Chapter Three: Expansion and Upgrades
Upgrading myself was definitely a good idea. My porch doesnt feel fuzzy anymore! I can even feel my roof and a little of the land around myself, too, though theres a little tower thingy on my roof thats still beyond my reach. I can feel movement outside, but I cant tell if Im some creepy house in the woods and thats trees swaying in the breeze, or if Im a rundown house in the middle of a huge city.
Even better, though: I have two new spawners! I have a nest of blackbirds on the roof over my porch, and I have an ant hill in the yard. Of course, with new spawners, comes new Intruders. Wasps have started showing up, and they love to harass my poor spiders. The spiders sometimes get them in the webs and eat them, giving me a nice bit of mana, but the wasps sometimes can get the spider. Im just glad I went a bit overboard with the spider spawner, and they spawn as fast as the wasps can get them.
And I can confirm that Invaders dont give me mana for what they kill. Stupid wasps. Theres also Invader ants, which dont seem to be able to take over my hill, but Im still a bit concerned about it. Im going to be putting a lot of mana into that thing once I get more. The ants seem like theyre designed to handle the roaches as well as the other ants, too, so theyll be able to pull double duty once I get them more upgraded.
And Ill want them to, too, because the last new Invader is my new gold standard for getting mana: mice. The rats go after them, so the ants get to pick up the slack with the roaches. The mice didnt come in from me upgrading my awareness, though. They came in after I made a resource node!
I checked all over everywhere I could find and it looks like Ill be hosting herbalists for the foreseeable future. I managed to grow a little patch of herbs in the backyard, and even sprouted some mushrooms near the foot of the stairs in the basement. Im going to make them work at least a little for the mushrooms, kinda reinforce the idea that the basement is for me, not them. And the mice love the shrooms, so I keep several rats nearby.
Oh, the room under the stairs on the first floor is now, officially, a spider lair. It even spat out a venomous swarm the other day. And speaking of spiders, my Scion doesnt fit in my Secret Sanctum anymore. Little guy is a tarantula now at least, so I have him in a little nest near the mushrooms to eat more mice.
While my spider is working on being a tank, my rat seemed to like the hit and run on the elf, and hes very sneaky now. If I didnt know everything about this house, Id swear hes teleporting, but hes been making little tunnels through the walls that it seems like only he can fit through. Hes my little Scout. Hes great.
Thats Scout with a capital S, by the way. My scions have titles now! The spider is a Guardian, and the rat is a Scout. It seems like they give different buffs, too. My scout gives things extra awareness now, which I think means an extra room worth of distance for noticing things. The Guardian makes things tougher in his room. Since hes in the basement, that means the swarm in there is even more of a hindrance and more difficult for invaders or delvers to get through.
So, with a good scion rat, I decided to upgrade the nest several times. You know, give him more rats to buff and stuff. After a certain point, I got to decide a path for it, which confused me. Rats dont have paths. Theyre rats! On Earth, maybe, but not here. Ill start with the path I didnt take: Plague Rats. Yeah, no. If Im in a city, I dont need to bring the black death, thanks. Besides, I think the one I took is more interesting: Packrats.
Im not exactly sure how, but they seem to spawn random stuff every so often, and put them places. I still only have the one chest in the attic, but now adventurers can look in my various drawers and cupboards and find interesting little things. Rough little gems, coins, sometimes theyll even put some fungus caps somewhere. They love hiding stuff in the chest, though, which makes sense.
The blackbirds I quickly upgraded to crows, partially to help with the mice, and partially because crows are cool. They also like to collect shinies or thats where the packrats get the stuff. Either way. The crows also find the wasps delicious. Im not sure thats how the food chain worked on Earth, but Ill take it. Good birbs. Protect my leggy-bois.
My real project, though, is with the ants. They spawn a bit differently than the other things. For my other things, I just queue up what I want and bam, I get it. They also periodically spawn stuff on their own, too. With the ants, though, they only spawn workers passively. And I cant tell the hill to spawn more workers. I can upgrade it, or I can trigger a nuptial flight. I upgraded it several times, and then the option for nuptial flight started blinking.
So I went ahead and spent the mana for it, just to see why it was blinking. Well, that lead to interesting things. For one: despite having only the one hill, there were several different types of ant available in the mating flight. I steered clear of the carpenter ants, at least for now. I wouldnt be surprised if they can do actual carpentry eventually, but Im just a house right now. I dont need ants chewing through my wood to find a place to live.
The option that stuck out to me, though, was the leafcutter. Thats the ant that farms fungus to eat, and I thought thatd be a cool one to use as my Guardian. Army ants and fire ants could be interesting for offense, but I like me some defense. I had her hitch a ride on my Scout down to the basement, and he stopped by the mushroom patch for her to get a bit of the mycelia.
I had honestly expected her to just suddenly have a little bit of fungus to grow and nurture, but that works for me. Ill bet those mushrooms attract Delvers almost as much as they attract mice, so I definitely want more of them. Shes a pretty active queen, too. She put her little bit of fungus next to my core, which is looking about like a marble now, laid her eggs, then went out to forage. I mean, I guess shes safe enough in the house, especially after I told a few spiders to watch over her.
Only the flies seemed interested in her, so spiders were the obvious choice for protectors. She gathered a bit of paper to bring back for the fungus, and sat down to just chew and process it for the thing. Its relaxing to just watch her work.
Oh, my crow scion says we have Delvers approaching. Multiple? Thisll be interesting. I didnt get a chance to do much outside yet, aside from the herb patch. I had also wanted to get a chest in the basement, but was more concerned with getting my new Guardian settled. Ah well, theyre here now.