The core happily began expanding again resolutely not thinking about the horrors of ant creation. It was a good time now expanding, maybe new things that weren’t completely useless. It did notice that there were fewer and fewer tunnels as it continued upwards. Maybe the ants were just getting lazy by this point. The core couldn’t see a reason why they would stop making tunnels but maybe they had. Nope, no thinking about ants right now, just wonderful growth, and onward to new stuff.

The expansion slowed somewhat as the tunnels thinned out even further, forcing the core to expand through pure dirt. It didn’t deviate much from the tunnels as it didn’t see the point but it couldn’t hurt. The core was in no real rush to do anything at the moment after its massive ant grind. It was curious about where the tunnels were leading to, as more and more of them started to converge.

Eventually, only a single tunnel remained, and the core sedately followed it upward until it reached the end of the tunnel. It looked like it opened into a huge cavern. The core started expanding into the new area but then felt a sickening wave of mana leave it. Not good, it did not want to experience sleep for a second time, the core hurriedly yanked its aura back into the tunnel. Interestingly the core had never done that before, it was just like expanding its aura but instead of expanding it was more like folding in on itself. The core decided that it did not like the experience either, filing the experience right above helplessness, but below sleep on its list of least favorite things.

The core took another look at the cause of its discomfort trying to figure out what was different about this particular tunnel and opening. Air that was not it’s was flowing through the entrance, but that was normal for most tunnels. The core didn’t care for the most part, it was a little inconvenient but it had noticed that creating enough of its own air halted the problem for the most part.

There also seemed to be something else filtering into its tunnel but it couldn’t quite tell what it was. This hadn’t happened to it often but occasionally it found little bits of something in the dirt that was too small for its aura to even see much less analyze. It was a little aggravating for the core to know that it had something new right under its nose but be unable to tell what it was.

Gathering its thoughts the core considered the problem; it didn’t seem like this new stuff in the air was what had been draining its aura as it was actually inside the dungeon currently and not causing any issues. The core decided that it would send an ant out of the tunnel to see what would happen.

It took some time for the single ant to make its way to the top of the dungeon from the defensive positions they had taken around the core itself, but it got there eventually. They carefully ordered the ant directly into the new substance in the air. No reaction, well that meant that whatever the stuff in the air wasn’t harmful to ants either. Moment of truth now, the core ordered the ant to exit the dungeon and see what was in the cavern outside. The ant had barely ventured out of the dungeon when the core felt something snap, and the core felt the ant’s life wink out as its body tumbled back into the dungeon.

Disappointed that this plan hadn’t worked the core took a look at the ant’s memories, as usual, most were a jumbled mess but its last memories were relatively clear. The ant had walked to the end of the dungeon and into something, much to the core’s surprise, the ant registered what was in the air. It seems that the ant’s eyes weren’t completely useless after all, as the ant could use them to perceive this new substance quite clearly when even the core was having a hard time even recognizing it was there.

The ant’s memories of the substance weren’t very clear but the core sort of understood the memory as meaning something along the lines of warm/bright/see/glow. It didn’t have the best understanding of those concepts as it hadn’t experienced most of them, the core did feel like there should be one unifying name for the concepts it just could quite… Light ...there it is. The new thing was light.

This light seemed interesting but the core still really wanted to know what had killed the ant and what forced it to shrink its aura. Delving back into the memories it watched as the ant exited the dungeon, it then felt an immense wave of pain, and the memory went black. The core was still slightly confused about what had caused its death, but the final moments of the ant were interesting. The core could now see part of the appeal of eyes as the ant had seen quite a bit with them before dying without needing to expand its aura at all.

What the ant had seen in its final moments was a large amount of dirt as far as it could see, which to be far the core had determined to be not that far at all. It had also seen nothing else besides dirt beneath it, there had been a feeling of just empty nothingness that frankly unnerved the core a little. However this was odd, the core distinctly remembered a few similar memories from the ants it had killed.

Going back through the memories the core found some disjointed fragments it remembered. There were quite a few of them of the ants doing all sorts of things from walking to collecting food, which was about the extent of ant behavior the core had observed. They all however had the same sense of endless space to them that the core’s ant had. Why would the other ants be fine in this new area but not the core’s ants? They were physically identical, the core had made its ants based on the ones it had killed but maybe there was some difference it could see. This was annoying with too many questions and not enough answers or even guesses for what was going on here.

Reluctantly abandoning the idea of going any further upwards at least for now the core began expanding outwards horizontally instead. It was slow going without the ant tunnels to speed in things but it wasn’t that bad, at least the core wasn’t making ants. The core had stopped paying attention to the entrance to its dungeon when it started expanding but it certainly noticed when something started digging its way into the dungeon.

The thing was huge, with massive pincers that were even larger than its ants and there were too many of them. The many legs of the creature resolutely shoved it deeper into the dungeon digging through the dirt to get deeper in the too narrow tunnels. The core snapped out of its daze, sending up its ant, and watching as the chitinous giant made its way further down into the dungeon.

When its ants finally reached the invader the core ordered the ants forward. As they charged forward the two pincers of the enemy lashed out crushing several ants into the side of the tunnel. However, the interloper could stop all of the ants pinned in the tunnel as it was. The core ants bit the behemoth as hard as they could, but they were only scratching the enemy's black chitinous armor.

The core was stumped on what to do, it hadn’t expected its ants to be that ineffective. As the core was thinking the battle continued with more and more ants pouring onto the invader's body. Mandible clacked ineffectively on chitinous armor, but then the invader thrashed its body sending ants tumbling to the ground except for one.

One ant held firmly onto one of the eyes of the interloper stubbornly refusing to be shaken off. Sensing an opportunity the core sent its ants back in directing them at the eyes of the enemy. The beast thrashed as ants tore at its eyes, blinded and in pain the creature no longer much of a threat to the core’s ants and they surged forward again.

However the tight tunnels hampered their movements as well, they were unable to completely encircle the enemy as they usually did to tear them apart. Not to put off for long the core guided its ants to continue savaging the creature’s eyes, and to bite anything within reach. It figured they would eventually find another gap in the creature’s armor if given enough time, and it did not seem like the invader would be taken down quickly at all.

The furious mandibles of the ants eventually struck on another weakness, finding a weak point between the thicker layers of armor where the pincers attached to the body. These points were further savaged as the ants attacked everything they could reach. The invader at that point decided it had had enough. Pushing against the sides of the tunnel it tried to back its way out of the dungeon. However, the core was having none of it, constricting the tunnels behind the creature to be as narrow as possible. It might not be able to affect things directly around invaders but it wasn’t going to let a template this good just walk out of its dungeon.

The ants were unable to deal a finishing blow to their larger enemy but the invader wasn’t able to flee as it became stuck in the narrow tunnels. There was only one way the battle could end and the behemoth eventually succumbed to its wounds and the core eagerly took a look at its new... Scorpion ...template.

The scorpion was an impressive creature, vastly superior to the ants in every way with thicker chitin and weapons in the form of its claws and tail. The core only had to deal with the tail in the narrow tunnels of its dungeon but it marveled at the lethality of the tail. It had a sharp tip for stabbing enemies and was venomous, wasn’t that exciting.

Unfortunately, the core wasn’t able to get the full scorpion template which was a disappointment for the core. The template was similar to the ants but not quite similar enough for the core to get the template on its first try. The core would be patient though, it couldn’t just give up on a template so much better than ants.

With that in mind the core set about repairing its dungeon and reforming the tunnels. It added more intersecting tunnels near the top of its dungeon which would hopefully allow its ants to come up behind a future scorpion and widened its tunnels just a little bit. The narrow tunnels had served it well, restricting the scorpion’s movements and eventually leading to its demise but it didn’t want the scorpions to be unable to enter at all. So it made the tunnels a little larger, still small enough that the scorpions would have a hard time moving about but large enough to allow them easy entry into the dungeon.

The core took a quick look over its ants and was happy to see that only a few had been killed. The bulk of its swarm remained and it would not have to make more ants. The core happily turned to its favorite task and the aura of the dungeon started moving slowly out. It wasn’t in a rush so the core refrained from actively using its mana, preferring to gradually expand its domain while having full mana to respond to anything unforeseen it might encounter.