Chapter 63 - Small Insect Colony's Hegemons

While Aldrin was at the training camp, the Terrorhawk Eggs he bought finally arrived at their doorstep.

"Go on and eat it. We boiled it properly. Your brother told us to let you eat this once at the end of each day. His instructor told him that it's effective this way." Their mother had a wide smile plastered on her lips as she presented the hard-boiled Terrorhawk Egg to Althea.

However, one look and Althea was instantly frightened at the egg in front of her.

"Mom... you know how small my appetite is. This egg, it's almost half my height!" She scrutinized the tall egg in front of her and wondered if a terrifying monster or just a large bird would hatch if they let it grow.

"Stop complaining, go and eat that. It's not your normal egg. It'll melt easily. Imagine you're eating a tub of pudding."

"How did you know?"

"... Burp."

"You ate one..." Althea's face fell listening to that extremely satisfied burp of her mother.

Now that she heard that, she noticed how her mother's skin became slightly glossy.

"This child. Don't mind the details. Your father and I tried it like your brother instructed. He said it's also good for our health..."

"That's right, Althea. Look! I can do this again!"

Supporting her mother's claim, their father suddenly appeared from their kitchen and began doing squats.

Althea watched all those with her eyebrows raised, wondering if the two in front of her were really their parents or they got swapped by an alien at some point. They seemed lively enough to make the third child they so wished before.

'If that's not it. This egg is truly miraculous. That idiot brother spent money again even after giving me 200,000 Credits...'

"Okay. I'm going to eat this. But mom, can you still contact him? I want to thank my idiot brother."

"His phone is out of range. His last message is their arrival near the fortress. The signal is blocked inside that place, he said."

Upon hearing that, Althea could only drop it as she began breaking the shell of the egg to eat it as instructed.

She wanted to become an Energy Refiner and her idiot brother is putting his life on the line to earn money for her. The best can do to repay that is to strive and better herself.

-

-

When Aldrin returned to his room after a hearty meal in that restaurant that used all those ingredients that could enhance an Energy Refiner in different aspects, he felt like he converted at least 200 IDLE Points to Dimensional Energy and refined it in his Energy Quintessence.

'This is probably the reason why the government is maintaining these Rifts. It's truly an Energy Refiner's haven." Aldrin sighed.

Even herbs growing in that Dimension are valuable enough to use as an ingredient that could also provide Dimensional Energy.

After spending a few minutes gathering his thoughts as he looked back to everything that happened today, he brought out his phone to check on his gains in Idle Adventure.

[Four runs completed!]

[Total IDLE Points earned: 14345]

[Total IDLE Points spent: 660]

[Automatic Exit fee: 1369]

[IDLE Points to be stored: 12976]

[Evaluations: B+, B+, A, B]

[Conquest Progress: +5%]

[IDLE Points: 18789/25000]

'18,000 in a day. And that's only from the five runs of Idle Adventure. Apart from leaving the 100 IDLE Points for the emergency summoning of Dimensional Clone, I emptied it after renewing the Merchants. I will be expecting more than 20,000 IDLE Points this reset...'

With his income growing bigger and bigger, Aldrin began contemplating on what he should focus on next.

There were still three hours before midnight so before that happened, he started allocating his IDLE Points. Rather than decide on the spot, Aldrin began using his free time that others were probably using to absorb the everpresent Dimensional Energy to formulate his next steps.

From the past three days, he used 2,000 IDLE Points to increase the storage by 10,000. He's actually thankful that, unlike any other feature, that one's price isn't growing.

Upgrading to fifth Dimensional Clone is still far away, it's 100,000 points, a much bigger amount than his estimate for 100 Small Merchants.

Before getting it, he's planning to unlock the next tier of his IDLE Points generator at the Idle Shopping tab.

"Hopefully, that will be perpetually unlocked rather than requiring me to buy 100 Small Merchants every time. It's 38,200 Points. I can save the 20,000 today and get it tomorrow but let's push that for at least until I upgrade the Dimensional Clones' weapon to Level. It's for their Skill! That way... I can begin raiding a subsidiary Ant Queen or Broodmother's lair."

These past few days, his clones' hunting ground was already inside the territory of the insects. Apart from a full army or the Ant Champion, they could now survive longer against their swarm.

Moreover, with his recent manual control, he managed to find out the social structure of the two Hegemons of the Small Insect Colony#111222.

As for how that was possible... He used his Shadow Clone Concept to infiltrate the heart of each territory. Since he could share the sight with it, the IDLE Database considered it as an extension of his eyes, allowing him to analyze anything caught in its eyes.

From that, the data he gathered about the two; The Black Spider Colony and the Royal Ant Colony each occupied more than 1/3 of the whole dimension while the rest were the place where other insects tried to survive.

That's right, the Dimension isn't a whole world but just a large plot of land with a boundary of nothingness. He tried letting his Shadow Clone jump out of it and as he expected, it just fell down until it disappeared seconds later as if the Energy existing outside the Dimension was destructive.

Judging from the 'Conquest' progress of the Dimension. Aldrin believed that this piece of lower dimension could possibly become his once the counter reached 100%. Whether that meant the extinction of all the insects existing there or not, he had no idea yet.

But with the additional information about the Fragment Core from the maintained-type Dimensional Rift near him... Aldrin suspected that he might find something like that as well or it was possessed by either the Royal Queen Ant of the Royal Ant Colony or the Regal Broodmother of the Black Spider Colony.

Or there exists another possibility that they both possessed it.

Either way, that's how it is... the heads of those two colonies were named like that.

The Champions are also not just an individual but they're not more than the number of his fingers. Furthermore, they're guarding a part of each territory. And some were near those breeding grounds.

"Every insect there is a source of IDLE Points. If I killed the Ant Queens and Broodmothers, their population would surely dwindle until the point that I would have no other choice but to face the champions and the stronger types of ants or spiders. However, on the same note, I wouldn't progress if I remained passive..."

With that line of thought, Aldrin continued his contemplation as time continued to crawl towards midnight.

And three hours later, his alarm rang, pulling him out of contemplation. His Idle Adventure chances have been replenished!

As soon as he renewed the 50 Small Merchants, Aldrin dived inside the Small Insect Colony #111222.