Swarming Sovereignty

Lia turned her attention to the windows that had patiently been waiting until the battle had finished. A few of her Skills had leveled up, though most of those weren’t particularly exciting. Battle Commander had gone up to level two, increasing its range and stat boost, Night Vision had gone up and gave her another ten meters of black and white vision, and Power Attack was up to level five and was now dealing fifty percent more damage.

And Venomous Bite had leveled up, too. There were no new effects, but everything had gotten just that much stronger.

Finally, she had gained one more Skill.

 

Yes, that would certainly come in handy. More damage was something she could always get behind.

Ah, the goblins had finished converting. Right, so, all in all, she had five sets of hands, and there were five goblin corpses near her which worked out perfectly. There was no helping all the blood on the ground, but she needed to get these bodies back to base for processing, so she ordered her swarm to start dragging them off.

As they walked back, Lia got to considering her next move. The goblins had always reacted to even one patrol going missing, so there was no way they were going to let the disappearances of three patrols go unnoticed.

Fortunately, she had received a rather substantial boost to her firepower. Or…she should have, right? She hadn’t actually checked the goblin foot soldiers’ stats, so she opened one up, just to make sure.

Yes, it looked like their base stats were about double that of one of the rat foot soldiers. Stats weren’t everything, though; what was almost more important was that the goblin foot soldiers were the same size as the other goblins. This meant that the goblin sentries couldn’t just…pick them up with a hand and eat them.

They could use weapons and armor, too. That would provide a bunch of other benefits that weren’t directly listed in the status and would even the playing field even more. Fortunately, Lia had been able to retrieve the clubs and lanterns of the fallen goblins by just laying them on top of the bodies while they were being dragged, meaning she had more than enough to equip her new troops.

And she wanted to see what would happen if she included a lantern while converting a rat, too. Actually, there were a lot of things she wanted to test when it came to conversion. What would happen if she included a bunch of rocks or sticks or something? Could she find a way to encase liquids in modeling wax and include them in the conversion too? What if she put a rat and a goblin in the same cocoon?

Wait, could she convert plants? Plants could be monsters, so it was within the realm of possibility. Once they made it back to her burrow, she’d go find a shrub or something that she could test it on. She wasn’t sure how useful plants would be if they could be converted, but she couldn’t just…not try it.

They got back to the burrow, and Lia left the swarm to put their new acquisitions away while she left in search of rats and a shrub. As she had suspected, she found a rat within moments of leaving the burrow. She took a moment to pin it to the ground and cover it with modeling wax before moving on. She didn’t start the conversion process quite yet, in the hopes that Amelia would get that she wasn’t looking for rats at the moment.

And, it seemed Amelia did, at least for the time being, as Lia didn’t encounter any more rats on her quest to find the nearest shrub. It took only a minute or so to find something of roughly the right size, which just left Lia with the problem of how to cover the thing. With the rats and goblins, the modeling wax had just sort of…spread out to cover them, but she wasn’t sure if that would be the case for the shrub.

Well, there was only one way to find out, and that was to try it. So, she grabbed one of the shrub’s branches, and willed the modeling wax to flow. And, to her slight surprise, it reacted like it did with the rats and goblins; with the lanterns, the process of covering the object wasn’t nearly as easy as it was with living things. It didn’t quite form up around the thing and begin to automatically cover all of it until it had been manually covered about a quarter of the way.

But the shrub cooperated, and was soon encased in an egg-shaped cocoon, bent in slightly where Lia was biting. Once she let go, the cocoon filled itself out, becoming near perfectly egg-shaped. Curious, Lia gently rested her teeth on the edge of the cocoon and let some venom flow, and was greeted with a window showing what she could turn the shrub into.

Interesting. The terraformer sounded like it had some potential for farming modeling wax, but that was not an issue at the moment, and it looked like it needed a lot of oversight. Lia wasn’t sure what counted as an “overseer”, but she was pretty sure she didn’t have anything that qualified.

The prickler, on the other hand…didn’t look amazing either. That wasn’t surprising, though, the plant was literally just a harmless shrub before she tried to convert it. But Lia supposed that the prickler had more immediate value to her; it would provide some defense for her base, and while it wasn’t great defense, it was good enough against things like goblins.

But, before she got it converting, she wanted to relocate it. She was guessing it would be easier to move in a cocoon than once it was converted and its roots were back in the ground, so it was probably best to move it to the entrance of her burrow now. She called over two goblins, the drone and the higher-leveled lightborn, and set them to moving the plant while she went back to the rat she had encased earlier.

She gave it a few taps, casting a meaningful glance up at the sky. To her great surprise, a few moments later a piece of paper just sort of…appeared on the cocoon. Lia grabbed it with a paw, dragging it down so she could read what was written on it.

Hey, it’s Amelia. The paper read. So, I was kind of wondering if I could get your permission to read your mind? I haven’t been doing it out of respect for your privacy, but I don’t want to start teleporting in a bunch of rats when you don’t want them. Go ahead and give that cocoon one tap for yes and two for no.

Lia hesitated for a moment, then gave the cocoon a tap. Another paper appeared on top of it, and Lia began to read again.

OK, thanks. I’ll try to avoid it while you’re in your burrow, though. You deserve some privacy, at least. Oh, and I’m not going to send messages like this unless I absolutely have to. I want you to be as self-sufficient as possible.

…And before you even think about it, the rats are different. They’re kind of important to you right now, and I didn’t supply the dungeon with more than the standard number of rats, so I’m just making up for that while I’m working on putting in a rat generator. The eventual goal is to make it so I don’t need to teleport them in all the time. Anyway, that’s all for me for now, you go get ‘em, I’m rooting for you!

Lia gave a nod, then had one of her goblins bring her a spare lantern. She wanted to see what exactly it would allow her to make with the rats. Presumably it would be something relating to fire or light, but she wouldn’t be able to know for sure until she tried it.

A moment later a foot soldier came out with the lantern, already covered in modeling wax. Lia directed it to add the lantern to the cocoon containing the rat, then she dripped some venom onto it, and took a look at her options. There were the standard options she had come to expect from converting rats, but there were also two new ones.

Fascinating. Why had the rat got a metal-themed option while the goblins hadn’t? Was it because of their size? Well, for the time being she had no need for fire magic and was wanting more durable fighters, so the ironclad sounded good. She was about to start the conversion when she paused. The modeling wax had hardened to allow for conversion, but…was there a way to add more things to the cocoon after it had been hardened? That would be quite convenient, and would make showing the missing requirements for a conversion more…useful.

She had more than enough Mana to use Analysis level three, so she did, seeing if that would give her the answer she was looking for.

Good to know. She unhardened the cocoon, and began hunting for more rats. She only had so many lanterns, so she wanted to make the ironclads she could make as strong as possible. She wasn’t sure how the level scaling would work with more than two of something in a cocoon, but it wasn’t like rats were a rare thing, so she rounded up five more and dragged them back to the cocoon. She ran out of modeling wax after the third, and had to use a goblin as a mobile reservoir of sorts, but soon enough she was looking at the options once again.

 There was a “Lesser Rat Viscountess Pyromancer”, and she could start the baroness pyromancer at a higher level, but she wasn’t interested in those, and the ironclad had more interesting changes anyway.

It appeared that one lantern was enough to make multiple ironclads, which was…good to know. And it seemed that increasing their level by adding more creatures to the cocoon had diminishing returns, so it probably wasn’t worth doing unless she had an excess of materials or needed something strong fast.

She began the conversion, choosing to make three ironclads, then set off in search of more rats again. Once she had gathered four, she brought out another lantern and checked her options again. She wanted to make sure that she wasn’t only given the option for three ironclads because there wouldn’t be an “even” way of dividing the levels, and found that three was indeed the maximum number of ironclads that could be made from a lantern.

And, in this case, it seemed that if she started the conversion with just four rats in, the three ironclads would start at 1/4^th their maximum level. But, finding rats wasn’t particularly hard, so she got two more, and set the second group to converting as well.

It was about that time when the first group finished converting. She ordered them to come to her, so she could take a good look at them.

They were…well, they more or less looked like slightly bigger rats. Their fur was a bit darker than normal, but other than that they were nearly indistinguishable at a glance. A closer inspection, however, would reveal that where there should have been skin, there was a smooth metallic coating that was growing fur.

Satisfied with their looks, Lia checked their stats, too.

 

That was…really good. Really good, almost on par with the lightborns, and she had more of them, and they would evolve sooner.

Which reminded her…how close were her foot soldiers to evolution? She had to assume that they had at least leveled up a few times, but there were also a lot of them, and experience was split between them, so she couldn’t be sure. With that in mind, she made her way back to the burrow to check up on her foot soldiers.

When she was at the entrance, she stopped. She could just check the status of one of the foot soldiers, but this seemed like a good way to check just how intelligent her swarm actually was.

You there. She directed a mental command at one of the foot soldiers that was eating one of the goblin corpses. Are you able to evolve?

The foot soldier froze, turning to stare at Lia. There was a long, drawn out moment as it tried to process the question until it finally lifted up a paw and then sort of…pointed at itself.

Yes, you. Lia said. The foot soldier in front of me. The one who just pointed at itself. Can you evolve?

The foot soldier looked…confused. There was another long moment before it seemed to have some sort of epiphany, then it nodded.

Do you need my permission in order to evolve?

It shook its head.

Do you have multiple options for evolution?

It paused, then nodded.

May I see them?

The foot soldier looked genuinely shocked that she had to ask, then nodded its head.

Good. Give me a moment here…

Lia gulped. The enlightened swarmling was…well, more than anything else she had seen, showed the sheer magnitude of what she was capable of now. Nothing had ever been even remotely close to being found when it came to altering Classes, and this race just…casually mentioned doing it. And, apparently, this foot soldier had somehow gained sapience. She hadn’t the foggiest idea how, but it had.

Go somewhere safe and out of the way, and choose which evolution you want. She instructed. And don’t pick foot soldier just because that was what I originally made you into. Pick whatever you feel is best. She turned her attention back to the rest of the swarm. The same goes for anyone who is capable of evolution.

Many of the foot soldiers stopped what they were doing and left to go evolve. And then, suddenly, three windows popped up in front of Lia.

 

 

…The gods weren’t going to smite her for this…right?