Crossing through the pillars of the open space, it led me past the maze of pillars and through the wide central tunnel, where the path deviated sharply to the left before descending downwards.

The corridor continued, the ash grey ground changing into a descending slope and I wondered just how far it went. Using [Heat Sense] I could still detect the wasps further down but their traces kept growing faint as they continued to move.

I channelled [Stealth] and felt my body temperate merge with the grey walls, while I focused [Heat Sense] to fully detect my surroundings.

The [Heat Sense] expanded around me, filling my vision turning the bare corridor and all inanimate objects into dull shades of blue, with the wasps appearing as the only bright red sources of heat.

With it activated I was prepared for any surprises coming my way. I'd just have to react quickly and retreat if I was alerted to any new presence.

Gradually, as I moved closer to the vibrations, I noticed the curve of the walls had become less steep. As the path of the corridor became a more inclined slope, the walls also changed and dipped to something more curved and wider so many wasps could fly through at the same time.

I hesitated at the top of the slope. Rather than the sounds of the wasps reducing as they moved away, at the bottom of the corridor I was met with even more intense vibrations. The wasps must have stopped.

The closer I got to them, the more pronounced the vibrations below the slope became. The group of wasps were close, the increasing sounds revealing to me there were at least ten wasps ahead.

The opening had to be here!

As I proceeded [Heat Sense] revealed the red outlines of more than twenty wasps. They were all fixed into a large chamber overlooking an opening where I could sense even more wasps flying up from the hive below.

Some wasps disappeared into other tunnels carrying creatures with them, while others followed up from the opening in a steady stream, changing direction to enter other caverns after depositing their cargo.

When two wasps left the cavern to enter the corridor I was in, I immediately turned around. I switched tactics to retreat to avoid the oncoming wasps, just as another three heat sources entered my sensory range. This time flying in behind me from the open space.

The two entities were headed for a collision course with me smacked in the middle!

My attention turned to the sloping walls which reached a stable height, and the corridor that was wide enough for both groups to fly past without having to fly over each other.

So I quickly scaled the sloped wall, using my nimble body to attach myself to the rough surface near the ceiling to avoid the wasps.

With [Grip] already at LV3 it wasn't difficult to hang on to the wall and the wasps soon flew past without detecting my presence.

I smugly watched the wasps fly past, while safely tucked into a groove at the top of the wall. From there I overlooked each cavern in the corridor to observe the wasp's activities.

In one chamber there were two openings and the wasps swarmed them in groups. They were large enough for many wasps to pass whilst carrying their creature cargo. The openings were likely linked to the lower levels because the wasps who flew in swiftly dumped their cargo in the cavern, before flying out of the other opening.

There are as many wasps inside as there were host creatures. These new hosts were checked by the wasps who separated them into three sections before carrying them away to one of the chambers.

One small pile I assumed contained those that didn't make the trip, while another had paralysed hosts who bled from many injuries and the last pile contained perfectly normal hosts without injuries other than puncture wounds.

I knew the less injured pile of hosts would be used to fill the hexagonal chambers and the dead ones would be disposed of, but I didn't know what the wasps used the injured hosts for. They were likely still alive under that paralysis.

With [Heat Sense] I tried to see what was happening inside each chamber but my range didn't help much unless I moved closer. I slithered along the wall with [Stealth] and from there I was able to spy on all the wasps.

The sloped corridor opened up to many large hexagonal shaped chambers adjacent to each other where different activities were taking place. The wasps carrying in the paralysed hosts, all looked exactly like the wasp that stung me. They were the only kind of wasp I'd seen so far but now I realised there were other types.

The wasps waiting in the openings to identify and separate the less injured hosts were much smaller and looked noticeably weaker than their hunter counterparts. They had fewer claws that did not look as sharp and they carried off the less injured hosts to a second chamber. These wasps still brandished barbed stingers but they did not look as dangerous as the others.

I directed my appraisal at them and the results only showed.

______________

LV11 Melior Hesperia

Specie: Ailith Vespoidea

______________

How insightful.

I noticed another chamber filled exclusively with these weaker wasps, only they did not house host creatures, and were composed entirely of eggs.

Large identical clusters of 20 plus eggs covered in viscous membrane filled the surface of this room and these wasps were busy sorting out the clusters into identical rows of spherical eggs.

These wasps were more suited to carrying as their arms did not have as many sharp barbs as the hunters did. They passed through and from the opening, receiving the clusters of eggs carried in by other wasps.

I spied on them, trying to detect anyone acting suspiciously. If these wasps were the egg handlers, some of them had to be changing the eggs.

But all the eggs were stacked uniformly together and there wasn't any identifiable trait to separate them. I wondered how these wasps could tell them apart. There had to be some hidden dissenters among them helping to move the weaker queen's eggs, but unlike my expectations, they all worked harmoniously together without any conflict.

So when were the eggs switched out?

Alongside the workers and the hunters, I noticed another class of wasp.

This one was much taller and bulkier than the others, it walked on four legs, with two larger front arms which it used to carry the hosts. The shell covering its segmented limbs was thick and it had larger sturdy mandibles and a wide body without the presence of wings.

I watched its lumbering body move through the corridor, entering and exiting chambers at random. I was perplexed at what its role was. It looked too clumsy and slow to be a hunter, and its arms were too bulky to be skilled enough to handle an egg.

It meandered aimlessly through the chambers until it came to the one with the opening. Its eyes settled on the pile of dead creatures and it lifted up the largest of the bodies with its thick arms and proceeded to carry it out of the chamber and up the sloped ground back into the tunnels.

And then it clicked. This one was for maintenance!

The small pile of dead bodies instantly reduced when more of its kind appeared to carry them away, they had to be taking them up to the graveyard and since I already knew where that was I wasn't too interested.

But then one wasp came to the pile of injured bodies, and lifted them up. The injured bodies were taken down the slope of the corridor, through another chamber where the changed depth made the wasps disappear from my sensory range and I grew anxious.

It just took away a potential new source of recruits!