Brooklyn doesn’t believe anything anymore. The more she involves herself with the weird tentacle monster the more unbelievable it becomes. When that crab humanoid spoke a few unknown words and then soon after that it spoke a word in her language has left her completely speechless for a time. She did try to start a conversation with it when the tentacle monster went down into the large cavern. She never got a response and was completely ignored by it. At first she thought that crab was just a funny reminder of her sister, who dressed up as a red hermit crab monster for Halloween although after that crab evolved into a completely different creature. She no longer finds that creature a laughing matter since if it is able to speak the human language it would be completely ground breaking for this world.

*cough*

Brooklyn coughs on her way to do a favor for ‘Puffball’, her name for the weird monster she has been so interested in. For Brooklyn that monster is basically a talking dog with tendrils.

*cough*

Brooklyn coughs once again. The reason for Brooklyn’s cough is because of her being trapped in a cave without any of the medicine she needs to be able to speak. Her vocal cords once got completely destroyed in a battle with a vigilante due to a “lucky shot” from his gun. Brooklyn still won the fight in the end and that guy lost a lot more than a voice box but Brooklyn still had to have her neck wound completely redesigned by a scientist. The scientist must have made a fault in design during the procedure, and Brooklyn completely lost the ability to speak normally since it causes pain everytime she speaks, she has gotten used to speaking short sentences since then but she still needs a medicine to ease the pain. There are also other positives for her unique speaking pattern like being able to talk faster since she tries to get across ideas using as few words as possible. The other thing that is great is that Brooklyn isn’t the most outgoing person in the world and would usually rather not talk. The only person she actually enjoys talking to is her sister.

And maybe ‘Puffball’ although it doesn’t really talk as much as play with dolls with Brooklyn to get across things. Most of the time the creature seems to be too human. It does things no other monster would ever think of doing like sitting on furniture, communicating with humans, asking for help from her. It’s all very strange.

Brooklyn doesn’t really know what Puffball wanted when they were playing with dolls last time other than it seemed very excited and wanted her to go to a specific spot in this cave.

She decided she would go along with it because it didn’t want to go along with her plan of escaping the volcano and ditching the crab monster and coming back to pick it up later. She decided an easy way to get the monster on her side would be to do a favor for it.

Although she isn’t sure about that favor now that she learned it included fighting a rock mantis twice her size.

*grumble*

‘Puffball better look good in a dress.’ She thinks as her stomach grumbles from being in a cave without any cooked food.

===

We finally made it! I can spot the mantises hideout! You stupid mantises almost trapped me in that glowing rock part of your nest, but this time I’m going to be trapping you.

...Well not me exactly, Gothalyn can handle that part. I'll be the support and handle some of the weak mantises while Gothalyn takes on the big one. Gothalyn has this in the bag.

Mantis sh-mantis no goth girl is scared of wee ol’ bug.

We have already begun culling some of the mantises and rock sticks guarding the nest and for some reason there seems to be more mantises than rock sticks even though they are an evolution higher, which is very strange but I’m sure I’ll find out why as we push further into the nest.

A mantis swings it’s rock blades at me and I dodge out of the way and counterattack getting a lucky stab in the eye.

[You have successfully taken over a body]

Oh! Monster mantis brains must be really close to their eyes, and I actually managed to take over its body!

I hop on the back of the mantis and control it to make it fight for me. Some mantises begin to try and cut me off their sibling, but I block their attacks using my rock mantis.

The mantises look unbelievably confused at their sibling fighting for me. They still attack them, but they seem to ignore their sibling more than me. Which is actually saying something since my mantis is ripping them apart and they still seem focused on me.

My mantis dodges out of the way of an attack and counter attacks and cuts off the head of a mantis. The second mantis attacking me doesn’t seem to care and continues its attack without dodging or anything. It also gets chopped off because of it’s simplistic attacks.

Cake is also dealing with some mantises, but they are barely able to chip away at Cake’s hardened legs and she is able to snip at them slowly ripping them to pieces.

And Gothalyn is just cutting them like wheat on a field. They don’t even look like a challenge to her. Based on the body count behind her I can guess she has killed at least 20.

We all continue killing the mantises until a certain big momma mantis shows up and

shrieks loud enough to cripple any opera singers ear drums.

“Kreeeeeh!!”

Mother mantis must be mad at her children dropping like flies. Too bad she is about to be the next mantis to die.

Goth Girl I choose you!

After making a cool throwing sound an explosion happens in front of the mantis which I can only assume Gothalyn did something to blind me again!

*BOOM!*

What did you do?! Are you crazy? Did you just explode the mantis! I need that mantis to be mostly intact otherwise I’m going to be scraping mantis bits off of the wall for biomass!

‘Cake, I can’t see! What’s going on?’ I ask Cake for help.

‘The big monster is on fire, and Gothalyn is trying to finish it off using her stone weapons.’

Oh, that’s good...wait a minute the other mantises?!

‘Cake come over here and protect me from the mantises!’ I ask for Cake’s help.

*snip*

I hear Cake’s claw snip next to me.

‘I already am Meister!’ Cake responds shortly later.

I feel bad that I’m going to be taking most of the biomass this time, but it’s for a good cause. I need it for that translation and after Cake’s most recent evolution I have been getting an idea in my head.

If I can get more intelligent monsters on my side like Cake. My life would be so much better, I could just ask them to help me do anything I want! I’m not going to even deny that is probably not the most heroic thing slowly enslaving Cake-like monsters.

Actually...it’s not that different from a certain kids game where the hero collects all different kinds of monsters and makes them fight for him/her. If that’s the story for a kids game then I am without a doubt a hero for giving Cake a much better life than she might have had as just a lowly hermit crab...even if that better life did come at the cost of her free will. I still think taking away a monster’s free will and making it into a intelligent monster like Cake could heavily increase my power in a cave and possible world filled with dumb monsters.

Just ask the human species, we worked our way up in a world of disease, alligators, lions, bears, the ice age, and not only lived through all that but exceeded so much through sheer intellect we turned the world’s apex predator with weapons that could cause an extinction level cataclysm at the push of a button.

Now imagine if humans were given claws that could snap bones, a carapace that could stop a bullet, intellect, and the looks of something like Cake.

That has to be extremely powerful no matter what world I ended up in.

Unless that world is super technologically advanced and has bombs that could eradicate planets…but luckily based on my rock conversation with Gothalyn that doesn’t seem very likely.

Although based on Gothalyn’s clothing and powers I can assume this world is somewhat modern and either some or everyone has powers of some kind.

As I was thinking about my possible future, I have been multi-tasking while being blinded and have basically been swinging in random directions of where an attacker might be, trying to hopefully keep the mantises off of me while Cake helps with any others and it seems like some bug just cut me.

Ow! Which one of you just cut me?! I reflexively move the dying mantis using it's last bit of life, and it hits something hard but I can’t tell what due to me still being blinded by the Gothalyn’s fiery inferno.

‘I’m sorry Meister, one of the beasts got through me,’ Cake pauses for a second before continuing, ‘I appreciate you for punishing me for my mistake, Meister.’

What?! I would never hurt youuuuuuuuuu…

I realize that I might have just hit Cake with a mantis blow meant for the thing that cut me.

‘I’m sorry Cake! I was trying to get that mantis off me and I swung the mantises blade in it’s direction!’ I tell Cake apologetically over accidently hitting.

‘Meister! It’s okay! If your punishment was by accident, I am always available to you!”

What?! Is that just an indirect way of saying you want me to hit you?! I’ll worry about that later. I need to stop wasting time and help Cake with the mantises.

I prepare a flesh grenade to throw at any mantises that might be giving Cake trouble.

‘Cake, tell me where to throw!’

*snip snip*

What?! Did Cake just double snip at me?

‘Meister, I have already killed all the beasts around us, there is no need for you to do anything.’

‘You did what?!’ I snap back at Cake, surprised.

‘I killed all the uhm...monster’s around us, Meister.’ Cake says a little shyly, worried that she might have offended her ‘Meister’ by killing the monsters.

‘How?’ I ask since I still can’t see due to the flames.

Wait, why is it slowly getting less and less bright. I’m able to make out that I’m stuck inside something that doesn't look like a cage, more like an igloo. It’s much nicer than being blinded, and the wall seems somewhat shell-like.

‘Meister, most of the beasts have moved away from us and have moved to protect their Queen from the Gothalyn.’

Ok...that answers that question but where the hell am I?

‘Uhm, Cake do you know where I am?’

*snip*

That snip seemed awfully close...wait a minute don’t tell me.

‘I have put Meister in my shell to protect you from the light. This was the best way for me to protect you. I’m sorry for touching you, but I will do anything for your forgiveness.’

Cake made a decision on her own?! I didn’t even think she could do anything about me being blinded, let alone actually do it without me saying anything. I don’t even care if that decision was stuffing me inside her shell, if that’s what it takes to make her more independent she can stuff me inside her shell all she likes...wait a minute that sounded wrong.

I shake those thoughts away and ask Cake a question about Gothalyn.

‘Uhm...what is happening with Gothalyn.’

‘Meister, I do not know how to explain this but I will try…’

That sounds bad did Gothalyn die?! I didn’t think even a train could stop her let alone some big mantis and a few of its children.

‘She killed the beast but afterwards…’

It was the little ones, I thought we got most of them though they must have had reinforcements in the back, but those mantises were about as dumb as rocks?!

‘...afterwards, she killed the rest of the mantises but started to make a new weird sound from her “stomach”...’

Oh, that doesn’t sound too bad.

‘...and she started eating the beast and blowing out the fire.’

What?!! That’s my biomass!

‘Cake, let me out! I need to get that Biomass before she eats anymore!’

How dare she eat cooked monster meat, from the monster she killed all by herself all the while probably starving from not being able to eat raw monster meat. All the while I kinda did nothing and got blinded by fire and was forced to hide in Cake’s shell.

…

I mean surrre it’s completely fair for her to do that, but if I’m already part brain-parasite.

I may as well be a parasitic leech to top it off!

[You have gained 29 Biomass]

I swear I’m not an addict!