"The radius increasing."

Klbkch tilts his head slightly.

"Skills get slowly stronger as you level. This applies to passive enhancement Skills as well. For example, a Skill might provide a twenty percent improvement when awarded, then an additional percent every level."

"Then I suppose I should price a remodel."

Nod.

"Thank you for alerting me."

"Is there anything else useful to clarify?"

"Nothing obvious to me."

"Thank you for your time."

"Of course. Have a good day."

Klbkch leaves the building and heads southwest.

The shops turn to apartments, then to storehouses and workshops, then at the end of a less frequented street, there is a tunnel in a mound of dirt, breaking the path of neat paving stones. No bricks, wooden beams, no supports, only packed and fortified dirt. An opening in the middle of the city.

Down into the Free Hive of the Antinum.

He does not acknowledge the Soldier sentries as he descends. He does not acknowledge the Workers maintaining the drainage tunnels as he descends. He does not stop by his quarters. He does not check in on the feeding chambers or the birther vats or the waste reclamation progress for the most recent batch of failures. He does not request a report of the Soldiers' progress in the lower levels.

He is expected.

In the deepest tunnels, as far down as the agreement with Liscor allows them to dig, the Free Queen receives Klbkchhezeim. Her body is bloated and gargantuan, more insectile where her children are humanoid. Two Workers attend her in silence, one helping settle her body. She can move without assistance on her stunted legs, a concession she has permitted herself through her transformations, but it is not an effort she undertakes lightly. The red-orange glow of her eyes is the only light in the dark.

She is dictating nutrient allocations to the other Worker when Klbkch enters.

"Do you require memory modification?"

Her voice is rumbling and weary.

"No."

"Were you unable to make contact with the human?"

"I spoke to him. It was informative."

"Did I understand you incorrectly, Klbkch? You who admonished me at length on the danger of gods. You petitioned me to risk all we have sought to build in the last ten years. But you stay your hand now. Why?"

"I believe he may be an asset, my Queen."

"Explain."

To the two Workers, "Leave us."

He waits for them to be alone.

"We do not understand our enemy. Our failures on Rhir were owed as much to ignorance as weakness. It was—you cannot understand how it was. We were fighting a blind war. Entire Hives fell in moments to forces I still do not understand today. I felt the touch of it once, through the Unitasis Network. The enemy is not an army which spills from a well. It is something we have no words to describe. An enemy which cannot be described cannot be defeated. That is fact."

The Free Queen fixes her eyes on Klbkch.

"We have a word."

"A word is nothing. I have learned more today about gods than in all the time I have lived."

"The human claims to be from another world. Is this intelligence accurate?"

"It explains events which I did not previously understand.

"There is another factor."

She does not ask him for his inferences, if it is not for her to know.

"Speak."

"According to the human, gods have distinct natures and domains, and have goals and act to achieve their goals, including in opposition of other gods. His god of his world, Iomedae, is described as 'lawful' and 'good', and seeks to fight 'evil' and create institutions which fight 'evil', where 'evil' is defined as oppression, cruelty and harm to others. Notably, central cases of this involve establishing defense lines against naturally evil creatures originating from a planar portal in his world."