When I woke up the next day I dicovered I was wrapped up in Victoria's arms, she had me completely trapped against her, unconsciously using her new size so keep me still. She was obviously squeezing me really hard but because we had the same strength and endurance she couldn't really hurt me accidentally, but I also couldn't get enough leverage to get free. I looked around and saw that the egg holding workers were... mingling? They were clearly talking to eachother psychically but they weren't really animated, I called out to them and asked what they were talking about. Turned out they were talking about their new level four spell "harden stone", and were discussing which areas needed it first, so it wasn't actually mingling, they were talking about work.

Eventually my wife rolled over and her grip loosened enough that I could wiggle out, once free I took two eggs so the workers could show what they could do to this chamber. They were worried about being unable to expand the room afterwards until I reminded them that a new chamber would be built deeper down. I switched on magic sense to see how it worked, it permeated the stone and caused it to reorganize into a slightly stronger variant but the energy also lingered in the stone where it was hit. They slowly worked around the room, swapping between eachother almost like it was choreographed so they could cast the spell rapid fire. Each time the stone was struck it formed a spot that then formed a thin line of hardened stone to the previously hit spot.

After a few minutes of that they formed a ring of dots and lines, when the last spot was added next to the spot they started with it made a line both ways forming a full ring of magic infused stone. Next they each picked a dot on opposite sides of the room and started casting repeatedly, the spots slowly started growing outward along the lines, effectively thickening the lines with each strike. The saturation of energy in the hardened stone lines was going up faster then the lines were growing, soon it hit some kind of critical mass and the lines began growing continuously instead of just a little when the spell was cast but they kept pumping in more power. Another couple of minutes pass before the thick lines hit eachother and became one solid line going around the room.

The workers that were casting tagged out with the ones still holding eggs and they began adding their magic to it by starting on another line above the first one, after they did that they tagged back since the first team had a break. They switched back and forth several times until the area above the door was composed entirely of stripes alternating between hardened and regular stone. Then all four needed a break, a larger room like this was more complex than the smaller ones due to surface area that needed to be hardened. So I let them take a break and stand there with eggs while I left to see what the other groups were working on, I immediately saw some work had been done, there were rings of hard stone scattered through the halls, going vertically instead of horizontally.

I had no idea why they were scattered as they were instead of being worked on from one location and expanding outward, but workers were really good at architecture so I would trust their judgement. The left side hall had a new chamber being dug out, and a few centimeters from the chamber the hall had a hardened ring. Watching five of them dig in sync was strangely entrancing, compared to the three worker squad I saw before they were grinding the rock away like a machine. I waited a minute until they looked like they were at a good stopping point before I interrupted them, and they all stopped at once and turned towards me in spite of me only calling to one of them. They stared at me for a second before they blinked and their sync broke, the one I called to approaching me.

I explained I wanted to learn their new harden earth magic and luckily it was one of the ones I already had help teach me compress earth so she understood what I wanted easily enough. I grabbed hold of one of the fair sized rocks they broke free but didn't compress yet, and started the same procedure as last time, shooting me with magic so I could "hear" it. A welcome surprise was reuse of some syllables from compression, if I had to guess it was because they were both earth spells and those sounds were common to all of them. That fact actually made it a lot easier to learn than compression because it had less total sounds I needed to "rememeber" to say the chant properly.

After only about a hundred attempts I got one level in magic memory and then managed to cast it, exactly what I expected to happen when I used it instead of a worker, indeed happened. Nearly half the rock was transformed into the hardened form from just my one blast, and it was only level one for me. I quickly braced after I did it, and the familiar swarm of bees feeling enveloped my brain, but because I had less repeats, less sounds, and higher feedback resistance, it passed by quickly and was only mildly annoying instead of brain blasting. I cast it on the rock again turning the whole thing hardened, then used compression on it, which bounced, well, more like it worked but the rock was already too hard to compress at it's current power output.

I then asked the worker to show me locations I can blast with it since I am apparently so good at it, and she brought me to the entrance chamber. One there she explained that since I could do so much in one blast I can just shoot the roof in one spot until the whole chamber was hardened. She also told me to stop once the chamber was done instead of letting it spill into the halls because she would need to check the edges and even things out to ensure a good connection. It was still interesting how when talking about digging or construction a worker suddenly felt a lot smarter. Anyway, I pointed straight up and started firing away at the roof, a circle of hardened stone rapidly expanding outward, and even more rapidly every time I gained a level in it.

All too soon the room was completely replaced with hardened stone, the dirt wall was weird though, it absorbed the hardening energy but didn't actually get harder. A little experimentation showed that the individual particles had gotten harder instead of making it into a harder wall. With that task done I went back down and saw Victoria was still asleep, I supposed level induced rapid growth was tiring. Talking to the egg carriers about my new spell I asked if I could help finish the chamber up and after some deliberation they decided to let me but also took manual control. One of them held my arm and pointed me at various spots, why those spots instead of right at the ceiling I hadn't the foggiest.

Once that was done I left again, this time I went to the river to get my materials and come right back, since I could harden loose material I had a plan. I went to the planned cook room and blasted my sand pile with hardening so I had a fair sized pile of hard sand. Then I sent it into the ceiling hole and ground away at the plug with a tornado of sand, eating away at the plug until it burst through the top and I had to blink away the sudden light, It wasn't noon so it wasn't particularly bad but the suddenness still surprised me. With that done I went back and informed the workers that I broke the plug so they could get started on finishing that room.

Finally I went back to the surface once again, the stone stackers were busy in the tunnels but that was fine, I was doing something else at the moment too. I pulled out my triple enchanted ring and drew the energy out of it so it shut down then hit it with harden stone. It was already hard from extreme compression but the hardening spell worked differently, there was a twist with the ring changing color and it just felt stronger. But when I tried to turn it back on, it didn't, a check showed that all the lines were now full of micro crystal shards, and they didn't burn off even when I applied maximum power. Maybe if I was a more powerful enchanter I could do something, but right now the ring was ruined.

Still, I could try some things, I hit it with several more hardening spells and each one increased the total amount of energy in the physical material but there was no further change. Once I hit it ten times the energy started leaking out into the air, I was still adding energy faster then it could dissipate so I kept going. At Sixty three blasts total it was nearly leaking energy as fast as I could add it, even with a level letting my add more energy, when it finally morphed again, turning from a really hard and dense stone ring into a vaguely ring shaped chunk of crystals, but I could tell it wasn't as good as it looked. The crystals were all tiny, just a bunch mashed together.

I didn't let that get me down and decided to try some stuff I back burnered because it would have taken a while but I had time now. I started by making enough dirt slurry to make the biggest ball of dirt yet, needing both my physical arms and all four magical arms to hold it spherical and I could have stood in if it was hollow, I compressed it as hard as dirt control could manage before I settled it into a divot in the ground so it wouldn't put all it's weight directly on the bottom. Once it was settled I focused and cast compress earth, but i held it, it normally had a build up before firing so I grabbed hold of that and kept it building. I chanted the spell a second time and I could feel my feedback resistance just suddenly jumpped in the way of a magical bullet, the power build up was just that intense.

When I released the power all over the dirt sphere it was compressed to the size of my fist, and because I made it with a concept instead of manually it was a perfect sphere. Then I started hitting it with harden, unlike the ring it was obvious that each hit did something, a crystal ball started forming in the core and each blast infused more energy, but unlike before it needed more energy because the crystal parts ate it readily so I had to fill up the crystal some before it would expand any. I had to keep blasting it through lunch, eating with one hand, adding energy with the other, it was late afternoon when the crystal finally ate the entire orb, becoming a very heavy and incredibly tough crystal ball.

Even then I could feel that the crystal had a ton of room left, but I had been adding energy to the thing for hours, I was sick of it. My huge ant strength was helpful for carrying the thing, it was like a crystalline shotput. I brought it all the way down and saw that Victoria was awake now and I could see that the dex increase prevented her from losing any skill at woodcarving, in fact she seemed to work even better then before, even while she was feeding a larva. I showed her what I had done and let her check it out before I started to explain how I made it.