Chapter 554 A busy day in the antborough (1/2)
Despite receiving the justice of my mother, I stoically endured her disapproving gaze for as long as I could manage in order to tickle grubs. Their joyful wiggles warmed my heart even as I quailed inside, antic.i.p.ating another THWACK at any moment. In the end, I could only hold out for ten minutes before I slunk from the chamber, only to find myself in even more sacred territory, the egg laying room!
Victoriant and Antionette look up at me in surprise as I crawl down through a gap in the ceiling.
”Eldest! What are you doing here?”
”Oh, you know me. Just checking in on everyone and seeing how things are going.”
”He's avoiding work,” the Queen calls out as she enters the chamber after me.
The two younger Queens give each other a brief look.
”The Eldest? Avoiding work? Surely you jest Mother!”
”Such a thing is impossible!”
The two of them laugh together and I hasten to cut Mother off before she can destroy my reputation. What can I use to distract her?!
”Ah! Is that Aphy the aphid Queen I see? She's gotten big!”
It's true, in one corner of the egg laying chamber, a much larger than before aphid Queen is nibbling on some Bioma.s.s next to her own little pile of eggs, looking very pleased with herself.
”Yes, she evolved not that long ago,” the Queen can't help but rush over to dote on her pet with pats and scritches. ”I wasn't sure about bringing her down to this Strata, but in the end I felt a lot more comfortable when she's somewhere I can keep an eye on her. You do like to get up to mischief, don't you Aphy?”
”Chirrup!”
The much smaller bug monster makes a noise of delight as it leans into the Queen's antenna like some sort of cat.
”The brood tenders take care of the aphid young as well?” I ask.
”Of course!” Victoriant chips in, ”they seem to get the bonus stats from their care just as well as the hatchlings do, and each aphid will pay the colony back far more Bioma.s.s that we spend on Aphy to get them hatched.”
”So the feeding is going well in the marsh expanse?”
”Aphy's children are far more useful than that,” the Queen tells me warmly, still radiating affection towards her pet, ”they've been spread to four separate expanses in the first Strata now.”
FOUR!?
”Since when did we own that much territory?” I ask, flabbergasted.
”After you left, the expansion happened pretty quickly,” Antionette muses. ”The Generals, Soldiers and Scouts were super excited about it. They were all fired up every time they found a new expanse. I think they sent a thousand Soldiers into the Red Woods Expanse on the first day they found it.”
A thousand?! But why?!
”I heard the same,” Victoriant confirms, ”I think they conquered the whole thing in two hours.”
Yeesh, they really were getting carried away.
”How many members of the Colony are there, right now?” I ask. ”The number can't be that high, can it?”