It took a bit of effort for my rats to get through such a narrow hole but they eventually made it and found themselves in a room not dissimilar to the storage room in the factory which I came from with one quite important major difference. On the ground of the room were dozens of drones which looked charred or in some cases completely reduced to slag. What happened here?

Ignoring the corpses for a second, I had my scouts look through the various crates for supplies and stuff but they found nothing so I had them inspect the corpses which led to the outstanding discovery that they were in fact burned. Looking around the room for a way out, I see the obvious thing which is the door, however my scouts likely do not have the mass to even pull the door knob down since the spiders had struggled when they did it and my scouts were less than a quarter the weight of a spider each.

Then, I found an air vent which had a convenient little hole in it which my scouts happily climbed through. Continuing through the vent, my drones quickly find a grater blocking their way further; however, there was another path going to the right which they promptly begin moving through. Not long after the change in direction they find themselves at the end of the vent and thankfully it was already open.

Looking down, my scout rat could see that there were a few loose crates which would break their fall so they quickly dropped down into the room. Looking around I could see a large box-like machine which was about the size of a tipped-over fridge with a conveyor belt coming out of the bottom part of it. My drones scurried over to the machine and upon close expectation, they could see that the machine had its internals ripped out of it and had some minor burn marks across its hall.

Nevertheless, my scout rats began their scanning process and soon the description made itself known. According to said description, the medium drone works was basically the bigger brother of the small drone works and could fabricate medium sized drones along with the smaller sizes, although with a decreased efficiency. Unfortunately, the larger drone production capabilities came at a price as the medium drone works required an outside source of power to function unlike the small drone works which could rely on internal power collection for its electrical needs.

Great, one more step towards getting those big ants. However, how am I going to get power for the drone works, I haven't seen anything that might be able to generate electricity yet. Perhaps there’s something further into this factory section. Ordering my drones to look out of the room, my scout scuttles over to the door and begins peering out into a hallway along with a familiar looking sign stating that the room adjacent to the one I just came from was the stairs.

Moving up the next floor, my drones looked through an already opened set of doors into another large room which was about half the size of the main factory room. In the center of the room was a rusty beetle-like drone corpse which was laying belly down on the ground. Around the drone were the slagged and burnt corpses of other drones which surrounded the beetle as if they were charging towards the drone before they died.

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I began getting an uneasy feeling which seemed to take root around the back of my head, and it was strong enough to make me order one of my scouts to poke the rusted drone. I ordered my other scouts to stay near the door just in case something happened and I needed them to run. I watched, from one of the non-sacrificial scouts, as my rat cautiously approached the strange drone corpse.

As fast as I could blink, the beetle sprung to life upon the scout moving past the ring of destroyed drones and the top of the beetle opened up to release a tube like appendage, in front of which was a small flame. Seeing the writing on the wall, I ordered all of my drones to get out of there as fast as they could, unfortunately the one which I had sent to inspect the beetle was immediately incinerated by the beetle’s uncaring flames.

My remaining scout rats rushed back towards the room which they had dropped down from the vents and quickly climbed up onto the crates in order to reach the still opened vent. Jumping into the vent, my scout rats dashed back out and away from where they had come from and began making their way to the factory with one less member.

With them on their way, I slipped back out of their vision and began thinking back on the strange beetle drone which had so quickly dispatched my unfortunate drone. It was definitely concerning to know that they could take down my drones so quickly so I made a mental note to not go back to the factory segment without something which I was confident in their ability to take down the beetle.

My spiders certainly are not quick enough to get to the beetle before it begins torching them and I doubt that my new ant drone would do very well against it seeing as they were described as quite slow in comparison to my drones which meant they would have to endure the fire that much longer. To ensure that none of my drones enter that area I designate it as a no go zone to all of my drones who seemed more than happy to oblige.

When my scout rats returned, I began ordering for their replacement members to begin being produced and told my scouts that they were to wait until their reinforcements finished fabrication and to begin monitoring the area around the factory and, more importantly, the large tower for any signs of hostile activity.

Now that they had their orders, I decided to wander about the factory where I saw GW-3N making themselves busy by helping out a couple of my spiders haul some particularly large chunks of scrap metal into the refinery which was nice of them. Speaking of spiders, they were still hard at work on the core which looks to have around an hour left to go which was nice.

Since the core was almost completed, I decided to pull a couple of my spiders off it and sent them on their way to begin constructing the medium drone works even if I did not have the power generation to operate it. Who knows maybe a convenient source of power will magically manifest before me. And with that I float about the factory, watching all my drones scuttle around.