Chrysalis

Tentatively, I bring my antennae into contact with the Queen’s and then activate the skill.

Core Surgery!

With what I learned during the skill upgrade I know that all I need is to be touching a part of the body on the monster I’ll be ’operating’ on but with an ant it feels like the antennae are the most appropriate place.

As soon as the skill is activated I feel a massive burst of information 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! Frantically I 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 instantly 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 that ants weren’t common in the Dungeon, based on what the 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 but it isn’t the case. The Queen has three total organs that contribute to producing her offspring.

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 Biomass that she eats into eggs that can then be born. THIS is the

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 Biomass from eating surface monsters or weak, lower level

explains the connected organs for egg

to some kind of liquid sludge.

she spent almost every bit of Biomass

+5 for healing channelling and upgraded her healing mana gland to +5 to take burst heal upgrade that lets her wave out the

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

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 taking the reformed goop and making it into

figured I could just go to the ’baby ant’ section and whip up some magic but apparently not! I may have

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

lives. By increasing their youthful state I gain leeway to develop them into 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 a little longer than

an ant and I’m not aiming too. 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

pheromone language gland at birth. This way I’ll be able to communicate and teach them right from the moment they

Hmmmm...

hatchlings to an even more horrible floor than they already started with. They’ll be smaller and weaker than

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

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