Chapter 208: 8 months later- The ant queen’s Hive mind Nexus
When they all reached back, Theo was made to keep the mantis back in his room and come to the Baron again, where they spent some time with the family this time.
It was a lunch with the whole family, except Cedric, who was still unconscious in the infirmary.
Time flew by really fast at that dinner, with Theo being extremely happy with himself.
By the end of lunch, they all went back, including Theo, and from then on, the strategy to make the ants stronger was finally started.
The ants individually had a really bad time in taking care of things, be it transporting material or food and hunting.
But that was why they were in such a big group.
Theo realized that he may have had to get them evolved sooner than expected.
A few days passed with him taking care of what the ants could or could not do. Many plans were devised, but they all felt inefficient at best when it came to controlling so many ants.
By this time, almost another five ants had joined the force, and the babies were getting bigger day by day.
And Theo couldn’t help but feel anxious when the ant queen kept giving eggs one after another. He did not know whether it was due to the safe environment they felt they were in, but Theo needed to control the population.
So Theo gave a simple command to the ant queen to lay fewer eggs. He did not know if it was possible or not, but one thing was clear after a few days, the ant queen wasn’t listening to this order or just couldn’t do it.
Theo left the matter for later. In his mind, there was another situation that felt even bigger when the mantis was the one he was leveling up.
The lifespan.
The ant queen may live for a long time, yet still not long enough. But the worker ants? Their age was unknown to Theo right now.
It could be weeks to months to years. There was no playbook for him to look at. And the one that was had still not reached their library.
But one goal was as clear as day—he had to get each ant to level 5 before even making them fight with beasts too big for them.
Level 5 would mean a double in lifespan, while a strength boost. He also wanted them to try new ingredients to help in the evolution detection.
But that was what happened in the start of the week.
Nearly a month passed after that, and Theo started balancing his life.
There was research on ants, there was an EXP grind for the mantis, and the learning of newer tactics while also training his knighthood.
All at the same time, showing that he was taking leisure time, as his father had his eyes on him, which surprisingly did more good for him than expected.
After a short break, or keeping his mind blank, or even having tea or breakfast with his siblings, Theo was able to think a lot better.
By now, the 50-something ants had turned to 80, which was a number that was tough to follow if he did not have the ability to get the ants in a line and get them counted.
Among the 80 moving worker ants, there were one or two that had wings on them and were a lot more feeble than the normal ones.
Theo knew this much and could tell that this was the male of the ant colony. But in a week or so, the winged ants had died off naturally, which gave Theo a scare that the other ants may follow suit.
This made his drive to get all of them to level 5 even stronger.
By now, 30 of the ants were halfway toward level 3, 40 were just level 1, and some were level 0 that had just joined the force.
And even after leveling so many, out of the 5000 EXP, Theo himself needed to level up by mere peanuts. It was nothing compared to the leveling he could have done with mantis now that it had grown stronger.
There was a plan to go to a different forest now, one that was accessible to him through other noble families, but it would just mean that Theo would have to tell these noble families what beast he had, which didn’t feel like the right idea.
About 9 months were left before Theo had to go to the town for the first time, and then the academy.
Bram had already started his classes for runesmithing, and having a talent for it, Theo was sure he was going to be accepted to the runesmithing program in a great academy by the end of the year.
Time flew by fast after that, and Theo tried his best to keep up with the growing population of the ants. He was happy the square compressed anthill he had made had a lot of space to make more than a thousand chambers of their size if given a chance.
By the end of the 8 months of relentless training and making things make sense, Theo had seen a boom of the colony’s population.
Now, there were around 850 worker ants in the colony. Theo had a hard time controlling them, but once he realized that he just needed to take care of some at the current time, and some would just be controlled by the ant queen to get work done around the colony, things became better.
But everything he had known of the ants till now was changed with a single decision he made at the end of the 8 months.
Finally, he felt ready to have them defeat a level 0 grey rat.
Yet Theo didn’t know that the ant queen had a different way of fighting.
A way he hadn’t realized till now.
When it was detected that a beast that was, as compared to the ants’ size, a giant, was sent to fight the colony.
Theo was, at that time, dumbfounded to see the ant queen get out of the colony itself for the first time in so many months.
By now, Theo had only sent insects their way and had increased the size of the insect they defeated.
But when he sent a grey rat for the first time, and the ant queen itself came outside the colony.
For the first time, Theo had seen a message pop up in front of him.
It was:
*
*
[Partially taming forced on the Grey Rat (Level 0)]
[Partial taming in progress]
**
That was the only time he had seen a message like that, and now, he could see the ant queen frozen while at the same time, the rat was also shivering, yet frozen as if stuck in one place.
At that moment, Theo saw the horrors of about 800 ants just invading the rat’s body and starting to eat it alive.
In a matter of a single minute, Theo got the message of the grey rat being dead and the EXP being distributed among everything, making it a one-digit second-place decimal for all.
It was at that time that Theo realized that the ant queen had an ability that he had overlooked. Its name was:
Hive Mind Nexus.
The ability helped the ant queen make a good contact with the whole colony and, by extension, something it wanted to get in contact with, which was, in this case, the grey rat.
Theo had come across a new world of knowledge that he feared to even write down. He didn’t, as it was etched in his mind, and he told not even a single soul about it.
It felt unreal and just ridiculous, to begin with.
Theo started testing out this newly discovered use case of the ant’s ability by the third try, and he finally realized how this worked.
When the ant queen used the ability, the consciousness of the beast was shifted to that dark taming place for the time being.
Theo knew that because he once closed his eyes and delved deep into the bond, only to see the queen’s big head and then the rats in the bond.
The rat was so scared the whole time, and Theo tried communicating with it only to see it disappear within a minute.
When he opened his eyes again, the notification of the kill had appeared, and Theo saw the carcass of the big rat being dragged by hundreds of worker ants.
The ant queen itself had moved inside again since its duty was done.
And that was the moment that Theo realized something—he had, no matter how, just come in contact with a mammal beast and tried contacting its taming process.
And for a moment, Theo had actually felt the scared emotions of the rat before it could not show any emotion and die.
At that point, Theo came to a realization.
What if he could partially tame a non-insect species with the help of the ant queen’s ability? Was that even possible? He still had his curse with him.
The next experiment itself gave him the answer.