“Alright, boys. Ready to see if you can match Pierce?”

Cen and Centoo looked at each other, then at Levi, completely blankly.

“Your enthusiasm is noted. Before I continue, any complaints you’d like to file? I feel weird enough doing this, I’d rather know you’re okay with it.”

Neither centipede made any objection.

“Don’t say I didn’t give you every chance to back out.”

Levi hesitated over the option, but this was something he needed to know and the centipedes were who he had to work with that were ready to evolve.

Evolution threshold advancement progress: 2/2

Evolve to Steel Centipede

Evolve to Clay Centipede Evolve to Crystal Centipede Combined Evolution: Centoo

Evolution threshold advancement progress: 2/2

Evolve to Steel Centipede

Evolve to Clay Centipede Evolve to Crystal Centipede Combined Evolution: Cen

Levi clicked the button.

Merge initiated

The two centipedes walked toward each other, even more blankly than their usual expressionlessness, beginning to glow blue. They coiled around one another as the light intensified until neither could be distinguished within it.

Dominance selector: Random

Combination type: Random

Enhancement type: Random

Level adjustment: +50%

Begin evolution now?

There were no obvious controls for any of the options, but Levi had been around the system enough times to know that didn't mean anything. There was no way he would just casually activate something as dramatic as an evolution without at least looking at the alternatives. Eventually he found the right triggers to access the sub-menus.

Dominance selector: [Random] [Cen] [Centoo]

Combination type: [Random] [Custom]

Enhancement type: [Random] [Physical] [Mental] [Magical]

Each time he selected something in one of the types, the 'Level adjustment' field changed.

Choosing either Cen or Centoo under Dominance set it to 'N/A'.

Selecting Custom under Combination type set it to 'None'

Choosing an Enhancement type reduced it to '+20%'.

Selecting more than one of the three reduced it to '-30%', and selecting all three dropped it to -50%.

So it was a tradeoff between control and advancement. If he let their evolution be entirely out of his hands, the resulting creature could get a nice level boost. But he wasn't sure he wanted to trust the fate of his centipedes to luck.

Dominance selector, nothing he did gave any indication of what it would do, but he suspected it would be an indicator of which personality would be retained by the final creature. He wished there were a ‘share equally’ option. If he was going to condense the two centipedes together into a single entity, he’d at least rather not destroy one of them entirely, but it was a firm toggle.

Since ‘Random’ took the decision of who to lose out of his hands, he probably would have chosen it even without the bonus to level.

Combination type… he couldn’t bring himself to leave random. If there was any way to control the outcome this would be it. Toggling it to custom greyed out the 'begin evolution' button.

Custom parameters not set

The system naturally didn’t provide anything helpful toward remedying that. He ran through every chromatic sequence he could think of, then started combining them with the relatively standard mathematical ones to see if anything stuck.

Nothing.

He would not accept defeat. He would be doing a lot of evolving in the future, and already he was imagining the possible combinations. This was something he needed to learn to do.

Levi closed his eyes and centered himself, fully focusing on the system and its subtle resonances. If you knew what you were looking at and feeling for, it became marginally less difficult to wrangle the alien system into usability. He wasn’t sure how long it took, but it was probably closer to an hour than a minute.

Finally, with the mental image of twenty-seven multi-fragmented rainbow diamonds shifting position like an omnidimensional slide puzzle, he reached a new dialogue window.

Please enter custom parameters for combination

Levi stared at the prompt, mentally nudging it to do something more, but it seemed this whole process would be one of the uncooperative types.

It took the rest of the hour and then some to find his way to the next layer, the actual parameters list. It was... confusing. A set of unlabeled toggles, most identical, all set to the center point between the two numbers.

70 - 70

15 - 15

7 - 8

30 - 30

5 - 5

3 - 0

70 - 70

5 - 5

3 - 5

It took him a few moments to understand what he was looking at. The numbers felt vaguely familiar…

No, not vaguely. He recognized those numbers. Pulling up his creature database confirmed it.

70 - initial health for Stone Centipede. 15 - health-per-strength-point for Stone Centipede. 7, Cen's strength score; 8, Centoo's.

Custom combined evolution let you select for the strengths of both creatures.

He selected the higher number in each pair, waiting for something to reject his blatant exploitation. No penalty appeared, so he locked in the selections. No reason to do anything else.

The next page was both clearer and harder to reconcile. There were four empty boxes on one side, a list of six abilities on the other.

[Ability 1] Petrify 2 [Ability 2] To Dust 1 [Ability 3] Dazzle 2 [Ability 4] Envenom 1 -------- Overwhelm 5

-------- Unstoppable 1

At least at first glance, this seemed blatantly unbalanced and very susceptible to manipulation. If he could really pick and choose the best abilities from each, couldn’t he build pairs of minions specifically for combining, focusing fully on maxing one or two abilities each?

Experimentally, Levi selected 'Overwhelm' and it moved over into the top box. He added Petrify and Dazzle, then Envenom to see what happened. Nothing. He swapped in To Dust and Unstoppable for Overwhelm and Petrify. Same nothing, even after swapping in an ability and removing its prerequisite.

Well, he’d seen with Storm that abilities didn’t always require what came before, so it wasn’t entirely unprecedented. Each ability only counted as a single slot, regardless of its level or how it was obtained. Encouraging hyper-specialization?

The sheer quantity calculation of spent ability points made the obvious answer obvious. Overwhelm, definitely keeping that one. Petrify and Dazzle were each valuable control skills, Petrify having a chance to stiffen and slow any enemy it hit, and Dazzle with its disorientation and potential stun effect. Both being already at level 2 made that decision easy.

Which left the fourth and final slot.

To Dust, Envenom, and Unstoppable each had only a single ability point assigned, so none had automatic precedence.

To Dust added that on-hit destabilization chance, Envenom made every claw or bite venomous, and Unstoppable was a momentum-building ability that could turn Centoo into a wrecking ball when given enough time to run up to an attack.

All were good options, none immediately stood out as particularly expendable.

Which would be most beneficial? To Dust and Envenom both added on-hit powers, one a quasi-disintegration and the other more ongoing damage.

Unstoppable was situational, and wouldn’t generally get more than one use out of a given fight. Good opening move, but that was about it. The improvement from Overwhelm was nice, but he could probably unlock it again later.

He already had the gremlins and Crackle to stack ongoing damage, though, so Envenom was a bit of an overlap. Especially if Skarm kept riding with Centi, there would be no shortage of ongoing damage possibilities.

That decided it. He slotted in To Dust, and selected continue.

Enhancement Type, the final toggle. Random, physical, magical, or mental. Attempts to prod the system into providing any definitions for the terms resulted in failure.

As tempting as it was to go with random for the level bonus, he eventually toggled it to Mental. If there was any option to preserve as much of both as possible, that would be the one. If not, at least he’d get a smarter centipede out of the exchange.

He scanned over his selections again, slowly, making sure he hadn't made any missteps, but everything looked good.

Dominance selector: Random

Combination type: Custom

(70-15-8, 30-5-3, 70-5-5)

(Overwhelm, Petrify, Dazzle, To Dust)

Enhancement type: Mental

Level adjustment: -30%

Begin evolution now?

Levi confirmed the selection, and the blue glow around his centipedes began to shift and writhe. First it condensed into a ball, then stretched out to a size slightly larger than either centipede had been originally, but nowhere close to Pierce. More a shift from car to truck size than Pierce's 'a couple train cars'.

When the light cleared, the new centipede tilted his head from side to side, peering down at his new shinier centipede. It wasn't much different from either of its component creatures, just a little darker, a little sleeker, a little more of a crystalline glint to its claws.

But a glance at Centi's character sheet showed two major changes that made Levi very excited for the future. He saw now he'd barely scratched the surface of his minions' potential. He couldn't wait to start their training in earnest. He had a lot more things he needed to test.

Centi: Level 10

(Stone Centipede +)

[No class selected]

Strength: 8

Health: 260/260

(+11/min)

Psyche: 3

Mana: 75/75

(+6/min)

Spirit: 5

Stamina: 165/165

(+8/min)

No class selected.

And he'd been upgraded to a plus status.