The biomass counter on the obsidian slab spun like a slot machine.
Every scrap of meat the ants dragged into the Queen's chamber—a beetle leg, a decaying leaf, the girl's finger bone—registered as a deposit. Under normal laws, a colony this size would need weeks to accumulate significant evolutionary mass.
But Red had the [ 100x GROWTH ] trait.
A single gram of protein registered as a hundred. The resource bar filled with impossible speed, turning the scavenging run into an industrial production line.
[ BIOMASS: 1,000 / 1,000 ] [ MILESTONE REACHED: GENETIC TAMPERING UNLOCKED ]
The screen flashed a sickly green. A new menu expanded, overlaying the live feed of the pulsating Queen.
[ SELECT EVOLUTIONARY TRAIT ] → A: Acid Spit: Range attack. High metabolic cost. → B: Iron-Weave Chitin: Increases defense. Reduces speed. → C: Serrated Mandibles II: Allows cutting of bone and light stone. Increases harvest speed.
Red analyzed the map. The tunnel network was blocked by roots and rocks they couldn't chew through. They were trapped in a small zone. If they wanted to grow, they needed to expand.
He tapped Option C.
[ CONFIRMED: SERRATED MANDIBLES II ] [ COST: 1,000 BIOMASS ][ GESTATION: 4 HOURS → (TRAIT ADJUSTMENT) → 2.4 MINUTES ]
On the screen, the Queen writhed. Her abdomen swelled, pulsing with a violet light. She began to lay eggs at a furious pace, the translucent sacs hitting the dirt floor with wet thuds.
Two minutes later, the first generation of the new brood hatched.
They were slightly larger than their kin. Their jaws were not just black; they were metallic, gleaming with a jagged, saw-like edge. They didn't click; they rasped.
"Good," Red whispered. "Now, let's test the hardware."
He zoomed the map out. To the north of the colony's tunnel lay a cavern marked with a skull icon.
[ THREAT DETECTED: OBSIDIAN SCORPION ] → Rank: F- (Common Monster). → Status: Sleeping. → Loot Potential: High.
Before, this creature would have wiped out the colony. Its armor was too thick for normal ants to scratch.
Red focused his will on the Hive Link. The silver thread connecting him to the Queen hummed.
GATHER. NORTH. KILL.
The command wasn't a suggestion. It was a biological imperative. The entire colony stopped their foraging. They turned as one entity. The floor of the tunnel became a moving black river.
Red watched the feed as the vanguard poured into the scorpion's cavern. The beast was massive compared to them, the size of a dinner plate, resting near a thermal vent.
The first ant bit the scorpion's tail.
The scorpion woke instantly. It thrashed, its stinger striking the stone floor, crushing ten ants into paste. It spun, expecting to scatter a few pests.
Instead, it faced a tide.
The new generation of ants—the Serrated Brood—didn't try to sting through the armor. They targeted the joints.
Red watched the health bars. The scorpion's HP was dropping, but slowly. It was killing the ants by the dozens with every sweep of its claws.
"Don't attack the shell," Red muttered, leaning closer to the screen. He pushed a specific command through the link, focusing on the legs. Joints. Sever.
The swarm adjusted. Hundreds of serrated mandibles locked onto the soft tissue connecting the scorpion's legs to its body. They began to saw.
The sound coming through the audio feed was horrific. The scorpion shrieked—a high, chittering sound of panic. One leg fell off. Then another. The massive arachnid collapsed onto its belly, immobilized.
The tide washed over it.
[ENEMY DEFEATED: OBSIDIAN SCORPION][BASE EXP: 50][TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH][TOTAL EXP: 5,000]
The console exploded with notifications.
[COLONY LEVEL UP: 1 -> 5][FAITH GAINED: +500]
Red watched as the ants began to disassemble the twitching scorpion while it was still alive. They were brutal and efficient. They were exactly what he needed.
He looked at his own profile. The Faith had hit his account, but he needed DP. He hit the button.
[ CONVERT FAITH TO DP ][ TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH ][ TOTAL DP: +500 ]
The surge of power was nearly intoxicating.
[ DIVINITY RANK UP ] [ RANK 1 REACHED: POLTERGEIST ]
→ Ability Unlocked: Minor Poltergeist Activity (Move objects < 5kg).
→ Next Threshold: Rank 2 (Apparition) - 10,000 DP.
"One scorpion," Red said, his eyes scanning the map for the next red dot. "And I'm already stronger than I was an hour ago."
He looked at the path leading back to the surface, where the wolves were.
"Eat it all," he commanded the Queen. "We have a lot of growing to do."
—
-
.
Three days later.
That was all it took for the Twisted Grove to go silent.
Red floated before the obsidian slab, watching the time-lapse of his conquest. Under normal circumstances, an ant colony would take years to dominate a sector this size. But the [ 100x GROWTH ] trait didn't just apply to numbers; it applied to maturity rates. Larvae that should have taken weeks to pupate were hatching in hours. The Queen was no longer just an insect; she was a biological printer, churning out soldiers faster than they could die.
The map of Sector 4, once dotted with hundreds of red threat indicators, was now clean.
[ SECTOR STATUS: PACIFIED ]
→ Dominant Species: Corpse-Mandible Ants (Variant: Serrated).
→ Colony Population: 245,000.
The live feed showed the forest floor. It was stripped. Not just of prey, but of debris. The ants had processed every fallen leaf, every rotting log, every scrap of moss into biomass. They had turned the forest floor into a highway of packed dirt, patrolling in endless, shifting lines of black chitin.
Red looked at his Faith counter.
[ FAITH: 24,500 ]
Ants didn't pray. They didn't build shrines. But they possessed a singular, terrifying focus. Every single one of them was linked to the Hive Mind, and the Hive Mind was linked to Red. Their constant, low-level acknowledgement of his commands—the Alpha Signal—generated a steady trickle of Faith.
Multiplied by a hundred, that trickle became a river.
"We're starving," Red observed.
The Biomass income had flatlined. They had eaten everything in the crib. If they didn't expand, the colony would collapse under its own metabolic weight.
He scrolled the map to the East. A river of sludge, glowing with a toxic green luminescence, cut off the forest. On the other side lay Sector 5: The Fungal Deep.
The threat indicators there were larger. And denser.
[ OBSTACLE DETECTED: TOXIC SLUDGE RIVER ]
→ Width: 15 Meters.
→ Corrosion Level: High.
The ants couldn't swim through acid.
Red tapped the [ GENETIC TAMPERING ] menu. The colony had banked a massive amount of Biomass from the Grove purge.
[ AVAILABLE BIOMASS: 55,000 ]
He bypassed the simple upgrades. He needed utility. He needed engineering.
[ SELECT EVOLUTIONARY TRAIT ]
→ D: Acid Resistance: Cost: 5,000.
→ E: Buoyancy Sacs: Cost: 8,000.
→ F: Structural Weaver: Ants can secrete a rapid-hardening resin. Allows construction of bridges/towers. Cost: 20,000.
Red selected Option F.
[ CONFIRMED: STRUCTURAL WEAVER ] [ COST: 20,000 BIOMASS ][ GESTATION: 10 MINUTES ]
"Build me a bridge," Red whispered.
On the screen, the behavior of the colony shifted. A new caste emerged from the tunnels—larger ants with distended abdomens filled with amber fluid. They marched to the riverbank.
They didn't just jump in. They latched onto each other, mandibles gripping legs, forming a living chain. As they connected, they vomited the resin onto their neighbors. The fluid hissed and hardened instantly into a material tougher than concrete.
Red watched, fascinated. It was grotesque, living architecture. The bridge extended out over the glowing sludge, a cantilever of bodies and glue.
As the bridge touched the far bank, the map revealed what was waiting for them.
[ ALERT: TERRITORIAL AGGRESSION ] [ SPECIES: SPORE-BURST BEETLES ]
Massive, bulbous creatures the size of badgers emerged from the giant mushrooms of the Fungal Deep. Their backs were covered in pulsating yellow sacs.
One beetle charged the bridge. It turned its back and exploded.
A cloud of corrosive spores detonated over the vanguard.
[ CASUALTIES: 400 ANTS ]
The connection in Red's mind spiked with pain—not his, but the collective recoil of the Hive. The bridge wavered.
"Hold," Red commanded. He felt the panic in the insects and crushed it with his will. "They are just meat that explodes. Send the suiciders."
He didn't have a suicide unit. So he made one.
He designated a battalion of 5,000 workers.
Charge.
The ants surged across the resin bridge. They didn't attack the beetles; they swarmed them. When the beetles detonated, the ants died, their bodies absorbing the blast and the toxins. They formed a ramp of corpses over the chemical fallout.
The second wave—the Serrated Soldiers—ran over the dead bodies of their kin.
They hit the beetles while they were recharging their spore sacs.
It was a massacre. The Serrated Mandibles sawed through the soft underbellies of the beetles. Violet ichor sprayed across the fungal landscape.
[ENEMY DEFEATED: SPORE-BURST BEETLE x 50][EXP GAINED: MASSIVE]
[TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH]
The numbers on the console spun so fast they blurred.
[COLONY LEVEL UP: 5 -> 12][NEW FAITH MILESTONE REACHED]
[FAITH: 110,000]
[TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH]
[DP: 110,000]
Red felt a crack in the air around him. The void of his domain shuddered. The grey smoke of his hands filled in, turning solid. He looked down. He could see veins. He could see the faint outline of fingernails. He wasn't flesh yet—he looked like a mannequin made of storm clouds—but he was substantial.
[SYSTEM ALERT][DIVINITY RANK UP][RANK 3 REACHED: LESSER SPIRIT]
[ ABILITY UNLOCKED: DIVINE PRESENCE (FEAR) ]
→ You may project your aura into a localized area. Weak minds will flee. Strong minds will kneel.
Red flexed his new, semi-solid fingers. He looked at the screen, where his army was dismantling the fungal forest, turning an entire ecosystem into fuel.
"We need a forward operating base," Red said. He zoomed in on the largest mushroom tower in the sector. "Hollow that out. Move the Queen."
The colony obeyed. They were not just insects anymore. They were a calamity. And Red was their architect.