In order to not have to pause my tunneling, I mentally instructed Invicta to gather up all the gold pulp while I sought an explanation from my little alien entities as to what metamorphosis would entail.

“Metamorphosis? Could you explain what that would do?” I asked as I set up a little map in my interface to keep track of my tunneling progress. I was going much slower than I initially expected and figured that I might be at this for a while. This was time that I wasn’t too comfortable giving up. I was beginning to feel a need to go home for some reason to check on things. I had experienced too many close calls that could have meant losing my ability to ever see any of my family again and it was beginning to bother me a little. Who knew what would happen next? It might end up with me either dead or stuck someplace until the end of time.

“Infecting?” Both Invicta and I asked at the same time.

“What normally happens after a monarch infects a host?” I asked, feeling that something was not right.

I saw my life flash before my eyes as I finally understood what it was saying. The ant from my dream was not a benevolent benefactor, on the contrary, it had sensed me as prey and raced across the interdimensional cosmos to catch me. What I had seen as a gift was in fact a parasitic bomb that it had lobbed at me. Only through sheer luck had I barely managed to just miss the command it would have gladly issued to have my alien cr spread and infect the surrounding Core.

I swallowed, my mind frozen with fear as I wondered what was keeping a new monarch from discovering me. Was it dreams? How long could I stay awake and continually pile up experiences in VR and life without letting my brain reset? I had already begun to slightly feel the strain again like I had before. It had just taken longer this time for it to occur.

I could feel that Invicta was in a state of shock. I had to see if I could get in front of this thing, to see if I could wrestle control into my arms. So far this alien swarm had been only obeying commands from others, as though it lacked a will of its own. Could it live under a drone hierarchy? I had to try something…

“I am the new monarch! I have been your monarch since the last one died! You have been obeying my commands and will continue to do so from now on.” I told the entity, expecting to fail and have to go through a rigorous test of wills to prove my dominance and right to claim my place. I had to see if I could get this thing under my control, if not, I and everything around me was as good as dead when another monarch showed up.

What? Really? Just like that? - I thought as Invicta finally let loose.

“Ahhh!” Invicta screamed in my ear as she bounced around my mind in a panic.

“Invicta calm down! Everything is under control.” I said, hoping that it really was. Inside I was sweating buckets from stress. I had completely lost the feeling of safety that I had been feeling this whole time since gaining this alien entity inside me. I guess I had begun to feel untouchable, as though I had a secret benefactor aiding me from beyond the dimensional divide. The truth was so much more disturbing. I was a possible host.

“You don’t understand! I have seen what Fomys spawn can do, over and over again. They feast and divide and kill without mercy. They, at least, can be killed. These things are made of cr that no one has access to! They could kill everything if they got out.” She railed as I tried to calm her down. I hadn’t experienced her mourning for the lost AI and I was beginning to see that it had affected her entirely in a different manner. It had caused her to develop a fear-based on her repeated experiences while stuck serving as a game AI.

“Hey, hey, please try to calm down. We will try to figure this out ok? Even if they could get out… I am not sure that they could spread. Remember that they are afraid of the void of space ok?” I said as I grasped at anything to try to get her to calm down. I really wasn’t sure about anything. From what I had seen, my swarm could ingest Tela cr technology and offer it for use again to whoever controlled it. If the monarch had lived… I could only imagine what it could have achieved. The universe could have been overrun with unkillable interdimensional ants. Ants who pridefully called themselves the “Swarm of Death.”

She buzzed and swirled around the outer edges of my mind, calming down a little but still very much on edge while I addressed the entity again. I could feel that she was reading my mind and was trying to remain calm if only to help me be calm as well.

“So… I can give you commands?” I addressed the alien swarm tentatively.

“Commands that no other monarch or hive or anything can break or overrule?”

“Ok! My first command to you is that no other monarch or power can command you without my permission. This rule includes if, for some reason, I become mentally incapacitated or controlled. If that happens I am commanding you to either enter an inactive state or to attack the entity that is disabling me or mind controlling me. Do you understand that?” I asked as I considered ways to block this entity from being taken from me. It had given me the monarch title way too easily and I feared that I was dealing with a “Yes man” entity. It might follow and obey literally anyone that it could understand. I could use my AI later, possibly Invicta, as a second opinion or lockout key just in case something bad happened. First I had to make sure that whoever I used would never be susceptible to hacking or outside influence. All this preventative planning on the spot was giving me a headache. There were just too many variables that I needed to look at. Maybe George or Silver could help me figure this all out.

“I will look into something like that for you Kevin,” Invicta said as she got the gist of what I needed. Having something to do seemed to quiet the intensity of her emotions down a little while she went to work.

“Also no spreading without my permission. My swarm will be controlled.” I said as I tried to think of all the commands I needed to hopefully contain a disaster waiting to happen.

I tunneled for a while in silence, unable to think of anything else to command. My stress was still way up and I was trying not to feel like I had an itch inside me. Just the thought that I had almost become like one of those zombie ants on earth who were taken over by fungus kept popping into my mind.

Working, tunneling, and clearing out a path deep within the cr sunspot slowly began to ease my stress levels. It was just the simple act of seeing something being accomplished and knowing that I had a goal in mind, the discovery of a new density of cr, that helped my mind relax.

After a while, the gold pulp harvested from obliterating the raw cr was beginning to accumulate and I had begun to wonder if, as a monarch, my options had changed. Would I still be tempting fate if I let my swarm feed on it? I did like the idea of them being able to increase their replication rate. It would solve a time issue and let me get on with my journey and upgrades faster. My sole concern was that whatever happened, a killer hive monarch could never be created. Not unless I had a guaranteed way of being able to control it on hand.

“As a monarch, can I choose what happens when metamorphosis is available?” I asked, wondering if they were anything like ants back on earth.

“What does each do?” I asked as I checked the map, happily finding that I was many miles inside the heart of the raw gold cr. If I was going to find anything it would hopefully be somewhere around here. I began to spiral my path, trying to hollow out a huge space while I continued to search. I had noticed after a while of tunneling that the power of the sun was unable to penetrate this far inside raw gold cr. It was as though I was inside the core of an apple, separate from the fires and inferno outside.

A little idea began tickling at the back of my mind, something about what Silver had told me when he had first handed me his Alpha key. What had he said? Oh yeah “Using cr interdimensional transmission technology would allow you to return your mind, upon death, to wherever you left this key physically. I would recommend that you only do so in safe places with a stockpile of cr however.” - good advice I mused as I looked at the growing room that I was clearing out. This, if there ever was one, was a safe place to leave an Alpha cube behind.

I rolled my eyes at the explanation for the worker before I thought of just how hard an ant worked on earth for their queen. What if I could leave one of them here? Not to create a monster as Magus had done but to create a hidden base for me. It also could burrow inside the many ancient sunspots and find me any and all materials that rivaled gold cr. I could do this all across the galaxies. - I suddenly had an idea flash through my head. Silver had unknowingly given me a key to be everywhere, hidden inside every star I visited.

“Ooo ooo! Can I do it? Can I please?” Invicta asked as she seemed to read my mind.

“Sure, why not,” I said as I guessed what she was going to do.

“Muhahahaa haa haa.” Her windy and pretty voice sounded out in as sinister and diabolical of an evil villain laugh as she was capable of. Which, if I had to be honest, was like listening to a kitten threatening the world.

“Hey!” She said in mild offense as she sparked and shocked the edges of my mind. This just made me laugh all the more at her antics.

It was right about then that the corner of my cr warped and flowed around a lump of something new. Something dark. To my eye, it appeared as though we were tunneling around a small pocket of darkness.

“So what is different about it?” I asked as I stared at it. It was so dark that it seemed to suck in the light around it.

“Empty? What does empty energy do?”

Yup, I still didn't get that word but I knew it had something to do with causing rapid growth and mutations in leeches and the monster that ate the Core.

“Yes, but it is cr right?” I asked,

“So? What are we waiting for? Let's get absorbing and assimila… oh right. You still need to replicate.” I said as I eyed the dark lump in front of me. It was just about the size of a large beach ball. Enough to create all kinds of amazing weapons or even a body. I was thinking that it would make an awesome set of armor.

“You know you think some strange things right?” Invicta commented as I was brainstorming.

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“Well, you have this thing about size and height and yet you fail to grasp the nature of cr when you think that way.” She said as I imagined her flipping through my ideas with her fingers, inspecting them one at a time.

“How should I be thinking about cr?” I asked as I remembered how fast it had reintegrated with me outside and how it had made me realize how badly I was thinking about speed and using it.

“Well, why do you think that your body has to be solid?” She asked.

“Because… “ I managed to say before I realized what I had been doing. I had been limiting cr by forgetting that it was impervious and as dense as I required it to be. I was also still thinking about my body as though it was still human, with organs and necessary internals. I could have a one-layer cr skin body if I wanted.

“This way you can store whatever you find and want to absorb and assimilate inside your hollow body as your swarm creates more of itself.” She said softly, still a little on edge from earlier.

“Thanks, Invicta…” I said as I imagined her as her small little stormy self.

“Oh, could you teach me how to do what you do?” I asked as I finished liberating the hunk of raw spatial obsidian from the surrounding gold.

“What do you mean? What do I do?” she asked.

“You know, swirl and create trails of vapors and particles. I think it would make an effective armor and possible weapon if I could make something that could do that on command. Like having a sand storm of cr that could do specific things rather than just slicing and dicing.” I said as I thought about it aiding me in blocking line of sight or better yet… becoming a dust devil completely.

“Oh Kevin, there are other times like now when your mind completely amazes me.” She said as she considered my request. “We can practice in VR if you like.” She replied after a couple of seconds. “It will take some effort but the results should be quite amazing if you can manage it… the ability to divide yourself into fragments. I wonder how vaporous you can become...” she said offhand as I continued to carve out more of the surrounding raw gold cr.

We searched for a while longer but didn’t find anything new besides the first hunk of obsidian. I had carved out a truly massive room inside the heart of the root of the gold cr. Before I left, heading back to the only tunnel entry, I created an Alpha cube and left it in the middle of the vast room. I also left behind a million cr to work with the next time I returned, if I returned. My parting command to the alien worker swarm inhabiting the million was to mine and replicate while I was gone. I made sure to leave commands to never breaking through the outer wall of the gold cr or to dig too deeply towards the dark heart of the dwarf star. I wanted it to claim as much of the root as it could without drawing the attention of a possible alien predator.

“Ok, it is time to test something,” I told Invicta as I moved over towards a small pile of gold pulp cubes. After a while of harvesting, Invicta had started to compress and cubify the gold pulp, making a pile near the entrance so that we wouldn’t have to shrink the diameter of our body to contain the extra mass.

“Are you sure about this?” She asked as I picked one up

“Not really,” I said as I considered letting my swarm eat the edible material.

After a few moments, I shrugged. “I won't know if I don’t try,” I said as I let my swarm be free to eat it. The little cube melted into my hand like it was getting devoured by a school of piranhas in my palm.

Nothing seemed to happen.

“Um, Kevin… I think we are growing.” Invicta said as she was the first to notice a difference. Sure enough, my cr was absorbing the raw spatial obsidian that I was carrying on my back at an alarming rate.

“Dang it! We should have done this sooner!” I cried as I saw how much time I had just wasted clearing out this room with just under 15 million cr at my disposal. I could feel the different cr swirling and becoming part of me. It was very strange to look down and to see that the two different materials never truly mixed. They were entirely different in color and even cell structure. My gold cr was white with flowing edges easy to follow with the eye. The obsidian cr drew your eye and mesmerized you with a darkness devoid of details. It was the complete absence of light. I wondered if it would change when I was outside, surely the light from a star would reflect off of its surface?

I gathered up the gold pulp cubes and secured them inside my much larger body for when we got back to the habitat. I was going to get my swarm working on absorbing the contents of the cargo hold. My habitat needed some upgrades.

But first I had an egg to rescue. - I thought as I smiled. A lot of my time mining had been spent mulling over the pros and cons of rescuing such a potential monster. In the end, I had realized that the egg and I were very much alike.

We both had the potential to become monsters if given the wrong environment and personality. We also had the potential to become something amazing as well.

Something potentially awesome.

If only the chance was given.