Grow! Grow? Grow....

The new food supply guaranteed Ingram a steady stream of eggs for at least two days, though that did not make him feel as happy since watching the queen lay five eggs after four hours of munching and looks of indigestion was not particularly up his alley of what's considered fun

But with exploring out the window he could only turn to the dungeon for something to pass time with, a few ideas already in mind

"Climb up that wall"

Motioning the guard he had it scale the rugged wall, all the way to the ceiling

"Vertical manoeuvrability, check, now come back down"

The guard took a second to rotate its body before descending the wall, something Ingram did not miss

"Spin around for me"

The guard cocked its head to the side in confusion, but did a princess spin anyway, taking it several seconds to do so

"Guess we need to keep your enemy off flanks"

A solvable issue in the dungeon since he could shape it to his advantage, as to how? Well he was about to try and figure that out

"Now try to bite at that wall"

This time the guard looked more than ready as it tore through the rock with its scissor like mandibles

"You gotta love the manual effort"

He had a tired smile on his face already

"Might be more fun that way though"

In the long run maybe, but managing a bunch of ants to dig smooth walls and neat rooms would be a great hassle

"Well, at least I have something to do now"

Walking up to the baby ants by the side he merged four of them to create one adult, leaving the baby guard and the older baby ant who has yet to mature in order to figure out how long it took one to become a full adult on its own

Climbing up the worker he held the base of its antennas and guided it toward the wall

"Dig in!"

Crunches were heard across the somewhat empty cave as the giant ant tore through the rock with lesser speed than that of the guard, slowly shaping up the place into what Ingram desired

Clank!

".... That's it?"

Looking at one of the fallen mandibles he felt stifled, a couple of hours in and there was barely a three meter hole in the wall while the once robust mandibles were battered and broken, unable to slice through food much less walls

"I knew giving us free rein to work through the place was too good to be true"

No tools no job, and he certainly wouldn't use the guard, his only defence, to do some labour

Thankfully he was only an hour away from the next batch of eggs hatching, which happened to be all workers, meaning the rate of guards per batch was lower than he believed

When they did hatch however the baby worker ant aged into a young one

"You came from the first batch and two came after you so eight hours to go through one phase? That is too long"

If you count incubation time and egg hatching plus the next phase then it would be a while before he grew his army

"No worries, I just need to stop merging so they can properly grow in numbers"

In the meanwhile, he used the new worker to resume its useless sibling's work, determined to at least build a room to lounge around in

After quite some time Ingram could be seen sitting in his rugged but somewhat smoother room, on a makeshift chair, staring into the eyes of his first naturally grown up ant

"A day"

Click

"To go from young to adult took you a day"

Click click

The worker chattered and blinked those dim black eyes, reflecting the dismayed look on Ingram's face

"Ugh"

Rolling back he let himself fall onto the ground with a thud, all he could think about being the massive waste of time it would take to grow an army, as it stood the eggs hatching took four hours, the same amount for the incubation that preceded it, double the amount for the first phase that took place after, and then a day for the final step, a whooping forty hours just to get five worker ants, granted he did not merge any

"Haah, shouldn't think of the glass half empty"

Jumping to his feet he tried to look at the big picture

"Rather than saying it takes forty hours for five ants to mature I should be focusing on the gains, five ants will mature every four hours"

Since the incubation did not halt until the eggs hatched, in fact it did not seem to halt unless there was a lack of food

"Then I can merge them all into these fellows"

Looking toward the side of the room he noted a bigger ant than his worker, with legs as thick as tree stumps and mandibles as large as horns, well, were as large as horns, now both fell off after being exploited to complete this room

[Name: N/A

Race: Giant Ant Servent

Lvl: 1

Power Rank: F

Stats:

STR: 23%

VIT: 35%

DEX: 4%

INT: 0%

WIS: 0%]

The combined form of two giant ant workers, maybe not as lethal as the guards but just as tough and more

"That being said I should go get some food while these batches come along"

A newly combined guard was ready for this mission

He had the worker take the front with the guard while h rode atop the robust servant, forming his balanced exploration group

They went out with the sun just peeking out the horizon, a perfect time to avoid meeting any deadly nocturnal predators

"I even have to keep track of the day and night cycle, this game is much more realistic than my last"

Almost to a boring level, but the realism would only make it better later when he had other things to do than breed big ants, sooner or later this all would become an automated process he did not have to keep track of other than overlooking the results

"Onward big boys! We have a hill to feed"

One that was yet to be formed, but sure as hell will be