Anty was very excited since she had hatched a few months ago she had grown significantly stronger. She was the first among her sisters to exceed sapient. She had just evolved into a humanoid animal. Anty knew that the rest of her sisters would become beasts, she didn’t know why she knew that. They all were born with knowledge and memories they didn’t understand, especially her.
When they hatched, different than what her memories prepared her for, they weren’t alone. Something, Anty could somehow identify as a death spirit, and a little girl were watching them.
The spirit had introduced himself as Seker and the girl as Melia, Melia then named her, the firstborn of her sisters, Anty.
Besides her name and the fact that she was the first born she soon discovered, that she was different. She had more knowledge and memories than her sisters. Anty also was more humanoid than her sisters. Even when she just hatched. This was probably the reason why Melia had given her a name and not one of her sisters.
Ever since they hatched, Anty was the teacher and decision maker among them. She somehow knew what her twelve sister’s specialties were. And more importantly, she knew how long it would take for them to become beasts, because only when they were beasts could they birth sufficient monsters to satisfy the expectations of the dungeon and herself.
Especially her youngest sister had huge potential, probably the most, other than herself.
Now after staying in the room, they were born in for so long, Anty decided that it was time for her family to ascend to the floor above. She already knew that an island mainly inhabited by ants would be waiting there. Thanks to her inherited memories she already knew that the ants would be the perfect foundation for their future ant empire.
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Settling on the island was easier than Anty had expected, no matter where she or her sisters went, all ants, even the few monsters among them, would make way and even listen to their commands. Only her oldest sister was different, where ever she went, the ants would follow, they would even fight for the right to do so.
At first, Anty was worried about the strange happenings, but soon she remembered what her oldest sister’s specialty was.
Now a few months later almost all followers of her sister were monsters, she even had a sapient queen in her retinue. Thankfully she also evolved into a beast, she was the first, and so far only one that was able to do so.
Anty’s other sisters were all sapient now, but it would still take quite some time before her next sister could evolve. Not to mention the time needed for all her sisters to evolve.
For now, Anty concentrated on teaching her sisters about their duties and building the foundation of their future kingdom. She had her oldest sister command all ants on the island to help build thirteen homes for them. As much as Anty liked her sisters, she knew that when they fully awakened their powers and evolved into beasts, they would need their own places.
This need became more evident when her oldest sister finally moved into her own hill. Almost immediately, her retinue started to modify the still basic anthill.
After almost a year of work, all sisters had their own home, but only Anty and her oldest sister didn’t have a basic anthill. Anty’s hill was only big enough for her sisters, herself and the firstborn ants of all her sisters. Anty didn’t know why, but all her sisters promised her their first born of each batch. Her only guess was that they wanted to give her a guard of formidable monsters, because she couldn’t produce offspring the same way and amount, like them.
The hill of the oldest sister was bigger than the basic ones, but that was the product of her ever-growing colony of monster ants. The main difference was that her hill wasn’t made of wood, leaves, and dirt, it was made entirely out of stone and dirt. It looked almost like a natural hill if it wasn’t that barren. She also decided to call herself the queen of earth.
When the queen of earth laid her first batch of eggs, they all had a deep earthen hue, especially her very first egg. When they finally hatched all larva were already monsters. Only the one that hatched from the very first egg was different, it immediately was sapient.
Right after the hatching process was over, many of the original ants in the retinue of the earth queen left. Only those that had an affinity or at least a connection to the earth element stayed. Those that left went to the six next oldest sisters. They respectively named themselves fire, air, water, wood, light and dark queen. The other five, six including Anty, didn’t get a single ant.
The element queens let their retinue modify their respective hills, to better suit their future children. These works took a long time, because of the little number of ants, the queens had at their disposal. Only the water queen was better off, the sapient queen, that once followed the earth queen had come to her and soon laid a batch of eggs. With this influx of workers, her hill progressed much faster compared to her sister’s.
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Anty was anxious, somehow the growth cycle of an ant and number of times a queen could lay eggs had slowed down. This wasn’t that bad for her other sisters, especially those that had evolved into beasts for a long time and were able to lay good foundations. But her eighth sister, the queen of darkness, who had only evolved for little more than a year, this change was disastrous.
She had planned with the normal growth speed and couldn’t support the additional time on her own. And while her older sisters had no major problems with the change, they couldn’t spare ants to help her. Only with the help of the unevolved sisters and the guard of Anty was she able to finally pull through.
With the disaster averted, Anty discovered that while the growth speed had slowed tremendously, the affinities of all ants grew in an unimaginable speed. Besides that, the number of mutations also increased.
The increase in mutations was especially evident in the strong ants and the best eggs of each batch. Most of Anty’s guard were some kind of variation.
The number of normal elemental ants was decreasing everywhere, but most mutations where weak. The few strong or useful ones were immediately recruited into the core of each queen.
Some of the rarer mutations were able to bestow a second or third affinity. Depending on which affinity’s they unlocked, they would join the defense or offense queen. Any combination of earth, wood, water, and light would join the defense queen, combinations of fire, air, water, and darkness would join the offense queen.
Despite their names, they specialized in support, the defense queen was responsible for food, first aid, and building fortifications. The offense queen’s main responsibilities were transportation, information, scouting, and assassinations.
That was at least what Anty wanted them to do. Thanks to her inborn knowledge, she knew how kingdoms worked. So she tried to model their kingdom after her information. She didn’t consider, that the kingdoms that adopted these structures were mainly human kingdoms.
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Thanks to the many new mutations all of Anty’s sisters now had at least a few ants in their retinue. But more importantly, the queens of offense and defense had finally evolved into beasts. The growth of their colonies wasn’t as fast as their older sister’s, but they had way stronger and a wider variety of ants than them.
Due to the work of the colony of the defense queen and the planning of Anty, the ant island was completely organized and every piece of land was used. But the ants needed more space to grow.
After long deliberation, the sisters decided collectively to search for a place to expand to. To their luck, some of the ants of the queen of offense had discovered a tunnel below the chamber in which the queens had hatched.
The expedition force included the best members of each of the already evolved sisters. Anty even send her whole guard with them. She had trained them to be able to fight, something she knew they would probably have to do in the future. But until that point in time, the ants never had to fight. After the expedition force left two weeks of tense waiting begun.
When they finally came back, they had lost about half of their members. But Anty’s guard was still complete.
It turned out, that after exiting the tunnel they arrived on a new floor, with forests and many animals and monsters. If they knew how the animals on floors above and animals in the outside world, they would discover that the animals were in the tenth and eleventh floor were more normal and similar to the outside. They scouted deep into the woods before they experienced their first attack. After repelling the ambush, many more followed. They never lost more than two or three members at one, but due to the large number of attacks, the casualties increased fast.
Now, a difficult decision had to be made, should they try and expand on what was probably a huge floor with many hostile animals or should they stay on their small island?
As the de facto leader of the ants, Anty decided to expand. It may cost them some children, but they desperately needed the new space. And if they Anty wanted to fulfill the expectations of the dungeon they would need the strength they could only gain through fighting.
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Anty was sure she had made the right decision when she had decided to push into the tenth floor. They had already established an anthill right outside of the entrance to the tunnel and send some of their subordinate queens there.
While their eggs wouldn’t develop as good as on their home island, they were able to boost the numbers of the ants and reduce the number of casualties of the children of the queens.
Until now there hadn’t been a need to establish more ant hills on the tenth floor. The reason for that was, that the expansion of the colonies had slowed down significantly since they started to have casualties. Anty estimated that they had at least five more years until they had to expand the territory under their control.
But while they didn’t need new territory, they never stopped exploring the floor. Recently they had discovered that there was a second floor underneath them, but so far only Anty’s guard was strong and experienced enough to venture in it.
Before they hadn’t fully explored their current floor they wouldn’t start any large-scale offensive to the next floor. But the exploration of their floor was trickier than expected, very early on, scouts had discovered holes in walls, and while they fit into the holes, they couldn’t pass through them.
Only a few days ago had they discovered that some of the weakest monster ants they had, had accidentally crossed to the other side almost two years ago.
The other side was apparently not very appealing, plants were sparse, and to leave again they had to reach a certain amount of strength to come back out.
Thankfully the ants were in a group and were able to survive against the animals there. While they had casualties, they were able to increase their strength significantly and leave.
When Anty heard about this news, she suddenly had a new memory, in this memory, she sends small groups of ants in regular intervals into the strange area. Every time she did so the dungeon was pleased. Sometimes the ants that were sent in came out with useful resources and treasures.
Together with the memory she got the information, that the same thing was possible on the next floor, the only difference was that the ants could be a bit stronger and the rewards better, but the enemies would also be stronger.