Mar was only casually interested in the unit that had become a Subject after having been transformed into a familiar in the depths of the ocean. They had only been vaguely aware of it as adding one Subject to the Swarm was like adding a pebble to a mountain, while it technically made a difference the mountain wouldn't exactly notice it easily.

No, that which captivated the attention of the Swarm at present was the work done in the town of Hor and the nearby forest. Days had passed since the Biomass Refinery had been finished, and Mar had while consulting with the most notable Collectives and the Avatars of the Swarm, made a decision. The Forest of Halla was...limited in how useful it would be to convert. Partially because while trees like all living beings did eventually succumb to the conversion process and became Units like any other. They were by far the least efficient targets in the sense of how long it took to convert them, and that they yielded relatively few benefits.

The decision that had been reached was that to cull the forest of all the unnecessary trees and convert them to Biomass. Would be a far more productive use of the territory. All the trees that had been made into Units along with special trees that the Dryad could identify, would be spared and then be converted. In time the forest would be regrown as the Swarm-Trees replaced the culled trees, and in the end, the land would be better off for it.

Old Yoss had convinced Mar of the need to spare some of the unconverted trees to maintain the happiness of the Dryad. It had taken some time for Mar to see the necessity of maintaining the interests of a single individual Subject, but the Avatars did exist to remind them of that perspective. As such scores of Workers and Fungal Zombies were scouring the forest to remove all unconverted and unnecessary plant matter to have them then be transported back to Hor, where the Biomass Refinery would process the plants.

It was the Logistics-Collective who handled the culling of the forest and the transportation of the materials back to Hor. The Collective of Hor took care of the actual refinery and the processes surrounding it, and Old Yoss managed the frictions between the two Collectives while also ensuring that the Biomass was appropriately distributed.

Mar had worried that the need for Subjects in the Refinery would be an obstacle as the humans that they possessed were not exactly familiar with factories and industrial scale production. But this was where the true power of having a proper Settlement revealed themselves. The Settlement Collective controlled the living apparatuses of the Biomass Refinery and as such knew perfectly how they were to be worked. With that it was easy for it communicate with the designated Swarmsworn factory workers to have them man the machinery and begin the process of refining the various sources of Biomass. It reminded Mar of playing Age of Empires and watching peasants being pushed into doing new forms of labour and somehow they managed to instantly transition from being berry gatherers into miners or construction workers.

Of course, Mar was not just simply observing the small scale industrial revolution that they had ushered into this world. They had far more than one scheme to observe and some of them were already beginning to bear fruit. While the Refinery created the Biomass that was sorely needed to create more Units and help feed the growing Swarm, the main issue that came with it was how to distribute the resources.

The first discovery that influenced the policy behind the distribution came when Queen Meath informed the Swarm that her ability to breed Workers and Soldiers were significantly more resource efficient than Mar using Create Unit. Her egg laying method reduced the cost by about 50% and had the added benefit of having the eggsacks being recyclable as Biomass material after the Units had hatched.

A noticeable portion of the Biomass had been distributed to the rebuilding of Hor after all of the unnecessary constructs had been cleared so that new Civilian Subject Cubicles could be built. From the memories that Mar still had access to the burgeoning construct looked like some kind of mixture between a beehive and an apartment complex from the outside, while internally it reminded them of a capsule hotel. Each individual building was massive and would require multiple Energy Pylons to sustain them, but in time there would be enough to cover the entire population of Hor.

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However, the largest amount of Biomass was not diverted towards creating more Units nor to the development of Hor. After all, Hor was a distraction, a disguise meant to be a tantalizing target which would distract the enemies of the Swarm from what was really being built. It had started when Mar had passed through the memory of one of the many ants that were in their collection. The memory of building a hive and digging tunnels specifically. It had given them the idea as the question of what would happen once the world inevitably realized the true scope of the threat that Mar represented.

Armies of the Light would be marshaled to counter her, monsters and men alike would put aside their differences and form an alliance meant to purge the entire Swarm. Mages, Shamans, Clerics, and other people versed in mystical arts would work together to find ways to better fight the Units and Subjects Mar would throw at them. Gods, Spirit Kings, Demons, and whatever else might exist in this reality would find ways to strike at her and thwart her schemes.

Mar could remember having seen it before...or perhaps only she had read about it back in those days before the fire. Whatever, the reason she knew that in this story Mar was the monster that would unite the world against her. This was naturally a distressing thing to realize, but ultimately it changed nothing. Mar had to consume the world and through that become it, but that did not mean they had to be an idiot about it.

Which was why Mar would let their initial assault fail after a dramatic war that was believable enough that they would think them dead. Infiltrators, Cultists, and traveling Preachers would be their true weapon once the initial stage was over, but while that was taking place Mar needed a place to gather their resources and grow their true forces. Which was why Mar had initially used Ysandra along with the various digging animals they possessed in the Swarm to lay the initial groundwork. They had dug deep and more importantly covered their tracks well while leaving an almost invisible string of fungal-floral matter connecting to the large cavern.

Had the laws of physics had their say then this would not be enough, but Mar was not in need of obeying those laws fully anymore. They could transfer Biomass through the tiny tendril into the growing underground complex after the Refinery had passed the Biomass into the Fungal-Floral Network. Which was useful as Spiderling Engineers and Workers were diligently preparing the space for the future, digging and building structures making way for the grand city that would one day be there. Deep beneath the earth, hiding like a crab in the sand while prey and predator alike were left non the wiser.

Unlike in Hor, Mar had immediately constructed the Anti-Sympathy Array after the work on the caverns had reached the second stage. The enemies of the Sovereign Swarm could never know about this place as it would ruin...or it wouldn't ruin everything, but it would make things far more inconvenient. Mar didn't rely only one contingency plan after all, which was why they had planted the seeds in the sea as it were.

Mar could feel the entire chain of industry move as the forest fell and the resources it contained were being stripped out of the carcass. They felt the refined Biomass flowed into the various enterprises being worked on within their territory, and they sensed the "refugees" "fleeing" Hor, while the Ant-Termite General prepared the expanding army to be sent out to begin the forrays into the nearby Baronies bordering their domain. Things were going to escalate very quickly from here and it would not be easy, but ultimately that didn't matter.

Mar was ready.