“So what do you plan to do now?” Flor asked, pulling my attention back.

“Um, well we can’t really go back outside without a party unless i use my bugs to fight through but the drop in Exp would be really large. So maybe i will work on breeding the bugs. I also want to check the Terrains which are large spaces like the Wilderness zone but with different layouts” I tell her.

“Hmm, well i want to use this place to make an alchemy lab and forge, i have newbie gear that i can donate and in exchange you can let me into the hive and make lots of potions with the plants all around.” She asked.

“If you want though, the stuff would all end up part of the hive and you would need to search me for them. Also I have no mana or healing herbs you use.” I reply.

At once she pulled out a single herb of all the types she had.

“This is healing herbs, mana herbs, Bloodroot which is used to strengthen the effects of both the previous herbs, split root which is refined with bloodroot to make extraction powder for potion making, and finally Magic herb which is used to increase the magic in the potion and works to make the potion quickly be absorbed by the body. Here Levi, can you make them spread through the wilderness zone and whatever else places the hive makes?” She asks.

Before Levi could take it the drone appeared and took all five plants with a quick swipe of her hand.

“Donation of these herbs is accepted, new herbs being integrated.” she said. The five herbs turn into particles of light and get sucked into the ground.

“Integration process activated, 6 hours before all suitable locations have grown sprouts of these new herbs.” The drone said.

“Weren’t you with the others?” I asked.

“I am a simple clone and can make several copies if the need arises.” She says blankly.

“I see…” I mutter.

“I’ll go off and set up my own little spot so you can enjoy your time off studying your bugs.” Flor says and she leaves and calls the drone and asks for a room she could work with.

“Guess it’s just us huh.” I say to Levi who smiles and nods.

“So let’s go see what the integration did to the hive shall we.” I say and pull up the portal window.

What region would you like to go to?

Queen Palace

Wilderness Zone

The Great Swamp

Rainforest

Forest of the Night

Canyon

Desert

Holy Land

Ant Hill (undeveloped)

Vampiric Mosquito Nest (undeveloped)

Topaz Spider Palace (undeveloped)

Striped Spider Palace (undeveloped)

Lightning Cavern

Ice Cave (undeveloped)

Heat Cavern (undeveloped)

“Well, considering I have only seen the wilderness zone before as a wasteland let’s start from the top to bottom then.” I said and opened a portal to the wilderness zone but what I got instead was a huge map.

The map showed a hilly rainforest covering two fifths of the map then followed by a more open forest then finally grassy flatlands. Besides that there were several dozen icons showing a type of animal which I couldn't make sense of since I didn't bring any animals besides rabbits inside.

Under the map was [Click anywhere you would like to go open the portal] it said.

As I looked around I looked at the little queen next to me.

“Levi, did you by chance bring any animals into the hive’s wilderness zone?” I asked her.

“Yep, i got some of the small animal rats then some wolves… hmm some birds and bugs for the wilderness zone instead of the hive. I just tossed wherever into the wilderness zone so that the rabbits wouldn’t randomly evolve into predators so rapidly which they still did but under the control of the wolves and the birds that attacked and grew big.” She explained.

“And what of the bugs?” I asked.

“They are growing big like our hive. But they are all spread out and ununited unlike the hive.” She said with a happy smile.

Being spread out isn’t a bad thing. The hive is simply a hive mind of bugs which makes them interact if bred in large groups. Spiders become community spiders and other bugs turn into swarm flies. Without constant breeding they would remain small weak bugs though i doubt most of the tier 3 bugs i have would lose since teamwork is also a big condition to beating powerful foes.

Still I am interested in these but for now let’s check out the terrain.

I look around the rabbit icon and press at the edge of the forest. The window closes and the portal opens up for me to pass.

Taking a step through I find myself in a bright green grassland with a shallow forest in front of me that heads towards rainforest covered mountains in the distance. It doesn’t cease to amaze me the size of this place.

Levi appears floating next to me with her lance and shield.

“Let’s check out the area a bit shall we?” I said and she nods.

“Be careful, rabbits are really strong since there aren't a lot of animals to kill them.” She said.

“Give permission for all tier 2 and 3 to hunt animals in the hive.” I tell her.

She nods and I feel the message travel through the hive link.

Not a moment later I could already hear a few the very loud beats of the Thunderbolt Darters wings. It had grown really loud which meant that the upgrade to their cave had bumped them up a rank in strength. I felt the link around for the Gale Striders and found they were in the cave and it seemed near the outside portion where wind crystals appeared due to the presence of lightning crystals which are a higher form of wind magic.

Looking at the stats I could see they had bred to increase numbers but I never used them since they were silent fliers and weak bugs whose max strength was 1 at max for the strength types.

Still i can’t let them remain so solitary so i give them permission to go where they want in the hive. They instantly appear on the grasslands and land on the leaves and begin to eat them.

Seems this is a proper environment for them. Thinking of this I felt the tier 1’s after i get tier 2 will simply become cannon fodder and normal bugs so i let the ones i had bugs at tier 3 into the terrains where they want. Who knows I may get variants. Obviously breeding is done at the habits because that is where the bugs naturally get added to the hive. It's similar to how ants have a specific scent and any other bug, including other ants from other ant hills, would be counted as enemies.

I walked into the forest and looked around with the minimap open. I had the entire map on my minimap since I had seen that expanded map before.

I soon got near enough to the rabbits to spot one. [Feral Rabid Rabbit level 32].

My jaw dropped when I saw that.

“Levi, why does that rabbit have feral and rabid in its name and why is it level 32?” I asked.

“Those are one of the rabbits that evolved to eat meat, I think daddy. Look there, it’s hunting that rabbit.” She said pointing to the side where I saw the new rabbit.

[Brown Hare level 29]

“That’s a hare not a rabbit.” I correct her.

“Yep, they came from the rabbits that continued eating the vegetation. But I think these don’t go underground anymore while the smaller ones still do.” She said.

As she said that the rabbit rushed from the bushes towards the hare whose ears twitched as soon as the rabbit began moving.

It quickly… JUMPED STRAIGHT UP AND DODGED!!! What the!?

The rabid rabbit passed where the hare was and stopped while skidding on the dirt but the hare had already landed and had turned toward it and rushed towards the feral rabbit itself.

The hare was obviously larger without a doubt. The scary part is that it was as large as a large dog, maybe a rottweiler while the rabbit was smaller and closer to something like a cocker.

The rabbit turned but what met it were the dangerous claws of the hare and the large teeth. The claws slashed the rabbit's face while it bit into the rabbits flank and ripped a large chunk of its flesh.

Leaving the very injured rabbit, the hare runs off in a different direction after crippling the rabbit.

As I watched, I suddenly saw a large falcon like bird, no three of them, fly down and with claws spread they came and clawed at the injured rabbit.

I took a quick look at their names as they came close enough. [Brown Falcon Level 26]

I looked at the others and saw they were 1 level lower which made that first one the leader but I never heard of birds of prey working as a group.

They must have evolved differently or were some kind of herd bird before.

When the rabbit finally died I noticed how the other two rose to level 26.

The previous leader claws into the back of the rabbit and lifts it up with monster strength that doesn’t match the size but considering how a thunderbolt darter can lift 35 kilos why can’t a falcon monster lift a 40 some kilo rabbit.

I was rather scared about the fact that such an intensive battle in nature happened like that. Not many people get to see the monsters in this world fight each other.

I was starting to wonder if my bugs would survive in this hive world but just as I turned away the sound of a thunderbolt sounded behind me drawing my attention.

It was only now that I noticed the sound of thunderbolt Darters had gotten near. Still I looked at the target and saw the three falcons falling from the air.

I start running for the crash site and find the three bodies burnt by the electric shock and were convulsing but were undoubtedly dead.

Still no thunderbolt darters were around and after waiting two minutes the swarm finally arrived and a royal guard grabs the rabbit and looks my way releasing a really strange pheromone i understood as [Greetings Great master].

I don’t know if i should believe my senses but whatever. The swarm was waiting for me to move and when I did every one of the workers and soldier class thunderbolt darter and Lightning Strider had rushed the falcons while the queen and the royal guards ate the rabbit.

I walked over to the queen and asked.

“How far were you all when you attacked the three falcons?” I asked.

The queen looked at me confused at how to explain.

What I got was [Distance of swarm stretched in line].

Trying to make heads and tails I looked at the swarm of over 1000 bugs, thunderbolt darters were around 20 - 30 cm and lightning striders had grown to about 12 cm each which is a huge leap from before. Put that into 1000, 3 royal guard make a meter long so with the numbers they have, I would see they were at least 1-2 kilometers away.

…

I turned very pale as that idea came into my head. Where did they get the power to generate enough electricity and shoot it nearly 2 kilometers away?

I looked back about to ask when i noticed the structure of their bodies had changed,

I looked at all the thunderbolt darters and saw the difference.

Finally I looked at Levi. “Oh right, I fed them some of the rabbitman we caught and made them stronger and smarter.” She said with a smile.

I could only facepalm myself.

Still i couldn’t punish her for this since she did it with the best intentions so i pet her head which she really liked.

“From now on, when you feed humanoid meat to any of the bugs tell me, okay?” I tell her.

“Okay daddy.” she replied.

Seeing that I had enough surprises for today I opened the portal and jumped to the next location that should be animal free besides the dragonflies.

Stepping in my feet instantly sinks into the mud.

Okay the swamp looks just like how you would expect. Large trees that have grown above the muddy ground which is probably the result of the water that would naturally fill this area when it came in. The trees had lots of roots exposed during the dry part of the day.

The trees themselves were huge and covered a lot of the light letting very little inside except near where the river was wide enough to push open a space for light.

I trudge my way to one of the trees and pull myself up onto them. They were about 30 cm thick which is considerably large for exposed roots which meant what was inside the ground was really long.

Looking around I started to see some parasitic plants that were bug catcher plants like venus fly traps. I instantly warn the hive to never get near this plant. I need to find all the bug traps as well as release bugs into the terrain to keep the plant traps from evolving or maybe adding bugs would cause the evolution.

Using the roots as a way to explore I walk around checking everything I could reach.

I found that the dragonflies were breeding in small puddles that were rather deep and good places for safe growth. The adult dragonflies would gather and drop some leaves inside and the nymphs would eat it.

[Drone, get all the bull rats and chop them into pieces and drop them in all the dragonfly breeding ponds]

[Yes master] she replied.

I waited and soon the portal appeared and lots of bits and pieces dropped into the pond. The nymphs began to frenzy as they began to eat the thumb sized bits to their content.

Seeing they were taken care of, I opened the portal to the next area. That was the rainforest that came from the previous forest habit I had. I think most of the bugs with no personal habit were in here before it was transformed.

The place was an overgrown humid place with so much vegetation that sunlight barely got through and you could only get the residual glow from the sunlight.

As I had guessed, most of the bugs without a proper habit were here. I even found the mantises I had tamed. That said they were in much greater numbers. As for the Pill bugs, they were well hidden and I couldn't find them in such a large place but the feeling I got was that they already numbered around 70 eggs and the 20 I tamed.

Normal real world female pill bugs can make around 100 eggs that take 2 months to hatch. From what i can guess with the 12 females i have the number 6 eggs per female in the game. The breeding pattern of bugs has seriously been reduced to a crazy degree but i guess it’s to make breeding them a longer process.

From here we got to the upgraded Dark forest that is now called Forest of the Night and let me tell you it’s no exaggeration on that part.

First off, the forest is tropical in design but it’s in perpetual night similar to the eclypse era of the wilderness zone but the difference is that the plants here are evolving to do photosynthesis with moonlight and mana. This place has nearly three times more mana in the air than any other place of the hive terrains i have been. To walk around I needed to use the light magic [Light orb] which lit my way as I explored a bit with Levi. I found that some plants actually move away from large light sources which is a curious trait but I also found others react to the mana I release and begin releasing bioluminescent spores and open up lighting up like a deep sea fish.

It was really strange but really curious to see. I can see Flor going mad to constantly explore the hive so i have been taking snapshots for her. I don’t doubt she would actually be willing to move into the hive just to get at the plants and the ever growing hive.

From here we go to the canyon. I would best compare it to the Grand Canyon but I think it's smaller at the moment. It's not as deep and the river is wider at the bottom. All around were cliffs that offered spaces for some vegetation to sprout making locations for birds to live. If these are linked with the other terrain this place would attract a lot of the birds.

The desert is as you would expect, a big sand pit but there was several oasis and about 200 meters around them were hard dirt and some vegetation.

Now the final location I walk into is the one I was most interested in. Holy land as it was called.

Stepping inside I noticed how hard it was to breathe. This place had such a dense concentration of mana that it was suffocating. I can see why it's called Holy land. A place with such a dense concentration of mana is a perfect place for magic users to train their magic by meditating and training. Looking around I noticed how it was a peaceful forest environment. It wasn't a dense forest but it could house all types of life if needed.

I was sure this place was located directly inside my mana pool. There is no other place that would have such a dense amount of mana.

“This is… a good place… for mana training.” I say huffing for air.

“Daddy… it’s better... to leave.” Levi said while a bit dizzy.

I agreed since she was like this. This place was a good magic spot but we can’t handle magic since we don’t practice magic but I feel I will be spending a lot of time there to train my mana capacity. Later on when my bugs are my main fighting force I can focus on just magic training.

I leave and enter the palace with a sigh of relief as the weight on my back was lifted. I really need to practice my magic some.

I look at the time and see it’s about time for lunch so i tell Levi i will be gone for a bit and will go to bed to sleep a bit. The others will be gone for about 2 days, maybe three ingame days so I will train my magic and try to meditate in the holy land for as long as possible after I return.