Although… if you give it enough time, would you get used to it enough that you could absorb a second one…
As if reading my thoughts, Tiny raises his head and glares at me with his dark red eyes.
Never mind!
I don’t think I’ll be able to raise the skill any higher for the short-term. I take a good nap, getting Tiny to defend me from the spawning monsters and making sure he feeds the Biomass to Crinis.
When I wake up, I’m fully refreshed. Time to head over to the queen and try this out.
Zipping up the tunnel, full of beans, I push my way through the crowd of workers and come face to face with Mother once again. The giant ant is quite placid, perhaps enjoying this interlude of relative quiet.
“Hello, Mother, how are things?” I inquire.
She reaches forward to tap on my head. “I am well, little one. The colony has been safe here, you have done well.”
Awwww, shucks! I’m not used to this sort of praise. If I could blush, I would!
“Thanks, Mother,” I beam. “I’m glad I could help!”
“Of course, child. We should always seek to better our family,” she says warmly.
“Exactly! That’s why I’m here!” I say enthusiastically. “I’ve gained a skill that will allow me to make all of the ants in the colony stronger!”
The queen’s antennae whip about a little in surprise. “Really, child? That’s wonderful,” she says.
Now for the tricky bit. I hesitate a little at this point. “Thing is, it’ll only work on the ants who haven’t been born yet, I can’t do anything to the family members who are already alive.”
The queen seems confused. “What are you planning on doing?”
I really have no idea how the monstrous queen is going to react to the idea of me modifying her core. She is quite intelligent for a monster, but her own logic and mine are quite different, as well as our experiences. This queen is still not even one year old. She can’t compare to my own nearly sixteen years of life.
“This is what I can do.” I decide to explain it all carefully. “I can perform the skill on your core, while you rest here. Then I can make the young that will be born in the future more powerful, smarter. I’m hoping that by doing this, more of them will be able to survive and grow until they can evolve, making the colony stronger.”
The queen wibbles her antennae around for a while as she digests this news. “You think you will be able to keep more children alive?”
“Yes. Their species won’t change and they will still be our family, but they’ll be better equipped to survive and live a long life. What do you think?”
This is the magic moment. I’ve worked so hard to try and make this project a reality, but if the queen says no, I won’t question it. The project will die right here. Perhaps it’s silly to take the feelings of a monster into account, but this giant ant is no ordinary monster to me. This is the best parent and family member I’ve ever had.
My main motivation for this project isn’t even for ant world domination. I just don’t want to see my siblings throwing their lives away anymore. I want them to be smart enough to retreat when needed and be able to take care of themselves.
I look the queen straight in the eye and await her judgement. I tried to be as honest as I could and explain things in a way she could understand. My heart is pounding as she gazes calmly back at me.
Eventually, she speaks.
“Of course, child. It is the responsibility of every member of our family to strengthen the whole. If you can achieve this, we will all benefit. That is what being part of the colony is about. You can start when you are ready.”
I should never have doubted the queen’s capacity to risk herself for her children.
67. The Day That Changed Pangera
Tentatively, I bring my antennae into contact with the queen’s and activate the skill.
Core Surgery!
With what I learned during the skill upgrade, all I need is to be touching a part of the body on the monster I’ll be ‘operating’ on. With an ant, it feels like the antennae are the most appropriate place.
As soon as the skill is activated, a massive burst of information hits me as the details of the queen’s core explode in my mind.
Yikes!
The queen has by far the most complicated and powerful monster core I’ve seen with the exception of Formo’s worm! I frantically put my sub-brains to work processing all of this information before the onslaught of data just straight knocks me out. With my backup dancers doing their part, the pressure eases off and I look in awe at the elegance of the queen’s core.
She’s actually a very powerful and rare creature, isn’t she?
I got the impression ants weren’t common in the Dungeon, based on what the human queen told me, usually appearing randomly at the bottom of the first strata or sometimes even lower than that. After all, they have the extremely rare ability to produce their own offspring, rather than waiting for the Dungeon to spawn more of their kind. We ants aren’t the only ones in the Dungeon with this ability, but we are among the most feared.
Looking at the queen’s core I can finally see how this function works. The queen actually has a network of glands and organs that work together to perform this job. I had thought I’d just find an ‘Egg-laying Organ +10’ or something in here. That isn’t the case. The queen has three organs that contribute to producing her offspring.
The way the offspring are produced is also not what I expected. Rather than being made from nothing, as eggs that then need to mature, the queen actually converts the Biomass she eats into eggs that can then be born. This is the reason the workers bring her almost all of the food they catch. Biomass points are directly converted into new workers inside the queen!
In a flash I make another realisation. This is why the queen’s egg producing rate has gone down ever since we came up to the surface! Like me, she has a powerful core and is a higher tier monster. She doesn’t get much value from eating surface monsters or weak, lower-Level creatures. She was born at the lowest reaches of the first strata, her natural prey are down there. With so few Biomass points being produced, her rate of laying has plummeted.
This also explains the connected organs for egg producing.
Firstly, she has an organ attached to her stomach that is designed to drain off Biomass and convert it to some kind of liquid sludge. This is the Biomass Conversion Organ, and it looks as if the queen hasn’t upgraded it at all…
I bet she spent almost every point on eggs and healing upgrades…
Sure enough, when I check through all of her organ data, she’s upgraded her antennae to +5 for Healing Channelling, and upgraded her Healing Mana Gland to +5 to take a Burst Heal upgrade that lets her wave out the energy over an area, perfect for healing a huge army of ants.
She’s really too unselfish. This also shows a little lack of wisdom due to her being a young monster. Upgrading the egg production organs is by far the fastest way to grow the colony’s power. I’ll have to convince her to upgrade all the organs related to producing eggs as quickly as possible, all the way to +10 if we can, but at least to +5.
The second organ in the process is the Lifeform Recoding Organ. If the job of the Conversion Organ is to strip the Biomass of its properties, turning it into a multipurpose goo, then this organ is for reshaping that stuff into the necessary material for ant egg making.
Finally, there’s the Egg Production Gland itself. This was responsible for taking the reformed goop and making it into ant eggs, essentially encoding ant DNA on the sludge.