We started the tour off in one of the outer tunnels, there is a long stretch of darkness between the main hive structure and the area being dug out, navigating it was easy enough with the light ant I was given. We reached the end and found a trio of workers digging into the wall and a fourth worker gathering the cast off dirt and piling it up. Then she did something to it that resulted in it compressing a fair amount, turning a fist full of dirt into a small rock, it must have been some kind of magic. Last thing of note wagon that on the ceiling was another light ant. The workers all stopped suddenly when Fighter did an antenna wiggle towards them, and then they shuffled positions rapidly and lined up.

"Four workers, are they? Find difference?" She said while gesturing towards them.

Hmmm, I got closer and started circling them, I was most likely trying to find the magic user, some marking or shape on them that showed they could do magic. After three circles of each I couldn't seem to find anything different about them, two arms to a side stacked right over eachother, armor plated exoskeleton all over. Maybe I needed to feel for the magic? I closed my eyes and tried for any feeling that isn't one of my old five senses. After like ten minutes of standing there I felt nothing new, I opened my eyes and still nothing, no glowing auras or anything.

"Give up, no difference," I said in exasperation.

"Yes, and no." She smirked "magic worker oldest, level two, learn compress earth magic."

"Wont they all get to level two eventually then?"

"Digging dirt too easy, no experience. Level from hunting, three workers fight beast, two die, must kill five beasts to level." She explained while giving the air a chop.

"Fighter weaken beast, worker kill?" I asked.

She shook her head, "Tried, worker kill many beast, no level, Fighter make battle too easy, worker not killer class."

So, not only do killing classes gain more experence for killing things, but they still get some for easy kills while noncombatants got none.

Hmm, now that I thought of it, "Fighter level?"

"Level six, skill harden shell." She puffed out her chest and a second later her exoskeleton became really shiny. "Power strike" she held out her arm and the underside gained a red glow. "Find Prey." she pointed towards the ceiling at an angle, "beast there. New skill two level."

I followed up with, "Fighter strongest?"

"Yes, but queen limit, daughters not be stronger but princess." She said sadly.

"Queen kill beast, level?" I made the chopping motion she did before.

She shook her head again, "Queen not killer class, not risk, not level."

Damn, so the queen couldn't gain levels by killing without risking her life and thus the entire hive. "Queen normal experience?"

"Make hive bigger with king," and she did the universal sign for sex, making a circle with one hand and sticking a finger through it.

I felt my cheeks flush at the idea of leveling from sex, is level six a lot or a little, what about me and the princess? I felt woozy from the head rush and had to lean against the wall. I took a few deep breathes to calm down, I knew that such a thing would come up eventually, but being so candid about it out of nowhere surprised me. After thinking about it for a minute I realize it made a twisted sort of sense, an ant queen's job isn't to dig or fight or build, it's to make children that did those things.

"Any more talk here?" I asked Fighter after getting my bearings.

"No, done here," she wiggled at the workers who started digging again while led me away.

Next stop on the tour was nearer to the surface, just off the path to the outside was a chamber with a hole in the ceiling. There was also a fire in the middle of the room and several rather poorly cut animal skins around the walls. The ant working in here was another guard ant who was busy cutting open another boar. She and Fighter did some wiggling before she set the boar down and came over to me, she wiggled her antenna at me for a few seconds before Fighter stopped her and wiggled something else.

"Me..... cook," she said slowly and with care to enunciate.

Fighter then told me, "Soldier not good cook, but queen not make good cook, so soldier cook."

"Can queen make good cook?"

"Queen's queen higher level, make fire ant, fire magic and good cook." She said while miming fire coming from her hands.

I see, level controls access to the kind of ants a queen can make. Meaning powerful queens not only have large hives but diverse ones as well.

The cook guard chimed in "wish...me... fire ant."

"Fighter, why other guard not talk good?" I asked about cook and the other large guard ants.

"Fighter special, int four. Other guards, int three. Workers, int two. Ants never weak, but luck when born make stronger." she explained to me.

So ant types have base stats and occasionally one is born with a bonus point in a stat. We bid the cook guard goodbye and continued on the tour. Next stop was nearby, a sort of work room with several workers and a guard overseeing them. They were scraping their claws against large relatively straight sticks, turning them into spears.

"Why spears only wood, no stone?" I asked about them.

Fighter looked at me confused, "Stone spear would break when hit?"

Wow, that was some leap in logic. "Not whole spear, just top. Give two rock, hand big." I said while making a fist.

Fighter and the supervising guard wiggled to eachother for a bit then sent one of the workers out. She came back shortly with the rocks I asked for and gave them to me. I hoped this would work how I wanted it to or I would look silly. I twisted one rock on the ground so it was being held in a divot, then lifted the second rock up and smashed it into the first a little off center. The side of the rock I hit crumbled instantly, leaving an unnaturally smooth edge for smashing rocks together, I guess even trying to make rock spikes worked as weirdly as making nails. I repeated the process on the other side leaving a really sharp rock.

I grabbed one of the straight sticks and used the stone to add some notches behind the end and held the stone on it, and realized I had no cord on me. "Fighter, need tiny rope, like camp."

Fighter pondered for second, then directed a worker to a branch with with fresh bark still on it and she sliced a strip of it off like they did when making the lean-tos. She brought it to me and I secured the stone to the stick.

I proudly held it over my head, "Stone spear! Why no make before?"

"King say wood spear good enough for ants." She said with a scathing edge to her voice.

Wait, what? "Was king... good to ants?"

"King was dumb, he say this spot good, but no big rock. He say steal gold, but gold not help ants. He say guard to town and let go alone and come back three days and smell like rotten fruit" if she had a nose she would have crinkled it.

In other words, the king was an idiot that wasted time and resources on stealing shit and using it to buy alchohol.

"Why listen king?"

"King say... do thing or never come back. Queen need king, so queen listen."

Wow, "why queen make king?"

"Not know, ask queen," then she turned to the guard and wiggled to them. "Let go, stone spear keep hive alive little longer, but still need teach."

She started walking away and I had to catch up. "Hive dying?"

"Yes, queen dying so hive dying." She said sadly.

"Why queen dying?"

"Queen dying since king die. When queen make king, life link. Queen still live because princess."

We made it to the next location which seemed to be a sort of pupating chamber. There were quite a few in here, new ones were almost completely white while the older ones almost look like a normal worker covered in a plastic sheet. There were a few workers walking around, occasionally turning one of them over. It was an interesting look at day to day operations.

The final stop of the tour was the queen's chamber. I entered carefully with my eyes averted, remembering the last time I saw her.

"Ah, Kadi, I see you are done with your tour. Oh stop looking away, i've covered myself." I turned around and saw that she was telling the truth, she had placed her lower arms over her chest. "Now, I would like you to meet my little princess."

She suddenly stepped aside, and that is when I felt my heart skip a beat. The princess was beautiful, the sharp but expressive look in her eyes, her thin nose, her plump lips, they all looked perfect. My eyes were drawn downward of their own accord, her chest was still armored but I could just tell those will be perfect too. Her hips were just wide enough to look motherly but thin enough to be cute. I was just too stunned to say anything, so I just keep looking her up and down, completely flabbergasted. I was broken from my trance by her softly coughing.

"Ahem, uh, hello. Mother said you were going to be my king?" She said with a cute little wave.

"I do, I mean, yes, I am Kadi!" Oh geez I was so nervous, she's too cute!

"Hehehe, you seem nice enough, I guess mom was right, if a man stays of his free will he will be a better match." She smiled at me and I just get even more butterflies in my stomach somehow.

"I um uhh can we, um," I can't think of what to say, my nerves were just completely shot to bits.

"It seems he likes you, dear. May I suggest you hold his hand and sit with him," the queen leaned down and told her.

She did just that, walked over, grabbed my hand, and pulled me down to sit next to her on the ground. I just sat there, on the dirt floor, smiling like an idiot because a girl was holding my hand. This situation was making me happier than any date I went to on earth. Eventually my brain managed to reengage the ability to have thoughts and I look around the chamber. In one area I saw a pile of eggs with a couple workers keeping them from sitting still for too long, when I turned my head to the other side I saw a wooden bed like in the other room, but queen sized and with an unmoving figure on it.

I tightened my grip on the princess' hand and asked the queen, "is that the old king?"

The queen's eyes suddenly become tinged with a mixture of sadness and anger. "Yes, that's him."

"Fighter told me he wasn't a very good king, why did you make him the king?"

"He made me like him by making me dislike myself. He would call me a monster and that only he could ever love me. I fell for it, every insult was designed to make him seem better, safer. After I first made him king he was good enough, but from the time he went to the town after becoming king he came back hateful. He wanted other women when he already had me! Jokes on him, he was incapable of having sex with anyone else since our first coupling. Without breathing my pheromones, my king couldn't do anything. So he had sex with me to stave off his own death but otherwise treated me like I was invisible!" She ranted.

She breathed heavily for a minute to calm down then said, "Sorry for that, ever since he died I started realizing how terrible he really was and never had someone I could rant to like that. That is why I was so happy you chose to stay, I could tell you would be a good king by simply imagining the opposite of him being good."

That was, wow, apparently negging existed over here, but he didn't know ants had a biological obedience protocol so you can't just sleep with a queen as a one night stand.

"So... how did he die?" I had to ask.

"Oh, he overestimated how much I would put up with, and when he ordered me to give him my princess so he could have human wizards learn how to break the pheromones I snapped his neck." She said matter of factly.

If I was drinking something I would have spit it out. He really was awful to drive someone that loved him, even if it was for the wrong reasons, to kill him.

"Anyway, you two go take a walk, get to know eachother, a human date." She said while shooing us out of the room.