The core began happily expanding down a new tunnel, happy to see yet more ants coming down into its domain. The core’s aura was now a rather oblong and lumpy shape as the core expanded into the ant nest above it. The core called forth a huge number of its ants that swarmed over the opposition. There had been a huge shift in the core’s combat strategy just recently when it had discovered a new way for ants to die. Instead of throwing them into the water to die, the core now ordered the opposing ants to be ripped limb from limb. This method of death was much quicker, and that meant more food faster, which was the real goal here.

The core wished it could take credit for this innovation, but like many other things, it had shamelessly stolen the idea. When the core’s enemies began to swarm its tunnels in larger and larger numbers it had at first sent out just enough ants to match the enemy and ensure that they all died by water. However, there were a few holes in this strategy. For one there was less and less water around the higher into the nest the core went. Sure it could make more, but it would all eventually flow back down anyway. So unless it wanted to completely flood the entirety of its tunnels, this approach was unviable.

It had still considered trying anyway, but there was one big problem with this approach. It just didn’t have enough mana to create that much water. The core was startled at first when it had realized that there were limits to what it could create, but there wasn’t much it could do about it now. There was some hope, however, as the core had noticed a slight increase in the amount of mana it could contain whenever it got food. Regardless, for the time being, about three ants in one go was its limit.

Watching as its minions tore their opponents to shreds the core considered its latest discovery, numbers. It had found this idea as soon as it had created two ants at once, the knowledge suddenly just appeared and he knew everything he needed to know about, numbers. It was very convenient with keeping track of the core’s things. For example, it had five templates, counting the new dirt template he had found, along with twenty-three ants, and exactly one core.

After the core’s valiant swarm finished mopping up the remains of their enemies, the core got back to work. Steadily expanding outwards and upwards. Why upwards? Well because there was more food upwards of course. The core had tried other directions but hadn’t found any ants in those directions, not a single one. So it had decided to take the logical path and pursue its closest food source. It wasn’t moving that quickly but it would get there eventually, and everything was just better as it expanded its aura. More mana regeneration, more space, the chance of new stuff, it even got a little faster at expanding the bigger its aura. Granted it wasn’t by a lot but the core was confident that eventually, the changes would add up. The core also thought it was getting faster at creating ants but that was hard to determine for sure. It had thought it knew everything there was to know about its creatures but apparently not. Every time it absorbed an ant it got a little better at creating its template.

Distracted from its ruminations, the core discovered yet more ants entering into its domain. It wondered why they kept coming. Maybe it was something to do with the doppelgangers the core had created? A mystery for another time the core decided as the invaders matched down its tunnel. Let's see how many ants there are, one, two, three, eight, twenty, forty-five. The core stopped counting, it just couldn’t focus, there were too many ants, they were all blending and shifting around so much that it couldn’t count them properly.

One thing for sure though. There were a lot of ants. There was no way its measly twenty-three ants could kill off that many. Suddenly the core regretted all the time it had put into expanding when it should have been making more creatures. Unfortunately, the core didn’t have much time to regret this fact as the swarm caught up to the leading edge of its forces. Four of its minions were swiftly dragged under by the hoard before the core ordered a hasty retreat.

Falling back deeper into the dungeon the core directed a master full strategy. Its ants bravely took up positions at the edge of a puddle. They bravely made their last stand there managing to force many of their attackers into the deadly waters. It was not enough though and the core’s ants were swept away by sheer numbers. The core thought about how nice it would be to have minions that weren’t so dependent on numbers. When it had a lot of ants it was great and the core barely lost any of its creatures, but when it didn’t have a number advantage things went downhill fast.

As the last of its minions fell even the small burst of food couldn’t comfort the core. It had spent a long time making those ants, and now it was all wasted. The throngs of ants continued down into the dungeon, a few of them falling into water pools but compared to the huge number of invaders the loss was minuscule. On the bright side, the core noticed that no more intruders were entering its domain, which was good. However the remaining ants were still heading farther into the dungeon, and the core noticed with some trepidation that they were on a circuitous route towards its core.

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Fighting down its unease the core gloated to itself as the ants reached the very end of the dungeon and stopped. Since the core had figured out that it was immune to water, it had decided to implement an ingenious defense. The ants would never reach it at the bottom of a pool of water. A few of the more foolhardy ants did indeed try, jumping in and properly succumbing to the insidious influences of the water.

It wondered why the ants wanted its core so badly. Maybe they could kill it for food? The core wondered if those confirmed its long-held suspicion about its own demise, once again deciding that it liked life too much to ever put the idea to the test. The core wouldn’t even be able to enjoy any food there might be if it died.

The massive swarm of ants milled around the dungeon, but unfortunately, they were not leaving. The core would have to evict them itself, but to do that it would need more minions, a lot more minions. So with great reluctance, it halted all expansion for the time being. Even when it hadn’t been paying full attention the core had been keeping its aura steadily expanding at all times. However, it would need all the mana it could get to get rid of its unwanted house guests, and couldn’t afford to waste it expanding. Not when there was so much food just sitting around already in its dungeon.

The core was pleasantly surprised to find that its mana began to return quite a bit quicker than normal now that it was no longer constantly spending mana on its aura. Getting to work the core focused on the ant template planning on creating some new defenders around its core. The template began to form but then sputtered and failed, that was new. It had never failed to create an ant before the only thing different was all the enemies in its dungeon. Could it not make any new creatures with enemies around?

Hurriedly it tried to make a bit of water, the template fizzled again but forcing stabilized it and a tiny drop of water bounced off the carapace of one of the ants. Well, that was good, at least it wasn’t completely impotent around the intruders. That had been substantially less water than it was normally created at once but at least it had worked. The core puzzled over the problem for a while trying to think its way out of its predicament. It once again considered flooding all of its tunnels but that would take even longer now even with its increased access to mana. The core solemnly swore to itself that when it got out of this situation it was going to have plenty of minions so this never happened again.

Eventually, the core stumbled upon a solution, managing to create a new ant farther up in its dungeon away from the invaders. This was good, it meant that the core would only have issues with its power directly around intruders and not everywhere in its dungeon. Swiftly getting to work, the dungeon began to create ants. It would make three then pause for its mana to return then make three more. In very little time it had recouped its former forces, however, it wanted a few more ants before launching its first raid. Bringing its creature total to around fifty the core stopped for the time being. It wasn’t enough ants to kill the intruders, not by a long shot, but it would put a good dent in their numbers. The massive unified swarm of earlier had slowly spread out in the lower reaches of the core’s dungeon and split into many smaller groups.

The core sent its forces against these smaller and more isolated groups, wiping them out one by one. At the same time, it began to create more raid groups, sending them out to continue the task of whittling down the enemy. The core began to chip away at the numbers of the invaders gradually taking out all of the outlying groups until only the swarm around the core itself remained. In that time it had assembled a total of five raid groups. However, the core had carefully counted the remaining invaders and determined that there were still almost three hundred ants in the main swarm.

Pulling back for the time being the core patiently continued creating ants, until it had brought its grand total up to three hundred and fifty ants. Now confident in victory the core sent its defenders streaming down into the dungeon to destroy the remaining enemies. Battle was joined, and it was total ant carnage. The invaders were outmatched and outnumbered, they were also trapped with the core’s pool to their backs. However, they still fought to the bitter end tearing apart the core’s fighters even as they were bitten and ripped apart. Despite the core’s preparation, there were still a lot of enemies and by the time the last enemy corpse collapsed to the ground only a measly one hundred of the core’s forces remained.

Reluctantly the core concluded it would be best to restock its minions before expanding again. While finding more food was important it was equally important to be able to obtain that food when it was found. It didn’t want to be stuck hiding at the bottom of its pool again, what if the ants had been immune to water? That would have ended very poorly for the core, it wasn’t exactly sure what the ants would do with its core but it figured it was nothing good.

The core began again the most important task in defending itself, making ants. It had gotten faster though, now able to make five ants in a row thanks to all the food it had eaten. That was cold comfort however when the core was faced with the massive amount of ants it would need. It had once enjoyed creating ants, watching mana fill the template and a new being spring into existence, but it had done it so many times recently that it was beyond dull for the core. Nothing to be done about it, better get back to work.