Pain starts to prickle at my consciousness. Not a shrieking or even very loud pain. More… like an itch, like ants are crawling on my skin… Oh.
I expand my mental scope, zooming my perspective as far out as I can. The noodly mass of tunnels and rooms that is my body floats in front of me, surrounded by a murky void. And above all that, in the topmost layers of that void, are small pinpricks of light. Each pinprick has a small tube around it that is slowly growing downwards.
With a rush of black around my vision, I focus on one of those small tunnels. Well, small is relative here, they’re still wide enough to fit a car. The cause of their growth is very apparent, as at the head of the tunnel are four large ants. Roughly the size of a refrigerator each their carapaces glint in the light from the tunnel openings. Two of them are slightly larger, with flat, shovel-like pincers that sharpen at the tips. The duo of miner ants hurriedly pick at the stone, shoving the loose rubble behind them with the flats of their mandibles.
The other two ants are different, sleeker with a more compact body shape. The mandibles are neatly folded into the front of their heads, making their bodies more low profile. Small wisps of smoke rise from the folded up mouthparts, trailing behind them as they descend.
“Are those ants?” Maddi’s surprised voice fills my mind. I almost forgot she can use my dungeon view.
I give a pulse of confirmation. “They aren’t like any ants I’ve seen though. Not that I know much about ants.” I wasn’t an insect lover in my previous life, at all. I’m surprised I’m as fond of my spiders as I am.
Curiosity spikes in the back of my mind. Where are these things coming from? Their tunnels are filled with daylight, are they burrowing from the surface? I shift so that I’m looking up one of their tunnels, directly upwards. At the end of the ant’s construction is a gaping hole. Instead of seeing the sky, or any other sensible sight, there’s only television static.
“Maddi, are you seeing static as well?” I know my demon has probably been looking through my eyes.
“Um, I’m not sure what static is meant to refer to in this usage, but I do see a bunch of random colors and shades of white and gray flashing. It’s… giving me a headache.”
Right, she’s never seen TV… I wonder why she’s getting a headache though? Whatever, better to look away and spare the poor girl. Not like I’ll learn anything more from staring at the visual noise.
My view shifts back to the entire picture again, showing my body in full. The ants are making good time, already halfway to my highest tunnel. I notice that a few of the tunnels, ones in the center of the group, are bending towards each other. Fascination overtakes me as I just watch the intruders merge their paths. Once around ten of the groups meet up, they start to make a cavern. The rapidly expanding cave sits just above the topmost layers of my body. Once the large space is seemingly finished, I feel a large flash of pain.
My mind’s eye snaps back to the start of the tunnels, just in time for another hole to open up at the top. The new puncture in my ‘skin’ also is full of static, and is much larger than any of the others.
A large, black leg reaches from the static, rippling its surface as it passes through. Very Stargate. The weight on the other side of the wormhole must be significant, because I can vaguely feel the foot pressing into me. Which is surprising in itself, so far nothing that’s happened has given me such a feeling. How large is this thing?
Another leg emerges, quickly digging into the stone of the tunnel floor. I feel another pinch as a massive head pulls its way through the portal. Mandibles that could easily hold my core pass through, quickly followed by an equally massive head. Compound eyes that glint with intelligence look around the new space as two long antennae flicker through the space. At the end of each of the feelers are two razor sharp hooks that glint in the light from the hole.
The giant ant pulls itself further into the tunnel. Around five minutes pass before it succeeds, as its massive abdomen just never seems to end. At several points, miner ants have to come up the tunnels and widen the space for the creature. Once the creature is fully through, the portal flashes shut behind it. Its large mandibles clack together triumphantly.
The queen ant has arrived.
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“Wow…” Maddi whispers in awe. I mean, it is a huge ant, but it’s not that impressive. Look at Mama Silk! She’s not as big, but… Yeah okay, it’s a huge fucking ant.
“Her stats are insane!” The girl squeaks. Stats? How’d she see… oh, it's a monster, right.
I flick open the monster stat menu and look at the royal ant. Sure enough, words flicker into existence.
〘〜〜〜〜〜〜〙 Nameless Dungeon Ant Queen (Invader) Adult Female Invader Queen Earth, Creation, Domination Affinities. Extreme Vitality, Extreme Endurance, High Intelligence, Low Spirit, Low Mana, Otherwise Average. Minor Blessing of the Mother, (Temporary Blessing Invulnerability) 〘〜〜〜〜〜〜〙
Wow, Maddi wasn’t kidding. Not just high stats either, a blessing too. I’m assuming those are important or good. I should ask Maddi, she seems to just know things. What worries me the most is the bit at the end.
Temporary blessing invulnerability. I’m assuming that means I can’t use my blessing to just remove it from my personal space. My blessing that I most certainly hadn’t forgotten about until just now. That would be so foolish of me…
I look at one of the miner ants, out of curiosity.
〘〜〜〜〜〜〜〙 Miner Ant 032 Dungeon Ant (Miner, Invader) Adult Female Miner Earth, Destruction, and Cleansing Affinities. Extreme Endurance, High Strength, Otherwise Average. (Temporary Blessing Invulnerability) 〘〜〜〜〜〜〜〙
Great, so all the ants have that. This stupid system is clearly thinking about my own abilities more than I am… Whatever, now's not the time to beat myself up! In the small amount of time I’ve been thinking, the ant queen has already reached the main cavern her subjects made and had her first batch of eggs. The bastards are just making themselves at home then.
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“We should start preparing defenses,” I murmur to Maddi.
She coughs politely. “I’ve… already been doing that, ma’am.”
“What?” I squeak.
Maddi answers sheepishly. “Yeah, I’ve already gotten things moving while you thought things over. Shall I give you a report?”
…Geeze, she’s better at this dungeon thing than I am. I guess it’s better to have an assistant that does a superior job than you then one that sucks. It doesn’t hurt my pride at all!
“Sure!” I say with too much enthusiasm.
She giggles at my antics. “I’ve warned the kobolds, and they’ve begun building defensive structures. I think they’re unlikely to be invaded from above, since the stone gets harder the deeper in you go, and the core room is almost invulnerable.” Of course! I knew that, for sure… How does this lady know more about my anatomy than I do? I didn’t really even know that I was made of stone outside of my tunnels!
She continues. “The spiders didn’t need a warning. Queen Silk sent out her children the moment the ants arrived. She seems to be able to sense them, somehow. They’re filling every tunnel they can with webbing.” I nod, that makes sense. “Azrael is warning the town, but…” She goes quiet.
“But?” I press.
“Before we got the message to him, the ants had already reached the human cavern.”
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I jump between rooftops, silently landing on the pads of my paws.
“There’s a group coming in just above, watch out!” I yell. A group of people on the street below me raise their shields, prepared for the incoming threat.
Cracks splinter across the false sky above, quickly becoming denser before shattering completely. Through the newly made hole falls several giant ants. Two larger ones with massive heads bulldoze through anything in their way as they fall. Behind them follow two sleek ants with smoking heads.
Metal clangs as the humans below slam their shields into the hefty insects. One especially large man shoves one back with his shield, sending the creature tumbling into a nearby building. Spears flicker out from behind the wall of steel and wood to swing at the two smaller ants. One is immediately hit, its head cut clean off in one stroke from one of the men’s spears. The other spits out a steaming liquid at the attacking weapons, pushing itself out of the way of their swings.
The still alive assault ant lands on the back of the attacking miner ant. The smaller bug doesn’t get much assistance, as the large ant is quickly assaulted. Wounds crack open in the dense bug’s carapace, the light in its eyes swiftly extinguished by the hammers of the shield bearers. With a quick jump, the lighter insect lands by the miner ant that’s still in the wall. The tankier of the two finally pulls itself from the wall of the building it was sent tumbling into.
The miner steps in front of the steaming ant protectively. It snaps its massive jaws at the approaching warriors, covering the sound of its ally launching a chemical blast. A glob of acid rapidly flies towards the humans, landing on one of the defending shields. The blast is easily blocked, but some of it splashes up and over the top edge of the shield. Screams sound out as the skin of the unfortunate man’s face burns away. He falls back, clawing at his face, and drops his damaged shield.
The larger of the two ants leaps at the newborn opening. Deciding that things are about to go south, I intervene. Leaping from the rooftop I’ve been watching from, I gather shadowy flames around my claws. Silently I drop onto the creature's unprotected head.
Its carapace bursts open like a ruptured melon, steaming as its insides make contact with my shadow flames. Behind me a similar fate befalls the assault ant, as one of the mages in the rear of the group finishes conjuring their spell. The insides of the ranged insect rapidly cool, causing its shell to burst as ice emerges from inside.
I look over at the man who was hit by acid. Before I can even check if he’s still alive, the number of lifeforce ticks up in the corner of my mind. With similar events happening all over town, I move on.
It’s a wonder why these people live here.
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In less than four hours, the denizens of the dungeon and the invaders reach a standstill. Very few ants ever made it near the kobolds, let alone to my core, so they’ve had to do very little. The reason for their lack of danger is the work of the spiders. Mama Silk has waged furious trench warfare on the formic menace. Her children successfully webbed almost every tunnel, forcing the ants to either dig their own, or be funneled into the few unwebbed ones. The few unlucky groups that decided to take the latter path ended up walking into the maws of Mama’s lurking children.
The humanoid village has taken the most damage. Their giant purple crystal winked out as soon as the first ant tunneled into me, and hasn’t turned back on, leaving them vulnerable. During the first hour the ants fell from the ceiling directly above their town, dropping right on the heads of the townsfolk. After the insects’ initial assault, things changed. The humans gathered their wits, causing this ambush method of attack to just end in slaughter for the ants. The invasive queen seems to have realized this, and has switched to a more hit and run style assault with larger groups. Once the humans built a perimeter, that method stopped being effective as well. And so the war has turned into one of pure numbers, the waves of ants slamming into the shores of spiders, neither side showing any sign of fatigue.
But, I’ve a plan! Not a very clever one, but one that should work pretty well. Even though both the spiders and ants are magical monsters, they still need food. And they need even more food to make eggs, which they’re doing in massive numbers. So the dungeon population of dusties and rats has rapidly dwindled to almost nothing. This is where my simple but hopefully effective ploy comes in.
In the initial assault, many people from the humanoid town died, giving me a huge boost of lifeforce. Since dusties are so cheap, I can create them in large numbers directly into the currently barren webs of the spiders. And so the ants will starve, and the spiders will not.
There is a flaw in doing this. It’s gonna take forever. The dusties are weak, but crafty, and the ants just don’t have the skills the spiders do. So many of the small robots escape from the jaws of the ants, to go and form more pockets of dusties. This cycle is forcing the conflict on longer than it would otherwise.
Maddi’s gentle voice pierces my thoughts. “Ma’am, I think it’ll take approximately four months for the ants to completely wipe out the ‘dusties’.” The woman says the small critters name with a level of disdain I can’t fathom. What’s wrong with dusties?
“Alright, so we’re in it for the long haul.” I groan. “What should we do in the meantime then?”
“Uh, ma’am.” Maddi says.
“Mmm? What is it?”
She pauses. “Weren’t you going to talk about something before this all started?” Her tone is gentle, but my stomach drops all the same. Fear immediately starts to fester within me.
“R-right.” I let out another sigh. “We were about to do that…” Where do I even begin? I’m so used to avoiding it…
Maddi cuts into me like a hot knife. “So, are you a girl?”
My mind reels from her question. Even though it’s been floating around in the back of my head for so long, I still haven’t ever given it my full attention. Am I? I mean, I’m a dungeon now, a living building, so does it even matter?
Who am I kidding? If it didn’t matter, I wouldn’t have hesitated to give my name, or tell Taven what my gender is. All the excuses I can come up with won’t ever cover up the tugging I feel on my self. But… even then. I’m still a guy, a human. I’m just inside this dungeon body… right?
But this feeling isn’t new. Isn’t something that started since I came here. I can separate the new urges that have occasionally pulled on my mind from the ache that’s always been there. Being a dungeon is new, but wanting to be a girl is not. And, if I’m honest with myself, becoming a dungeon is an improvement compared to dealing with the body I had on earth. Being a mass of tunnels and caves filled with life doesn’t send my stomach curling with revulsion, or make my mind recoil.
You know what? Fuck it. Let’s just do what I want. I’ve been tossed into this insane situation, with a fantastically different body. I’m a natural predator of sentient life, and a host of monsters. I’ll let myself embrace my new life. I can let myself be me.
And that’s a girl, and a dungeon.
Deep within me, something shifts. A weight lifts from my mind, like some anime character taking off training weights. My vision within the dungeon sharpens, the colors brighten, everything becomes… more real. A level of disconnect I never even noticed vanishes almost instantly.
“Ma’am! Your core, it's repairing itself!” Maddi’s excited voice interrupts my journey of self discovery. Without thinking, I move my view to the core room.
My core is glowing much brighter than normal, to the point of being almost blinding. If it wasn’t part of my body, I’d assume it was going nuclear. But, instead of it getting hot or hurting, I feel nothing but a soothing warmth. As I watch, the large crack in the upper corner rapidly smooths over. Maddi is right, it’s healing.
I hear the woman chuckle. “So, can I assume you figured out your answer?” Her smirky grin would easily be sensed, even if I couldn’t see her at the moment.
I mentally smile back at the demon.
“Yes. Yes, I'm a girl."