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.
