Another thing my instincts were telling me was to make the walls into dungeon stone, and that was something I agreed with. There were only a few things that could break through dungeon stone, but if something like that came here, I would already be dead.

It took a while to do this and a lot of mana, but thanks to having real territory now, I was getting a lot more. Ants no longer give me mana only from their deaths. I was getting it from them living inside of me as well, once again proving that my instincts were wrong on that front.

I made it to the dirt part of my territory, and this time I also disagreed with my instincts a bit. Instead of replacing the dirt, I just made the dungeon stone a bit deeper so that it would still be there and continue to expand. It was a bit more difficult to expand like this, especially when I reached the ants as I had to wait for them to not be close to where I wanted to make the dungeon stone. There was even a need to go deeper as near the ant nest there wasn’t a place devoid of them.

The ceiling was a bit more difficult. There were numerous holes where ants went through to get to the surface. I also needed an entrance; otherwise, I would start to suffocate, so I just left those places open and grew my dungeon stone around them. Something concerning is that ants were getting closer to my core, and some of them were a bit bigger and stronger than normal. Was it my Mana-rich territory that caused them to change like that?

My worries were put aside as I noticed the battles grew more interesting because of it. The ants also seemed to employ more tactics. My favorite was when a colony had an especially good food item but not wanting to risk it being stolen, they voluntarily gave up a less desirable piece of food as a distraction. I felt that that was really clever, and that helped the red ants strengthen themselves so they could keep their current territory against larger numbers.

The ants were quite often at my core, and I didn’t like it when they touched me. However, they couldn't do anything to me as I was a lot bigger than them and made from quartz. In fact, I was 100% clear, something I was incredibly proud of. That also meant that my mana caused me to glow quite brightly. My worry grew into concern, and some of the bigger specimens tried to bite me. Right now, they couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t certain if that would be the case in the future.

I had ignored my instincts for a while now. They told me I needed to make the room bigger and then make more of them so I could gain more mana, but they also told me that I should make monsters to defend myself. For me, it was still more interesting to watch how the ants lived and fought. But I was becoming a distraction for the ants, so I decided to use one of their plans.

For the first time, I actively changed where I was moving myself more to the center of the room where it felt right to be. Then, I started to carve myself a pillar of dungeon stone so I could be even more in the center of the room. When I was there, it felt just right, and I started to grow the pillar around myself, extending it until I was completely hidden. If I were to completely encase myself, I would soon suffocate, but I wasn't going to do that.

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Right on top of myself, I made a structure from the crystal I was made from, but I made lots of holes into it so I wouldn’t suffocate. The light that was coming from my core was diffused when it hit the crystal above me, making me completely hidden from the outside world. On top of that crystal platform, I made myself but smaller, something that was more normal for dungeon cores. Now, I was hidden in plain sight, and I had a decoy.

The ants were curious, but whatever they liked about my core the decoy didn’t have it. When they couldn’t get closer to me, they eventually stopped bothering me. For the next few months, I spent my time observing how the ants lived, died and evolved. There were new types of ants doing more specific things, and they often surprised me with something new. Then, to my absolute horror, I could feel their fear. They were alerting the colony of danger. It had happened before, but nothing quite like this.

I calmed myself down a bit. Whatever it was, it shouldn't endanger my ants. Once, there was an animal with claws trying to dig into the ant nest, but my stone stopped it. So, it shouldn't have the capability to do anything to my ants. Only a few minutes later, I was proven completely wrong. I watched in horror as a narrow tongue slipped through the holes I left in my dungeon stone and captured an ant every time it returned.

This creature also tried to scratch its way deeper in, but it couldn't. That didn’t matter as its tongue was so long that none of the ants could escape. Usually, I needed a creature to be inside my territory to figure out what it was, but the creature spent so much time capturing my ants with its tongue that I was able to figure out that the creature was an anteater. An apt name.

In less than an hour, only a few ants were left alive. None of them, however, were the queen, so in less than a month, they would all be dead. I was devastated at first. I couldn’t believe what had happened. There was just no way. Then, I was angry, incredibly so, but I couldn’t do anything. The creature was long gone from here.

What a fool I was. I made dungeon ants and for a time I was distracted by them, but they just didn't feel right. They didn't have the same spark. While they still behaved like ants, I needed to tell them what they needed to do. They couldn’t decide for themselves.

I grieved for the loss of my ants. Eventually, I accepted what had happened and I killed most of the monsters that I had made. I only kept a few of the different species' queens and workers. They had already laid some eggs, and I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them just yet.

I was quite numb, so I just followed what my instincts were telling me. It was a slow going as I pushed my wall territory outwards. Soon, I figured out that I was at the base of a mountain. Unfortunately, I was close to the edge, so I constantly had to push my core room backwards so I could make more rooms like my instincts told me.

While I had the desire to decorate the rooms and make them more interesting, I just did the bare minimum that was needed. In the first room, I made my first monster. To my surprise, it seems that I knew how to make some monsters, probably thanks to whoever my parents were. When I figured this out, I spent a little bit more time trying to figure myself out and learned that dungeons don’t have parents. We only have one, and when we release one of our seeds, some of our knowledge goes with them to help them get started.

I expected that this horned rabbit would be quite interesting to observe in the wild, but right now, it was nothing but a puppet that couldn't do anything for itself. I knew that it was about twice the size of a normal rabbit and while the horn was short and blunt, it would still be quite painful when the rabbit jumped into someone. There was also a need to add something to the monsters' pattern, but that knowledge was a bit hazy. I guessed I didn’t get those memories completely.

I didn’t let that bother me and continued to expand. When my instincts finally relaxed, I had made five rooms and expanded my territory to the maximum I could. I could fit more than double the amount of rooms into the territory I claimed, but I didn't bother as my instincts were satisfied.

The reason why I expanded my territory so much was that it was quite interesting to see the new things I could discover. I even found something called copper that was inside a rock. It needed to be processed somehow to be used, at least that’s what my inherited memories indicated.