Pov Vib Ci

I was moving towards the descent tunnel with the words of Father still rattling around in my mind. I do not know if I would have been able to give such permission, to purposely let go and weaken yourself. There’s so much to learn from this decision, and I now kind of don’t want to do my job, but it is my job, and I have my orders.

I am to descend below Father to the colony of the underworld, get everything I need from there, and then start scouting further than I ever have before. With most likely 10,000 other ants similar to me doing the same.

I was barely a year old when I learned that there is no such thing as completely unique for an ant, yet I was not common either. Even now, the scouts around me, who would be doing the same job as me, waiting to descend, weren't quite like me.

I was a lot smaller, which meant that I should not be able to cover as much ground as them, be able to fight as well, or have the stamina to keep going as long as they do. I didn’t like those limitations, and with the correct skill choices, I managed to fix two of those problems. As for combat, I went the other route—avoiding it as much as possible.

Only the true geniuses could have all three, and I knew I wasn’t that, but I was still elite, and I wasn’t going to let my commanders down, even if I no longer fully agree with the choices we had made. Finally, my turn came, and I jumped down the descent tunnel, letting gravity take hold and whatever Father did to make sure that we didn't accelerate too much.

Every so often, I needed to grab hold of the walls and rush past intersections that led sideways. From those tunnel entrances, I saw thousands upon thousands of large ants working on the dungeon’s fortress project.

All of them there were monsters; the only real ants working on the fortress project were down below, bringing non-dungeon materials into the dungeon, where the monster ants picked them up and used the materials to further fortify Father.

It took me an hour to reach the underground colony. A huge cavern was down below, filled with activity. The builders here took a different approach to our usual colonies. When they finished making a big enough area for Father to keep breathing, even if his surface entrances are blocked, we didn't start building colonies upwards from the floor. Instead, we went downwards to leave as much open space as possible.

What we also did was continue to excavate even beyond Father’s needs, as we still got resources for non-dungeon materials brought here. At first, everyone planned to use those materials to further their individual nations, and while a little bit of those resources go back up, basically everything is used to continue expanding here, even more since our goals have changed.

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After descending using the structures we’ve built from the tunnel entrance, I joined the mass of ants moving all around. There was a lot more excitement in the air, but I couldn’t enjoy it as they seemed to. It felt wrong, what we were doing, and perhaps there are ways we can fix the shortcomings of this plan of ours, but those decisions are way above my station.

It didn’t take me long to gather everything I needed. These spatial bags that have been developed have extended our ability to stay in the field at least 100-fold, which I enjoyed. I was one of the weird ants that didn’t like much company, but then again, most scouts were like this as we needed to spend a lot of time alone. I went through one of the tunnels towards the north of this world, leaving the underground colony behind.

I had a long journey ahead that would take me through two minor underworld areas where the biospheres only contained a few types of creatures. Father already got their patterns, but we have taken over those environments and, for the first time, are herding creatures not of the dungeon.

From what I’ve heard, it’s not much different, although this creature seemed to be a little bit more unpredictable, but the ants responsible for them seemed to enjoy that.

There are a lot of empty areas without any inhabitants or even plants that we have run across, but that’s because they don’t have mana crystals that give off light. That seems to be the deciding factor if there’s life or not, although it’s not a 100% rule—it’s close to it.

We didn’t do anything with those areas before, but I’m certain that those empty areas will soon have light as well, and we would be making farming areas out of those places, as it’s always easier if we didn’t have to dig huge areas out by ourselves.

It took me a week to reach the end of the scouted area, so now it was time to continue going further. I activated my sense skills and let the world I knew fall away, replaced by a new one. It was full of faint colors, with a few bright lights in basically all directions. We had orders not to delve too deep, so I discounted the lights that were below me or above. We didn’t want to go too close to the surface.

I focused on the north, sensing the lights in that direction. Whenever I picked a light, I focused on the color. If it was connected to the outside world, it would have a blue hue that everything seemed to have when it’s connected to the outside world. There didn’t seem to be any, which was good news. The light didn’t seem too bright, indicating there wasn’t a lot of life there.

I deactivated my skills, but I still remembered the direction I needed to go. Now it was time to hopefully find a way through. Fortunately, I didn’t need to dig, as I was a bit too small to move fast through this kind of rock. Some brilliant ant developed a skill that lets us move through rock without having to dig our way through.

There are a lot of stipulations, and it takes time to do it properly, but it’s still a hell of a lot faster than trying to dig through this. That being said, I know some diggers who could rip through this rock like it wasn’t even there and probably advance faster than I could.

I will leave the decision-making and colony expansion to the ones who have those jobs. I am good at scouting; I like it, and it’s what I’m good at. So I dived into the rock, sensing my way ahead, looking for pockets of empty space to have places where I could rest.

It didn't take me long to find such areas, and thankfully I wasn’t too big, but I saw the advantage of being our original size. I still couldn’t imagine just being the size of my eye—how could we ever have been so small? But that didn't matter now.

I also had to record and write into my report the different kinds of materials I was moving through and if there were any resources we could use. It was going to be a busy time. My antenna twitched from happiness as I thought of this, while continuing to move forward.