This process is going to be more complicated than I thought. I figured I could just go to the ‘baby ant’ section and whip up some magic, but apparently not. I may have to make changes to multiple organs here and rework them slightly.
I think I’ll have to work backward. I’ll start at the last step, the egg production organ. Reaching in with the most delicate control my combined minds can muster, I ever so carefully begin to make fine adjustments to the design of the eggs produced by the organ.
I don’t have any intention of changing the early life phases of the ants. They’ll go from eggs to larvae, as usual. In fact, I actually extend the early, development phase of their lives. By increasing their youthful state, I gain leeway to develop them into a more complex organism at the end of the process. The longer the gestation period, the more ‘allowance’ I get. I don’t want to keep the young in larval form for ages, but increasing it to a little longer than it currently is gives me a little wiggle room. I’m looking at adding a lot of complexity to these guys.
The first thing I do is give the hatchling worker a more complex brain, beefing up the Cunning stat considerably. I won’t be able to get them to the same Level of Cunning that I had when I was reborn as an ant, and I’m not aiming to. If I gave them a brain that complicated, they’d be larval for a year and the queen would need so much Biomass to produce a single egg it wouldn’t be worth it. Instead, I’ll give them the intelligence of a young human child which they can build on over the course of their evolutions.
The next thing I do is give them the Pheromone Language Gland at birth. This way I’ll be able to communicate and teach them right from the moment they’re born. If they can ask questions and talk with each other then they should all advance at a faster pace.
Speaking of advancing at a faster pace, mutable stomachs! We are going to have a ton of hungry mouths to feed soon enough and being able to stretch our Biomass to its limits will make all the difference. I might slot that into the first evolutions so they’ll have it once they reach the second tier. Hopefully this means they’ll avoid the pitfall I fell into and evolve faster than they can mutate.
Hmmmm…
These complicated additions are really stressing the system here. I’ve overdrawn on my budget. To balance out the changes, I’m forced to reduce the physical stats of the hatchlings to an even more horrible floor than they already started with. They’ll be smaller and weaker than the current workers by a significant margin. It shouldn’t matter though. My goal is to raise them up myself until they achieve their first evolution, then I’m hoping they’ll be strong enough to take care of the next generation without me.
Next, I push my current Core Surgery skill to the very limit and begin to change the evolutionary paths available to the workers. At the very least I can alter the first few tiers. The inbuilt knowledge that comes with my skill tells me that the system will be able to fill in the rest even if I don’t settle it myself. I just have to hope it can carry on with the foundations I lay in a sensible way.
For the future ant society, I’m envisioning three basic paths of evolution. The soldier path for those ants dedicated to battle, the support path for those who will be healers, tend to the young and become the future queens, and the artisan path for the ants who will indulge in their love of digging and making stuff. I’m extremely curious to see exactly what sorts of things a highly intelligent ant decides to create!
The Soldiers will obviously focus on physical stats and resilience. Their future paths include leaders with auras, tanks and scouts. Each individual can flavour their own path with whatever skills and mutations they like, so hopefully this allows enough individuality.
The Support or Worker class will be more intelligent, focusing on the work of the colony, caring for the brood and the queens. Their future paths include Juvenile Queens, Healer ants and Brood tenders.
The Artisans are the caste I’m depending on to take over my core manipulation duties. I don’t want to have to form special cores myself for every ant in the colony. These guys are highly intelligent and have a strong Will but are the weakest physically by far. Their paths include Core Manipulator, Ant Mage and Carver ant. The last one, I gifted with exceedingly mobile claws on their front legs, almost like hands. I’m not sure what they’ll be able to do with them but perhaps they’ll surprise me.
I also manage to put in place special evolutions for each of these paths. I don’t think an entire colony of ants will be able to fully reinforce their cores or anything, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
By now the changes are really starting to push back hard and my mind is hitting the wall. I judge I won’t be able to do much more before I can’t go any further. I carefully check over my work to make sure I haven’t made any massive mistakes, like shift their antennae into the middle of their eyes.
With that task settled, I sit back and take in my work, figuratively speaking. Despite the downgrades I’ve made, the rate of egg production for the new ants is still going to be about half of what it was before. I’m ok with this though. If each of the new workers can prove to be twice as effective as the previous, it’ll work out just fine.
Now onto the secondary organ and the minute adjustments to ensure the Bio-Soup being produced contains the extra bits and pieces needed to produce the new juiced up eggs.
By this point, my head is on fire. There isn’t anything more I can do here even if I wanted to. Hopefully, the work I’ve done is sufficient to make my dream a reality.
With that, I withdraw my mind from the core of the queen.
68. Unexpected Company
My mind snaps back to its regular housing and I take a moment to reorient myself. I’m still where I was before, partially buried in a mound of workers with the queen standing in front of me, quite close.
“Are you all right, child?” she asks, seeing me suddenly look so fatigued.
“I’m completely fine!” I gasp out as my brain continues to melt into sludge. “How are you? How did it all go?”
I’m anxious to know if there was any pain or discomfort during the process. I could have tested it on my pets, but there’s a chance the skill would have a different effect on them since they have a different relationship with me than most monsters. In the end, I went ahead and worked on the queen hoping it would all be fine.
“I am fine,” the queen assures me. “It tickled a bit.”
Tickled?
Having the fundamental makeup of your being tinkered with only results in a tickle?
Thank goodness!
“That’s great! Excellent! The whole process has been a success. Hopefully from now on, our family will experience a great gain in strength!”
I stick around to counsel the queen about spending some Biomass to mutate her egg production organs. She is quite reluctant at first. After trying several arguments, I eventually tell her that by upgrading all three organs to +5 it will greatly increase the effect of the changes I’ve made to her core. This isn’t really a lie. If she upgrades those organs and chooses some good mutation advancements for them, the rate of egg production will increase as the overall efficiency of the system goes up. I don’t know for sure what advancement choices will appear, though it isn’t hard to guess that almost all of them will be based around speeding up the process, reducing the cost of each egg or improving the stats of the offspring, any of which would be fine!
Once I’m certain the queen has agreed to upgrade all three organs before beginning to produce the new workers, I drag myself back down to where Tiny is waiting and take a quick nap. The relentless battering my mind has taken has pushed even my newly evolved self pretty darn hard. Using the Core Surgery skill in particular was exceptionally draining. If I’d attempted to do it with my old self, I’d have had absolutely no chance of getting anywhere. My respect for the Sophos only increases the further I walk down the path of core manipulation. Just how powerful are their minds to create the things they do? Are their brains filling their heads and extending down into their torsos? Where do they fit it all!