New Ability

After another few minutes of walking, they reached a space with over twenty different tunnels, each with a doorheaded ant blocking its entrance. If it were another insect invasion, they would have probably tried to open each and every tunnel to find the queen and probably given up after being fruitless before opening all of them.

Yet the puppet master didn't even look at them for less than a split second. Instead, he looked below them, at the ground beneath their feet. It seemed like solid ground, no different from the other areas. But with a single move from him, his tentacles stirred, and the ground started shaking.

Not long after, a hole opened up. The seemingly solid ground was revealed to be the head of a larger and more sturdier doorheaded ant.

ds, the ants entered before the ground closed back up again. Upon entering, the ant was surprised to find the inside glowing in a greenish light. The space was larger than any of the rooms he had seen, second only to the ancestral nest.

Large pillars of earth stood around the space, each almost as big as the Queen's bed tower. There were around twenty to thirty pillars in total. But the most shocking thing was the false queens - there were many of them. With the help of his soul gaze, he could quickly count them all: fifty-eight false queens, each standing in a different area.

Yet, there were more surprises. At the center of the room was a large body of water, which would be considered large from an ant's point of view. This water was glowing green and was the source of the light. Surrounding this "lake" were ant eggs, two to three times larger than the eggs of soldier-sized ants.

"This life signature, this mental wave type... Those are false queen eggs," he thought in awe.

Suddenly, he looked at a certain corner and saw the queen drinking from the lake water. Yet, after a few sips, she stopped and produced a hissing sound. "Did she just hiss?" he was baffled.

At the next moment, he saw something unusual happening. The false queens started carrying corpses of queen ants, hornets, bees, termite queens, and even a large doorhead ant queen, throwing them into the lake. The queen watched this quietly.

Afterwards, she walked to one of the larger pillars and started hissing loudly. Suddenly, two pairs of false queens came down carrying leaf pieces. They arranged them like a mat, and the queen lay on it. She became still, then started shaking violently.

After half a minute of intense vibration, she laid another large egg, and her abdomen quickly deflated.

A unique-looking ant came forward. This ant was essentially a honeypot, but instead of honey, its body was filled with the green glowing liquid from the lake. Its body was also uniquely shaped, with legs as long as a daddy long legs, looking slender yet capable of carrying its massive abdomen filled with the liquid. Some parts of its body were armored with a strong exoskeleton.

This spider-like honeypot came forward and fed the queen some of the liquid. The queen absorbed it quickly, and her condition started looking better. Not long after, her abdomen swelled back up again and returned to normal. She calmed down and lay down, seemingly fallen asleep.

"This is simply too interesting," he thought. "Is this some sort of ritual? Who would have thought ants were capable of something this complex? And that liquid, what exactly is it? I don't know yet. But one thing is for certain: that lake has something to do with the false queens' creation and the queen's weird mutation."

"I'll have to stay longer and study this deeper," he thought. "Who knows, this might be what could help me with my diminishing lifespan."

For the next three days, he did nothing but watch their behavior and the changes, study more about how to use and control his mental power, make his puppets sacrifice themselves for his meals, and study more about how to use his soul puppeteering ability.

During that time, he had many significant discoveries. One was witnessing two different eggs hatch: one a large false queen and the other a doorhead ant. This surprised him, as it was the queen that birthed the guarding doorheads.

Another discovery was that he could now reduce the amount of liquified thought he used when blasting, yet concentrate it more to deal single-point concentrated damage.

He also witnessed all the material thrown into the lake by the false queens melt away, leaving nothing behind. This truly amazed him.

Furthermore, he discovered that he could see a certain type of unique energy particles abundant in the room. These particles seemed to have healing properties when gathered by a medium, such as his thought power. However, he could only control it slightly, succeeding about one out of twenty times.

Last but most appreciated was his gaining of a new ability in his soul study. When he was manipulating and experimenting with the minds of his puppets, he suddenly had an idea: instead of breaking or purifying, why not try to dig into it?

Although this approach normally caused an explosive reaction in living normal ants, it was just a simple exercise for him to waste time. He had broken down a single tentacle piece into as many parts as possible, dividing it into a hundred or more slim, almost invisible parts.

Afterwards, he sent these parts into the target's mind, spreading them in all possible directions. One has to understand that the mind is a vast place, even for ants. After over two hours of constantly wasting time on this seemingly pointless and fruitless task, he finally saw light when he found a space filled with images, scents, and sounds.

All the memories were in scattered form, like a messy room. Afterwards, he used up all his remaining puppet subordinates to practice this new ability, because it was that good.

The ability to absorb another's memories meant he could not only gain knowledge but also experience it as though he had lived through it himself. And he knew exactly where to use this ability.

"My queen, it is time for your reign to end and mine to begin," he said with a smile - which, in his ant form, wasn't possible.