[Ding! You have established soulbound with Aetheris race, Elvira Seraphina Valora.]
Soulbound: when one of you died, the other would die.
[Ding! You have gained control over Six-Legged Cartels.]
[Kingdom function unlocked.]
Three days had passed since Ben's meeting with Elvira.
He stood in the same room where he had first seen her speaking with the four royal guards.
Using his new crafting skill, he had changed it into his personal room and workshop.
The way the craft worked surprised him.
It did not follow the game rules he knew, where he needed a recipe and enough materials to build something.
Now he only needed to imagine the item clearly in his mind and prepare enough raw material.
One stone cube, for example, had a volume of one cubic meter.
He could use all of that volume with perfect efficiency.
Nothing was wasted.
The only requirement was mana.
Creating a simple sharp sword cost him 50 mana.
He only had 250 mana in total, and to fully recover it he needed to rest for an entire day.
"To think I spent all my mana fixing this place," he muttered.
He opened the kingdom interface.
For an ant kingdom, the numbers were terrible.
Elvira had told him they had just finished a territorial war with another ant kingdom.
The goal had been to capture the enemy queen.
Even though Elvira had taken over the queen's ability, she still could not spawn ant eggs.
She was more like a parasite that absorbed nutrients and stole abilities.
So she needed a new queen to handle reproduction.
Fighting without a way to replenish her forces had cost her many ants.
[Six-Legged Cartels
Forces:
Queen: 0
Princess: 0
Drones: 0
Knight: 0
Soldier: 4
Worker: 25]
The queen's role was simple.
She laid eggs and created new ants.
A princess was a queen candidate.
She could replace the queen or be used to start a new colony.
Drones were male ants that existed to breed and clean around the queen.
The knight was the type of ant Ben had killed earlier, a special guard whose job was to protect the queen.
'This arrangement doesn't look good at all.
I will need to implement more changes.'
He felt the whole system was not efficient.
It would be better if the queen role was replaced by a real breeding machine that produced eggs, while workers just brought biomass to feed it.
He opened his inventory and checked one of his important materials.
[Biomass x 50
Type: Material
Use: Evolution fuel, crafting material
Understanding: 5.60%
Max Stack: 9999
Rarity: Uncommon
A malleable organic substance absorbed from defeated creatures.
Can be used to enhance physical attributes or craft organic-based things.
Suitable for merging with living tissue for transformations.]
With this biomass, Ben felt he could build what he imagined.
'It's even better if I can make a new type of army…'
He remembered the notification he had received after his transformation.
[Ding! Recovery completed. In the process, host has evolved from human to Hive Sovereign.]
The system gave him very little information about Hive Sovereign, but he had a guess.
He likely had a hive mind ability.
It would be a skill that allowed him to control all his creations made from biomass.
"My beloved, I have gathered all you asked."
Elvira opened the door and walked in with a smile.
Ben's lips twitched.
Becoming a Hive Sovereign might have changed parts of his personality, but it did not make him a forgiving person.
"I told you, don't call me that," he said. "Do you think I forgot?
You literally tore my arm off and tried to kill me a few days ago."
"Hehe, come on, it is all in the past, and it is an arm, not like you died," Elvira replied. "I already told you the reason, asked for forgiveness, and even did the oath."
"Yeah, you say that, but you were the one forcing it…"
Remembering the incident made Ben annoyed again.
If they had met in a normal way, he might have been attracted to Elvira's current appearance.
Her personality also matched his taste.
But she was too sly.
"Hey, you cannot be like that.
You are the only one who took my virginity in my three lives, so be responsible," Elvira said, half teasing and half shy.
Ben let out a long sigh.
"Forget it.
I don't want to have this debate again."
The "virginity" she mentioned was not what he meant by the word.
It was an oath tradition of the Aetheris clan when they married.
They bit their own lips until blood came out, then kissed their partner.
That had happened after Ben had lowered his guard and removed his mask.
In his defense, he had only done that after he was sure Elvira no longer wanted to kill him.
As a Hive Sovereign, his regeneration ability was absurd.
As long as some part of his body survived, he could fully regenerate.
The process consumed biomass, but as long as he had enough, he was almost immortal.
That did not mean he could act recklessly.
He still had clear weaknesses.
Fire damage was especially bad for his body.
If it hit his chitin armor, he would be fine, but if it touched his flesh, the result would be disastrous.
Ben stood up and headed for the exit.
Elvira chuckled and grabbed his hand.
"Come on, stop sulking, my beloved.
You know I can tell how you feel.
You should be happy," she said.
"In total, I have gathered a lot of ant corpses.
This should be more than enough for you to master the biomass."
They walked along a wide hallway with many curves and traps built into it.
"We still need to look for the queen," Ben said. "Did you find her?"
"Not yet, but one of the soldiers reported they had found her tracks," Elvira answered.
Ben stopped and looked at her.
"Why, my beloved?
Is something on my face?" she asked.
"...."
"Never mind," he said, and started walking again.
He wondered how Elvira could talk with the ants.
Did she gain his hive mind ability?
Then he remembered that she had absorbed the ant queen's ability.
That should include hive mind control.
Otherwise, she could not have led them for so long.
They soon reached a room that had been turned into a warehouse.
Right now, the ant kingdom had several main rooms.
There was the queen's chamber, which Ben now used as his personal room.
There was a rest area for worker and soldier ants.
There was this warehouse, used to store food and materials.
There was also a trash chamber where they dumped all waste.
Rows of ant corpses lay stacked on top of each other.
Ben's eyes lit up when he saw them.
"Alright, I will start my work now," he said.