The ants within smellshot pass the message along, and within moments, every ant is flinging scented insults up at the spider who gleefully waggles her legs back at us. The rage is rising to a fever pitch when another mind cuts through my emotions.
[Isssss bait. Thissss creature wantsssss death. Not for itssssself, but for you. Denyyy it.]
Invidia’s eye glows with insight as it stares up at the looming mother spider. I bring myself back under control and tell the ants to stand down. It’s not like us to lose control of our emotions. Actually, it’s totally like me. It’s not like my siblings to lose control of their emotions. This dastardly spider might be cleverer than I’ve been giving it credit for.
[Fine, you stay up there, you bloated sack of schemes. Just keep this in mind, there’s going to be an army of ants marching through here at some point, and if you’re still around, I’ll personally feed you to my mother. Clear?]
I aggressively snap my mandibles at the spider matriarch, then turn around and lead our strike force away. The ants are reluctant, unwilling to leave the insult unaddressed, but when I firmly walk away, they follow as I head back to base camp, my pets trundling along in my wake.
It takes a long time to traverse the vast web down to the ground. It’s taken a full week of campaigning to get to this point, but the Expanse has been basically conquered. Obviously, we discovered the presence of a powerful spider who was laying eggs in here. It just took a long time before we were able to pin down the location of her lair, and was also quite a project to neutralise the blasted webs.
Once we worked out that we could treat the webs much the same as I treated that damn slug’s goo all that time ago, it was a lot of work to haul the dirt and soil necessary to create our superhighway through the ridiculous net of mega-webs covering this Expanse top to bottom.
Once we did, though, it was all over for the arachnids. Turns out the spider brood isn’t nearly as cooperative as ants. Such an inferior species! Gwehehehehe. With hundreds of cooperative ants working together with our advanced tactics, the hidden super squad, and my pets and I, they never stood a chance. Even so, there were so many of the darn things they took a whole week to wipe out! I’ve been biting so much, my mandibles hurt!
The haul in experience and Biomass has been worth it; not really for me, but for Vibrant and her squad, it’s been super valuable.
“Hey-hey! Welcome back! How’d you go with the big one? Was it big? Was it tasty? I bet it was!”
Speaking of whom, the hyper-energetic soldier comes bouncing along the web from a separate corner of the Expanse.
“Find anything on your side?” I ask her.
“Nope-nope! It’s all been cleared out! We left the spawn points alone, though, just like you said. It’s so empty here now, it’s almost weird!”
Leaving the spawn points alone will let this place regenerate into a nice hunting ground for the colony. Unless I miss my guess, the fat spider will move out and into a different territory. We’ve wiped out her army and cornered her once; if we come back with more ants, I don’t care what sort of traps she has tucked away up that cave of hers, it won’t be enough. A monster doesn’t get to tier six or seven without developing enough of a brain to work out when they’re outmatched.
“I suppose we better continue our recon mission then. Gather everyone up and we’ll head out into the tunnels. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and we spent a lot of time in here.”
“We got a lot of Levels, though! My friends have never been so big before! Soo many evolutions!”
Wait a sec…
“Did you just say friends?” I ask her.
Vibrant tilts her antennae in confusion.
“I suppose so? Is that bad?”
“Ah, not really? I think? I mean, do you even know what friends are?”
“Yup-yup! Just like Crinis and me! Buds forever!”
A tentacle extends from my back and reaches out to Vibrant, who gives the inky tendril of darkness a quick slap in the air with an antenna. I guess that’s a high five?
[You two did hang out a lot when you were little, didn’t you, Crinis?]
[We did. And Vibrant helped me a lot when you went missing. We even ate humans together.]
[I see. Well, that’s good then.]
Hang on… WHAT!
Ah, forget it. Do I even want to know? Not like they were eating ants. Nope, the colony has a strange respect for the dead, at least, the same respect that a normal ant colony has for its dead. They take them out of the nest and watch them, much like normal ants remove bodies and place them a distance away so they don’t invite fungus or disease into their home.
In this world, it goes a little further. They don’t eat the Biomass, nor do they harvest the cores from the deceased ants. In what might seem like a tremendous loss of efficiency, they let them return to the Dungeon, dissolving into pure Mana. I’ve seen a few such… I hesitate to call them ceremonies, but they do feel quite impactful, in their own way, since I’ve arrived. I’d rather not see any more.
The real haul for me personally has been the ongoing development of my Skills. Nothing helps pump up those Levels like combat experience, even against weaker foes. Thanks to having a decent group of ants around me, my brains have been able to churn out battle magic non-stop. The day of elemental fusion is drawing ever closer! MUAHAHAHA!
I’m so close to the avatar state I can almost feel the arrow on my forehead. Watch out, Dungeon! I’m coming for you!
59. Exploration and Sweet, Sweet Skills
Another Expanse conquered, the great web has been brought low. Vibrant and I lead our group into a new section of tunnel as we prepare to launch the next leg of our advance scouting party. The first item on our list of jobs is to retrace our steps, filling in our Tunnel Maps and checking that nothing has passed us by during our battle. After climbing through the Dungeon, we reconnect to the point we entered the Expanse and find a group of three scouts sneaking about on the roof.
With a quick salute, they report that no changes have been reported to the main nest at this stage. The scouting and expansion mission goes on in all directions around the main nest. The two new nests are under construction, new Queens almost ready to move in. Sounds like great progress is being made on all fronts! There’s some news regarding Leeroy and a new squad being sent to fight and Level up in the second stratum, which is a bit surprising.
A squad with Leeroy in charge? Sounds like a bad DC movie with a band of mildly super-powered criminals banding together. I hope the generals have some idea what they’re doing. If I get up there and Leeroy’s managed to get herself killed, I’m going to be super annoyed. I’ve spent a lot of effort keeping that ant alive, and I refuse to let it go to waste! I’ll make a sensible member of the council out of her yet.
With all the news being positive, we pass our own update to the scouts so they can return it to the colony and resume our mission. The time for the next meeting of the council isn’t far away and we probably should head back, but since there isn’t any major news, I feel comfortable extending our search to the nearby tunnels. Levelling up is one of our objectives, checking for signs of an approaching force is the other! Plenty of the first has been done, but not much of the second.
In terms of powering up Vibrant’s squad, it’s been an unmitigated success. Every last one of them has reached tier four and are well on the way to maxing out their mutations. There were even plenty of cores to soak up in there, meaning that a lot of them have solidly reinforced their internal gems.