Chapter 58: Chapter 58

Kai said a quick goodbye to Tiffany and followed Anna into the hive. Thanks to the hive connection they knew where Artemis was currently and the two of them made their way over to the huntress’ room.

To Kai’s surprise, the room had quite a bit of decoration, something that the rest of the hive was sorely lacking. Even her own room wasn’t decorated. She felt quite comfortable in the white room that was tinged by violet light and it wasn’t exactly as if they had paintings or other artistry yet, but looking at the room in front of her made clear that that wasn’t necessary either.

Artemis had hung different furs on the walls as well as a few bows. Kai remembered the first bow that her daughter had made and it was there as well. Next to the bed stood something akin to a desk, only it was made of silk, with a large animal hide laid across to provide protection from whatever it was that Artemis worked on. On the other side of the bed, underneath the ramp leading to the second floor, a shelf had been snuggly fit in to provide some storage room.

In comparison to that Kai’s own room was just plain empty, but that was probably okay. She should accumulate a few mementos to use as decoration over time, at least she hoped so and once they had canvas and paint she could put paintings of her daughters on the wall!

The three greeted each other before Anna and Artemis started discussing the implications of what the system had shown Kai in the vision and Kai settled down on her daughter's bed, listening to them. Without really getting the intent thingy she wouldn’t be of any help so she didn’t partake in the conversation.

The first thing that Artemis really pointed out was that a large part of the vision might not have depicted reality. The system had offered only one tip afterall and that was to slime your way into the plants good graces to manipulate it. All the other things like the speed growth might have been largely exaggerated to make the point clear, something Kai could only agree to after her own failed attempt.

Once it became clear that the two of her daughters would be at this for a while, possibly even attempting to see intent like in the vision, Kai decided to excuse herself and go to her own room.

With the fields now finished most of her daughters were waiting for her to give the go for the dungeon operation. Many things had been prepared for this, like crude saddlebags for the advanced drones or arrows, but there was one thing that had yet to be done and Kai wanted to send out her daughters tomorrow.

She settled down, this time in her own bed, and accessed the hive connection. After the drones had found the first remnants of civilization in the form of ruined foundations of farms and the odd mine entrance here and there, it hadn’t taken long to discover the destroyed town.

That wasn’t what she was interested in however, no, it was the seemingly normal cave entrance that was located a short distance away from the stones. Honestly, had it not been for the large cobbled plaza that had been built around the cave, she would have dismissed it.

As things stood though, the cave screamed dungeon at her and she had to investigate it further. Well, the drones would do it and she would look through their eyes so to speak, but that was basically the same.

Submerging herself further into the connection, Kai found a squad of scout drones nearby and ordered them to go to the dungeon. They would take a few minutes to get there, time she would spend inspecting the settlement menu. 

[Outpost]
Name: Antana
Governor: Kai Antana
Country: —
Population: 69 (1)
Morale: Highest
Quests: 6 daily (pathetic)

[Settlement quests]

 

• To know thyself
  The hive mind designated [Brian] is currently mostly occupied analyzing the biological structure of the entities designated [Queen], [Workers]. There are more mysteries about your species besides that however and they need to be solved. Figure out the magical properties of the Antanoid silk!
  Reward: Skill [Analyze]*
  Find and study the hive mind!
  Reward: Skill [Block analyze]*, 2 daily (pathetic) quests

• Building upwards
  Your outpost population is growing at an astounding rate and there is a need for more homes. Finish the first floor of the hive up to the fourth ring street.
  Reward: 2 daily (pathetic) quests

 

[Laws]
[Map]

As Kai had expected, there was a new quest in place of the old one. The quest wanted them to build more rooms, something that she had in mind anyway because she would not tolerate one of her daughters not having a roof over their head.

This made her question some things however. Except for the first quest the others were or had been tasks that ensured somewhat good living conditions for her daughters. Kai only wondered, was the system trying to get her to do something nice or were the quests related to the personality of the leader?

She was more inclined to believe the latter to be the case, since as of now the system had come across as neutral or at least it was trying to do so and she wanted to ensure that her daughters had the best life possible. That the method was somewhat similar to the quests her children had gotten before they met the conditions for the [sapient support system] was a strong point for this too.

The second thing Kai was curious about, was if it was possible for a settlement to lose quests and if so, how?

It only made sense that something you gained, you can also lose and it would be weird if the system favored old settlements more than rising ones. Then again, with mana around and the intent nonsense weird things could probably happen if an old city or something similar was destroyed or abandoned. Who knows?

Kai pushed the worries about that aside for the time being, together with the system screen and focused on the drones that were about 50 meters away from the dungeon entrance. Things would somehow work out and she had a more important task at hand right now.

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Watching through the eyes of the drone in the front, she urged the 5 beings to slowly close the dungeon. The closer they got to the cave entrance the larger it became and when the drones stood in front of it, the thing was large enough to easily fit a few trucks inside.

Kai watched intrigued. There was some serious issue with the space here, at least that was her guess and Anna and Artemis were bound to be interested in this.

Aside from that nothing else was off with the cave and it gave off the impression of being a normal cave. Further inside stalactites and stalagmites grew out of the stone before the natural tunnel curved away and there grew some moss here and there.

Kai told the 5 drones to enter and proceed deeper with care, curious about what they would find. They made it to the natural spikes without a problem and rounded the curve, climbing over the stalagmites in some places where there wasn’t enough space to walk side by side.

She almost smiled when she looked at the cave that widened up considerably. Not a lot of light managed to reach the cavern in front of them, but that didn’t deter her. Dark caves were not an unusual thing after all.

The drones continued into the new area, slowly reaching their limit in terms of sight and found almost nothing. Behind a massive specimen of stalactite another tunnel branched away, giving Kai a view of what was the real dungeon.

The tunnel was populated by large fields of moss in which small mushrooms grew that radiated a weak blue light. The cave sadly wasn’t a straight thing, but even before the turn a new cave seemed to branch off.

Kai got a bit giddy at the view. Dungeon crawlers seemed to be a real thing in this universe!

Wondering what magical things one could find and discover in this place, she made the drones continue forwards. The one she was looking through cleaned its eyes real quick with its furry legs before it got going.

The moment the drones stepped into the tunnel they noticed a weird change to their environment and by proxy Kai did too. The air cooled down rapidly, the cave was overall wet and water dropped from the occasional stalactite into little ponds. 

It wasn’t natural, but glowing magic mushrooms weren’t exactly normal either in Kai’s books so it wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen.

The drones crept further inwards and sniffed at the moss and mushrooms. One of them tried to harvest one of the shrooms, but the moment it cut the things stalk it started to fade away as if it had never existed in the first place. A curious thing.

Ignoring that the mushrooms were probably not meant to leave this place the drones continued on. They stopped at the crossing for a moment as Kai considered where to send them to. Not really seeing there being any difference in the paths she just sent them ahead.

One of the drones suddenly screeched in pain and began to thrash wildly around. The other four, the one Kai was looking through included, surrounded their injured kin and looked around warily.

Something had slapped the drone into the eye and had completely demolished the sensitive organ while also ripping a part of it away..

“Ribbit.”

The four drones turned to the sound, laying their eyes on a disgustingly massive toad that was larger than Kai’s head. The thing had been inside one of the ponds, lying in ambush for some prey.

The drones dashed to the side just as the toad opened its mouth to send its tongue flying again, slapping the already injured drone into the side. The hit left a bleeding rend in the poor thing as if the tongue had barbs or something.

The other drones were already rushing the offender, but the damn toad was laser focused on the drone on the ground. The tongue lashed out once more and then the squad was on the disgusting thing.

Mandibles opened wide in a flash before they teared into the soft flesh of the toad and the animal struggled for a short moment. Then it went limp, simply lying there and Kai wondered, was the tongue thing normal for toads?

She had always thought that was a thing that frogs did, though she wasn’t an expert on amphibians.

Kai looked at the corpse absentmindedly as she pondered about this, not really noticing that, similar to the mushroom, the toads flesh was slowly fading away.

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