Stor slowly packed what little his family had left into a sack he had with him. His wife had pretended to go to sleep some time ago, instead watching him from the shadows of the stairwell almost hide her. Knowing she was there hurt him. They hadn’t said any words to each other, there was no need.

  He and the other elite hunters of the village were venturing into the forest to find food to eat. What they needed most were meat, though there were some herbs, fruit, and vegetables that were safe for them to eat. They only had a few weeks of food left if they rationed themselves close to starvation.

  The reason why he had joined this group was for food, but there were other reasons. Many of these hunters were proud of themselves and their abilities, and the thought that inviting outsiders to explore the forest instead of them was humiliating. After all, what better people to explore these forests than the families and villages that have made it their home for generations.

  Stor found this to be lunacy, but he had always been a little weird. His family held heretical beliefs about the forest—he was taught that there was a god in there. Here, those beliefs were considered old fashioned, but Stor was still alive after all these years. He wondered where that god was now that the forest had gone silent.

  What made him worried was how long it was going to take for the adventurers to come here. In his younger days he had ventured out of the village and with trading in the towns near the big river. The path to the village was perilous and rarely traveled, even the traders that regularly travel here to collect pelts and meat from the magic forest struggled.

  He thought about his children and realized that there wasn’t much of a choice. They had too little food to suggest that they would survive, much less guarantee. The situation was too desperate for them to just not do anything.

  After he packaged up his things, he knelt down to pray to the god of the forest. He prayed that he would be safe, and that they would find food. He kept it simple and short, he didn’t want to waste the god’s time.

  If the god was listening to him.

  He got up and turned to his wife. She wasn’t startled that she was caught; she looked at him with troubled eyes.

  Stor knew that this might be his final chance to say something to her. He wasn’t brave enough to crush her with what could be his final words. Nor did he feel he could lie to her, saying something about how he would come back. All he could do was walk up to her, kiss her, and then depart.

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  He saw his children and couldn’t stop himself from changing his path. He kissed them too as they laid asleep. All of them slept to keep the pain of their hunger at bay. Stor imagined a table full of food after all of this was over, all of them eating until their stomachs burst, though he knew it was little more than a foolish dream.

  His wife grabbed him as he was about to step out of the cabin and gave him a final parting kiss before rushing into the home. She had tried hard to hold off her tears, but she wasn’t able to.

  He left and headed for a secluded grove. This place was considered an open secret to the hunters, and was going to be where the group was meeting up.

  Stor felt a slight hesitation as he approached the forest. He wasn’t the only one that felt it, a strange foreboding that had only appeared when the forest went silent.

  He steeled his nerves and kept walking.

  Jacob watched as the queen ant transformed into a crystal ant. There wasn’t much of a change.

  To save money he had sacrificed the [Strong Exoskeleton] and [Razor Pincers] characteristics, as he wasn’t going to need them anymore. The queen lacked a good reason to be in combat and plenty of reasons not to be.

  Nor did its children need it either. [Razor Pincers] were used in the waves as bleeding was kind of a broken status effect. Since these worker ants were going to be diggers, the hard stone would dull the characteristic and make it pointless. Instead, they were going to have the characteristic [Crushing Pincers], which will make them flat and increase their jaw strength.

  The [Strong Exoskeleton] wasn’t needed either. High concentrations of mana naturally exaggerate object attributes. This was the reason why the [Reinforcement] spell is a part of Basic Magic despite being a metal-type spell.

  In order to make the exoskeletons valuable, he was going to turn them into a mana core of sorts. As they ate, they would incorporate the mana crystal material into their exoskeletons. This would be what will give them a lustrous look. The high mana concentration will also naturally improve the strength of the exoskeleton without the need for a characteristic.

  Normally, mana cores grow in strength with leveling up and naturally physiological development. Here, they grow stronger from the more magic crystals that are eaten and absorbed. There are many cons to doing it this way, like how it was closer to a mana generator than mana storage, or how injuring the exoskeleton could cripple the mana system within the ants.

  For the worker ants, he planned to have an ‘evolution’ where the ant, once its exoskeleton reached a certain saturation of crystal, could turn into a higher tier. Maybe something like a gardener class to help with farming the crystal blooms. He was still working out the finer details.

  Jacob then went and began to manage the other parts of the dungeon. The deer and the bear were struggling as the scarlet teeth they were eating weren’t nourishing them in the way that they needed. The other animals he had captured were struggling too.

  While he had wanted to push off the second layer, he was starting to realize that the crystal blooms only solved the food problem for the ants. The other animals couldn’t eat them, and he had no plans on changing that.

  Now was the time to fix issues before they become too big.