Chapter 104: “Queen of Insects”
Of course, I had a reason to need Sugaru to reincarnate. While she was indeed the only member of the top brass who hadn’t gone through reincarnation yet, there was an actual problem beyond that.
As a Vespoid Queen, Sugaru had reached the maximum limit on followers.
To be accurate, they hadn’t determined an exact number of ants that she could control. There were no problems with the ones operating in the Great Liebe Forest or in the ground beneath the neighboring prairie, but if Rare wanted her invasion to expand outside of those areas, that number would not suffice. The treants as well could only multiply so much, since they had a limited population density, so Rare believed something similar was at work. In other words, what she needed was a new queen ant.
For a common ant queen, when she first copulated, she would receive enough sperm from the male ant to fertilize a lifetime’s worth of eggs, which she would store inside her body. If she were to be unable to lay more eggs, the typical reason would be that she had used up her supply of sperm. However, when Sugaru had been asked if that might be the case, apparently her race didn’t even understand the concept of sexes in and of itself, which meant that all of her eggs had been unfertilized.
When considering normal ants, queens could choose to lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs, with the latter always birthing male ants. However, with regards to Sugaru’s race, if they didn’t technically have sexes and could only lay unfertilized eggs, then either the offspring would be genderless, or they would be hermaphrodites. If these had been normal ants, then the creation of the next queen could be induced via pheremones and diet, but the eggs Sugaru laid had predetermined results. Thus, it would be reasonable to assume that it should be possible to lay an egg meant to become the next queen.
In her current skill trees, she didn’t have any reproduction skills to create a new generation of queen, so Sugaru needed some kind of breakthrough. Perhaps learning a specific skill could unlock the one they sought, but looking at World Tree, its [Root Division] skill was unable to create more world trees. Along the same lines, since Sugaru was a Vespoid Queen, Rare was certain that she would be unable to reproduce another queen-type monster. Assuming she was right, she hoped having Sugaru reincarnate into a higher class of monster would be that breakthrough.
“With the event’s increased XP, I’ve already regained what I used earlier from killing the people in the capital. I’m no longer in the red from the death penalty, so the players I fought and killed yesterday around noon put me in the black. Nice, nice, aha ha ha.”
Rare calmed herself down.
“There should be enough for Sugaru’s reincarnation now. As for our emergency funds… Eh, we’ll start saving again tomorrow.”