While the members of the sanctuary were getting ready, over at the horde that Mira’s group recently raided, a monster was in ecstasy.

About one month ago. The Hive womb that created the genius and the prodigies was troubled. After it came to this world it had thrived, it created its family and developed them greatly, there were threats that arrived after the beginning of the apocalypse but it overcame and became way stronger than it was before.

It was planning to seek communication with the other hives in the area when a new threat approached. This new threat never tried to eliminate its Hive; it just sought to weaken it.

The Hive womb saw this as a great opportunity to improve the Rank of the children it didn’t directly give birth to since they grew very slowly. The plan worked for a while, but the threat still never weakened, worse, it adapted and started targeting the Hive wombs intelligent children.

The womb was furious but didn’t fret; like other challenges it felt it would overcome this one. But like a cancer, the harder it beat this threat the stronger it returned. The womb got fed up of this threat and told the 2 monsters that were staying with it to attack the threat when next it came.

The threats returned and the monsters attacked, but the monster never returned. The monster it sent were two Rank 5 monsters. The threat had already grown into an untreatable tumor, even after defeating two Rank 5 monsters they didn’t outright eliminate the horde, the threat just kept slowly weakening the horde, torturing it. All the intelligent children died, it sent its direct children at the monsters hoping that its own offspring would be able to do better as they were both smart and strong.

But alas, all its direct children died. The threat kept killing its children; it could do nothing to stop it. No, it just wasn’t trying hard enough, its life had been easy, the threats it met before were just not as wise as this one, not as cruel, its instincts just weren’t enough anymore.

It began to do something it had never done; it began eating its own children.

The Hive womb couldn’t control the undead directly, even its own children, it could only give orders and hoped they carried it out, the only way it could sense its surroundings was through its direct children’s senses. It improved by getting a portion of the en-code of the children it had made, it got a larger en-code portion from its direct children.

It could only make direct children by consuming corpses, the higher the cumulative strength (Stat) of the corpses the shorter the gestation period. After consuming corpses it would gestate for a while and produce a direct child that was a Rank below it. It had a set of direct children it instinctively knew how to make.

The Hive womb realized its instincts weren’t enough anymore, it had to move more intelligently and it had to think differently. So it consumed some of its children; the sorrow it felt was great; it had never dreamed it would be pushed to such a corner. The burden was great as its instincts fought against its reason, but it succeeded in eating a few ten thousands of its children before it couldn’t anymore.

After the grueling ordeal of eating its own children the Hive womb got a new inspiration on how to make its children. It thanked its creators for their benevolence. The new children unlike the previous ones didn’t use aura, they had skills that required only energy, and their skills and traits were more specialized and streamlined than the previous undead.

Hive Tricorns that surpassed the higher Ranks in strength, stamina and agility but possessed low intelligence and had no energy and sense stat. Hive Prodigies who had energy skills that were more specialized and more deadly than aura, although they didn’t have the same potential as aura skills.

The greatest boon of the new undead was the Hive Genius, the undead was smarter than its creator, the Hive womb, but wasn’t defenseless either. It could perform strange attacks unlike anything it had seen before. It was perfect when it fought alongside the prodigies.

The threat began attacking again and it sent the new children at the threat to test out their capabilities. It ordered them to kill the intruders, it watched and saw that the children had encountered the threat again; the threat had 19 Rank 4 entities.

The fight began and the threat was struggling, they didn’t know how to handle the new children, especially with the Genius’s weird attacks which was something they could sense, this fact surprised the Hive womb. It thought only the new children were capable of sensing the attacks, but it so happened that the new children were similar to the threat.

It thought ‘Is this a sign that I should learn from the threats?’ The Hive womb watched in glee for a moment as the new children dominated the fight, but its joy was short lived.

One of the entities was proving particularly hard to handle, the entity was capable of performing long and short range attacks intermittently without breaks, the entity was capable of exponentially increasing its speed for and instant.

The prodigies were unable to harm the entity, the entity killed one of its children and the Hive womb began to weep, it could see its children trying desperately to fulfill its orders even after the loss of their sibling.

The genius sent its greatest attack at the entity, the Hive womb seeing this had a spark of hope; it was a very powerful attack, capable the Hive Womb itself. But as if fate was playing a joke on the Hive womb the weird entity suddenly deflected the attack, the genius tried redirecting the attack at the entity again but the entity redirected the attack toward one of the other children.

The Hive womb wept when it saw this ‘I finally had children that were capable of rivaling multiple threat entities of the same Rank, but now this new entity comes along and wastes my hard work. Will I never be free of tumor? Will I never be able to defeat this threat?’

Then the genius did something none of its children had ever done, something it hadn’t ever considered ordering, but could do by itself. It ran away, the Hive womb was shocked, it wondered ‘Why haven’t I ever run away with my children?’ it answered its own question ‘The threat never threatened me directly, I don’t have to run if it doesn’t threaten me directly’

It asked itself again ‘Wouldn’t it have been better if I had run away? I wouldn’t have lost all those children. Why did I stay?’ …it thought for a while and answered itself ‘Because I am stupid, I didn’t want to be pushed away from my territory and stayed here even as I suffered… children running away, that’s what this threat has always done! Whether they won or lost, they always ran away. I have to learn from them.

In fact I shouldn’t just wait for them to attack me, instead shouldn’t I go to them, attack and run away. I can even hide, if they don’t know where I am, they’ll never be able to attack me again. Why didn’t I ever think of this?’It asked but it couldn’t answer the question.

The genius ran away and the Hive womb cheered, it could see a new future for itself ‘I don’t have to wait here. I don’t even have to get revenge for what they’ve made me suffer. No, I should even thank them for showing me the way, I can just attack other hordes and run away with no one being the wiser, I-‘the thoughts of the Hive womb were interrupted.

The genius had died, it could see from the eyes of the remaining prodigy that the unusual entity had struck and killed its special child. It wept as rage filled its mind ‘Is this a sign that I will never be able to escape this threat. No, I was foolish again, this threat will keep growing stronger if I let it live, there was never such an unusual entity among them, what if there are more? What if all of them become unusual? They do change a lot. I must slaughter them. Damn my sorrow, I will eat my own children if that is what it takes, as long as I get rid of them, everything will go back to what it once was. They are what’s wrong with the world!’

The Hive mind received a message from its creators it said ‘Congratulations on meeting the requirements for the title: True Nemesis, the rewards for having this title is a mutation… You have changed from a Rank 5 Hive womb to a Rank 5 Nemesis Prodigy Maker’

A bunch of new ways to create children filled the Nemesis Prodigy Maker’s mind, it was eager to try it out, it was feeling something it had never felt before; curiosity. Up until this point the it had been moving on instinct but now it was moving with ingenuity, it didn’t feel sorrow as it contemplated consuming its own children, it was just joyful for the new hope, it said ‘Thank you, Creators!’

…