Antelligent Design

13. The Final Preparation

Well, that was an exhausting forty-eight hours. After slumping back into our chamber and putting Vibrant on guard duty, it’s time for me to spend my newly amassed wealth. The last few days have been extremely productive, both for the colony, and the village, not to mention the significant gains I’ve made within my own personal strength.

The increase in knowledge has proven itself valuable by how rapidly my Skills have been Levelling. It’ll probably take weeks to get things to the point I’d be happy with them, but at least I’m on the way.

Now let’s spend it up big!

I’ve got 276 Biomass in the bank and I’m ready to go.

At 65 apiece, this is enough to close the gap and get four body parts to +15. Now, what to choose?

Eyes for sure. Back to the ol’ classic! Up here on the surface, I find my eyesight still isn’t up to the task of seeing long distances. In the Dungeon, the wide-open spaces aren’t quite this wide and open, and I can get around much better.

[Would you like to upgrade Omni Focused Eyes from +10 to +15? This will cost 65 Biomass.]

Let’s do it!

[At this level, you may choose to combine your mutations or emphasise one. Which will you select?]

Okay then! So far, I’ve upgraded my eyes to have a long-distance section of vision focused toward the front. Then I upgraded them to have other, separate areas of focused vision pointing in most directions. The effect is that I have quite decent vision forward, above, behind and to the sides of me, but with fairly chunky gaps of poor, blurry eyesight between. I’m happy with both upgrades, so I suppose the way forward is to fuse!

Nice. Let’s hold that one and focus on the next. I think carapace plating will be the solid play. If I’m going to keep fighting against monsters as far out of my league stats-wise as I have been so far, then I want all the defence I can get!

[Would you like to upgrade your Dispersive Regenerative Inner Carapace Plating to +15? This will cost 65 Biomass.]

Yassss!

[At this level, you may choose to combine your mutations or emphasise one. Which will you select?]

Now this is a little interesting. The two upgrades I have on my inner carapace, Dispersive and Regenerative, are both very useful. The dispersive plating helps my carapace to spread out the damage of blunt attacks, making it harder to crack. Whilst the regenerative aspect allows my plating to rapidly regenerate itself. This increases my survivability by a lot since my carapace is tough to penetrate and heals damage.

If both upgrades are equally good, we will fuse them!

Two to go.

I think I’ll choose my Regeneration Gland on this one. If I’m going to be battling up against larger, more damaging monsters, then being able to repair damage during the fight could be critical, just as it has been in the past. The thing that worries me the most is my legs. My carapace is super tough and getting tougher with every mutation and evolution. I’m excessively proud of it, to be honest. So shiny. So strong.

But it doesn’t do a whole lot for my stick-like ant legs. Monstrous ant I may be, but my legs remain skinny and oh so snap-able. Although, I really didn’t think legs this size would be able to hold me up at my current girth. I suppose I have Mana to thank for that. They’re a defensive liability, so I desperately want to improve my capacity to regrow them at a moment’s notice.

[Would you like to upgrade your Rapid Limb Regeneration Gland to +15? This will cost 65 Biomass.]

[At this level, you may choose to combine your mutations or emphasise one. Which will you select?]

The two upgrades I have assist in the growth of missing limbs, which thankfully includes my antennae, and speeds up the process. Both are valuable, so fusion is once again the path I choose. One selection to go, and I think it’ll be wise to go with antennae on this one. Improving senses has never steered me wrong.

[Do you wish to improve Precognitive Infrared Antennae to +15? This will cost 65 Biomass.]

Yessiree.

[At this level, you may choose to combine your mutations or emphasise one. Which will you select?]

I have to think on this a bit. Infrared is quite useful, another way to detect enemies and to help cover up sensory shortages in other areas. Having said that, my senses have been steadily improving, particularly my sight. There isn’t really a need to emphasise the infrared. The Future Sight has been very interesting, not to mention saving my life—if not my backside.

My reflexes and reactions are almost not quite fast enough to make full use of the tiny glimpse into the future that my antennae give me. Emphasising this mutation will perhaps give me that extra nano-second that’ll make all the difference. Ok. I’m going to emphasise the precognitive.

Excellent choices, Anthony. Time to lock them in!

Hmm… Humm—HENG.

HANGARAMBA!

DAMMIT!

As the itch overpowers my senses, I flop to the ground, twitching uncontrollably, my body no longer responding in the way I want it to.

I-I hate this!

Eventually, it fades and I regain control of myself, averting my gaze from the judging eyes of Tiny. I can’t help it, man! It’s not my fault…

With that behind me, I can have a quick rest. After farming away in the Expanse and mutating, I’m ready for a quick break.

And I’m up!

Getting my legs moving, I check out the situation in the nest. Phew! The pupae haven’t hatched yet. Ominously, the next two hundred larvae have already hatched. Very small at the moment, so soon after emerging from their eggs, the little grubs are tended to by a small army of workers who diligently clean and stuff them full of the food they’d been amassing for just this purpose.

As soon as the flood of eggs started hitting the nest, the workers, ever on the job, began to hoard food, storing it in their social stomachs and squirrelling it away for the young. Secretly, I’m hoping this will slow down the queen a little on her march to explode the colony’s population. Even though the first batch has hatched, there’s another two hundred waiting for their moment. They’ll hatch in a few days and it’ll be a hell of a job trying to get four hundred members of the new generation up to speed.

The whole point of creating this new breed of ant is to give them a chance to fight intelligently so they don’t have to meaninglessly die by hurling themselves into the enemy. If I don’t raise them properly and bring them out of the weak hatchling phase, they might die as soon as something looks at them sideways.

Since I have a moment of time, I head over to the village and bring along a sample of the wood we brought up from the Expanse. I want Enid to take a look at it since she was a merchant who specialised in Dungeony type stuff.

To my displeasure, she’s otherwise occupied supervising a Dungeon delve away from the village, and only Beyn is around to speak with me. Talking with the one-armed priest is always… loud.

[OH, GREAT ONE! I am honoured by your GIFT of this STICK!]

[Too loud! It’s not a stick. We took it from the Expanse. Give it to Enid.]

[I understand, O Great One. I shall present your stick to the mayor as soon as she returns.]

[Not a stick—Mayor? Enid’s been promoted?]

Beyn shrugged.

[It was more just making formal what had already been in place. She’s been running this new village since we got here. May as well call her the mayor for her trouble.]

Makes sense, I suppose.