Finally, finally ready to expand again. The core had made so many stupid ants, it was thoroughly sick of the species. It had been getting better and better and making the things but it had still taken entirely too long to finish shoring up its defenses. The water pool around the core had also been expanded just to be on the safe side.

Beginning to expand again the core curiously tried to actively push more mana into the process. It had instinctively done it before but the core wanted to see if it could speed up its expansion even further. The core’s aura began expanding upward again slowly at first then faster, and faster and mana was poured into the process. Thrilled by its stunning success the core burned its mana heedless of the costs and its domain expanded at a faster rate than it could believe. However the mana of the core was not infinite, and it was very quickly running out. Caught in its single-minded focus the core’s mind began to fade, as its reserves dwindled until it finally lost consciousness.

Slowly the consciousness of the core flickered back to life, it felt groggy and weak. Checking its mana it watched as it slowly and painfully regenerated. The core weakly concluded that it should avoid completely draining its mana in the future. The regeneration was even slower than normal and it didn’t like what happened when it ran out. For the memories of the ants, it seemed to be something called sleep, but it found the entire experience very uncomfortable. It was too similar to the core’s birth, struggling against the call of oblivion.

Shaking the last of its discomfort as its mana level returned to normal the core regarded its domain. I was pleased to see that it had grown substantially. There were far more ants wandering around its tunnels then there were before. Fortunately in the absence of any orders by the core, its forces had stayed in the lower reaches of the dungeon. From the drop in their numbers, it seemed like they had repulsed at least one attack.

Quickly examining the enemy forces the core noted that the total number of ants was lower than before. That didn’t mean it was running out of ants, although it was sick of the things they were still its only source of food. The core supposed it could have its creatures kill each other but that would be far less efficient than killing invaders and would potentially leave it vulnerable to an attack.

Massing its swarm of defenders the core directed its ants to overrun the enemy. There was only token resistance put up this time, and while the dungeon’s forces also took substantial losses the invaders were once again eradicated. The core was almost bored with how easy it had been, ants were just a numbers game with little effort involved on the core’s part just directing the swarm in the direction of the enemies.

The core checked throughout its domain just to be sure but found no more invaders anywhere. It expected that whenever it had invaders inside it, it would feel a nagging sensation of wrongness. Once again the core was impressed by how quickly its aura had expanded, it might have lost control of the process and used up all its mana but it was so much quicker than just expanding normally. It couldn’t hurt to try again one more time, could it? The core was certain it wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, and would carefully monitor its mana levels.

Focusing on its aura once more it began to slowly push it out. Maintaining constant expansion for a little while before gradually starting to feed mana into the process. The core’s aura jumped outward and it began to lose control again. The core’s focus was swept away by the glorious expansion of its domain, it was only when darkness began to creep again through its consciousness that it checked on its mana. Startled, the core hurriedly halted all expansion and held its breath as its mind threatened to fade again.

The instability quickly faded this time, and the core was relieved to see its mana recovering at its normal rate. That had been a touch too close for the core, it really didn’t want to pass out again. Before nothing too bad had happened, but it had no idea what would happen as it expanded upwards. What if I woke up to find all of its ants dead and its core surrounded again. It would not be put in such a position again.

The core returned its attention to the dungeon as its mana returned to full. It had found yet more enemies but this time they strangely weren’t moving down towards the core. Instead, they were clustered around a few sets of chambers in the upper reaches of the core’s newly expanded aura.

Checking what the chambers are, the core was expecting there to be yet more ants. However, there weren’t ants, at least not just ants instead there was something new. The core hadn’t found something new for ages; it couldn’t wait to see what the new things were. Some of them were white things that squirmed around and didn’t seem to be doing much, but the ants were bringing the things food so maybe they were dangerous. There were a few chambers with this type of thing in them but it was the last chamber that excited the core. It looked like a giant ant was occupying it with its smaller brethren attending to its every need.

The core would love to get the template of this new creature. There was only one giant ant but it hoped that its vast knowledge of ants would allow it to understand the thing’s template immediately. With that goal in mind, the core took a look at the normal ants scurrying around these new areas. There were a lot of them, the core thought there were probably more ants up there than all of the invaders it had combined. It was suddenly grateful that they seemed content to wait for their destruction above the core instead of sweeping away its depleted forces with sheer numbers. The template for an ant once more manifested in the core mind; it reluctantly began to push mana into the pattern. It needed more ants, again, maybe it would be able to make fewer of them if it got the template for the giant above.

Once the core finished the largest swarm it had created to date he sent off its ants who trundled off towards the upper dungeon. It needed to get a different pattern, the core was so sick of ants even the giant variety wouldn't be that much better. The gathering swarm overwhelmed the perimeter of the enemies and poured into one of the chambers. The core braced itself for a vicious fight as its frontlines attacked the unknown creatures, but nothing happened, there was no resistance in any meaningful way. The core turned its attention to the new… Larva ...template, slowly the core examined the template hoping and praying that its initial impression was wrong unfortunately it wasn’t.

This stupid template is just a weird ant. It's not even a better version of an ant, they turn into normal ants if you leave them alone for long enough. Total disaster, the core could create the larvae, as they were virtually identical to ants even if they looked different, but there was absolutely no point. Bitterly disappointed with the larva, the core ordered its forces to converge on the last chamber which contained the giant ant.

Because it was expecting more resistance from the larva the core had drastically over-prepared for this attack. It had overrun the larva and other enemy ants with only negligible losses to its forces. The final chamber held many more ants than the grub chambers and the defending ants were able to hold the entrances to the chamber briefly. However, the core’s swarm was unstoppable, their numbers simply too high to overcome.

Excitedly watched as its minions broke into the last chamber and attacked the giant ant. The core imagined an epic ant showdown, where its brave forces gradually overcame the mighty behemoth. However, reality made a fool of the core twice that day, besides some pathetic flailing and a few crushed ants the enemy completely failed in its defense.

Thoroughly annoyed with the events, the core examined the new template… Ant Queen ...the ant queen. As it had hoped the template was similar enough to that of the ant that the core could create it however it wondered if it should. Although a few of its ants had perished killing the queen, it had seemed by accident more than anything else. The core carefully delved into the memories it had gathered, there were so many of them now that it could look through all of them. The memories just sat in its consciousness waiting for the core to look through them.

Carefully examining the memories of those killed in the recent battle, the core paid special attention to the memories of the ant queen and those ants that had guarded its chambers. The memories it had were fragmented and very confusing but by cross-referencing memories from the different ants the core managed to string together what was going on here. The ant queen much to its disappointment was not much for fighting, all the thing did was sit around all day and make larva.

The core put aside its initial disappointment and carefully examined the memories it had trying to figure out how quickly the ant queen could create fully functional ants. Even if the ant queen was a failure in combat, maybe it could be used to free up the core from the onerous task of endlessly creating more ants. Unfortunately, the core determined that the ant queen made ants more slowly than it did, a lot more slowly. That nixed the core’s one good idea for making the ant queen useful, at the rate it used up ants it needed more quickly not at the glacial pace the ant queen made them.

Discarding the ant queen template to never be used along with the larva template, the core got back to work and it needed more ants again. Deciding it had worked very hard recently the core decided to take a small break before it inevitably had to start its dreaded task of replenishing its forces. It carefully examined the tunnels that crisscrossed its dungeon, it had taken its ants entirely too long to get to the other side of its domain and that was entirely the fault of the bizarrely inefficient tunnels.

Shaping the stone and dirt was easy for the core, it had made them and the materials naturally responded to its wishes reshaping themselves into nice straight paths for its minions. The core had tried this trick on some other materials it had not created and had found to its surprise that it still worked but it had taken a huge chunk out of the core’s mana. However, shaping the materials the core created cost so little mana that it might as well be free. The new layout even had the added benefit of funneling all the water in the dungeon to the very bottom directly on top of the core; it had never felt safer.

Satisfied with its new and improved layout, the core pulled out the ant template once again. Ants were probably the best template it had, but it just made so many of them, maybe it could expand just a little bit before making more of them? Hurriedly dismissing the insidious idea the core reminded itself that while it liked expanding, a lot, it needed minions to defend its territory. Not wanting a repeat of past events the core focused on directing its mana through the complicated swirls and shapes that made up the ant template.