Day 7

Looking over the upgrades for ants, he saw the cheap upgrades that would up the amount of hp they had, their mining speed, the amount of damage they could cause. He saw their evolutions, which unlike ladybugs, could go many different routes, and he also saw the perks he could purchase for them, which were numerous.

One thing that stood out to me was the cost. They were expensive.

As much as he spent the truemass, I’d also like to keep it. He wanted to be cost effective and with ants that was certainly not what he was doing. For example, purchasing the evolution for the ladybug cost 50 truemass, whilst all of the evolutions for the ants were at 200.

It seemed that the evolutions worked together. They were not meant to be a step up from the previous generation, but a more specialized one. He could purchase worker ants, that were better at mining, soldier ants, queen ants, winged ants, but there was also other species of ant available for purchase.

The squares which symbolized these upgrades were the furthest away from the current one, in the middle of their own skill tree. These ants seemed to have totally different strengths from the stone ant.

Joe was happy with how the stone ants performed at the moment, and didn’t see a reason to purchase a new race. But, seeing the numerous species had reminded him of the [Breedable] quirk.

He looked up to see the jawed ant. That had been the product of mixing two species together and it had been capable of ripping ladybugs apart. Whilst that wasn’t the biggest feat, it was certainly showing him that he was on the right track.

The bad thing about having jawed ants was that they didn’t come with the upgrades other ants had. He’d have to manually upgrade them through mixed breeding. An inspect skill, which allowed him to thoroughly analyze his spawns would help him quite a lot.

He searched through the possible buildings, which would give him special skills, and saw that there was one he could purchase that would give him the inspect skill, but it cost 500 truemass. It was an miscellaneous object, and looked much like a large, standing, magnifier.

Good to know.

He found the firebug next, and purchased it for twenty truemass. Producing one of them, for the cost of nine truemas, he found that he’d created a larva looking creature that burned. Never-ending red flames charred the stone black as the-larva looking creature lied down.

The temperature in the room increased. He worried that it would get to a high enough level that it would boil the ladybugs and ants from the inside. If he had some sort of access to fresh air this would easily resolved, then again, he didn’t.

Stop burning, he ordered the firebug, and it complied. Nice, I didn’t know I could do that.

Next, he ordered it to go mine, but it was unresponsive at that order. So it can’t mine, great.

He hadn’t planned on making it mine though. His plan in purchasing the firebug had been simple, make it mate with one of the ants. If he could create an ant with immunity to fire, that could turn aflame at will, that would be great.

Ego stared at the little bug, and Joe swore he could have seen sparkles in his eyes. Ego must have been fantasizing of all the different war tactics he could abuse with this firebug.

Don’t worry poor guy, we’ll get to fighting soon enough.

He ordered an ant to come over. It stopped mining, promptly turned around, and walked over towards them, standing beside the firebug. It awaited its new orders, but there were none, Joe left them standing beside each other, hoping that they’d create another species.

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That had broken his rule of not bottoming out his truemass. It was currently at 0, and that stressed him, so he did what any core would in that scenario, went into a daze and hoped for better the next day.

Day 8

The firebug and the ant hadn’t produced any offspring. Strange. They’d stood still beside each other for hours without anything happening in between them. Joe didn’t know if he was just imagining it, but there seemed to be a strange energy between them, as if the firebug was threatening with going on fire if the ant touched it. I mean I can’t blame the ant for not touching the bug-larva-slug whatever it is.

He brought his ladybugs and ants over as usual to give their truemass. Since one of the ants hadn’t done any mine, he gained slightly less truemass than he should have, 188.

That’s a crazy amount! He felt elated at seeing the number. This was more than six times what he’d started off with, and it was only going to increase from here on. He felt a tingling sensation around his core body. He wanted to dance, but lacking the limbs, he did a little light show with his crystal.

A lot of ants and ladybugs had spawned, precisely, 5 ants and 10 ladybugs, he still didn’t know why ladybugs spawned at a higher amount, Since the amount of units he could gain was dwindling, currently at eight, he ordered the jawed ant to eat all of the ladybugs.

He ordered one ant at each of the new ants, hoping that the reduced power would lead to more dominations. He was lucky this time, and gained three new units. They only cost five truemass to heal.

He ordered his units back to work. Slaves are amazing… for doing work. Should I feel bad? They’re insects so no. And it’s not like I directly control Ego, although he spawned with a lot of admiration and respect for me. I wonder if that’s programmed into him, or part of his personality.

The sound of iron hitting metal had grown louder than before. Whoever was creating that was mining closer towards him, and in two days or so, they’d probably reach my coreroom, which wasn’t a good thing, at all.

I turned my focus back to the current experiment of combining the fire slug and the stone ant. Was I missing something? When the other units made new units they had been close to each other, but was there something more to it?

Joe wracked his head, but couldn’t find a solution to his problem, and instead tried to force the two creature’s into breeding. They stared at him, unsure of what exactly he was asking. Even insects had a tough time with stupidity.

Are they shy? No. The others haven’t been shy. Are they incompatible? Can’t be. The perk doesn’t work that way. What are they missing?

“Ego, any clue as to why they aren’t mating?”

“Hmm,” Ego said. “In war, one must kill the enemy”

“Uhh, okay thanks.”

Ego perked up as usual.

Perhaps there is just a low chance of it happening.

The hole the ants had created spanned quite a long distance now. Since Joe had ordered them to keep mining in that direction, it was a long tunnel leading off to nowhere. It went so far that Joe didn’t have perfect sight of it anymore. The ladybugs were still stuck trying to excavate the large block of ore.

Joe created five more firebugs, costing him forty five truemass, lowering him to 143. Ahh that hurts. He told his ants to start mining northwest. He couldn’t keep track of them as they all moved out of the tunnel and towards a patch of wall, their legs rhythmically bouncing up and down, their heads swaying from side to side.

He sent six firebugs, and six ants into the tunnel, hoping something good would come out of it. He sent them far enough that they wouldn’t clutter his area, but not far enough that he couldn’t see them.

He hoped this experiment would do him well. He was sacrificing the truemass six ants would bring in over a day for this experiment, but if he could get an ignitible ant, then it was all worth it.

He still had 143 truemass left, and since he couldn’t purchase any more units, he decided to buy another barrack. He could at max, with his current core rank, purchase three of them. It upped the maximum amount of units from 50 to 70.

It lowered his truemass down to 93.

Progress. Progress is good.