Thanks for all the feedback and stuff, if anyone had any suggestions please tell me in the comments, I will try to get another chapter out tomorrow, but its a monday, and the weekends ending :( but either way heres chapter 2.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 2
Josh popped back into the throne room, and immediately sent several Workers to put him back in the queen, excited about the soon to be Soldier Ants. As the queen tightened around him once more he realized that all the material that had been collected was gone, and that around fifty new Workers were connected to him, apparently more food had been gathered and more Ants produced while he was gone.
He sighed and sent some of the new Workers to fetch food from a storeroom.
It was odd, the material counter in the Ant Creation menu counted all material in certain areas but not in others.
Like materials that were being transported through the nest were not counted until they were put down in a storeroom, and weirdly enough, as soon as Josh Produced a Ant the counter would go down, even though the material hadn't been transported.
Also after some experimentation, Josh figured out that one unit of material, was equal to a square centimeter of Ant food, which was fungus, meat, seeds, and other things.
For some reason the Workers only collected food and nothing else, maybe other types of Ants could collect more. Back to the present, Josh was currently Producing another Ant, but this time he chose Soldier.
The black goop, shifted into a Ant slightly bigger than the Worker but with more claw like, and sharp claws in front, and a small stinger in the back. Josh looked in the Ant Creation screen at the description for the Soldier.
Current Designs
Worker
Soldier - 3/4 centimeters long and 1/4 centimeters wide.
Black/brown coloration, sharp pincers, and small stinger.
Able to spit a slightly toxic poison, sting is also slightly toxic.
'Great, let the terror of my poison Ants reign upon the puny mortals, muahahahaha!'
After enjoying the feeling of power, Josh started production of several Soldiers, then switched over to Worker production. The reason being that he needed to explore the area around his nest, and sending cheap Workers on suicide missions was the best way.
After the stockpiled material was used, Josh started sending the Ants he started out with to the surface, an out with the old, in with the new, easily controlled, kinda thing.
The 90 or so old the Ants still left from the various foraging expeditions, started spreading out in a circle from the nest. A while later the map of the clearing had expanded to twenty feet in diameter, but some of the Ants had been encountering tree roots so it might not be much larger.
Surprisingly no other Ant nests had been found yet, but there were some signs of other Ants, mostly the lack of stuff the Ants usually ate. Excited to take over a nest and see how his Soldier were in battle, Josh sent out all of his Ants except the Soldiers.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Detail quickly grew on the map due to all the blank spaces left by the first Ants sent out being filled in by the second wave. Sadly no Ant nests were found but the entire clearing had been explored, due to its size, and the speed of the Ants it had taken a little over a day.
When the first Ants ran into a tree trunk Josh's first thought was of building a nest inside of it, and creating a Ant cave skybase. He could have platforms all around the tree, and whenever it was attacked swarms of flying Ants would stream out dealing tiny annoying bites to his foes. Sadly, after fantasizing, Josh sent a Worker to try and tunnel into the tree, but the bark proved too hard.
Deciding to leave the rest of the forest for another time Josh called back the Ants and sent half the workers to forage for material, while the other half expanded his nest.
First. He had them create a new throne room a couple feet below the current one, and connect them. After finally moving the queen down, which constituted a mixture of pushing Ants and Ants used as rollers, Josh created five large storerooms surrounding the new throne room, connected by thin tunnels.
Then after moving all of the material into the new storerooms, Workers were sent to fill in all of the old tunnels and rooms, so Josh could build a completely new base from scratch. Once the Ants finished, all that was left was the long tunnel down to the 'atrium' aka old throne room, and the new storerooms and throne room.
Deciding to have a tunnel going straight down into the middle of his base, Josh had the Workers begin to make a new tunnel that circled around the old one, because the harvesting Workers were still bringing materials down to the storerooms.
While that was happening Josh sent some of the Workers to find and bring back rocks from the surface, so the materials in the storeroom would not rot as quickly due to moisture.
Many,many hours later most of the nest was complete, stretching down about four feet, and at its widest point two feet wide, it is full of rooms and... more rooms!
The throne room was completely encased in the pebbles the Ants had brought down, so were the storerooms, which were almost completely full of material. The throne room was shaped like a pentagon, with storerooms at every corner, and the queen at the back side.
Above that was the infirmary, not that any of the Ants could heal yet, but a separate space for wounded was useful, mostly because it allowed Josh to see what Ants not to use when he needed materials, and what Ants to use when exploring unknown territory.
Above that were the Tunnels, they shot off in most directions, they were so that the nest could create outposts away from the nest and allow easy travel to places with lots of food, and eventually once another nest had been conquered, they would connect the two nests.
Josh sent several ants to create outposts around the clearing. As well as several Ants to the tree roots to build a base there for future attempts at a sky base.
And finally above the Tunnels were the barracks, which housed the Soldiers, the Workers would almost always be working, though they did have a smaller barracks attached to the Soldier’s.
All of the rooms were much bigger than they needed to be, but when you had nothing to do and lots of time to do it, you may as well be extravagant. Due to the large amounts of material in the store rooms Josh decided to create more Workers since there was no need for Soldiers yet.
For some reason there were some small shards of what looked like glowing glass in some of the carcasses that had been harvested, not knowing what they were Josh let them be fed to the queen. The process of creating the Ants was exactly the same as always, queen digesting, nutrients being filtered through Josh's orb, then the queens washing machine dance. Even the screen to choose what type of Ant he wanted created, but once the worker formed from the black goop, a new screen popped up
Congratulations
Due to the use of part of a lizard's core the Worker Ant has upgraded to
An Earth Worker, this Ant will be better at digging and building with earth as well as being slightly sturdier.
'Well, that was a thing' Josh was extremely excited and immediately sent several workers to bring all core shards to him, there ended up being three different piles of them, the first were clear shards from a dead sparrow, the second were more brown ones from lizards, and last were tiny, almost dust sized green ones from a grasshopper.
After creating several more Earth Workers, Josh used some of the clear core shards to create a Worker , the result was this
Congratulations
Due to the use of part of a sparrows core the Worker Ant has upgraded to
A Sense Worker, this Ant is able to sense vibrations from stuff up to two feet away.
'Cool, now what else?' Josh immediately created another Worker with the green core dust
Congratulations
Due to the use of part of a grasshoppers core the Worker Ant has upgraded to
A Nature Worker, this Ant is able to feel where the best materials are in a two foot radius
'Sweet, now to find more of those cores, and dominate with my magic army!'
*thunder crashes in the distance, and rain starts pouring*
'Well, at least Ants can swim' then after a second of thought
'Wait a minute, let me double check something, yep, I am not a Ant, well... shit'