While cuddling together in the afterglow Victoria suddenly bolted upright and yelled "I got one!"

I, of course, had no idea what she meant "you got one what?"

"One of my new soldier eggs is special! But... it doesn't say how they will be special, just that they have a plus one to something." She ponders that for a moment but then her eyes flicked to the top right of her vision "I also have another blue box notice, it says... I can absorb the bonus to earn ten points on my bonus buildup trait thingy?"

Ah, I see what it is now "sounds like bonus buildup is a way to make some kind of super special child, you build up potential and then give it to an egg and they will be better in some way than a regular enhanced child."

"So, blue box is giving me the choice to not have a regular special in exchange for getting a super special faster?" A complicated expression appears on her face as she thinks about that, "do you think I should take the deal? It sounds like it would be a good idea."

"It's your choice to make, you are the one putting the real effort into making them so it is only right you get to decide that" I smiled at her while I explained my reasoning.

She took some time to think about it, weighing several things in her mind before concluding "I will let her be born as she is, no deal with blue box" she looked towards me to see if I approved and I just kept smiling at her, she smiled back and we both went to sleep now that that was decided.

The next morning we spent some time talking about how we would build up our cave system. The first point I asked about was ventilation, but that will be solved by next level, seems the secondary effect of the glowing ant's light is it cleans the air, they need to release a burst to heal fast but their regular light also provides a tiny healing boost. Basically it's a light of health, it makes everything within the light healthier, from the people that enter it to the air around it. Next point was waste rock, it is starting to form a fair sized hill outside the entrance.

For that I planned to make a low wall ring around the place to disrupt attacks, for things like the boars that can't climb it should make it so they can only attack from the side that has a guard stationed at it. Finally we talked about the shape of the place and how to dig deeper, until much higher levels stone can only be removed, not put back, so any digging we do should be treated as permanent. After some back and forth we eventually decided on a square formation with off-shoot rooms, so the right side will need to be rejoined with the left in the back room. Once that is done we will be able to start the next section which will be on a lower level, we will essentially be building a pyramid from the top down, with a small entry area leading down into a more complex structure.

While talking about that, the workers who took the eggs came back with them as larva, meaning it was feeding time, I gave Victoria a kiss and let her get to that while I went to snag some workers to get started on the wall. I got the two that were still digging the big room and led them topside and over to the pile of rock that was off to the side, I grabbed a armload and told them to grab a much as they could as well. Next I led them to a spot about ten meters in front of the entrance hole and used all three armloads of rock to start the wall pile. I thought at them the idea of it, a wall that is ten meters away from the entrance hole on all sides, aka a circle with the hole in the middle. I think they understood me easily, their structual engineering savantism letting them grasp the concept of a circle wall easily.

After an hour of piling rock we hit our first roadblock, there was a tree in the way, which was a great excuse to try my improved dirt magic. It blasted into the dirt under the tree a lot faster than before and permeates the ground with ease, with a slight push of effort the dirt rapidly liquified and the roots of the tree started losing their grip. Being careful of the angle I forced the tree to tip and fall over away from the entrance. Overall I would say it was nearly twice as powerful as before, I had confidence that if a boar and I spotted eachother at the same time at range, I could melt the ground between us before it could reach me.

Me and the workers turned the tree into large but manageable chunks and put them off to the side while we continued working. After another several minutes passed I had an idea, I told the workers to simply make a one stone thick ring along the wall area first and to also just ignore the trees in the way, I would take care of them later. With them working I went to the river bank where my charcoal pile was, as well as the mud. I grabbed hold of a glob of mud with magic and it worked a lot better, moving mud before was just awful, but now it is only hard. Looking at what was happening I could see the water in the mud having a disruptive effect on the magic, it was probably way worse before but now I could push through it a little.

I dropped the mud glob, turned to the charcoal mound, and pulled the dirt off the top like I was peeling an orange. Inside it was full of that wonderful black stuff. I fill an extra large dirt jar with a much of it as I could carry, then saw all the ash and wondered if I could do something with that, I mean it's a powder so should count as an earth particulate. I set the jug down and turned my magic on it, it was a different feeling to the mud, instead of having to push through a barrier the particles themselves felt... slippery? It was like trying to grab water with your hand, but the upgrade made my magic sticky enough to overcome that. It may have been similar but it wasn't dirt according to the magical definition.

I scooped some up and clumped it together into a ball, I held it in one hand and had a dirt ball in the other, it was odd feeling how magic interacted with both. I grabbed the jug again in my magical grip and carried the sphere of ash by hand, then started back toward the cave to see how the workers were doing with the stone ring. They were about halfway done, as in they had half a circle around the entryway, were three trees disrupting it at the moment. I set the charcoal jug down near the door and got to work knocking over the trees, I kept hold of the ash ball and ran magic through it as I worked to hopefully gain some insight into making it not slippery.

I had to knock over seven trees to get the basic ring of stones finished, and no insight into negating how slippery ash was, but I did gain two levels, and I was able to confirm my level up feeling was real by checking the screen as soon as I got that feeling. I was using the ash ball as essentially a reverse wand, instead of an item making it easier to use magic it was making it harder, and fighting through it helped me level. That was probably one of the things that was just counterintuitive enough that not many people here think to do it. With the basic ring done I had the workers start piling rocks up along it, starting where we stopped before.

I stopped them again for a second and had them turn one rock into some gravel bits, another into sand, and a last one pulverized into dust, and collected them in dirt bowls. Trying each one I found that the easiest was sand, it was barely harder to control than dirt, to make an analogy, dirt was like a five pound dumbbell and sand was a six pound one. Gravel was barely moveable, I could only properly 'grip' one of the stones at a time and that one was like, to continue my analogy, trying to lift a two hundred pound dumbbell. The dust was just weird, for a while I couldn't grab it at all, if the ash was like grabbing water then dust was like grabbing air. Eventually I got a grip by decompressing the magic stream back to it's weaker but fluffy state which let me saturate the dust with magic and thus gain some control.

It was still hard to control directly, I had to effectively 'herd' the dust instead of just moving it, it was just too light. If I had to guess, like in dnd, I had some half elements on my hands, mud was earth with water, ash with fire, and dust with air. Knocking over another tree while holding the dust was even harder than with the ash since I needed to split how my magic manifested, one hand fluffy to maintain the dust ball, and a tight stream from the other for the tree. I got a level just from one tree like that, but luckily no headache, I knocked over three more trees before lunch, and I headed down to eat with Victoria. I brought the charcoal jug with me and handed it off to a worker to take to that in progress cooking room. The kids were in the middle of their own lunch once I got down there, and my honey just looked beautiful feeding them.

"So how have they been?" I asked while sitting next to her.

"It's going well, but I get a little sore during the fourth one, I'm just not quite big enough to handle all of them perfectly, even with them having a supplemented diet." She paused to pull the larva off one breast and switched to the other. "Mother said that even after she grew she was still sore if she did a full set of six workers, but one celestial made it okay since they eat less. So I'll take her advice and probably have three workers, two soldiers and a celestial as the regular batch, with other configurations as needed." It was kind of an odd feeling, needing to think of them as a cross between children and resource.

"So how long do you think it will be before you can get that next level? I mean, we have been doing stuff a lot and you gain points towards levels with that even when still pregnant, right?" I asked her

"Yes, but it is only a little compared to when I actually get an egg fertilized, would estimate we shaved off one whole batch with our enthusiasm though." She giggled at that fact.

Suddenly, her little sister's light winked out, I thought at her but instantly realized I felt nothing. I then picked up her and listened to her chest, her heart stopped, she was dead. I looked back towards Victoria and she was in shock, then an expression of horror and sadness slowly spread across her face. She grabbed me in a tight hug, realized she still had her larva attached and handed her to a worker before doubling back into the hug. I returned it just as she started to cry, I didn't know what was going on so I just patted her back and gently stroked her head while she let it out.

After several minutes she calmed down enough to explain what happened, her sister dying means her mother is dead, celestials are linked to their mothers intimately and die almost instantly once she is gone. I just sat there with her as she drained her emotions into my shoulder, I had nothing more important to do than care for her right now. She was mostly done once a soldier came in with the food, down to sniffling instead of full sobbing. I had to help her eat as she refused to let go of me even to feed herself, but I didn't mind, she needed me and I would do it. Turned out the crying had worn her out mentally and then the food relaxed her enough that she ended up falling asleep while attached to me.