Starvation (1/2)

At the same time Haalfrin is touching the necro crystal, the Queen notices that her juicy mana farm has completely fallen into a coma.

At first, she thinks the man is faking an injury in order to get out of supplying her with more mana; it's not the first time he's done this.

So, to put him in his place again, the Queen "lightly" kicks him across the room several times… but he never wakes up.

That's odd; he always wakes up after a few hits from her.

Then, to the Queen's horror, she sees that parts of Haalfrin's body seems to be rotting in some places…

"Ah!" she panics, "Is he… dead?" Her heart immediately drops thinking this might actually be true..

"This infinite meat machine is my greatest possession! After all I went through to get it, I can't let him die!"

She runs up frantically to check on the man, and to her relief, she sees that he's still breathing, though his pulse is weak.

Seeing Haalfrin on the verge of death, the Queen nearly pulls her hair out of anxiety. "Arg! I don't know healing arts at all!"

The most the Queen could do was wait and see…

… With Dakka showing signs of stirring from his long slumber, losing Haalfrin now would be the worst timing.

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Over the next several days, the Queen takes some drastic measures to keep Haalfrin alive; she continues to feed him Ant meat and water, while she uses up her stash of healing elixirs she'd taken from the Threshold but never had the heart to use.

Once Haalfrin's condition stabilizes, the Queen breathes a sigh of relief and puts away the few remaining healing elixirs.

Ironically, the Queen is part of the reason why Haalfrin wasn't consumed by the necro crystal…

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Since Haalfrin is still alive, the land is cloaked in perpetual twilight, and the Queen is still unable to keep track of time.

With Haalfrin being unable to wake up right now, the perpetual ritual sacrifices come to a stop. No more Arkin are summoned, and no more Ants are forced to commit suicide.

Since the Queen is no longer feeling the constant ecstasy from all the mana flowing into her soul Realm while her children feast, she suddenly comes to realize that she has no stimulation in her life.

In a sense, the Queen had become addicted to the constant rush of happy-chemicals in her body. Now that it's suddenly gone, she suddenly starts to feel depressed.

What makes it all worse is that cursed grey sky! With no way to keep track of time, she starts to feel crazy again, as if she's stuck in a stagnant hell.

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Since her children's blood has submerged the Threshold completely except for the tip of the tallest tower, the Queen has very few places she can go outside the sky fortress.

And so one day, the Queen finds herself sitting at this tower's peak.

With these Ants not being required to die anymore, and being complete newborns with no memories, the Queen finds them all far too troublesome to bother with. So, she just lets them run around and play as much as they want.

So, feeling melancholy, the Queen rests her head in her hands and looks expressionlessly at the horde of Ants who are playing in the "sticky red water", as her children like to call it.

Apparently, some of her children had found recordings in the sky fortress with various stories etched inside. Of course, these memory crystals transmit thoughts directly to the user, so these Ants are able to actually understand what's in them.

From there, the little Ants had gotten plenty of ideas on how to pass the time. One of the things her children had learned was about the existence of boats and the vast oceans of the outside world.

And so, the Queen hears her children proudly call blood lake the "vast, untamed seas".

After they briefly squabble among each other, half of the children hop into the blood sea and link themselves together – arm in arm. They then form themselves into little boats.

With these boats having no sails or oars, the Ants making up the hull propel the ships by sticking their legs out and swimming.

They only practice "sailing the ship" for a little bit before they realize that they can go a lot faster if they all kick their legs at once.

With the boats formed, the other half of her children change into their humanoid forms and hop on these "boats". They start calling themselves "croo-men", and they appoint 1 captain for each boat who's in charge of telling it where to swim.

After that, the children sort themselves into teams – half of the boats and their "croo-men" are the pirates, while the other half are the "army".

At this point, the Queen is actually getting interested in watching the way they play.

"Maybe it's because I've always directly controlled them during the battles," she thinks, "but I've never seem them direct themselves in a fight without me."

Watching the armadas of "boats" skimming around across the water, the Queen sees that the two conflicting armies are scarily coordinated with the way they weave around and attempt to flank each other.

Of course, since the Ant children don't like pain, they don't kill each other during their play fighting; instead, when they "board the enemy ships", the "croo-men" attempt to wrestle with their sisters and throw them off the ships.

One side wins when they've captured all the other's ships.

If Haalfrin or anyone else had seen these Ants playing, they'd really think that the Queen was directing it from behind.

Perhaps it's because all of these sisters are fragments of the same soul, but they never argue with each other over who's in charge or what the rules of the game are supposed to be.

Unlike all of the other Soul Fragments, the Queen can only watch the playing from a distance. It's not that she CAN'T play with them; she was even invited to join in the fun.

However… seeing them run around and waste energy like this, the Queen can't help but feel sour in her heart.

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This pointless playing goes on for several days in a row before the Ants grow too tired. In order to conserve energy, the Queen has them all enter stasis to regenerate the mana they lost during their mock war.

With everything gone quiet now, the Queen looks over the still red sea and grows… a little bored.

Looking up at the grey, starless sky, she recalls some old memories.

Long ago, the Queen remembers seeing herself as a little girl being lectured by her mother – the queen of her home tribe.

"It's too dangerous outside," the older woman had told her. "You're my successor, so you can go to the surface AFTER you become Queen. Until then, you must stay down here and train."

Unfortunately, the accident with the Void happened, and little Fina had met that Featureless monster. She disappeared from this world after that.

After somehow making it back out of the Void, she had woken up in that dark tunnel with no memories of a former life.

Maybe it's because she had forgotten about her thirst to see the sun, but even when she discovered the surface again, she recoiled from the harsh light and sent her children upstairs to battle against the native Rehkin tribes in her place.

Back then, the Queen only saw the sun as an evil, burning fire that hurt her eyes. She never actually saw the daylit surface with her own eyes.

Now that she has all her former memories back…, the Queen looks down in regret. "I… I never did go up to the surface with my own body. I should have."

She looks up at the grey sky and laments, "I wonder if I'll ever see the yellow sun with my own eyes?"

Queen Fina thinks a bit more and says to herself, "But I would have to kill the summoner to do that. If I kill him, then I'll spend the rest of my life feeling hungry… And I can't do that…"

This whole time, the Queen had been boiling with fury at how the demons and their summoner have been keeping this grey mantle over the sky and keeping the sunlight from her.

Now? Now that she's given up on this dream of her own accord, she can't feel angry anymore; she just feels empty.