I sensed a group of people heading my way. I recognized one of the people. It was the one who got away the other day. I had another shot at the person. This was going to be great. I watched the humans build a fire outside my entrance. I thought they were going to smoke Gina out. But the smoke from the fire wouldn’t flow inside.

“Hey, Queeny did you do something to the tunnels?” I asked Queen Bitey. I was certain the smoke should have gone inside.

“I made the tunnels according to my memories. The tunnels are ventilated so there is a positive pressure on the tunnels. We can’t be smoked out.” Bitey explained to me.

I nodded my approval. I waited for Gina to start her attack. I wasn’t disappointed. Gina came screaming out of an access tunnel, crossed the room before the humans could react and barreled into the human in the front. That human had a rough wooden shield he was carrying. He already had it up but he wasn’t bracing the shield when Gina struck him. The guy went flying back and triggered the first pitfall. The man disappeared below ground with a loud shriek. Oh, yeah. The spikes got him. Gina had used impacting the shield as a way to bounce back the way she had come. She was gone and back out before the humans really registered what had happened.

They clustered around the pit trap and tried to get their friend out. I watched them struggle for a while. It looked like they brought a rope and were trying to pull their friend out. The other guy climbed down while the three girls anchored the rope. I thought Gina was going to attack again but she didn’t.

“Gina, this is the perfect opportunity.” I told her. I was anxious to get more mana. I could tell the one in the pit was already dead because I had received a rush of mana as he died.

“You don’t want to kill all your food at one time.” Gina explained. “You always want to leave some so you can harvest more later.”

I thought that made sense. I decided to let Gina continue her attack plan. She was the warrior after all. I watched the group pull the dead guy out and struggle to pull him to the entrance. Since they took the body I was unable to absorb his memories. I only received his energy. I guess I had to be content with what I had gotten.

As I was looking through the items left in the pit I realized they had left a pack and his weapons. As I looked over the weapons I realized that there was no metal anywhere. I thought the spear should have a metal tip. I looked through Jason’s memories and realized metal had been disappearing. I looked around my area to find any metal. There was the stuff I had dug up. It seemed to be fine. I wondered why. I looked more closely at it.

I stared at the metal for a while before it occurred to me what was happening. I had a large aura surrounding me. All the trees connected to me and I were generating auras from our mana centers. It was infused with our magical energy. The air and ground were saturated with our energy. That seemed pretty neat. I realized my aura was affecting the metal in my area of influence.

I started playing with the metal. I wondered if I could make metal weapons. I didn’t have a way to heat the metal. But I could use really fine roots to manipulate the metal. I could just grow the wood I needed.

I spent longer than I imagined playing with the material I had. Time seemed to pass in a fugue state as I manipulated metal and wood.

“Hey, Bitey.” I called out to her. “Look what I made.” I celebrated with her.

She took one look at it. “What is it? A stick?” She said taking all the winds out my sails. “My warriors have better claws than that puny thing.”

I was momentarily deflated by her criticisms. But I quickly perked up again. “We can use it to lure humans into the dungeon.” I told her.

“I’m not sure we still need anything to lure the humans here.” She explained. “It's been a couple of weeks since you started playing with your junk.”

I was surprised at this. Had several days really gone by? “Really?” I asked in a surprised voice. “It hardly felt like any time at all.”

“I’ve had the nest working this entire time.” Bitey told me. “We have prepared more rooms and traps. There are treasure troves hidden here and there. We have also learned the humans are eating the ants they defeat in battle.”

That was a lot to take in. Humans were eating the ants. “Do you guys taste good?” I asked Bitey.

“No idea. We don’t eat other animals. We grow our food.” Bitey told me.

If I had a head, I would have nodded it. I think some branches rustled overhead. “Where are those chambers?” I asked her.

Bitey did something. It made sense. I thought Bitey was an enormous carpenter ant but I couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t a bug expert when I was human. To be honest, bugs used to freak me out. Turns out having organs and hormones are pretty important to having emotions. The bugs didn’t scare me as much anymore.

Anyways, I looked at the farming chambers Bitey had set up. There was no light in the chambers. I asked Bitey about it. “Hey Bitey, what exactly are you growing in here? There is no light.”

“You know stuff. I’ve been looking for aphids to farm but these mana berries you grow are very satisfying.” Bitey explained.

“Should I grow some in here?” I asked. I thought it would light up the room and let us grow a larger variety of crops.

“Is there a way to give me permissions or the ability to make my own modifications down here?” Bitey asked me. “All I have been doing is directing the workers to clean out areas.”

“Let me think about it.” I told her. I had a few ideas for how to make her request work.