Chapter 1.2

As the sun rose on my third day, I felt the surge of energy, and I knew I now had 4 energy. I stopped focusing on watching my ants practice to start cheesing it up. I started building another hallway, this one from the side of the pit trap that still had a ledge. It was only about 15 cm wide, so I made a hallway starting from almost all the way up the wall, where it couldn't be reached, and would be hard to see. I planned to make another room behind that which would hold some of my bugs, so I could knock off anyone trying to cross, and then they'd have to get out of the pit. I'd seen that one of the upgrades for the pit was to add sharp spikes to the bottom, which I would've stayed clear of in my previous life, but I didn't want anyone to be killing my ants.

They were basically smart puppies to me, and I didn't want to see them get slaughtered. And I kind of had the feeling that anyone who found the entrance would just slaughter everything, and maybe kill me too.

My ants took a break from sparring and started excavating the new hall and room, using up all the energy I had for that day.

After a couple hours, they'd excavated it all out, and I put them in that room to fight.

I had another 20 hours before I could do anything more, which sucked.

So I thought about all the CQC training I had, and then tried to figure out how an ant would use those techniques, with varying degrees of success.

After a couple hours of that, I felt my first ant level up, which I hadn't known was even something they could do. I inspected the one that had leveled up. I could sense that it was a level 2 minion now, and that the other was a level 1. Its bite was a little stronger, it was a little bigger, its shell was a little tougher, and it was a little bit more nimble. A small but noticeable improvement, and after only a day of practicing. And also they'd picked up the fighting techniques fairly fast.

The second ant leveled up half an hour later, gaining the same improvements as the other.

After the third room had been completed, I had unlocked a couple structures I had been waiting for: an energy well, and a hive room. The hive would let me create all insect minions for less, and they'd take less energy each day, by -1. That meant that my normal ants would just take half an energy, and no upkeep. I still had a limit of five minions per room, but I could still just get a shit ton of ants, have them practice and get stronger and level up. Never hurt to be prepared.

The hive cost a whopping 20 mana plus 3 energy per day, but it would already save me 2 energy per day if I didn't get any more ant minions. It was worth it as long as I had more than 3 insect minions. I only had 12 max energy, 10 from what I'd started with, and 2 from the other 2 rooms I'd made.
But the energy wells each increased my max energy by 5, and increased the energy per day by 1. The first one would cost me 1 energy, the second would cost me 5 energy, the third would cost me 10 energy, and then the fourth would cost me 15.

The next morning, I got my 5 energy, and built the first energy well inside the ant practice room. I could feel my energy pool expanding, and also the energy well was effectively free, since it gave me the energy I would've gained from it that morning. A little weird, but nothing else made sense anyway.
So I built the second one, ending up with two energy wells, and 1 energy left, with a total of 22 energy capacity in my energy pool.

I couldn't turn a room into a hive room if it had anything else in it, so I spent that energy on another hallway, off the side of the practice room.

I went back to teaching my ants new moves as soon as they had dug out that short tunnel, though I was running out of new moves.

After several hours they leveled up again, with a larger increase in their biting power, but no increase in their speed or anything else, but by that time I was becoming bored out of my mind, so I started teaching them how to dance. It was certainly funnier than watching them spar, and maybe it would help them with their footwork. That's what I told myself at least.

The next morning, just after I had received my much needed 7 energy, I felt people enter the grassy patch around the entrance. I spent the 5 energy to transfer my fire pedestal. I spawned another 2 ants with my remaining energy, to push the intruders into the pit trap. I hadn't upgraded it to have spikes yet, which I regretted now.

I could hear them talking, and even though I could tell they weren't speaking english, I knew what they meant. Just like I could read the runes on the pedestal.
It was a muscular man with light armor and a sword on his back, a woman carrying a staff, and a teenager, probably being taught how to be an adventurer by the man.
"This could be what we need!" The woman gestured angrily. "You know the village is dying, maybe a dungeon is our last hope! Do you want to throw away the lives of everyone in the village?" Well, at least I knew that some people didn't want to kill me.

"I'm warning you that a dungeon is bad news. I personally think this would save the town, except for the fact that we'll all be enslaved if we are seen near it." They'd reached the steps, and stepped down into the dimly lit hallway. I'd removed the torches as soon as I figured out how, so they were basically in the dark.

"Damn. I haven't seen a dungeon this young figure out how to remove the torches." The man said. I was proud of myself for a second, before I realized that he had been in and survived without injury, dungeons more advanced than me. Fuck.

I needed to have a name for them, so I decided to call the man Bob and the woman Kate. The teen could be Jake.

Jake spoke up from behind them, "This is really cool! This is going to be so fun!"
Bob glared at him and he subsided, but he still looked excited. "It'll only be fun if you don't get yourself killed. Maybe instead of yelling and alerting everything to our presence, you can tell me about dungeons."
That was awfully convenient, but I did want to hear about what the other jungles are like, and what I hadn't figured out.

"Yes, sir. Um." Jake paused for a second thoughtfully. "Well, the dungeons get energy from killing animals and humans, which drives them to create traps and minions to kill people. They create loot to lure in adventurers," He continued on, but all I could hear was him saying that dungeons get energy from killing people. Fuuuuuck. I didn't want to kill anyone If I could help it, but I was wondering why everything had seemed so slow.

I caught Jake saying something about dungeons being sentient, but only barely, often making it easy to outsmart them. And from the threat descriptions he gave, it didn't sound like the minions of other dungeons were organized, or knew hand to hand combat. They certainly were in for a surprise then.

They reached the first, totally empty room. Bob glanced around, probably waiting for an ambush. But I knew that would just be a waste. "Alright, this is strange, follow me." Bob said. He walked purposefully towards the first hallway, and held up the torch he had.

"What the fuck is wrong with this hall?" Jake asked, staring at the sharply curving, snaking tunnel. Bob whacked him on the back. "Watch your mouth." He did acknowledge that the tunnel was weird though. "I have seen a few curved tunnels in the smarter dungeons, but this dungeon does seem to be abnormal. It's a good tactic in general, making ranged weapons worthless, and making it harder to scout for enemies." He carefully stepped into the entrance of the hall, and started walking along. I hoped that the weak torch light would not be enough for him to detect the pit, but I knew he'd probably be alert enough. Sure enough, he stopped as soon as he turned the corner, holding his arm out to stop them.

"Pitfall, no path on this side. Follow me."

The pit was a good 5 meters long, inside the 2 meter wide hall. I'd placed the ambush hallway halfway across, and as he reached the middle of the hallway, my 4 ants charged out at him, working together to pull him off the edge. I made one of the ants jump onto his head and sacrifice itself, knocking him off.

One of my level 3 ants lashed out a leg and knocked Kate off, and then when the teenager turned to run, caught his ankle and pushed him off. I knew the pit wouldn't hold them forever, but I could keep them down as they tried to get out. Especially since Bob had fallen badly and had a sprained ankle. Just that one sprain alone gave me 3 energy. He'd managed to catch Kate, so she was okay, but Jake was holding his broken right wrist in his left hand, his face ashen.
All together, I got 8 energy from twenty seconds of action. I wanted to save that for later, if that discouraged them enough, so I didn't spend it. I positioned two ants on each end of the pit, and had them loom menacingly over the edge.