I spent a couple of sun ups working on my new dungeon. Jason had had all sorts of ideas about what a dungeon should look like. I thought it would be fun to make his dream a reality. First thing is we need a “core room.” I asked Bitey about it and she thought I could use the mana fruit I was making as the core. I had found a way to store them as crystals. The ants seemed to enjoy crunching the berries instead of mushy berries.

Ant3 was in charge of the other warrior ants. Bitey said she was doing well. I was still in charge of healing and working the root tentacles I had used on Jason. Bitey thought we needed more ways to attack. Ant4 was busy digging tunnels and managing the traps.

I dug a tunnel from the surface down to the first room. I flooded an ant with mana to force it to grow. It grew to twice the size of Ant3.

I laughed at Bitey. “Its an Ginormant. I should call her Gina.”

I could hear the disdain in Bitey’s voice when she spoke back. “I hate you sometimes Tree. Your naming sense is the worst.”

I just laughed some more. I gave Gina her own squad of ants for the first chamber. “You don’t have to worry about stopping everyone in the first room. This room is just to soften them up. We got traps further in. Just hit whatever comes in hard and move on. You can try again in the next room.”

I decided to call her team Gina and the Ginormants. I decided not to tell Bitey what I was thinking. I didn’t need her snark for this.

The second room was a simple pitfall trap. I placed stakes on the bottom. I covered up the trap with some root tentacles and covered the roots with dirt. I would manually activate the trap once something walked over it. It was going to be great.

The hallway out of the second room had two branches. The left was a deadend. It led to another room with a pit trap. I thought about having a bug out tunnel so Gina could fallback from the room but I was worried about her getting trapped in there.

The third room was root spikes from the roof. Then there were more pit traps. There was a secret exit the bugs could use to retreat to the next room. The fourth room had more ants and another pitfall trap. And there was a way down to the next level.

“Don’t you think your floor plan is a little boring?” Bitey asked me.

“I know but I don't have a lot of options to work with. I pretty much only have diggers and warriors. You help with reinforcements but there I just don’t have a lot of combat options.” I explained.

Bitey harrumphed a bit. “I see what you mean. It doesn’t feel like a proper nest though. This isn’t how ants fight.”

“Well, Bitey you are more than ants now. You have to change how you fight.” I told her.

I had kept driving my tap root lower and deeper. I was starting to absorb minerals and metals that I didn’t recognize or know. The deeper I went the more mana I pulled in. This in turn allowed me to grow taller and bigger.

I also discovered when I worked my roots through other tree’s roots systems I seemed to take over the tree. I gained a feeling about the tree. I gained a portion of their mana absorption. I started pushing my roots out to link up with the trees surrounding me.

I realized the other trees had the same problems I had. They were covered with parasites. I asked Bitey. “Hey, the other trees I am linking to have the same issues with parasites I had. Can you make a squad to go over and start taking care of it?”

“Sure thing Tree.” Bitey told me back. “It will take a couple of days because we are still making the dungeon underneath you.”

“That seems ok.” I replied. I looked over the preparations we had made for the dungeon. We had a handful of rooms for the top floor. After clearing the traps on the top floor we made a second floor that only had two rooms. The first room was the same floor traps and ant attack rooms. The second room was the core room. Not a real core, just my fake core. The crystal berries I placed in the room glowed with energy. I thought it was a nice reward for clearing the place.