Rohan stared at Elane for a second, then let out a quiet laugh.

"You’re adapting quickly. I expected you to be a little more disappointed, if I’m honest."

Elane shot him a look while carefully tucking away the newly evolved Worker Ant Gene into one of her inner pockets.

"I’ll take that as a compliment... Besides, we can just buy a Normal tier defensive gene at a later point, or look for one ourselves, then have you evolve that. It’s no big deal that this experiment unfortunately failed."

Rohan pushed himself up from the ground, brushing the remaining crystal dust from his palm and trousers as he did so. The momentary lull they’d taken in the tunnel was already over — their little experiment, while a failure, still taught them some very useful information. But it had also eaten up some time.

And time was the one thing they had to watch carefully if they wanted everything to go their way.

If Rudith’s group noticed anything at all — and Rohan knew the chances of that grew as they cleared tunnel after tunnel — then they wouldn’t stay silent and spread out forever.

’If we’re lucky, we’ll come across some of them in the tunnels, saving us the effort of having to take care of them if they regroup.’

If they were smart, the moment they noticed something amiss, that would be the first thing they’d do.

Even if they didn’t know it was them hunting down their Awakened, they’d still be highly cautious regardless.

’Still... we got what we wanted from this stop.’ Rohan thought, glancing over at his status one more time.

’Ideally I’d like to max out my Elite tier energy so that I can finally test an evolution using it out. Maybe I could even take my Horned Rabbit Spear or Firestone Skin to Commander tier...’

Just the idea of that made him drool. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

But even if he did manage to do that, they’d still be F tier at the end of the day.

’I still need to figure out how to evolve them to the next rank. Though my best guess right now is that I need to absorb higher rank Origin Crystals, which seems like the most obvious answer at the moment.’

He also didn’t know what would happen once he did manage to evolve their ranks. Would they still remain Elite tier or even Commander tier by the time he evolves them? That would be insanely overpowered if it were the case.

’Evolution Gene has already shown its limits by not being able to change the type of a gene through evolution, so the chances that they’ll retain their tier after evolving to the next rank... I don’t think it’s high.’

It was a shame, but also fair.

The world would probably have long collapsed if things were that easy.

"Come on," he said.

Elane nodded and bent to lift the Lava Hellebore again. It was her turn to carry the large flower, much to the relief of Rohan.

And with that, the two of them slipped out of their tunnel and into the next one in their path of vengeance.

***

The darkness swallowed them almost immediately. By now, the entire nest was pitch dark now that the glowing orange veins once fuelled by the priceless treasure in the boss’ lair had disappeared.

Or at least, Rudith assumed that was the case.

Because Sarah had noticed the deaths of two of their hired Awakened, which had now climbed to four, they had to turn back to regroup with the others before it was too late.

From doing this, they didn’t get the chance to actually head into the boss’ lair and see if the flower was there for themselves.

Though, internally, Sarah was relieved.

’Thank god I didn’t have to face off against that monster again...’

Her last encounter in the boss’ lair didn’t quite go so well. She was lucky enough to escape with her life due to the distance between her and the E rank Elite at the time.

It was her own narrow tunnel that she, Rudith and the others had spent weeks digging out and around the boss’ chamber, that ended up saving her life.

Once she made it inside there, in the nick of time no less, the boss was reluctant to follow her.

Though that didn’t stop it from barging through the heavy doors at the entrance of the lair and scaring the living hell out of Rudith and the others waiting impatiently outside.

"Does your enhanced eyesight still work good enough in this darkness?" Rudith asked, somewhat frustrated because of their situation.

From the very beginning of their second attempt at stealing the treasure, almost everything that could go wrong for them, did!

"It does, just not as well as if there were some light. My night vision is only so-so." Sarah responded.

They continued to walk until eventually, they returned back at the entrance of their tunnel.

"Let’s head into the last tunnel to find Aron and Joe."

They slipped into the last-most tunnel seconds after that suggestion. There were only a few metres of wall separating the two, so they didn’t have to travel far.

However, unbeknown to either side, just a mere dozen seconds after Rudith and Sarah emerged from their tunnel and made their way down Aron and Joe’s, Rohan and Elane slipped out of the fifth tunnel after having taken care of the fifth and final duo of Awakened that Rudith’s group had brought along.

"Well, that takes care of all of them, I guess." Rohan quietly whispered, though he wasn’t happy about this result.

He wished that they could have encountered some of the original six of Rudith’s group rather than those weaklings they’d hired.

Now, he was almost certain that Sarah might’ve noticed something was off due to her enhanced senses as the group’s scout. Elane already notified him that she’d heard scurrying movements coming from one of the other tunnels, so he knew that Sarah must’ve heard the same thing in those short moments they used to ambush the unsuspecting Awakened.