Dungeon Life

Chapter Two-Hundred Seventy-Five

Teemo returns and tells Violet the good news about the sewer expansion, and he gets roped into helping her get proper access to what’s underneath Fourdock. I can feel how much he wants to be nowhere near the sewers, but Violet’s scions are more than happy to hit him with puppydog eyes so he can’t just leave. Coda helps keep things on track, though, so I’m confident my protege will have her expansion area soon.

I can also feel her poking at her mana and at the ally pool, trying to decide how she wants to pay for the upcoming expansion. I feel like I’m watching a kid counting their coins, trying to figure out the best way to get the most candy. Tempting as it is to try to give her free reign over the ally pool, it’ll be good for her to learn to budget and understand the value of a dollar. Er, of a mana.

With her distracted with that, it’s time for me to tend to my own distraction. I’ve been holding off on making my antkin enclave forever. I think it’s finally time to pull that lever. My tunnelbores have been working diligently to make a separate section off the lava labyrinth for me to put them, and though I think I’d like some extra shortcuts between their enclave and my others, it’s not anything that would require me to delay any further. And, with my magmyrm returned from the war, they can get their reward in the opportunity to advance to antkin.

I spend the mana, and the progress bars pop in over about a third of my magmyrm. As a ratio, it’s a bit lower than my other enclaves, but I have more magmyrm than I had ratlings or aranea at the time I gave them an enclave.

They start gathering a lot of random things, which draws my curiosity. One group starts gathering from the underground herbalism nodes in and around the labyrinth, which isn’t too surprising. I’m sure they can grow something to eat from them. Maybe not from the fool’s coal, but there’s plenty of other things they could eat.

Two other groups head to my Sanctum and start copying down the basics of enchanting and alchemy from Thing and Queen’s labs, respectively. Though the two scions are still in Silvervein, I’m happy to see they won’t need to worry about their labs being completely ransacked. Designs are meticulously copied to parchment, as well as recipes for the basics.

A fourth group even heads to Jello’s metalworks to learn from her, too. They can’t exactly hydraulic press things into shape like she can, but with their natural heat, they can hot work things like most others could only dream. Jello is happy to teach what she can, and I let my attention wander to the enclave itself as those groups gather.

Because in the enclave itself, the rest of the magmyrm are working on making the place a home. At first, it looks like they’re all just milling around, uncertain what to do. It only takes a couple minutes to start seeing what they’re up to, though. They start melting shallow lines along every surface, and it looks to me like they’re planning where to put everything and everyone!

They draw a winding path through the main entrance cavern and leading to the other tunnels, leaving several large sections unmarked for the moment. Then they all descend on one of the larger tunnels, and work to expand it. They embrace their magma and scoop into the rock, liquifying it before carrying it back to the main tunnel, where they make a large pile, for now.

As the other groups return from their gathering, they set their gains in their own piles, each in their own separate little clear spot, before either heading back out to get more, or joining with the group to dig out the main tunnel. The whole design reminds me a lot of the kobold enclave. I wonder if they liked the design they saw, or if it’s just a simple and efficient way to make a space for an enclave. At the minimum, I expect my antkin will be much more comfortable than the kobolds were.

The gatherers return once more, this time with a few of my denizens instead of information and basic resources. They have a couple rockslides they’re herding toward one of the side tunnels, as well as a tunnelbore ant that a few are riding! That one also heads for the tunnel with the rockslides, where they start widening it out a bit, too.

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With everyone settling in to work on the enclave proper, things are starting to take discernible shape, too. I think the main tunnel is going to either be their working area, or their residential. It’s difficult to say just yet. Whatever they choose, they’re clearly planning for plenty of foot traffic. If Coda wasn’t already occupied, he’d probably like to take notes.

The entrance cavern is also seeing a lot more work, too, with the magmyrm starting to not only tunnel into the floor, but to also use the material they excavate to start shaping buildings, too! It makes me imagine how adobe houses might get made, though I think those usually had some kind of woven fiber core for the walls? No fiber interior for these walls, though. While I’m pretty sure I have some kind of plant around that could be used for that with the magma they’re scooping and shaping, I definitely don’t have enough to build a small town.

As the temperature starts to rise from all the magma they’re slinging around, they seem to realize the issue with the scrolls and such they’re gathered. The ones in the entrance chamber have a bit of a freak out, before one just starts copying the information onto the floor. Nobody else seems to have any better idea, and before long, the interior floors of the budding buildings are covered in the hastily copied notes. Man, and I thought my handwriting was terrible. They seem to be able to understand what they wrote, or at least aren’t acting like anything was lost.

In fact, the magmyrm look pretty satisfied with themselves, and a few even head for the exit, where they start carving the floor of the ‘road’ with a mural. It’s a bit rough, like their writing, but it quickly shows what looks like my core with countless ants moving about. They move on to the next section and I’m pretty sure that’s Queen helping direct them, or maybe trying to protect my core like I had first planned for her to do? Nova they are not, so it’s difficult to tell exactly what they’re trying to portray, even if I’m pretty sure they’re going for a brief history of their spawner.

It looks like the ants are intending to entertain plenty of guests, but if they do, they’re going to need to figure out a way to cool things down a lot. I wonder if Teemo could teach them how to make pumice? I think that’s a volcanic stone. And even if it’s technically not, they just need to make the magma form a sponge and let it cool, right? It should give some nice insulation, though it might be a bit brittle for that. Stone with lots of tiny holes isn’t exactly a good building material. I could try to suggest asbestos, but I’d rather not give my dwellers cancer, thank you. There might be a magical alternative? I should have Teemo ask Slash some time.

What else will my ants need if they want guests… softer furniture is easy to suggest, but it’s a bit early to do so just yet. They don’t even have full walls up yet! Furniture can wait. Water will be a big thing they’ll need, which is also a good way to sink some heat. I might be able to engineer some kind of aqueduct from the aquifer lakes, but then what to do with all the hot water after? We could try to vent it into the ocean, but I don’t know that I want to potentially drain the lakes for that. Getting water from the ocean could work, but then the antkin would need to have some way to deal with salt build up in the cooling pipes, probably.

I don’t know too much about salt water, but I do know it’s a pain to try to actually make do work. It loves to corrode metals, and though it’s an even better heat sink than fresh water, the salt could just decide to start crystalizing wherever it pleases. And that doesn’t even take into account the fact the enclave is well below sea level. If something breaks, the whole enclave could flood. Heck, half of me could flood. I bet the First Mate from Hullbreak could help out, but it’s probably a better idea to simply not do that.

I’m sure they’ll think of something. There’s plenty of time for them to figure it out, too. Heck, with the alchemy information, they could just make some kind of heat affinity potion, similar to the aqua affinity potion Old Staiven sells for people who want to explore Hullbreak properly. Or they could do something with enchanting. Or a combination.

It’s definitely too early to worry about how my ants will socialize, considering they still don’t have buildings set up yet. I bet Aranya will have advice for them once she gets back, too. She wasn’t quite able to come back with Teemo and my forces, since she wanted to make sure the satellite church in Silvervein was properly established, first.

Until she gets back, it’ll be on Larx of my ratkin, and Vernew, Folarn, and Norloke of the spiderkin to help smooth any bumps in my antkin’s road to independence. Larx especially has experience in guiding, thanks to the spiderkin, and with their help, the antkin should be able to hit the ground running.