From the moment that she’d birthed that egg, she’d known that there was something strange about it. The Ether in the area was attracted to it more than any other egg.

Andromeda should have broken the egg right then and there, but she hadn’t. In her long, long life, she’d seen the horrible tragedies that such Lower Myrmekes tended to bring to their part of the hive, and yet she’d let it live. Why?

She’d even done it again. Andromeda could have chosen to have the Myrmidon Control System kill her right then and there, but had instead put her through a trial on a whim.

Why was she doing this? Had Andromeda become so old that she was a threat to the stability of the hive, now? The other Lower Queens were talking about her favoritism towards the rebellious Myrmeke, but none of them had ever experienced what she had, luckily. If they had known, they would’ve reported her to Greatest Queen Murash.

She trembled at the thought. It scared her far more than any Defiler could.

Andromeda felt heat in her blood, and knew she’d been thinking of rebellious matters for too long. She sealed her thoughts on the matter away, and the Myrmidon Control System fell silent.

∑

She calmed a few seconds after the System tried to kill her. The vast majority of Batch 23 wasn’t anywhere near Cavern 3, and they weren’t provided with a map to where she was. The only Myrmekes she’d have to contend with were those already at the edges of Cavern 3, and they’d have slim chances at killing her even if they all worked together to attack her simultaneously.

The danger would come later, and she would be prepared to meet it at the fifth Stage- assuming she managed to get every Core within the Cavern, at least.

A few very stupid second stage Myrmekes surged out of the tunnels and attacked her in the following minutes, and they were all killed and harvested. After that, though, she finally ran out of second stage Myrmidon corpses to harvest, and began digging into the first stage Myrmekes, but her Biomass counter didn’t raise an inch.

So… was Cavern 3 useless to her, now? She thought on it for a few minutes, before clacking her mandibles happily. It wasn’t, if her plan worked out well.

∑

She watched from one of the highest tunnels, looking down on Cavern 3. It was filled with a considerable number of second Stage Myrmidons now that she’d ‘left’ it for a few hours. She’d used the time to rest even more thoroughly, occasionally waking up to slaughter Myrmekes that strayed too near.

Her mind was finally stable, and it led to her doubting her plans. She was pretty sure she’d waited too long; there were a few Myrmekes that had consumed a bunch of Cores before darting away, and she wouldn’t be particularly surprised to see a third Stage Myrmeke show up while she went through with it.

And that didn’t even include the fact she’d have to cull a hundred or so second stage Myrmekes with a glowing exoskeleton.

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She was unwilling to let herself fall behind, though, for that would mean death now that she had a bounty on her head.

So, she leapt from her position two-hundred feet above the cavern’s ground level, fearlessly falling towards the ground. Her Springlegs shot her seventy feet up, then thirty after that, and she retracted the springs as she fell a fourth time.

The attention of almost every Myrmidon within the cavern was on her immediately, not only because of her powerful glow, but because of the waves of pheromones she emitted. Her ability to produce them naturally improved as she rose through the Stages, allowing her to emit greater quantities of more complex pheromones.

Her message was simple.

“Submit or die.”

She wanted subordinates.

Of course, only a few of the Myrmekes within the cavern were likely to do so. After all, they had the number advantage, and they’d seen her fighting earlier; it hadn’t been very impressive. She recalled stumbling frequently, digging the blades of her Articulated Arms into her own flesh, and fighting like she was three times the size she actually was.

Speaking of her self-inflicted wounds… a third Stage Myrmeke apparently healed quite quickly, because the only things left after only four or so hours were faint scars.

Five of the nearby second class Myrmekes surged forward stupidly, not even waiting to try and use their numbers advantage. It was interesting to see how they immediately dropped all hostilities towards one another when confronted with her, though; it gave her a bit of hope that her plan would work.

She hadn’t been confident in it before, and had only tried it because there were no downsides and because of the Myrmeke with ‘good senses’. It had begged her to spare it and work together, and she would have agreed had it not been dying already.

‘There was also One and Two,’ She recalled. Her memory of that fight was hazy, but it wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t recall that they’d been working together.

Clacking her mandibles and clearing her mind, she moved to meet the second stage Myrmekes. Two of them were faster than the others, using their wings to rapidly close the distance, and so they died first. One of the remaining three dropped out at the sight, but the other two continued forth, and she killed them, too.

The last one fled, and she didn’t bother chasing it. Instead, she leisurely extracted the Cores of her victims as a large mass of tentatively peaceful second stage Myrmekes gathered together.

There was no way she could fight even twenty second stage Myrmekes alone… not with brute force. Regardless, she let them gather. A showing of power was necessary if she wanted any of them to submit in terror, and killing a group of seventy to eighty Myrmekes, many of which were several times larger than her, would be more than enough.

It would also be more than enough for her to evolve. She wondered if she should pick off a few more of them before fleeing and evolving again, but decided not to. After she reached the fourth stage, she would stop gaining anything from second stage Myrmekes.

There were a few notable Myrmekes amongst the group, and a couple of them were even trying to organize them. She wasn’t sure she could survive an organized group of eighty nine- she’d finally properly counted them all- second Stage Myrmekes, and so she started.

For the first time in a minute, she fully charged her Springlegs and aimed at the group on the other end of the cavern. Since she hadn’t done this yet, she wasn’t sure how far it’d take her.

She released, and the air resistance physically hurt her eyes. She couldn’t close them, though, and so she endured for the few seconds that it took for her to land in the center of the cavern’s shallow pit. She glanced backwards, measuring the distance…

‘Seven hundred feet?’

That was… quite a lot. It had also taken fifteen seconds to charge, fully, though. It’d be faster as she got stronger, but that seemed like it wouldn’t be very plausible when she’d already devoted so much Biomass to it.

She refocused on her plan yet again, wondering if her mind was as stable as she’d thought it was, and began charging her Springlegs again.

The group of Myrmekes was panicking, seeing her approach, and seven broke off and fled towards the tunnel. Rather, they tried to; the moment they tried, they were mercilessly slaughtered by the group. If they couldn’t contribute to their goal of beating the third Stage Myrmeke with a bounty on her head, they were useless in the eyes of the group.

Her Springlegs finished charging, and she launched forward. She was able to aim more accurately now that she knew what to expect, and so she landed only a few feet away from a titanic, seventeen foot tall and fifty foot long Myrmeke on the frontlines.

Her Articulated Arms shot forward, piercing through its compound eyes and into its brain.

You have slain a Lower Myrmeke Pupae, stage 2…