It took us a whole extra day to clean up the entire yellow mess that had been created inside of the Clinic. The damn yellow spores had been so damn aggressive that they had tried to grow from just about every available object that they had landed on, so we had been forced to wipe down absolutely every surface inside of the building with medicinal alcohol, including every nook and cranny of our own bodies, as the fungi did not seem to like that particular volatile compound at all; they died the instant their membranes got exposed to the ethanol.
Every item that could be boiled had also been dunked and overheated in some nearby very large vats of steaming water. And when even that did not work, we simply used our spirit manipulators to flash-freeze or incinerate the spores by manipulating the nearby available environmental thermal energy to kill them off permanently.
Only after a lot of effort from all of the people in my party, at least the ones who could use their branch-tentacles, did we manage to permanently get rid of the nasty yellow things.
Of course, our continuous struggle did not go unrewarded, as the System saw it fit to award each and every one of us who had participated in the cleansing with a bunch of achievements that also came attached with a bunch of status-point bonuses and Cultivation Experience.
Because we had “manually” gotten rid of the problem by using our spirit manipulators with zero assistance from the Mother System, that struggle had seemed to count as a cultivation-aligned significant victory as far as the System was concerned, hence the rewards.
When it came to my own rewards, the [Surgeon] subclass had now become “unlocked” for me, while I had also been given a few passive skills like [Steady Hands] and [Nerves Of Steel] by the System which were aligned with such a job.
Of course, the Subclass had only become “available” for selection, instead of being forced upon me. To actually pick it as a permanent Subclass, I would first have to go to the Weirdwood Tree and make it “official” over there, but I wasn't actually sure that I wanted to do such a thing for now, as there were a limited number of Subclasses that one would be able to possess throughout their entire lives.
Sure, I would be able to put up with a bunch of blood and guts if there was no other way for me to save a person's life, but I did not want to select such “butchery” as my calling, as it was a rather mentally traumatizing endeavor and I had already been mentally damaged enough by the memories that kept coming from my transplanted spirit roots.
Still, this entire yellow-spore fiasco had brought to the surface the obvious need for us to find some sort of a viable cleansing spell that would be able to work on a patient's body and maybe even on the nearby environment.
Therefore, I had urged everybody in my group to start searching for any-and-all types of cleansing spells immediately. Each and every person that could go to the Heavenly Library was now using their own astral projection to look for such spells except for Carmine, who was still needed at the Smithy, as she was still crafting items for the Dungeon delvers and had no time to spare.
I had been searching for such “specialized” spells ever since the moment that I had created that “priority” list inside of my head, but even with the entire Heavenly Library at my disposal, I had not found anything suitable as-of-yet, because the entire building was absolutely MASSIVE.
Not to mention that ever since we had broken the Librarian Golem from the entrance, we had lost the proper “guide” that would have been able to point us towards where certain manuals could be found.
I mean, the whole Library occupied the insides of an entire mountain range, so the number of unknown books and scrolls available was absolutely staggering. It would have taken years for us to create a proper archival map of the entire place, even if we were to work on it each and every day.
But we did not have the luxury of such a timeframe, so we had to “jump” from shelf to shelf and simply note down what the whole area was all about. It was nice enough that the whole Library had indeed been very thoroughly organized beforehand, but the book placement was in a very counter-intuitive way, even though it might have been logically correct.
I had not yet figured out what the exact “guidelines” for the storage of the books was based on, because it was definitely not the usual book classification system that was used back on Earth, since the addition of “magic” to the organization system messed up everything.
Especially since a lot of the manuals were from the old Dwemmer folk who seemed to consider magic and technology one and the same thing. Try shelf-placing a tech manual that describes a cleansing spell for some golem engines, but can also work on living humanoids. Where will that item go? To the golem technology section of the Library or to the magic spell collection? It was a difficult choice, hence the weird arrangement of books everywhere.
Therefore, a lot of the useful stuff had been actually hidden away unintentionally amongst the mass of “other” general information Tomes that could be found inside of the Heavenly Library, which made the search quite complicated. The only thing that we could do was to keep on mapping out the entire place.
But just as I was sitting in a cross-legged meditation position on top of one of the Clinic's beds while using my own astral projection to look for stuff on top of the shelves inside the Heavenly Library, I got pulled back to reality by the loud screams that suddenly burst from three partitions away.
"AAAAARGH! AAAAAAAA! AYEEEEE! (*HUFF*...*PANT*)... AAAAARGHHH! AAAAAAAA! THEY'RE OUT TO GET ME! ALL OF THEM! THEY'RE ALL SCREAMING INSIDE OF MY HEAD!" Zacx began yelling. The Ant-man had apparently risen from his slumber and was now flailing all four of his arms in all directions while panicking.
Phew! Ok...so Zacx was finally awake...good to know. That was a good thing, because Shen had not awakened even after resting for more than a day and a half, which made me worried. The Pill should have fixed any-and-all of his internal damages including his brain concussion, but he had yet to regain consciousness as of yet.
"Wait, Zacx! Who's screaming? I thought that the connection got cut off!" I asked Zacx immediately as I entered his third bed partition of the Clinic.
"THE QUEENS! THEY'RE ALL AFTER ME! THEY WANT TO SEE ME DEAD ...THEY...erm...Wait a second...UGH...I can't hear any of them anymore. DAMNIT! What did you do to me? What happened? And why is the entire world so grey and lifeless?" The Ant-man began clutching his chest.
"Uff...OK...I hoped I would not have to do this as soon as you woke up, but it’s better to just get the issue out of the way. I am sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but I kind of sort of maybe had to cut your antennae off." I bit my lower lip.
"YOU WHAT?!! SHIT! No wonder that I can't smell anything and the whole world looks like crap!" The formic immediately began to touch the top of his head in a panic, only to find the healed-up stumps of his former antennae.
"Look, I'm very sorry that I had to cut them off, but at that particular point in time, I did not have any other choice. All of the Conservative Faction Queens were assaulting your mind continuously, so I had to do something to shut them up."
"And cutting off my antennae was the thing to do? WHYYY!”
"Well...I’m sorry, but nothing else came to mind at that moment! Just be glad that those organs were indeed responsible for your connection to the hives, and not some other piece of your brain that lay deeper inside of your head.
"The moment that your last antenna got removed, the entire stream of nastiness immediately disappeared. It may not be obvious to you, since you have never used your antennae in such a way, but they were the things that kept you continuously connected with the Hives' mind-network.
"And since neither of us knows how to “manually” shut them off from this side of the connection, I simply did the next best thing that I could think of, which was to simply remove them."
"My antennae did that? But! I...URGH...my sense of smell! And the rest of my weaker senses! How the hell am I supposed to live like this from now on? The entire world looks like a dull piece of gray shit without my antennae!"
"I'm sorry, but for the moment, you're going to have to get used to it. I mean, since you cannot smell things anymore, you are now basically just similar to a human that's suffering from a really bad case of the sniffles.
"Of course, I cannot even begin to imagine how the rest of your weaker senses were creating a larger picture of the world inside of your mind since I'm just a simple human.
"Yet, on the other hand, you should be glad that you still have the rest of your main senses. You can still see, hear, touch, and maybe even still taste. I am not very sure about that last one though. Do you have any taste buds inside of your mouth, or did you use your antennae for that as well?"
"Both, actually. The sensations are usually somewhat complimentary, but I tend to avoid dunking my antennae inside of my food when I'm around other people because I have noticed that the gesture startles most of the onlookers."
"Ok, so there’s still a partial remaining capability to taste then. Better than nothing."
"You will have to excuse me for not sharing your jubilant “optimism” about my current situation." The Ant-man replied with an obvious trace of bitterness and sarcasm inside of his voice as he kept tapping the stumps on top of his head.
"Look, Zacx, I know it sucks, but at least the Queens are not able to murderize your brains anymore."
"Sure, but that's only a temporary thing. I am 100% certain that they will send somebody down here to assess the validity of my claims plus the Awakened state of my existence, and those are probably going to be some of the female-warrior Formicae that will most certainly be inclined towards the opinions of the Conservative faction. They might even send a War Queen."
"Shit! Ok, so that’s another thing that we’ll have to prepare for. How long will that take? I mean, until someone from your Hives gets here? We are still in the middle of the Dungeon crisis, you know. Not to mention that we also still need to keep quiet about Fung. Having a group of Formic inspectors drop out of the sky and then mess things up even more may prove to be quite a big problem for the whole village."
"I don't know...the fastest they could arrive is probably in about 2 weeks, with one month being the most likely period. I mean, the Hives wouldn't be able to simply just send the nearest Hive Guardians to take care of this issue, because this involves some rather contentious politics within the Big Hives. A delegation of representatives from all of the large Clusters would first need to gather together before heading over here, and that will take some time. AAAARGHH! Dammit! Why the hell did I even try to get Awakened in the first place? I should have simply told you that Formic males cannot be Awakened because of our anatomy, and simply avoided this whole scandal!" Zacx began clutching his head and mandibles with all of his arms.
"Yet, you did not. You grabbed onto that small bundle of hope that was available in front of you and were proven right in the end. If male Formics can indeed be Awakened, then you should not hide that fact. On the contrary, you should actually be screaming this discovery from the top of your lungs to your entire species, because in the end, your entire kind can only stand to gain from it.
"Don't let those stupid old Conservatives beat you down. Once a major truth like this comes to the surface, it's really hard to bury it down again, if not outright impossible. And even if you were to die, the TRUTH would still remain the TRUTH."
"Oh...Heavens, all of that sounds quite nice once you put it like that...but you do not KNOW the Hives. The Queens will stop at nothing to get their way, especially the Old Ones, even if it means burying the truth beneath the dirt together with myself.
"Only the younger Queens have been smart enough to realize the true value of the male Formics, but even though they are superior in number, their own Hives are much weaker individually compared to the bastions of the Old Ones. Those old crones have been preparing and reinforcing their own homesteads for hundreds of years.
"You may not know this, but our Queens are almost as long-lived as the Elves themselves, assuming that they do not die from any other natural causes. While from the outside, our Formic race might look like a completely united species, there are quite a whole lot of conflicts that occur between the Hives on a regular basis.
"Battles involving thousands of workers and soldiers killing each other are quite commonplace, but nobody ever sees or hears anything about those because they usually occur underground where nobody can notice such things. And such information of high value as the Awakening of a male can most likely start a species-wide war of ideologies. I…can't even begin to think what might happen…" The Formic shuddered.
"Look, I'm sure that we'll be able to figure something out... As long as the Old Queens aren't completely set in their ancient ways, and if we can get the support of some of the Younger Queens, we might be able to forcibly negotiate an outcome that will not require any sort of drastic bloodshed.
"I mean, it's not like it's an easy thing to Awaken any of you male Formics. It requires a bunch of spirit stones and also my weird cultivation method, so it's not something that is going to become too widespread too fast.
"I can understand why the Old Queens would become fearful about the Awakening of a bunch of “lowly” males who they have abused for their entire lives, because the newly-awakened fellows would be able to threaten even their own positions, especially if those males happened to belong to the Old Hives.
"Yet the Awakening of the males is going to happen sooner or later. It just depends on HOW. Is it going to be through violence and Hive wars, or is it going to be done peacefully across a longer period of time? While it’s not up to us to decide such things, we might still be able to tip the balance towards a peaceful resolution if we play our cards right."
"I...I truly wish I had an answer to that question. We'll have to see how things are going to progress once the inspection team arrives over here. And I can assure you that they WILL arrive here, sooner or later! The location of the village and the fact that I was posted at the Buddhist temple is already a known fact within the Hives. You will not be able to benefit from the same anonymity that you have gained against the Imperials and the Cultists when it comes to our Formic kind. Still, if you use your smarts, you might be able to convince them to keep your secret, as our Formic Hives are not plagued by any Cultists or rebels like your humanoid-kind is, and we know how to keep our mouths shut better than most of the other races."
"I guess you are right. It's only after they arrive down here that we'll be able to see how we can deal with the entire situation. I just hope that they will send some level-headed people that we can reason with. And even if they are going to be unreasonable, then at least we should try to be prepared for them.
"Therefore, my next suggestion to you is that you should join one of the Dungeon teams and level up as fast as you can. We would have a lot more leeway to negotiate if they wouldn't be able to simply beat you down with sheer brute strength. I can also help you with your cultivation and spells." I pointed my finger at him.
"While you may be indeed somewhat right about negotiating from a higher position of power, I'm not sure that I can do the whole Dungeon thing." The formic began scratching at his stumps. "I don't think I can stomach the levels of violence that are required to be efficient down there. It is why I became a scholar and left the Hives in the first place. There was too much bloodshed occurring back home every day. I have found these “teachings” of the Buddhists quite to my liking, especially the “you shall cause no harm to other living beings” and “you shall do no Evil” aspects of the Monk's Dharma."
"Oh dear, so you're one of those guys like Ping as well. Look, I get where you're coming from. I do not like that sort of violence either. You would have to be some sort of psychopath to enjoy such a wanton slaughter.
"But as I have told Ping as well, you cannot mentally bundle the creatures of the Dungeon together with those of the outside world. The monsters that spawn inside the Old Monastery CANNOT be reasoned with, and their only desire is the destruction of everyone and everything. You should not feel any sort of guilt for getting rid of them.
"By destroying them, you would only be protecting the village and everybody inside of it, which is an act that you would be able to feel proud of. The other Guardsmen most certainly feel that way!
"Also, I can bet my non-existent hat that once the inspection team arrives over here, they are going to put you through a bunch of hellish “tests” that will be meant to “accurately gauge your Awakening level”, and you might even “accidentally” die during one of those test procedures.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
"I mean, that’s one of the oldest tricks in the book for getting rid of unwanted or uncomfortable people. So having a real high level and being able to take care of yourself would ameliorate such problems by a lot, and would also prove to the inspection team that a Formic worker male can indeed become a power-house in their own right, if presented with the proper opportunities to grow up.
"I...will have to give that some thought. At least, I’m going to need a few days to adjust to my missing antennae. It feels very weird to be missing those organs, because I can still somewhat sense them on top of my head."
"That’s because the associated Meridians for your antennae are still there. This happens to a lot of amputees, the so-called “ghost” limb sensation. But since you are a Cultivator now, you should be able to do a lot more than a simple unawakened with them, even if their physical counterparts are gone."
"I...wow...hmm...you’re right. Strange..." The Formic began to wiggle his Ghostly antennae meridians while I watched him with my Qi-Vision.
"About your missing antennae...here...have this Pill. It’s a Regeneration Pill that can regrow even missing limbs, but I do not recommend that you take it yet. I’m just giving it to you for safekeeping and as my apology for cutting off your appendages.
"Use it ONLY if you will find yourself in some dire circumstances, as it can regrow about 20% of your whole body mass if you wind up with an extra hole too many inside of yourself. And since I can make these, I think that we can also try and see what happens if you'll begin to regrow your antennae partially."
"Partially? How would that even work?" Zacx looked up hopefully at me.
"Well, I can brew a separate batch of pills that would have the Regeneration Essence inside of them a lot more distilled, and would only contain enough “power” within to start the basic process of regrowth. You would wind up with a couple of mini-antennae sticking out of your head that would only function partially, but I think that the tradeoff might be worthed.
"We would need to experiment with how much we would be able to regrow them though, as I have no idea how fast the “connection” to the hives could become re-enabled once they grew back. Worst case scenario, I might even have to cut them off once again because we grew them too much."
"I don’t mind, as long as I can still feel something with them. You would not believe how horribly dull the entire world seems to me right now."
"I’m sorry! Truly! I wish I could have thought of a better way to help you back then, but you were in a real pinch when the little Monks brought you in."
"I KNOW! Shit! I’m grateful for that, but it does not make my loss any less painful. A part of me really wants to hate you for turning me into a cripple, but I know that you had the best intentions at heart. Holding a grudge over such a thing would only step on my Buddhist principles, so I...I…(*Hurk*)...I forgive you." The Formic Monk choked those last words out.
Seeing him struggle like that, I could only glomp him and give him a big hug.
"Oh, silly little Formic! We’ll find a way to make this all better, OK?"
"Alright." Zacx nodded uncomfortably in my grasp while sticking out all of his four hands in an X, as he did not seem to know where to even place them. I guess hugs weren't really a Formic thing, given how they were all encased in armored chitin like that.
"A shit...sorry about the hug...I did that unconsciously. By the way...can you even feel me?" I couldn’t help but ask while retracting my body away from his. "I’m still not sure about how your Formic anatomy works, so can you please enlighten me?"
"It’s alright. While that was...unexpected, I did not feel bad at all. But to answer your question, I can sense you without any problem. The surface of my shell acts in a similar way to the “skin” of you humans. I can feel pressure, heat, chemicals, and a few other “sensations” that you humans have no words in your vocabulary for, but compared to your “fleshy bits”, my carapace can withstand a lot more punishment, so some of the sensations are a lot more muted."
"Huh...that’s nice! But I guess it sort of makes sense. As a Humanoid species, you would need a whole lot more “sensors” inside of your bodies than a bunch of tiny ants."
"UFF! Erm...a fair warning to you...especially for the time when the inspection team arrives. PLEASE, do NOT compare us to ANTS! Formics HATE that! It feels similar to when someone compares you humans to those tiny monkeys that jump up from tree to tree! While our species might indeed share a common ancestor with the ants, we are a lot more evolved than a bunch of tiny insects. We have our own culture, we know how to read, write, craft things, create art and music. We are NOT just a gathering of mindless bugs!"
"Ok...sorry...sheesh, I did not know that! Trigger landmine duly noted and archived. Yet, you cannot deny the many similarities between your two kinds."
"Nor have I ever attempted to. We are proud of our ancestry, to be honest. Ants are some of the most hard-working, selfless, and widespread creatures on this planet, and the Formics strive to emulate those virtues inside our own society. I just wish we stopped fighting amongst each other so much."
"Yeah...about that...you said something about a potential War Queen coming over here? Who or what is that?"
"Ah...I guess I should explain. War Queens are many of the Younger Queens that are still in a subordinate position to an Older Queen."
"So...what’s the difference?"
"Well, many things. But mainly, it’s about mobility. A War Queen is still capable of self-locomotion and can actively fight and cast, while an Old Birther Queen is almost rendered immobile by her own mass. A War Queen can only lay a few eggs at a time, but a Birther Queen can lay up to thousands."
"Soo…those Old hags that kept assaulting your mind..."
"All of them are large Birther Queens and they are hundreds of years old. They run all of the “Big” Hives together. Just like you humanoids have your Cultivator “Big Sects”, so do us Formics have our own “Big” Hive Clusters that have withstood the test of time."
"Where are they anyway? The Hives, I mean. You said it could be a month before someone might show up, so what kind of distances are we talking about?"
"OH...they are all over the place. My own Hive-of-origin is barely a week away on foot, but is one of the smaller ones. The rest are spread all over the world in equal measure.
"Actually...I should first explain how things work inside of the Hives, so you can understand this better. Once a young Queen grows up to adulthood, they have the choice to either remain within the Hive as a subordinate of the older Mother Queen in their War form or to leave the Hive altogether and go establish a new one someplace else.
"Of course, finding the real estate for a new hive is a rather difficult endeavor, because it needs to be in a place that is outside of the magic infested zones of the world, but in a place that has not been yet claimed by any of the other sentient races.
"In truth, the younger Hives that got established in the last few hundreds of years came into being only after forcibly evacuating the former local residents. Those brutal takeover tactics are the reason why the whole world used to assume that the Formics were just another type of Monster that kept leaking away from the magic-infested zones for many thousands of years and treated us with violence upon meeting any of us."
"I’m sorry to hear that! But...I thought things got better as of late, didn’t they?"
"Oh...yes! Our entire spectrum of relationships with the rest of the world has improved by leaps and bounds during the last few hundreds of years, but the tensions caused by the old ways are still noticeable.
"Such bad blood is hard to wash away, especially since some of the Old culprit Queens are still alive and kicking, and many of the humanoid noble houses tend to hold some very strong grudges that can last across generations. It’s...not a pleasant subject.
"Small wars and border skirmishes still occur even to this day, though most of the world does not label us as monsters anymore. Fortunately, my Hive is an exception, as we did not kick anybody out when my own Mother Queen first settled inside of this province.
"As you might have noticed while coming on your way here, this whole region is pretty uninhabited. The large amount of wild forests make it a difficult place for any large population of humanoids to settle down, but for us Formics, it is not a problem since we always dig our Hives underground anyway. "
"Now that you mentioned it, is your Mother Queen in the Progressive or the Conservative Faction? Since you say that she is close by, maybe she can even lend us a hand?"
"Erm...if I had to label Mother in a certain way, she would tend towards “neutral” more than any other way. She does not like any stupid conflicts, including the ideological ones. Is why she left her Old Queen and Hive in the first place.
"But if she really had to take sides, probably the Progressive Faction. Our Hive’s males have always been mistreated a whole lot less compared to the ones that reside in the Big Hives, even though we have never been pampered either. And trust me, I have visited the Big Clusters during my training days as a scholar and those guys living there have it hard compared to the ones residing within my colony. At least my Mother does not force any of our own males into bloody deathmatches."
"Wait...WHAT? Deathmatches? Seriously?"
"Ah...I guess I should explain again. You see, if a Queen dies for whatever reason within a hive, then one of her guardian-daughters starts to mutate rapidly and becomes a War Queen within the span of a few days, if no other War Queen is already present. The same goes for the establishment of a new remote Hive Cluster.
"Of course, since this new Queen is basically a virgin, she first needs to mate with one of the available males before being able to lay any newly fertilized eggs. This, of course, leads to some dire competition among the male members of our species for the honor of becoming the Father of the entire Hive, and a lot of us die fighting each other.
"Yet a winner always emerges, and that certain male gets to spread his genes by breeding with the unfertilized War Queen to continue the lineage of the Hive.
"Of course, in contrast with the normal ants that you humanoids always compare us to, the Formic Queens needed to breed from time to time to replenish their own sperm stock, so every time that happens, the fight amongst the males occurs once again in the form of a “Tournament”.
"Most of the time, the old reigning Champion gets to keep his position for a few rounds of breeding because of the advantages that he gained from leveling up during all of the fights from his past, but once a Champion gets too old or too careless, he immediately gets replaced by someone from the younger generation.
"On the overall, a Queen breeds with multiple partners throughout her entire long life, and those always get selected based on their uncommon strength or wisdom, which allows for the production of better children with each and every new “competition” that occurs.
"But such a “Tournament” only basically means that all of the males have to fight to the death for their right to fertilize the Queen. Even those unwilling are always forced to fight during the Tournament period, because there have indeed been some cases throughout the Hives’ history where the winner at the end of it all had been one of the most reticent pacifists that had not even wanted to fight in the first place.
"You also need to realize that outside of the gladiatorial fights between the contenders for the position of “The Father of the Hive”, which are considered “entertaining” by most of the spectating women, the female formics always tend to look down upon us males like we are a bunch of lazy layabouts that only have fighting and breeding on our minds.
"Fortunately for me, my own Mother abhors such a cruel selection process and has resorted to other ways of selecting her partners. Heck, my own biological Father would most certainly lose a Tournament if he were to fight right now because he is quite old and rickety for a Formic, yet Mother still breeds with him because he used to be the Greatest Warrior of the hive in his younger days and has defended our Hive with his blood and soul his entire life. “Sperm doesn’t age, even if the maker does.” Mother likes to say."
"Hah! That sounds quite lovely! I’d love to meet her then. She sounds a lot nicer than those Old Crones from the Hive network."
"Oh! She is! Maybe you can meet her once this whole Awakening and Dungeon insanity is over...I mean...If we’re still alive...ugh..." Zacx drooped his head while looking a little bit depressed as he suddenly reminded himself in what a shitty situation we all were.
"It’s OK! We’ll figure something out! Don’t lose hope!" I tapped Zacx on his shoulder. "We’ll march right into the Dungeon and smack that Ancient Evil over the head with a slipper until it goes back to wherever it came from, and then we’ll present your level 999 Cultivator self to the Old Queens so they can choke on their own words."
"PFF...Mwahaha...Now that...I would really love to see..." Zacx spread his face-mandible in something that I could only assume was a laughing grin, then he leaned back into his pillow.
>>
After I settled the Formic problem and he had fallen back to sleep once we had finished our talk, I resumed my trek throughout the entire Heavenly Library.
But now, I was headed towards the Zoology section of the whole building, as the interaction with the Formic had stirred my curiosity towards his kind.
Fortunately, finding a book that contained descriptions about Formics had proven to be a lot easier compared to finding a bunch of spells that met my criteria.
As I began reading through the entire zoological almanac that I had found and looked at the very-detailed drawn pictures, I could only shudder. Indeed, depicted inside were both the War Queens and Birther Queens.
The first type lay a whole lot fewer eggs but could still actively move around and basically looked like a centaur-ant with four legs supporting the abdomen of the body, while the upper torso section still remained humanoid-like with a pair of hands. They were almost like the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms formians, so I wasn’t surprised that the Mother System was copy-pasting shit again.
Aw...and for whatever fucking reason, they ALSO had something resembling BOOBS on their chest. Damnit, Mother System! Do you think that the Players will try to motorboat even a Formic Queen if they ever got the chance? Actually...never mind...of course they will. Fucking perverts!
On the other hand, the Birther Queens would become a lot chunkier once their Hive became securely stabilized, with their abdomen rear sections beginning to grow to ridiculous sizes to accommodate their increased egg production mechanism, a growth that usually rendered them almost immobile and was not something reversible.
Of course, this did not mean that the other female members of the species were biologically incapable of producing eggs, but rather that they remained in a permanently suppressed hormonal state by the pheromone emissions of their Mother Queen throughout their entire lives, and did not even think of mating.
I was also surprised to find out that it took barely a single month from the egg-laying process to the full maturation of a Formic’s body, if all conditions were right and the food was abundant. Language and “common sense” seemed to be transmitted genetically and they were a combination of the knowledge possessed by the Mother Queen plus the Father Champion, which meant that some hives knew different things compared to other hives just based on this genetic heritage.
Of course, just because the body of the newly-hatched Formic itself had matured, it did not mean that its mind had grown as well, so basically all of the newborn Ant-folk acted like a bunch of toddlers and kids for a few years before actually “growing up” mentally.
But the simple fact that a Birther Queen was capable of creating a whole legion in one go was insane. Of course, such a thing did not happen very often, because none of the Queens were stupid enough to continuously create children.
New eggs were created only when the need for them arose, as food consumption within the hives was strictly regulated. If the Queens were to create too many children in one go, the hive would suddenly risk dying of starvation, so mass egg production was a rare occurrence, and usually happened only during a conflict situation where soldiers were constantly needed as cannon fodder.
Also, I found out that during such conflicts, the cannibalization of the bodies was something that occurred quite often. Nothing was wasted, and all of the dead were turned into a paste and fed to the younger spawns. Yuck! Just imagine growing up by feeding on the dead body of your elder sibling. Sheesh!
Even the book also acknowledged the fact that the Formics waged war amongst themselves just as much as they fought the other Humanoid races, but that did not surprise me at all. What surprised me was the other vast array of “mutations” that Zacx had not said anything about.
Basically, based on the type of “jelly” that was produced by the Mother Queen (from her boobs, by the way), certain mutations could be induced in the larvae, and change the body structure of the matured individual.
Zero jelly being fed to the larvae resulted in Workers, as they were the “base” form of the race, and they looked similar to Zacx. They came out in a 50/50 male-female parity and were the most commonly encountered members of the species. The females were slightly larger than the males though, and more “curvaceous”. They also had boob-like growths on their chests as well.
Red jelly created Soldiers, and those were basically bulkier versions of the Workers, with a lot thicker carapace all over, enlarged fists that looked like capable of crushing rocks and shoveling earth, and immense crushing mandibles of death. Also, based on the testimonies of the book, they were also slightly stupider than the Workers, as most of the energy during their growth had been directed at improving their mass and muscles instead of their thinking power, and they were mostly male even though sometimes a female Soldier could also occur.
Green jelly resulted in Brood Tenders, which were similar to the Queens in their centaurian form, albeit smaller in size and with a series of “sacks” all over their bodies that they employed for storing and processing the food meant for the grubs who were laid by the Mother Queen. They also had the largest boobs of all “forms”, as they were the most motherly.
Then there was the rare blue jelly, which created Spellcasters. Those looked like your average Worker when it came to their size, but they were almost always female, and also had increasingly humanoid features based on their inborn amount of magic.
The humanoid traits could become so accentuated that you could even wind up with a basic human-like female with only a couple of antennae on her head and compound eyes as her only “Formic” defining traits if she was born as a prodigy of magic. And of course, for some reason, they also had large boobs. Fucking System! I bet these were made to become harem members for the “collectors” that wanted to “catch them all”.
An even more “rare” jelly was the purple one, which created something called a “Swarm Behemoth”, which was basically a gigantic centaur-like Formic with traits similar to that of a Soldier, which meant extremely heavy plates. It also had spikes growing all over its body and joints, and two large scythe-like appendages that extended from the sides of the forearms. Its function was basically that of a siege-breaker beast that could wipe out hundreds of enemies on his own. Fortunately, those Behemoths were seen only during the direst of conflicts, as they were very high-maintenance and also did not live very long compared to the rest of their other siblings.
And last but not least, the gold type of jelly, if fed to a young grub, would create a future Queen. The grub would mature “right out of the box” as a War Queen, but such an occurrence did not happen very often, as the creation of such a child only came into being once one of the important subordinate War Queens died for whatever reason, usually because of war-related injuries.
As far as their “proficiency” towards magic, the Spellcasters and the Queens were the only ones capable of properly dabbling in magic in the Formic hives, and were usually the most destructive people that you could find during any conflict, but they were basically used as Earth’s “nukes”; they were more like a deterrent than an actually deployed offensive power, since their numbers were quite a few, as creating blue jelly required the Mother Queen to consume a bunch of rare-ass ingredients before being able to manifest the substance, including highly-concentrated Spirit-Stones.
OOH! Concentrated spirit stones? Well, well, well, then I might even have a gimmick to work with over here! With my method of moving Qi around, creating a bunch of those isn’t a problem anymore! Heck, I even have hundreds of them already made, which I might be able to use during the negotiations with the incoming Formic inspection team. I’m glad that I found this book! Thank you very much, accumulated wisdom of the elders!
But just as I was about to turn the page and go into the section of the book that detailed Formic Culture and rituals, I got pinged heavily over the party chat by Fung.
[Trina! You there? I think you should come and see this. We might have found what you were looking for. Xibei got lucky, and we found a Tome that I think is depicting some cleansing spells.]
[What, really? I’ll be there immediately! Where are you?]
[13’th floor, section B on the right. You’ll see a weird series of triangles once you go down the alley, so you can’t miss it.]
[Ok, be right there!]