Locked within an eternal, primordial void was a newly-born consciousness. With next to zero intellectual capacity at the moment, it, like its kin, was driven by only instincts- was meant to be, rather- as a plethora of words that it did not recognize were presented to it.

You are not yet truly alive. Choose your form.

It did not recognize the words, but it understood. It was not meant to, but it did. It was as though the words directly projected their meanings into its brain.

No, not brain; it had no form. How did it even comprehend these words? How was it even thinking?

Its train of abstract pondering was interrupted by the expansion of text within its mind.

As a Lower Myrmeke Larva, you are presented with two Greater Paths.

Soldier

Worker

It ‘looked’ at the two options curiously. There was no need for a description, due to the meanings of the words being pushed into its mind.

Curiously, workers worked but soldiers did not soldiered; they fought. More importantly, it was clear that the soldier ants were better. Bigger, stronger… well, that was about it, but that was all that it needed.

It chose to be a soldier, and the text disappeared. Suddenly, it felt like it was something.

But it couldn’t move. A moment later, the environment shifted; the eternal, primordial void disappeared, and in its place, light shone through the walls.

…Walls? It took a while for it to realize that it was now within an egg; a really, really tiny and constrictive egg.

You will be an egg for sixteen days. Direct your growth towards one, a few or even most of the Lower Paths presented.

Acid (Hydrochloric) (2)

Durability

Detonation (14)

Lockjaw Mandibles (1.5)

Venom (Neurotoxin) (4)

Size

Strength

Springlegs (3.5)

Wings (5)

The moment that she decided how to spend her time as an egg, she would fall into a hibernation of sorts as her growth was directed into the paths she chose.

She could split her time into certain ‘Lower Paths’ in measurements of days and half-days. The majority of the paths had minimum requirements, though, the exceptions being durability, size and strength.

While she had a slight understanding of what the words meant with just a glance, she gained a greater understanding after staring at them each for a few seconds. After a minute, she had a good understanding of what each path involved.

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Directing her growth towards the acid path would allow her to spit, as one might expect, acid, the lethality of it determined by how much of her time as an egg she invested into it.

Directing her growth towards durability would make her chitin more durable, although it would also make her flesh and muscles more resilient to a lesser extent.

Detonation was a path that she immediately steered clear of. She did not want to be a suicide bomber, which was exactly what the detonation path was.

The Lockjaw Mandibles path would make her mandibles stronger and grant them the ability to lock, making it so that anything caught in them would have a hard time getting out. Its strength depended on how much time she invested into it.

Next, diverting her growth towards the path of venom would allow her to use her stinger to inject a neurotoxin into her victims. Just like everything else, its strength depended on how much time she spent on it.

The path of ‘size’ was rather self explanatory; diverting time there would cause her to become larger. Without touching it at all, she would be two feet tall. Strength was similarly simple; diverting time there would enhance her muscles, granting her greater strength, stamina, and would even make her muscles a bit more tear-resistant, so that the greater strength didn’t cause her to turn herself into mincemeat.

Directing her growth towards Springlegs would grant her the ability to jump massive distances by surrounding them in, well, springs. Unfortunately, that they were springs meant that they needed to be pressed down on to do their thing, meaning that using them had a brief ‘warming up’ period. This path was also versatile, as it did that while also making her legs stronger.

Lastly, there was the Wings path, which would grant her… wings.

‘This not easy.’ She thought. Of course, the thought wasn’t thought in a language, but that was roughly what the abstract thoughts translated to.

After an unknown amount of time, she eventually finished dividing her time up. The text listed off her decisions before issuing a warning.

You have chosen:

Strength (4) 4

Springlegs (4.5) 8.5

Durability (2) 10.5

Lockjaw Mandibles (2) 12.5

Acid (2.5) 15

Size (1) 16

You cannot change your mind once your directed growth begins, and your form won’t grow or change until you reach the second Stage. Are you certain?

She hesitated. She wasn’t certain at all, but this seemed like a good enough plan. She would shoot forward with the Springlegs, grab something in her Lockjaw Mandibles and, if she wasn’t capable of breaking her opponent’s armor on her own, she would melt through it using her acid.

Finally, she reluctantly agreed, and the world went black for a second. In the next instant, she was suddenly within an entirely different, fully-formed body.

Out of 713,204 Lower Myrmidon Pupae in Batch 23, only 10,000 will be allowed to enter the hive. Exit your egg, and struggle for supremacy.

She only briefly looked at the text that lurked at the edges of her mind’s eye, instead entirely intent on escaping from her impossibly constrictive egg.

Now that she was larger, it felt like she was going to suffocate in here. The egg was already on the verge of breaking apart entirely because of her size, and so it broke apart easily when she started pushing, biting and tearing.

She wriggled out of the slimy white egg and, for the first time, got a good look at her surroundings.

She was within an enormous cavern. Her wriggling antennae told her that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of her kin were in here with her. They were all were within an enormous but shallow pit in the center of the cavern, and thousands of tunnels spread through the cavern’s walls.

Behind her, an enormous ‘Crack!’ rang out. She whirled around, only to find that, directly behind her, a twelve-foot-tall ant stood. Its eyes were, luckily, not trained on her, but the environment.

It must have invested every day it had in the egg into its size.

The words in her mind had been clear in their meaning. All of the ants here were going to end up killing each other, until only ten thousand remained.

‘Escape. Need, now!’ She rapidly decided. Her control over her body was not yet perfect, but her instinctual understanding was enough for her to begin pressing herself into a patch of dirt right by her egg. The springs around her legs were compressed rapidly due to her high strength, and the moment that they couldn’t be compressed any further, she stopped pushing.

With tremendous speed, she was shot a hundred feet forward and up. It was enough to easily clear the height of the pit, but she was nearly in the pit’s center, meaning that there was a nearly thousand yard distance between her and the pit’s edge.

As she began to fall, fear suddenly shot through her body. She hit the ground hard, but the springs on her legs nullified the damage that she had been expecting.

Then, it all started to go downhill.