IWUAaDNW: Exploration 2.2

What I needed was a tank. And if one was thinking about tanks in the insect world, they of course had to think about beetles. So why couldn’t I make one? Because I hadn’t completed the acquisition research thing. Insect Mastery provided me with 3 free insects to research: Spiders, Bees and Wasps. An ant had died inside my walls, so I was able to make them. I had beetles as part of the bug level thing, but apparently they didn’t count for some reason, because of course not.

[...]

“Pixie, come back, I have work for you,” I shouted.

The floating lightbulb stopped, then came to me with a happy whistle.

“I need you to find me a beetle. Do you understand me?”

[Order sent: Small Lesser Pixie assigned to task [SEARCH]]

It bobbed once, saluting with a tingle and an enthusiastic “BLEEK!”, and sped off into the grass.

Considering how many bugs there seemed to be amongst the grasses, I didn’t expect it to take too long.

I was right; it came back a moment later, a big dead beetle in its tiny arms.

[...]

I was disappointed when my pixie dropped the beetle on the floor of my dungeon… and nothing happened. It didn’t get absorbed, its corpse just sat there, unmoving. Why wasn’t I getting the research option? I popped open my info-box and saw my mana wasn’t even moving.

[...]

Once that was done, yeah, I’d be able to worry about floor 2, but I was still vulnerable right now. I was still set on using a beetle as a tank, so I needed to find a beetle that wouldn’t mysteriously not wo—

Oh.

I was an idiot.

Of course the beetles from the surface weren’t going to work; they were created by my dungeon. They were just like the centipedes, and the flies, and the other bugs I created as “useless deco creatures”, because that’s what they were. I needed a real beetle, from somewhere out there.