Swarming Sovereignty

Lia pounced on the rat, pinning it to the ground with her claws before biting into it and covering it with modeling wax. She was surprised by just how…small it seemed now. Whereas before she had been about the same size as the rats, she was now about double their size, easily able to pin one to the ground.

She dripped a drop of venom onto it, then checked out her options.

Interesting. Swarm Cannon Fodder had been replaced with an entirely new species, and two others had appeared as well. Lesser Rat Relay probably wasn’t good until she had like…a bunch of other rats that could carry it from place to place, and she couldn’t even make a Lesser Rat Baroness with this rat.

Though that did have interesting ramifications. Would having multiple creatures within the same cocoon lead to different outcomes, even outside of cases like the Rat Aristocracy? She’d have to try it out.

But, for now, she would have to go with Lesser Swarm Foot Soldier. Not only was it an immediate increase in her combat capability, but it was also something capable of beginning to automate the creation of her swarm. She wasn’t going to get anywhere if she had to convert everything herself, and while it seemed like they couldn’t make anything complex, it was definitely better than nothing.

So, she began the process of conversion and set out in search of her next victim. The next rat she found she consumed for modeling wax, and the one after that she covered but didn’t begin converting. Instead, she took the rat after, covered it, and dragged it to the first rat. From there, she sort of…squished them together, and the modeling wax rippled, dragging the rats together before expanding slightly to make the combined cocoon more egg-shaped.

She dripped some venom and looked at her options. As expected, Rat Baroness was available for creation, but the other options had changed slightly. Next to their names was a little bit that read “(x2|Start at ½ max level)”, which she assumed meant she could either make two of one type, or make one of that type but have it start at half of its max level.

And, finally, much like there had been when she only had one rat, there was a locked option, this time for “Lesser Rat Viscountess”. It was apparently a step up from a Rat Baroness, and required four rats instead of two.

Though, she was beginning to wonder…all these Rat Aristocracy used female titles instead of male ones, even though the “base” phenomenon, the rat king, used a male title. Fortunately, her Mana was still large enough to use Analysis level two, so she did.

Well, that sounded about right. It wasn’t really a big deal to her, not with these rats, so…no, actually, while it wasn’t a big deal with the rats, it would be a big deal later on when she was converting people.

But that was future Lia’s problem. Right now, she was just going to focus on surviving until that she got to that point. She set the rats to converting into two Lesser Swarm Foot Soldiers, and resumed her hunt. She didn’t need whatever weak magic the Lesser Rat Baroness would have, and she wanted front liners in the battle against the goblins, so she felt like foot soldiers were the right choice.

As she hunted and converted, she found her mind wandering. Where was Amelia getting all these rats from? How did she know whenever Lia went hunting? Was she always watching her or something? She really wished she had some way of communicating with Amelia, just so she could begin to ask the many questions she had.

Once she had converted ten rats into foot soldiers, she began to diversify, making more burrowers and drones in equal proportion to the foot soldiers. And, finally, once she had thirty total converts, including her old swarm, she stopped and surveyed her handiwork.

She had reached level four from the experience gained from conversion, and her stats were starting to look pretty nice. She had gained ten in HP, Stamina, and Mana, two in Defense and Dexterity, and three in everything else for every level, leaving her in pretty good shape.

She had also been pleased to find that Venomous Bite had leveled back up to three – she had been close to leveling it up when it was downgraded, and it appeared that the experience had carried over to some extent.

She returned to her home base, and surveyed her swarm. To her surprise, upon evolving the drones and burrowers had lost most of their insectoid features, and now looked like…well, just big rats, albeit with a glint of malevolent intelligence in their eyes. The foot soldiers were much the same, though their teeth were pointed, and their claws were much sharper than those of the drones or the burrowers.

Lia paused, considering the burrow for a bit. She had just sort of…made it in a field without much thought to location, and that wasn’t ideal. Where she had originally been teleported in was, apparently, no longer a safe area now that she had evolved, so the obvious answer was out.

If possible, she’d like to set up around a food and water dispenser, but she wasn’t sure how tough the guardians would be.

Well, there was a quick way to find out; she just had to press further into the bazaar until she found one and could get a glimpse of the guardian. Amelia had estimated that evolving once would allow her to defeat the guardian, but Amelia also thought that those goblins were an acceptable first enemy.

…Lia had beat them, but that wasn’t the point, the point was that Amelia’s power estimation was a little…skewed. Lia took a moment to survey her army. She had roughly fifteen foot soldiers, each of which she had made load up on modeling wax. The drones had been converting the extra corpses to modeling wax, and the burrowers had been doing the same with the material they excavated, so there was a growing pile of the stuff in a corner, allowing for quick refills.

Oh, right, she should probably check the stats of her foot soldiers, so she knew how useful they would be.

While it wasn’t great, it was still good enough when she realized that she both had fifteen of the things and that they were originally not even monsters, just animals, weak ones at that. If she could do this to just…random rats, she couldn’t help but wonder what rat monsters

would look like after she was done with them.

She turned to face the bazaar. She was probably going to lose a few foot soldiers in the coming fights, but that was a sacrifice she was willing to make. If she could get even a couple of goblins converted, that would be a huge improvement to her fighting strength, and she could start really making headway.

She marched off, her soldiers following behind her. She noted, idly, that they defaulted to forming ranks and marching in file like a real army, something that made her really feel like a general leading troops to war.

The first thing she noticed upon reaching the bazaar was that Night Vision had, suddenly, become much more effective; she was seeing much further than she used to be able to.

No, that wasn’t the case. Night Vision only provided sight beyond where natural sight ended, so…this form seemed to be able to see better in the dark as a consequence of biology, and that translated to better Night Vision. Whatever the case, it meant that she was easily able to pick out the nearest patrol and lead her swarm to it.

There were three goblins this time. It seemed that the goblins were trying to ramp up their response when it was proved that what they were using weren’t working, and Lia really didn’t like that. It meant that the goblins had some sort of organization and that indicated that there was a chief somewhere.

But, now that she had evolved and had a swarm, three goblins was no huge threat. She got her swarm into position just outside the light of the lantern, and then cast Gnawing Hunger on each of the goblins. Immediately, their eyes glazed over, and they dropped what they were holding, wandering to the edge of the path and beginning to grab and eat the grass and flowers growing at the sides.

While they were distracted, she ordered her swarm to mob one of them and leave it on the verge of death while she attacked one of the others. The goblins were so absorbed in their eating that they didn’t even notice what was happening until Lia’s swarm was on top of them, at which point they turned on the swarm, a ravenous glint in their eyes.

It was too late for the first goblin, who received numerous bites and scratches anywhere it wasn’t covered in armor, and dropped to the floor, HP too low to move or do much. Lia got a good bite in on the second and numbed its hand, but wasn’t able to take it down in one hit, and so the second and third were able to react.

The second goblin used its other hand to grab at Lia, but its movements were dull, and it had to take its hand away from the flower it was uprooting, so Lia was easily able to dodge and give it another bite for its trouble. She had plenty of Stamina, so she was applying Power Attack to each of her blows, just to get it leveling up.

Around then her swarm reached the goblin she was fighting and began to mob it as well, this time killing it entirely with their bites.

The third goblin, however, performed much better than its companions. As her swarm converged on the second goblin, it stumbled over, grabbing one of the foot soldiers in a hand and bringing it to its mouth, where it bit the poor thing clean in half and began to chew, a blissful expression on its face.

A moment later the goblin let out a gurgling croak, dropping the other half of the foot soldier. Lia could feel that it had, in its dying moments, bit off the goblin’s tongue, buying enough time for the rest of the swarm to finish the second goblin and then attack the third.

Lia had them keep that one alive too, then had the soldiers cover them in modeling wax. They were able to completely cover the first goblin, but had to take a break and process the body of the second before they were able to get more than three quarters done on the third. Fortunately, at about the halfway point, the modeling wax seemed to stop the bleeding where the tongue used to be, so it seemed the goblin wouldn’t die in the meantime.

While they were waiting, Lia got curious. The modeling wax had covered the armor of the first goblin entirely, indicating that it could, to an extent, process non-living things. That being the case, she dragged the weapons and lantern over from where the goblins had dropped them, covered them in modeling wax, and pushed them towards the cocoon of the first.

Much like when she had put two rats in one cocoon, the weapons and lantern seamlessly melded into the goblin’s cocoon, this time leaving it only slightly bigger than it was initially. She didn’t immediately start the conversion, choosing instead to wait for the other goblin’s cocoon to finish, and then process them both at once.

Interesting. It seemed that she could only make one Lesser Goblin Lightborn, probably because there was only one lantern in the cocoon. And she had to wonder…if the descriptions did not explicitly mention conversion or modeling wax, would they still be able to create modeling wax? She anticipated needing much more of the stuff, and something the size of a goblin would be able to carry quite a lot, so that would factor into what she would make these things into.

She hadn’t leveled up, only receiving twenty or so experience, the rest being split and given to her foot soldiers. Even so, while waiting, she had been able to recover enough Mana to use Analysis level three, so she did.

Excellent. In that case, she got the goblin converting into a lightborn. The main reason she chose lightborn was…well, because it seemed more interesting than the other options. She didn’t really trust the intelligence of an infiltrator made from a goblin, and foot soldier and sentry just seemed boring when compared to lightborn.

After all, the worst case scenario was she had another body that could be used as cannon fodder, but best case scenario she got something better than any of her other options. It was a gamble, and Lia lived for gambles.

In the meantime, she had several other windows awaiting her attention. It was time to see what other spoils the battle had given her.