Me and the princess just wandered the halls of the hive, hand-in-hand. There really wasn't much to do except enjoy eachother's company, but I found her company very enjoyable. Fighter was with us too, but she hung back, simply being a strong escort in case something dangerous appeared somehow. We went up and down a few of the outer tunnels, seeing how the digging workers were doing. Then we stopped at the cooking room to get lunch, and I must admit, eating lunch with a girl you are head over heels for was amazing.
After that we hung out in the crafting area for a bit and she watched as I did my best to teach everyone how to sharpen stones, which was easier said then done with single workers. Workers were strange, they seemed to work better when more were working on a task at once, so I eventually split them into teams of two to do the stone sharpening, one would hold the stone still and the other would strike it. Suddenly the roughly 15% success rate for making a sharp rock instead of shattering it jumped to 80% . I was sure if I could figure out how to make it a three person task they would be able to do it perfectly but there are only two things that needed doing.
I sat down next to the princess and asked her "why are the workers like that?"
"Workers have a trait called 'will of the hive' that shifts their actions to better outcomes the more of them work together. It does have a limit, even a hundred workers together can't do something one is completely incapable of doing. So no amount of workers can use fire magic since no worker has fire magic, but get several second level workers together and use their earth magic simultaneously and it changes from a neat trick to quite an impressive showing" she said proudly.
"That IS amazing, so in some situations workers are the most powerful ant. What about in battle? Seen several large groups of workers in battle and they never did too well." I asked, very interested in how this works.
"It's because they have no combat ability, so it counts as incapable, so the will cannot help them. it's kinda sad, if they could use the will for combat a swarm of workers would easily beat anything, which is probably why the blue box made it so they can't." She sighed
Did she say "the blue box MADE it so they can't?"
"Huh, you don't know? I suppose you humans would have a way to hide it from eachother, but we ants remember! The blue box appeared..." she holds her hands up and seems to do some quick math on her fingers "about a thousand years ago, it gave some powers and took others away, that includes the power for workers to fight as one. The war was running at full speed at the time, and grandmother thought it was an attempt to stop it since the powerful would have to fight beings just as powerful instead of the helpless to gain more power. The war slowed for several years as the races adapted, but then they picked up again afterwards."
"Wow, was this a story passed down to every queen for generations or something"
"Nope, a queen trait 'mother's wisdom' let's a queen can pick a memory and all queens after her will have it. It only applies to those born after it is used, so her first 4 princesses couldn't get it. Is many little lessons in here" she said while tapping her head.
"Well, I have time to learn them all, they sound really interesting" I gave her a big grin.
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Fighter interrupted the princess' story telling when it was time for dinner, this time they found some sort of wild carrots to go with the meat instead of any fruits. After we ate, Fighter tells us it was time for the princess to retire to her room for the day and that I should go back to my room as well. I asked to walk with the princess to her room and Fighter had no problem with that. We walked together to her chamber where the queen sees us and gave us both a smile before entering the room herself. With us standing just outside her room I built up my courage, spun her around so she was facing towards me and leaned in for a kiss.
She placed a hand over my lips "sorry, I would REALLY love to do that, but anything more then holding hands is not allowed until after i moult and have my queen shell."
I just backed my head up and gave her another smile "it's not a problem, I know all about wanting to wait till you are ready, you have a good night."
She returned my smile, nodded and walked off while waving bye. I turned around and Fighter lead me back to my room, once there I sat down and let out all the tension. Despite how happy I was all day I was also super nervous that I would do something terrible that would make her hate me, when she stopped my kiss my heart felt like it was going to drop into my stomach. I'm glad she understood, and wanted to do it too, but couldn't for some biological reasons.
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I placed the light ant on the bed next to mine and tried poking her in different spots to see if I could turn her off manually or if I would need a guard to do it. About ten minutes later I gave up on manual control and left her alone. I took out my book and checked out the first section again, the stone age, all about how to work with stone, the main problem was it needs bigger stones, not the fist sized rocks the workers could barely make with magic. For example, to make a stone pick or shovel i'd need a single rock big enough to shape into the proper form.
Ugh, I knew teaching this hive wouldn't do much, because as soon as the princess left the queen will start dying a lot faster, but I still wanted to help now. Haaaa, well I could also think about how tech would interact with the princess' ancestral memories. Like the three workers with one magic worker is the optimal ratio of digging to compressing with the minimal down time, if the workers have tools then they will dig faster so three to one won't work anymore. Well, i'll talk to her about it tomorrow, I call in a guard and have her switch off the light.
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The next day I woke up feeling great, I had a wonderful dream about the princess. But when I noticed how tight my pants felt I realized it may have been a smidge too wonderful. With the light ant asleep on the bed next to mine I couldn't really 'take care' of it, I know she is probably dead to the world, but it made me super uncomfortable thinking about her being there. So I had no choice but to just put up with it until it settled itself. I sat up, got my book, and placed it on my lap before I called for a guard to get the room lit up.
I'm just able to calm down before a worker came in with breakfast, some berries and sorta smoked meat, don't think the smoke was on purpose. When i'm done Fighter comes in and asked if I would see the princess again now. I had to think on that, I didn't want to look too eager, but she could also be wanting to see me, and refusing to go would make her think I didn't like her. Well, I could ask Fighter if she knew anything.
"Fighter, queen want be with king always?"
She pondered what I meant for a couple seconds "more queen love king, more be with, princess love lot, be with lot."
Well couldn't argue with that, I grabbed my little ant and had Fighter lead me over to the queen chamber. When we got there the queen stopped us at the door.
Before I could worry she explained "Sorry, but my little darling made herself sick. You made such an impression on her the other day that she gorged herself on food in an attempt to grow faster, unfortunantly for her that doesn't work on us, so now she feels awful because her shell is squeezing her guts."
"Um, i'm not sure how intimate this is, but rubbing someone's stomach helps with humans and I could do that for her?" I rubbed my stomach for emphasis
"That is sweet, but it is indeed too intimate right now, and i'll let you know why. Intimacy with her king or even just a candiate at this stage will make her want to mate because her hormones are at proper levels, but she has to moult this last time for her reproductive tract to be accesable, so trying anything with her king would just drive her crazy. Also she would break you trying to find relief." She had to surpress a laugh at my look of horror. "It's not your fault, is one of the quirks of our biology"
"You know, it's odd, you know things like the words biology and hormones but weren't able to make stone spears" I furrowed my brow in thought
"yes, that does seem odd at first glance, but it is part of our 'mother's wisdom', one of my great-grandmothers added her memory of a dictionary to it, so I know what a hormone is, but I am missing a lot of the finer details." She explained
"In any case, can I come in and give her some well wishes at least?" I asked
"Sure" she backed up through the door and stepped to the side.
I entered the room and saw the princess laying on her bed in the back of the room and went over to her "hey princess."
"Uuuugh, don't look at meeee" she groaned, but now that I was looking I could see what the queen meant, her abdomen was so swollen the plates had separated, reminding me of those honeypot ants.
"Don't worry, I will be gone in a moment, I just wanted to say 'I hope you feel better soon'" and I started to walk away.
After a couple steps I heard a quiet "thank you."
The queen stopped me as I pass by her and whispered to me "thanks for visiting her, she thought she suddenly turned ugly and that you would hate her, showing you are fine with her like this will keep her spirits up until the pain ends." And then waves me on.
Well since a morning till night date like before was a bust I decided to hang out in the crafting room. Once there the guard on duty excitedly wiggled something to Fighter who relayed it to me. The jist is that one of the workers got a level while making stone spears. Wasn't nearly as many points from spear making as killing a boar, but it was no risk crafting, so they could do it until they needed to sleep. well, it's good to know for sure that workers can in fact level without dying in droves to kill things. I mean, I already knew that digging through stone would do it, but not stone crafts.
After lunch I brought the book with me to the queen chamber, I decided that if the princess couldn't move due to feeling sick then i'll just stay and read to her, she very much liked that idea. A few hours into reading there was a couple of cracking sounds from nearby, I looked up and one of the egg piles was wiggling. I put my book down and watched as a couple of baby workers popped out of their eggs, they were.... cute enough. Were a lot like a regular insect larva but had features obviously designed with being cute, such as a cute humanoid face.
"Little sisters are cute, but our babies will be much cuter" the princess told me with conviction.
I got stunned for a second, thinking about kids already? but hearing how sure she was I had to smile "yeah, i'm sure they will be."