Doyle stood back from himself and considered the floors. In theory, which floor he chooses doesn’t matter as eventually the ageless ant queen will become a wandering boss. However, the system seemed to like to say stuff like that and then under deliver. After all, he had gotten the paths related to his monsters evolving into elemental variants a while ago and yet nothing. It almost felt like someone out there was rolling dice and yet never getting a crit.
Whatever the case may be, for now he needed to choose the best place with the assumption that the queen would be stuck there for a while. That basically removed the fifth floor and those that came before it. They weren’t bad floors, but he wanted the queen to get a few levels under her belt. That would be a bit hard in the early floors as without being a roaming boss, the queen will be level limited based on the floor like anything else.
With that in mind, Doyle soon settled on the ninth floor. Sure, the tenth floor would be better, what with it being one floor deeper. However, if it was there, then whenever a party was fighting the boss Doyle would be semi cutoff from the queen.
On the ninth floor, Doyle would still be able to freely communicate with her. Sure, even if the floor she is on is being delved, he can pass a message on through the other linked queens. That, however, is much more one way than he would like.
Not that Doyle has any real plans for how he wants to mess with occupied floors. It was just better to be ready in case something came up. Though more important was just going to be having the ants look after the small things.
Both in size and subject. Sure, Doyle has a perfect view of his dungeon. However, not even natural born dungeons keep their entire dungeon monitored, let alone a human turned dungeon. There is just too much to watch.
The ant’s don’t suffer this problem as they split the work. As the system shows, it isn’t impossible to watch literally everything. Dungeons and in fact most sapients just aren’t up to it. A swarm of ants, though? Well, now we’re talking.
So with the ninth floor chosen, it was a matter of choosing which queen. Well, he could have chosen one of the pre-existing nests. Doyle could also make a nest that is completely separate from the floor. He chose neither.
Instead, he placed the nest in about the most boring location, right outside of the safety zone at the floor’s entrance portal. Sure, it means they can’t do much about enemies that pass them by. However, that doesn’t matter to Doyle as he is chasing after different metrics.
That of safety while at the same time allowing access. Placed too close to anywhere else and it might get caught up in some kind of earth magic or an explosion of some sort. Though Doyle did see the irony in the safest place being where the enemy enters the floor.
Even the exit wasn’t as safe as a monster could be chased that way. Sure, that is technically possible at the entrance as well, but that would require the delvers to get behind one of the mobile monsters and then chase it all the way back. Not very practical.
So with his choice made and a new ant nest placed, Doyle sits there for a moment. He pauses a moment more. Right, he doesn’t actually know how to do this. It would make sense for it to be some kind of system command and so a few are tried. Though once he got it right, he did feel a bit silly.
Doyle had been overthinking things. All it took was to think with intent about the queen he wanted and to tell the system, ‘[Assign this queen as the ageless queen]’. You know, like the name of the path except not plural. Strange that the path was plural despite only giving a single ageless queen, but it isn’t like he can call someone up and complain about the name or anything.
Though it might hint at there being something more to the path. Various meanings that quickly pop into Doyle’s head and flitter around. Stuff like potential follow up paths and the possibility of his queen at some point connecting to a greater ant hivemind. None of the ideas are completely impossible, it could even just represent a common path for ant hives.
However, Doyle tamps down on those ideas as he observes the chosen ant queen change. At first he can’t really tell what is happening as the queen’s exoskeleton splits, though it soon becomes clear. She is molting, which would make sense if she is going to be getting bigger.
This takes a long time. Well, a single molt doesn’t take too much time, but it isn’t just a single molt. After she finishes one and her shell fully hardens, the process repeats and repeats. Going from the size of the common black garden ant all the way to the size of a thumb and that doesn’t include the legs and antenna. Rather, just the central body and head parts are the size of an adult’s thumb.
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Quite impressive, though through knowledge provided by his ant pattern, Doyle realizes this isn’t too far out of range for a normal ant. Well, normal if you include some kind of rainforest ant which held the title of the largest ant species before the system showed up. That ant could be said to be thumb sized, except that was including the legs and only when comparing it against a smaller thumb, but still impressive.
Of course, with how the square cube law works, there is a whole lotta more ant in his queen than in the rainforest species. So while not too out of whack, anyone that sees her will certainly know something is up. Besides, it isn’t like there are rainforests around here, so most ants people will have seen are the smaller kind. Good thing the queen isn’t meant to be parading around outside of her nest.
However, before he can think on this more, a sort of static seems to invade Doyle’s head. He can tell it is coming from outside. In fact, the source is obvious, the new queen. She is trying to communicate, but sadly the mental boost from the path isn’t quite enough to allow it to start talking moments after gaining them. Though it does make him really wish the language pack he had gotten oh so long ago was cheaper.
That or maybe he needs to watch his world energy reserves better. While a million and a half is a large number, when his most recent floor could only have 33k in monsters. The amount also wasn’t too big. After all, he is restocking the floors as they get cleared multiple times throughout the day.
It honestly just made him feel like a farmer, rich on paper, but cash poor. Sure, at any one point in time Doyle had a bunch of invested points in a similar way to how a farmer had a bunch of expensive assets, those tractors aren’t cheap. However, he couldn’t use the harvest of points to buy other stuff. He had to reinvest it into the floor that was just cleared including any loot that dropped and needed replacing. Same old story, the farmer sells his crops only to need to put all that money back into seed, feed, and repairing or replacing equipment.
Thank goodness Doyle switched most of his floors over to, ironically now that he thinks of it with what his previous comparison was, farming. That wasn’t enough to be completely self sufficient though, especially on the sixth floor. He had thought having an equal amount of monsters in the farm zone would cover it. How foolish he was.
Even with the farm pumping out cattle nonstop, the town was in the middle of a beef craze. Those cows out in their pastures are safe and some are even providing milk already. Suffice it to say, the town was quite happy with their choice of Moota as the deity to watch over the cows. Sure, a deity for the farmers would work just as well, if from a different direction. The biggest difference is that this way, they don’t have to personally worship a deity for it.
The cattle in the dungeon? Suffice it to say, if anyone bothered to actually butcher them instead of letting them turn into perfect cuts of meat, the town would be able to single-handedly supply every settlement that can make it to Wolf’s Rest. Though even as it is, they’re basically already supplying all the meat.
Which would be more impressive if people’s consumption was anything like it was pre-system. Not that suddenly people stopped wanting to consume meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rather, most people outside of Wolf’s Rest weren’t ready for their food to try and turn the tables on them. Even the cute little white-tail deer was more than willing to take the fight to the hunters if you didn’t take them down with the first shot.
Doyle shakes his core and focuses back on the ageless queen ant. She was still unable to communicate and no amount of daydreaming will change the fact that he had only half paid for the 1.5mil and change. So, while the language pack would be super useful and most likely also speed up the kobolds figuring out how to read the monument. It would have to wait.
Just like Doyle had to wait for the ant to figure out communication. Because, of course, the static wasn’t actually static. Rather, it was pheromones and such being broadcast telepathically. Oh, and the wait was a couple weeks, during which a certain team had been grinding away at the sixth floor. Half because the money from bringing back steak was decent and mostly because they don’t quite have the endurance to beat all the monsters on the floor.
Henry sighs as Ion collects the last drop. The herd of 20 cattle had given them quite the challenge. “Such an unlucky draw to face a full group just after we get here!”
Chad nods as he shifts his backpack to make it more comfortable. “Seriously! Though all of them dropped some larger cuts like prime rib. There is nothing that sucks more than to kill a cow only for it to drop a single budget cut steak. At least our waiting in line won’t have been a waste.”
Henry laughs, “Good chance for me to go get some more lessons from that butcher in town. I don’t get why everyone insists on using the much less skilled locals to do the butchering when they’ve got a true pro in the system shop.
Susie shudders, “That thing isn’t right. I don’t get why you’re so insistent on learning from them. It isn’t like you want to become a butcher.”
Henry shakes his head, “You wouldn’t get it. The guy knows stuff! Didn’t you see how cleanly I cut that one bull? I can hardly imagine what he could teach me if I could get an entire body to him!”
Alive curls her lips, “I’m the rogue and yet I’m not in with this. Like, sneak attacks and hitting weak points should be my jam, but I can’t stand the guy. There is just something off about him. Plus, his past is totally locked down. No question works and not because he doesn’t want to tell. No, it is because he can’t tell. I advise you to give up on his lessons.”
Henry snorts, “You just don’t get it. He knows stuff! Sure, some bits of him are a little unstable, but I’m willing to ascribe that to some kind of past trauma.”
Susie rolls her eyes and sarcastically quips, “Yeah, just a little unstable.”