’t really mind as long as she keeps being friendly with me as weird as that may be, I don’t really mind.

Currently, Gothalyn is sleeping which is actually unusual this is the first time I have actually seen her sleep. I can also see that she has been working on something in a corner using that rock powder. There are little pouches of glowing powder that have been made out of rat pelts.

Hole Base is starting to look like an actual monster lair in here and the human has been the one decorating. The most me and Cake did was a little pile of molted carapace and Cake expanding it slightly. The human did a complete redesign of our house and made it look like an evil monster slaughterhouse.

Geez that human has some weird tastes in design. Although I guess since I am home I should begin to evolve Cake.

[Confirmed, Evolving subject ‘Cake’ into an Hermine Sapient, estimated time 8 hours]

Cake soon passes out and the black evolutionary sludge starts to seep into her body, I also made sure Cake had saved enough Biomass so that she doesn’t starve and attempt to eat Gothalyn upon waking up.

Alright...now what? I guess I can upgrade something with the Biomass I have left over from these past two days of grinding with Cake.

[Material Storage: 25/250

For these last two days I have just been trying to upgrade everything that I regularly use evenly to keep it all somewhat equal in power. I haven’t actually fully upgraded anything specifically except Radar Sense, although I have gotten very close to a few.

I think right now I’ll upgrade Anti-Gravity cups for the first time using what little Biomass I have left over from the past two days of upgrading.

[Confirmed Using 11 Biomass to Upgrade, Remaining Amount 14]

Suction Cups: Anti-Gravity (Extremely Weak) -> (Very Weak)

My senses are once again cut off and I wait for Cakes upgrade to finish or for Gothalyn to wake up so we can try some more rock communication.

===

8 Hours Later:

Brooklyn wakes up on her blanket made from monster hides. She has been feeling much better ever since that radiation was smacked out of her system. The suctioner monster has also been even weirder than she could imagine. She thinks about how the monster acts almost human instead of a monster that might only live for food and killing. It will use the rock furniture she had made as if it was something normal for a creature in a deep cavern. Brooklyn doesn’t fully believe her eyes when she sees something she might consider a pet be able to have the know-how to use furniture.

Brooklyn rolls over to her side on the blanket and starts to get up to prepare some more crude bombs using High Density Sulphurine to replenish the ones she had thrown at the millipedes. The Sulphurine in this cave is very high quality and if that weird monster keeps bringing her more of it she might be able to have more grenades than she will know what to do with. If she ever gets out of this cave, she will try her hardest to bring that creature with it. There is also the hermit crab that follows it around all the time. It shows intelligence as well although not nearly as much as the suctioner, it seems to follow orders from the suctioner based on the way it acts and jumps around at the slightest command of the suctioner.

*pop*

Brooklyn turns around after hearing a pop sound from a dark corner of the cave, she lives in with her monster companion. Brooklyn immediately grabs one of the new glowing Sulphurine rocks that the monster left and holds it in her hands to be able to see in the pitch black dark after the suctioner destroyed her flashlight; although the flashlight was already on its way out before that happened and it did more than make up for it by getting her these rocks, so she actually doesn’t mind that much anymore.

Brooklyn walks over to the popping sound and spots the suctioner monster. She goes to pet the cute little monster and the monster doesn’t react in its usual way of trying to uncomfortablely back away from the petting, instead it just doesn’t seem to care.

As Brooklyn pets the suctioner monster she hears another sound.

*splorch*

Brooklyn looks away from the pet-like monster and uses a rock to see where the sound came from slightly wary of it but since the intelligent suctioner didn’t go into attack mode it surely can’t be something bad.

Brooklyn immediately almost comes face to face with a species of monster that she has never seen before which is surprising considering how much it would stand out compared to the rest of monster-kind.

She watches as a large crab humanoid with reddish-pink hair, a red body mixed with a yellowish-white and two pincers connected to the jaw that shield the mouth. The two claws are big enough to sever a normal person’s arm. The crab creature moves forward and has to adjust it’s balance using its four legs connected to a humanoid torso made of carapace. The eyes of the creature are pure black and it’s antennae stick out of the bangs of its red hair. The red shell it carries behind looks almost twice as large as the rest of its body and spirals up in a rainbow of colors.

If a monsterologist saw the thing she was seeing right now, it could lead to an entirely new classification of crab monsters.

A humanoid-crab class.

Brooklyn stares at the new monster that must have evolved from that hermit crab that follows around the suctioner in disbelief. The suctioner monster starts to bounce around in excitement at his companions' evolution.

Brooklyn begins to wonder if this suctioner had anything to do with this crab humanoid that stands at about a foot lower than her, and what else thissuctioner might do. From curing her radiation itch using slaps to evolving a crab into a new completely different species she has nevereven seen, all the while it shows a level of understanding only a human can have, inside of a random cavern. It’s as if only a god could make such a creature capable of all of those things.

As Brooklyn tries to make sense of the creature. Joy is also trying to make sense of Cake’s new evolution, specifically Cake’s hardened curvy chest that looks very similar to a certain mammary gland.