Austin would have sighed in relief if he could actually sigh, he was down to twenty three percent on his remaining power when the new reactor kicked on. It was nice to finally watch the number tick up and with that he could finally begin his counterattack on the ants and continue digging down into the caverns below. The tractor beam turret he had set up in the tunnel where he had found the ants’ word to life. This one was far more powerful than the ones he’d put on his own mechanical ants. It was built to haul around cargo containers and asteroids to load them into ships. He fired it at the hole on low intensity and watched as earth and rubble and Ant corpses floated towards it slowly as a horde of tractor beam ants began collecting the debris and moving it to designated stockpiles. The system was pretty simple but shockingly useful. A small force field emitter blocked the debris from traveling too far and kept any biological ants from entering. Without the modulation from the mechanical ant’s tractor beam emitters to disrupt the field and let the objects pass through. The force field was divided into two parts, a radon field which would instantly cook anything that tried to pass through it. Thus, killing any of the ants that got sucked up and an actual force field to stop them from going too far. While the tractor beam emitter wasn't powerful enough, at least at this setting to tear apart rocks it was powerful enough to yank some clean out of the earth given they weren't too big. So, any fault or seam allowed chunks of it to fly off only to be captured by tractor beam ants. That then loaded them into the rock disposal pile which would automatically be fed into a grinder converting it into powder. This powder was then fed to a molecular disassembler to print resource blanks. The local terrafirma was a unique mix of an iron heavy phosphate a densely packed regolith mixed medals and carbon with small chunks of meteoric iron mixed in. Considering his ship had crashed from upper orbit that shouldn't be that surprising but the shear amounts of metal he was getting was absurd. Then again that would also explain why so many local fauna had adapted metallic exoskeletons and other such adaptations. Anything that hadn't adapted to this area would likely been poisoned by heavy metals……

Wh-which probably explained why Sophia’s village didn't grow crops instead raised livestock and why they didn't have wells instead relied on those crystals for their water. The ground around them was poisonous. Loaded with heavy metals, though that were extremely good for him they were very bad for the local human community. The only exception seemed to be those odd herbs, they were extremely rich in metals, yes but not toxic heavy metals. It was as if it had been designed to provide as much nutrients as possible while breaking down the heavier metals. Its other medicinal qualities seemed just a byproduct. Though he'd have to do a bit more research to be sure but he guessed these properties probably would be poisonous to the creatures that had adapted to a diet rich in heavy metals.

The locals probably couldn't eat the meat of the monsters in turn but their own livestock. Some weird sheep cow hybrids like creatures seem to have no problems breaking down the toxic plant life and probably weren't nearly as poisonous. Likely without a constant influx of the chemicals in the plants the humans would ge-get sick……. Crap.

He quickly pulled up the scans of Sophia’s older relative and compared it to examples of heavy metal poisoning in his database and well…. He-he would be wincing if he could. The concentrated herbal extract he had given her would most definitely fix her right up and faster than he had originally predicted but it also would rather violently purge the toxic chemicals from her system. He quickly instructed his bot to fetch a bucket.

Meanwhile he began producing his next Beatle. He wanted at least two to protect against anymore breaches in his perimeter and a third to start scouting the surface nearby. The semi functional assembly Bay would also begin printing out parts for a second fully functional assembly bay. Once he had that up and running, he began work on a foundry. While the molecular disassembler could produce resource blanks from the ground soil and regolith from the local geosphere, he was having a harder time processing salvaged metals and the metallic corpses of the insects. A fully functional foundry would be needed or at the very least a basic material refinery in the short term.

He hoped he didn't have to actually wipe out the local insect population. Their ability to produce metallic carapace likely from eating local wildlife and the soil would be quite valuable to him. If he simply relocated the queen elsewhere with a small population and let them thrive, he could farm them for additional resources. Though he lacked any form of research or animal handling or any of the needed facilities to even begin to attempt anything like that. He put assembling the infrastructure for some form of cryo storage to house the queen and some workers when he located them onto his growing task list. However, collecting some useful samples for later study would likely be a good idea. He pondered as he worked and mined, he punched through another three Ant tunnels and sealed them with the force fields. Annoyingly at this rate he’d have to set up another reactor soon. Though for now expansion was one of the least of his worries. The hanger was large enough for a basic production and fabrication facility and while an expansion would be helpful down the line for the time being it wasn't necessary. He was in no short supply for resources and in no short supply for space. However, his fabrication capacity was in short supply progress had all but hit a bottleneck. At this point there was truly nothing he could do but wait there. He had more salvage than he could process, he had nothing to fight. He could put another tractor beam in the corridor filled with beetles, but he had really no reason to. With a force field set up to stop there advance and turrets had been established nearby if they tried to punch through another wall. For the first time in a very-very-ery long time. He found himself without anything to do and he hated it. He guessed he could lower his clock speed. Or finally start designing more units though he’d have to take it slow without any coolant and while running so many tasks at once he’d risk overheating. He really needed to build some-some sub systems to delegate task to. He really wanted to-to sigh then again if he delegates all his task what would he do with himself then?

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Sophia woke up to a faint blue glow. No wait, that was the moth apparently it had decided her hair was a good place to sleep and its wing was now covering her face. She poked the fluffy thing a few times and it crawled off of her before hopping on to her back latching on there when she got out of the bed. She was left wondering where her mother and the others were. The healer’s hut was all but empty except for her the beetle and the moth. Yesterday the building had been full, why was it empty now. Thankfully though when she went outside, she found someone waiting for her, Frederick, the guard that had been helping her. He was the only nice one in her opinion.

“Hey, Frederick, where is everyone and where is mom, is she OK?” Sophia asked hearing the weird wherein sound of the beetles legs behind her.

“Yeah, they're fine most are better than fine whatever weird stuff that bug made, got every guard in their back on their feet. Most are limping still yeah but at least we got enough that if there's another attack will have the full guard on the walls. Your mother on the other hand didn't react so well to whatever it gave her. The healer has been looking after her in the outhouse. I don't know what's going on but the sounds coming from there are something out of a Horror Story.” he said before noticing Sophias expression and realized it was probably not the best time to be joking about that.

“Not like that calm down, it just made her sick in a different way she'll be fine once she's done.”

As if to prove his point Sophia’s mother came limping around the building towards the door helped along by the town's herbalist. Sophia darted off dislodging the moth on her back. It took all of her self control not to run full tilt into her mother to give her a hug. Only managing to stop just before impact. The moth flew over to the beetle who had tried to follow them out the door only to get stuck in the door. It had barely fit through the first time and this time it actually managed to lodge itself in the door. It's weird rolly legs ground against both the building's floor and the ground outside unable to free itself. It then did the by far the weirdest thing they've seen it do yet the front of the leg extended as a claw emerged from it. The weird rolly legs forming legs similar to that of a horse or a dog. It planted its claws into the earth and with a loud pop the door frame splintered as it freed itself. The door hadn't been knocked off its hinges but there was a noticeable indentation left in it.

“We might need a bigger door.” Sofia said as her mother picked her up pulling her away from the large beetle.

“Frederick what is that thing I know Matthews mention something about some beetle thing making me medicine but, what exactly is going on?” she said shielding Sophia from the strange creature before.

“We aren't exactly sure you were in pretty rough shape and because of the dire wolves we were running low on herbs. So Sofia volunteered to go out and collect them. Most of the guards laughed her off but I did my best to try and talk her out of it and when that failed, I did what I could to prepare her. So she left gathered up some herbs and apparently. When she was on her way back, she ran into a dire wolf and escaped into what she assumed at first was an abandoned animal den. Turns out it wasn't so abandoned. It belonged to this big beetle here that's been following her around like a pup and it seems to have picked up a lunar moth. That has in turn taken a liking to your daughter. The beetle ate a bunch of herbs and created some weird stuff that it mixed with water. You drank it and with the lunar moth or whatever it fixed you right up. Honestly, we don't get it either. According to the town mage your daughter's got some sort of magical connection to insects or something or at least that was the best I understood it. I don't really get this whole magic thing sorry.” He said with a small shrug.

“Ohh.” Was all Sophia’s mother could get out before she looked down at her daughter, not sure how to respond to all this.