BornAndTorn 72 Expansion 1

I had not developed m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic tendencies out of the blue nor was I addicted to the feeling of pain. It was quite the contrary I did not have any feelings of pain as it happened. Had my brain not realized what happened to my body or was it suppressed by a certain someone?

As I pondered about the reason for the absence of pain, I noticed a cribbling sensation where once my arm had been. So this is the so-called phantom-pain? Feels a bit strange, but luckily I will not have to get used to this feeling as long as I have enough supplies.

I had expected a snarky reply but I did not receive anything of that kind. It remained silent, even after I nearly blew up this whole place. Does it have that much trust in me?

All out of a sudden, I was greeted by another angry inhabitant of my body. But this one was way harder to please. The ant queen had nearly doubled in size since I last saw her. This may be caused by the order I indirectly gave her. At least her mood could be explained that way.

At this moment in time, I was glad not being able to speak each other's language. But I had the feeling, that the language barrier was enough to stop her wrath. I mean, I could understand her being angry about the new workload, but she was getting compensated by me, so why is she that furious?

She jumped straight out of my mouth and landed right in front of me. I was quite scared of what I would have to do to appease her. There is nothing scarier when a women scorn, especially if that woman is a queen leading an army of weaponized ants.

The ant queen turned around without any warning and walked away. What left me baffled was she was not alone, she was accompanied by a new type of ant I had not seen before.

This type did not fit into any category I had seen before. It did not have any wings making it suitable for combat in the sky. Its sh.e.l.l was not thick enough to be able to defend against attacks. But it did not look like an ant responsible for collecting nutrients.

The ant was looking like a crossbreed between a fire ant and a slag beetle. It had the colour and general build of a fire ant and the jaws of a slag beetle.

This strange combination was currently walking behind the queen and did not leave her side. I considered what to do but decided to not to do anything for the time being and to see how this situation develops.

While the queen and was still doing her best to ignore me, I noticed that the strange new ant was carefully observing me. After contemplating for a while, it moved carefully towards me. It was seemingly mesmerized by my presence alone, something I could not fathom.

My hunch proved to be correct, as it walked right past me to the exit of the cave. The ant disappeared from my sight in a matter of seconds leaving me wondering what exactly its purpose is.

I had no idea, where exactly the ant came from as I did not see it leave out of my mouth as the queen and did. If I had to speculate I would a.s.sume that I pa.s.sed through one of the many holes of my body. It was a bad idea to mix small stones into the coin after all. But in retrospect, you are always smarter.

After what felt like an eternity I could I start and try to negotiate with the ant queen again, even though she still seemed a bit p.i.s.sed at me. Sadly, I could not help it as everybody has to make sacrifices in the name of progress.

That would be a big fat lie, as I seemingly always find a way to get hurt no matter what I do. Even as my life is not threatened by players or ruthless monsters, I end up getting injured by a self-made grenade.

The ant queen, just stared at me silently waiting. I just knew, that her mood would not be improving any time soon, especially if she understands what I have planned for this mountain. I did not ask to be transported into a remote village out of concern for my safety. My initial plans were supposed to work as my backstory and further advance my other plans to strengthen myself.

This plan cannot be applied since I am currently on top of a very tall mountain, that is why I had to come up with a suitable alternative. The other option I came up with was quite a megalomaniac one and I would have to spare a lot of slime in order to ensure that the construction will not be destroyed by the resp.a.w.ning soil.

Building a functional city inside of a gigantic mountain, I bet no one would expect anything like that. My plan is to create a safe hideout for me while also using NPCs as a cover for me. Even if that meant, that I had to abduct those NPCs. I mean between murder and arson, whats human trafficking?

Using the NPCs as a cover is not even my real aim, its more like a neat side effect. Though the main goal still seems so far away and its feasibility depends on so many conditions and variables, that it is useless to actually think about them right now.

Yet before I could even start our negotiation, I noticed that yet another ant escaped out of my body and walked straight to the exit. I turned around to see what exactly they were doing once they left the gap in the mountain. As it turned out it was not just one ant that had escaped my body, but much more as even an ant trail had been formed.

Staring down the mountain the only thing I saw was that the ants were climbing downwards through the thick layer of clouds. As much as I wanted to follow them, it was not the time to do so. Ignoring the growing amount of ants I walked straight to the ant queen.

I sat down right in front of her and began to gesticulate what I had planned for this mountain. It was my misfortune that the ant queen prefered to bite me all over the body instead of listening to me. I fully support her desire to vent her frustrations on me, but I want to complete my plans as soon as possible and her behaviour is not helpful in doing so.

After earnestly enduring her barrage, I began the serious part of our conversation. This deal was essential, so I did not mind the previous "exchange of pleasantries". Now that I had her attention I could start and gesticulate about my plans. The translator in my body would have been quite useful, but I wanted to avoid using it as a middleman because it would most likely try to get as much as possible.

The first part was done easily as I only had to point with my finger at the mountain and everything surrounding it. Now that I had declared the object in question, I had to clarify the exact shape or item I want to make. The best way was to point at the tipis for that. The biggest obstacle was to show, that the tipis were not meant as a general shape but for their general usage.

I carried the ant with me to show her the tipi from the inside and sat in it. I also added gestures that would indicate other activities you would conduct in a home. It took me a while to notice that the ant queen failed to comprehend what I was trying to tell her.

I wanted to smack my head upon noticing it, why would such a bug know of a concept that is called home? Why did I not demonstrate what I was going for? Being sophisticated has worked out for me anyway, being a brute just fits better.

Using my strength and I punched the ground beneath my feet as hard as I could. The impact caused spiderweb-like cracks to appear on the stone bed. I did not need much more, I walked to the gigantic pile of coins and grabbed a handful of coins.

Afterwards, I placed those deeply into the ground and waited for it to resp.a.w.n. These coins are the perfect tool for what I am about to do. They have the interesting ability to absorb every red liquid and everything inside of it as long as it is not bigger than the coin itself.

I also learned that these coins only have a limited storage area and once this threshold is surpa.s.sed a quite explosive reaction takes place. If one coin is enough for my whole arm, then what about 6 coins, what kind of impact will those have?

I came to this conclusion upon remembering the stones that I had inserted into the first coin. Those stones did not resp.a.w.n, they were kept inside the coin till the very end.

The combination of those 2 effects can be used as an expansion pack. Quite literally. I just hope that I will not scare the ant queen too much from that little demonstration of what man is capable of. Though I will have to find a way to keep my distance because this might end up quite spectacular.

The way to avoid being in close proximity of the explosion is quite simple. All I have to do is pulverize the ground and then to drop much of my blood onto it and let it slowly fill those coins. This process will be repeated until the critical point is reached and an explosion ensues.

There were only 2 things I had to keep track off, I had to distribute the same amount of blood to each coin in order to cause a chain explosion. I am not sure what would happen if the first explosion starts and the blood gets thrown onto the next coin causing a chain reaction.

The time frame I had to work with was just about 5 minutes, as the ground took that amount of time to reform. To ensure that I would spread the blood evenly, I decided to split the blood into even amounts by creating covering a small hole left by my previous experiment with the magic slime before filling it up with blood.

I am taking advantage of the fact that those 2 substances build 2 phases if they come into contact with each other. That enables me to keep the blood separated from any other material and ready for usage.

For the transportation of the blood, I decided to carry the blood with my hands. Using my mouth was a bit absurd even for me. Despite not being able to accurately dose the blood, it was much more comfortable to use my hands.

The final step to finish the preparations was to cover the hole with slime. Even though this process looked easy on paper, it still required me to open up my stomach in order to be able to reach the slime. Using the fine hair to cover this whole ground would take me an eternity and sadly I neither have enough energy nor enough interest to cover this period of time that is infinity.

After I spent the next 30 minutes covering the hole with my slime and filling it up with my blood I was finally finished and could start. I was looking around only to see, that the ant queen fell asleep.

I had to wake her up otherwise all this preparation would have been for nought.

And the purpose of this demonstration is to reimburse the queen for all her effort. It is time to expand her horizon.

Let the show begin.