Swarming Sovereignty

Now that the battle was over, several windows popped up, awaiting her attention.

A lot of those levels were pretty boring. Active Camouflage had stopped gaining any new effects and had started to simply decrease its Stamina cost, Magic Multitarget (Mental) had similarly become cheaper, and Battle Commander and Blood Money had just received buffs to the numbers of their current effects.

Mindspike and Swarm Progenitor, however, were a bit more interesting.

With those dealt with, there was only a single large window left.

…Right. So…it didn’t look like she was able to go back to the evolution line she was on before, but that was fine. This line was physically much closer to what her eventual goal was, and it was strong to boot.

But…she was a little stumped as to what to do. Enlightener was out of the question, as she wanted to be on the front lines and didn’t want to be wantonly granting sapience to things if she could avoid it, but she wasn’t sure what to do about the other two.

By her understanding, champion monsters were a step up from elite monsters in much the same way elite monsters were a step up from regular monsters. There were other steps above that as well, disastrous, calamitous, and, finally, heroic, so working up that ladder was a good thing. But it was also probably going to be difficult. Assuming that one of those two types of magic was her own mental magic, she only knew of one other easily obtainable magic type, pyromancy.

And if she evolved now, she would gain that much more power to fight the goblins with. But…no. She shook her head, dispelling those thoughts. She was not going to potentially stunt future growth for an immediate gain. Right now, she had more power than ever before, and she was confident she could hold against the goblins for a while. She was going to focus on experimenting with converting rats and getting more magic types, and she would hold off on her decision until she was able to see all of her options.

With that decided, she made her way back to the center of the camp, where she unloaded all of the modeling wax in her storage. Everyone come to the center of the camp and fill back up on modeling wax. She instructed. Once you’re full, go man the walls that border the bazaar and keep an eye out for patrols returning to the camp. If possible, I want them captured alive and readied for conversion, but don’t actually start any of them. And if it looks like you’re about to die and it can be prevented by killing the goblin in front of you, do it. I value your lives more than I value a potential conversion.

The fort burst into motion as her army followed her instructions and started streaming towards the center. As they began to consume the modeling wax, Lia left for the edge of the fort, making her way back towards where the burrow was. As the only one with any sort of significant storage capacity, she would probably be needed if they wanted to get the modeling wax left there to the fort in any reasonable period of time.

She squirmed past the barricade and began to run back through the field. About halfway back to the burrow she encountered Rose leading the remaining part of the swarm towards the fort. The goblins were carrying piles of cocoons that Lia could only assume were plants, while some of the drones were dragging smaller, rat-sized cocoons behind them.

How’d it go? Lia asked.

Excellent. I obtained enough experience to reach my evolution, and then began to stockpile rat cocoons whenever I came across one. Rose explained. I’ve been waiting to hear what you want with them before converting them.

Excellent work as always. Lia said approvingly. I’ll have need of those later. Have you decided what you want to evolve into?

I…have. Rose said hesitantly. But I want your input before I make a final choice.

Understood. Lia replied. We’ll deal with that after we finish porting everything over from the burrow. How much modeling wax is left in that hole and in the burrow?

About a fourth of it, all in the hole. You took about half of the hole with you, and we went through a fair bit of the burrow and hole while we were making these cocoons, and filled up before leaving for the fort.

Good. Lia said. I’m going to bring that fourth with me in my storage, and then we should have all of that moved over and we can start working on reinforcing those walls. Is there anything else of value left in the burrow?

Only some of the goblins’ weapons and armor. I was planning to make multiple trips, so I didn’t bring those with me yet.

Leave them. Lia instructed. I’m planning to have the burrowers dig a tunnel back to the burrow then have them collapse the entrance so we can use the burrow as a bolt hole. We’ve got plenty of goblin armor and weapons now that we’ve taken over the fort, so we can afford to leave that stuff there.

In that case, would you prefer I stay in the fort once I get there and oversee the process of strengthening the walls? Rose asked.

Please. Start placing the pricklers on the outside of the walls, and bind all the walls together with modeling wax instead of…whatever the goblins are using. Actually…it might be better if we take the wood of the walls and turn that into wooden modeling wax, I’m not sure. Have one of the burrowers or drones make some so we can test and see how it compares to normal wood. Oh, and have the foot soldiers start sorting all the goblins’ stuff into piles so we can figure out what to do with it.

Consider it done.

Thanks a bunch, Rose. Lia replied. You’re really helping make things easier for me.

I-it’s just my job, my– Lia. Rose stammered, glancing away embarrassedly. I don’t deserve praise like that.

Job or not, you’re really exceeding all of my expectations, and so I’m going to praise you for it. Keep up the good work.

Y-yes!

With that, Lia left, continuing to make her way back towards the burrow. She reached her destination after only a couple of minutes more, loaded up the remnants of the modeling wax, and then set back off for the fort.

Another five or so minutes later she was back, and the place was already a hive of activity. Drones were reinforcing the walls, foot soldiers were carrying stuff towards the center of the camp, and everything seemed to be running smoothly.

When she got to the center of the fort, she found Rose giving orders to a bunch of other members of the swarm. She waited for Rose to finish before approaching the girl. So, you wanted to talk about your evolution with me? She asked.

Yes. Rose said, suddenly nervous. I have several options, and there’s one in particular I think would be best, but it’s…different, so I wanted to make sure it was fine with you before I picked it.

It’s fine. Lia said dismissively. You don’t need my permission for stuff like this. It’s your evolution, you shouldn’t have to need my permission for anything as long as you think it’ll help.

I kinda guessed you would say that, but it would still make me feel better if I got permission.

Very well. What’s so different about it?

It’s called “Lesser Swarm Manager”, and it’s like…well, an alternate version of Swarm Queen, if the description is to be believed. It lets me order an arbitrarily large number of my sisters, and gives me the same freedom of conversions as something like a Swarm Battlemaster. It’s not as effective at conversions as Swarm Queen, but is much better at well…managing the swarm.

Rose fidgeted a little as she continued. But what really worries me is that it lets me command lots of my sisters without your permission, and I can have my sisters stop doing things that were assigned to them by your “task manager” if it wouldn’t completely stop progress on whatever task they were working on. And because of those things I’m worried that I might take away some of your control.

Lia laughed. That’s perfectly fine. I really don’t care about micromanaging every little thing, and even if I did, the swarm will eventually get so large I’d need some people like this anyway. I think it’ll make your work a lot easier, so I say go for it. If you think it’s the best option, then I trust you.

I…understand. When should I evolve?

Now. Don’t worry about keeping everything here going, I’ll take care of that. Just consider it a well-deserved break.

I do not require breaks, but I will treat it as such. Is…there anything else you need me for before I take my leave?

No, you’re free to go. Lia replied, making sure Rose left before turning back to her thoughts. She’d have to have a talk with Rose about breaks later, and make it known that taking a break when tired was perfectly acceptable, if not preferable. Actually…she might have to enforce breaks for the entire swarm, if they were all like Rose. She didn’t want any of her swarm running themselves ragged just because they wanted to do as much work as possible.

That would have to come at a later date, though. Right now, they couldn’t really afford to take breaks. She wasn’t sure how much strength the goblins still possessed, but she was willing to bet the goblins in this fort hadn’t amounted to more than a fourth of the total population. And the longer she waited, the more goblins would spawn, so time was of the essence.

Once she cleared out the goblins in this area, she would be able to get a feel for where they spawned. From there it would be relatively simple to station some of the swarm at each of the spawn points to kill the goblins as soon as they spawned. It would make for a good, if temporary, way to farm for materials. Once the dungeon realized that the monsters it was spawning were dying almost instantly, it would stop spawning them in those locations for a while.

But that was for later. Right now, she needed to gather enough strength to make that a reality. Fortunately, Rose had had the swarm put the rat cocoons in a pile of their own near the other accumulated piles of stuff, so Lia was able to immediately get to work.

She took two rat cocoons and combined them, before rooting around in the piles until she found a lantern. She coated that with modeling wax before adding it to the rat cocoon from earlier, then made to convert everything therein into a Lesser Rat Baroness Pyromancer but stopped, a new entry grabbing her attention.

Why was that an option now? It hadn’t been before. She thought back for a moment, then realized it must have been an effect of the “Enlightener” Title. The Title gave her light magic a boost, so it must have enabled this conversion option as well.

Well, she needed all the different magic types she could get, so she wasn’t going to look this gift horse in the mouth. She got the rats converting into a photomancer, then got another pair of rats and a lantern, which she set converting into a pyromancer.

That was all the easily-accessible magic types, but there had to be ways to get more. Earth magic was probably pretty easy, she could probably just encase a bunch of dirt in modeling wax and add that to a conversion, so that would make for five. Water was probably similar, but she needed to get water first.

There were a couple of streams on campus, but they were far away, and she wasn’t so sure trekking out to get them would be safe, so she decided to put that idea on hold. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t need water magic to get the evolution, and she could just wait to get water from the feeding station that was almost certainly in the bazaar.

What else was there…she had no idea where she would even start for wind and lightning, but blood was…probably easy. She did have more than a few corpses to extract the stuff from, after all. So, she moved over to the pile of modeling wax, tearing out a chunk with a paw and then beginning to mold it into a bowl of sorts.

It did not go well. As much as modeling wax was an incredibly easy substance to work with, her paws were not made for this type of work. But, even so, a bowl was a pretty easy thing to make – it was just something that had a dent in the middle to hold stuff.

After a few minutes, she had an ugly, lumpy thing that resembled a very dented sheet of metal more than a bowl, but it would be able to hold blood, so it was good enough. She hardened her creation, then called over a drone and set it to work draining blood from the growing pile of goblin corpses to the side.

While she was waiting on that, she grabbed one of the burrowers that was working on the tunnel to the burrow, and had it dig up a mound of soft earth for her, which she then carefully covered in modeling wax and brought over to the rat cocoons. And, as she had suspected, she was able to convert two rats into a “Lesser Rat Baroness Terramancer”, securing her fifth magic type.

I…am done. Rose said shyly, coming up behind Lia. How do I look?

Lia turned around, looking Rose up and down. She was almost the same size as Lia now, and though she didn’t look much different than an ordinary rat, she had this sort of…aura about her. For some reason Lia just couldn’t place, Rose exuded “older sister” energy, something that made Lia feel at ease, like she could just leave everything to Rose and it would be fine.

Good. Lia said. You look good. Uh…you know, as good as a rat can look. Sorry, I’m hoping to evolve into something humanoid as fast as I can, and hopefully you can do the same.

No, it’s fine. Rose said. I’m happy to hear you like it. What are you doing, and how can I help?

I’m converting rats into rats that can use different kinds of magic. Lia explained. I have a potential champion race that requires rats that can use a bunch of different magic types in the swarm, so I’m getting as many as possible. I have fire, nature, earth, light, and mental, and I’m hoping I can get blood. Any others you can think of that we might have easy access to?

Rose paused, considering that. Wood? She said. I’m…pretty sure that’s not under the umbrella of nature magic, and there’s a lot of wood around here.

Good thinking. Lia replied. I’ll try that. If you think of anything else, let me know, but otherwise you keep doing what you were doing before, alright?

Yes, Lia. Rose said. Do not hesitate to ask if you need my assistance.

I will. Thanks, Rose. Lia said, then turned back around, returning to her search.

Fighterman481

I'm sure some of you are thinking it's weird that "heroic" is the most "top-tier" classification for special monster races, above things like "calamitous", but there actually is a reason for that. It ties into one of the like...two things I have preplanned with this series, so I'm not going to get into it more than saying it's intentional.

Uh...that's all I really have to say, though. Next time we're probably going to be finishing gathering magic rats, so...look forward to that, I guess?

And, as always, thanks for reading!