Chapter 105: “A Parting Gift”
The skill tree that contained Sugaru’s [Haplodiploidy] didn’t really have any new skills to learn. However, a completely new tree did get unlocked: [Insect Production].
The very first skill in this tree was [Ant Queen], which from the name probably created an ant queen. Instant buy! However, unlike regular ant eggs, this skill cost XP instead. It had a similar system to the treants’ [Root Division]: if [Haplodiploidy]’s ability to create more eggs corresponded to the treants’ [Scatter Seeds] skill, then [Insect Production]’s ability to birth queen-class units seemed to correspond to the treant [Root Division] skill. But even with the additional cost, the advantage of being able to create more queens was huge. Rare spent the required XP to try it out.
<They are significantly larger than normal eggs. The amount of time they require for incubation has increased as well.>
Standard ant soldiers were born from eggs about a quarter the size of these ones. They didn’t require much time before they hatched, either. In comparison, while the queen eggs didn’t seem like they would require hours to incubate, neither did it feel like they would hatch at any second.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait patiently. Let’s examine these other skills.”
Running parallel down the tree with [Ant Queen] were the skills [Spider Queen] and [Coleopteran Queen].
“If I remember correctly, some species of spiders are social, but ‘coleopteran’ means beetles, I think? Do beetles even have queens?”
Beetles though they may be, they were also monsters, so if she were told this species of them had a queen, Rare’s only response would be to nod and say “Sure, seems legit.” After looking it up later, she would find out that while they didn’t have queen colonies like ants or bees did, there was apparently a species of stag beetle where adults would raise larvae in a social manner.
“I’m curious, but it’s not something I need to know right now. I’ll think about after I’ve restocked my emergency XP.”