Broodmother Clone

The **Avatar of the** **Broodmother** or the **Broodmother Clone** is the counterpart of the Broodmother in the Forest Plane. She became independent from the original due to the circumstances of its birth, along with the tempering of the will of the forest.

## Overview

### **Original Vs Clone**

The broodmother’s clone advanced in different conditions from the main body. She no longer needed to sleep when she was undergoing changes, but she couldn’t create any drones. With Richard acting as a constant conduit between the two, she also had access to enough information on every level up to make the process quite short. It would only take a month for her to be finished.

With the main broodmother bottlenecked right before level 12 , the avatar would soon surpass it given time. However, the main body had a far more complicated system with the chrysalides, flesh furnaces, and cloned brains that the avatar did not possess. The clone’s army was just a horde of warriors, while she had a complicated logistical and scouting system alongside top-end fighters; she was a fully self-sufficient war machine. If the two went to war, the clone would lose every single time.

That being said, Richard had to acknowledge that the clone was much better as a piece in the whole. While she couldn’t create winter soldiers and arrowbeasts, her night elves were plenty strong for their cost.

## Progress

The broodmother’s clone was approaching level 6 at this point, now a giant creature over fifty metres in length alone. She didn’t have the hardy carapace of the original broodmother, and she was still producing workers, but every time she could upgrade something she had boosted her production capabilities. She could now produce five level 9 drones every day, with two more for every lower level on average. She was even better than the original at making new designs if Richard wanted it, and could create a total of 28 workers in one go! Book 6, Chapter 132

She was only level 8, but her 900-metre-long body was almost the same size as the original.

A wave of the hand pulled a glob of the honey towards him, but Richard hesitated for a while before holding his nose and tasting it. He almost gagged from the sour taste, but he immediately felt a wave of pure energy with life force flowing through him. His blood flow immediately accelerated, to the point that he had to suppress arousal.

Landing on the clone’s head, Richard could tell the differences from the main body almost immediately. He jabbed down with a single finger that was covered in pale blue flames, the exoskeleton just melting away to the application of even a meagre force. This one’s shell was less than two metres thick, almost paper compared to the body.

Richard spent a little more time just conversing with the clone. He had noticed that she was basically independent of the main body long ago, but apart from a guess that it was related to the excessive life energy in the Forest Plane he didn’t know why nor care.

The clone seemed entirely unbothered by the attack, replying calmly, “There’s no being in this plane that can threaten me, Master. Why should I waste my energy protecting myself? Every drop used on my shell is a drop I’m not using to strengthen my army. Our entire purpose is to create drones, and the cycle strengthens every day. A single drone not created a year ago would have an enormous impact today, and the process snowballs very quickly.”

Even a level 15 broodmother couldn’t create true legends, but as long as she had the food she could send out an infinite army of low-level troops. Low-level to her was still level 10, strong enough to be a knight in most planes known to Norland. An unending sea of such soldiers could definitely sweep through all of the empires currently occupying the world, and despite their damage potential the epics of the plane would eventually tire out and have to escape. On the other hand, even the most powerful elite drones would be nothing against a true epic being, and only special units reinforced with divinity could even come close to mattering in a fight against legends. Between barely impacting the higher end and absolutely crushing the common troops, the choice was obvious.

## Level 9

As they conversed for a little while longer, Richard was surprised by another piece of information, “You can level up?”

“Yes, Master. I was waiting for when you arrived, but you seemed to be in a rush so I just suppressed it to not bother you. Do you have any instructions?”

“Hmm… No, stay on your path,” Richard decided after a while. Since she had already chosen to focus on troop creation, he didn’t want her to abandon that now. The ninth level upgrade would boost her drones by an additional level in this scenario, allowing her elven elites to be level 15 instead of 14. Even a few dozen of these warriors would be the core of an entire tribe, while druids would become elders in smaller councils.

However, the broodmother couldn’t yet create druidic drones; she didn’t have an adequate comprehension of the laws of life, so any druid she created would only have elemental magic, not the natural magic it was supposed to. The solution was to absorb a large number of beings or objects that possessed the laws of life.

When he learnt this, Richard froze for a moment. Laws of life? What was more suitable than the trees that controlled them? He had just obtained two trees of life, and outside of the cores he didn’t really have a use for everything else on them. He would have sold it all off for money, but if feeding it to the broodmother granted a chance to create druids, that would solve the last deficiency in his army. He quickly ordered the ancient treants he controlled to change course once they entered Emerald City, taking the trees to the broodmother instead of the portal.

### **Night Elves**

After reaching 180% analysis on nine other elven races, and there are a total of 130 others that I can refer to in part.

With the impossible requests of long lives and reproduction removed, the broodmother’s clone already had a set of four prototype elites waiting for him upon his return.

He almost mistook them for silvermoon elves when he saw them; they were taller and larger than the forest elves, with their bodies striking a perfect balance of dexterity and speed. They weren’t as fast or as stealthy as forest elves, but in a one-on-one fight they had a huge upper hand. As was typical, the vital organs of these drones had all been moved around. Locations like the pit of the stomach and groin were now just traps, making them more effective against new opponents.

The clone had quickly concluded that forest elves were mostly useless in smaller skirmishes, their weak bodies ensuring that they were only suited to assassination and scouting. The warriors amongst the locals had limited defensive capabilities, which was why they relied on treants for physical prowess. Trying to hurry out the prototypes for his arrival, she had ended up building something very similar to the high elves of Silvermoon.

Richard couldn’t help but agree; there was a reason the silvermoon elves were considered rulers even amongst high elves. They had strength, longevity, intelligence, agility, and magic, making them perfect mages, clerics, warriors, archers, and a plethora of other classes. If not for their low fertility, the elven empire would not have crumbled so quickly.

There was another bonus to choosing this design. Having a point of reference himself, Richard could give the avatar a long list of improvements she could implement. Some she would only be able to implement at level 9, others at level 10, but she would also make her own changes at those points. By the time she hit level 15, her level 20 drones would be no different from true silvermoon elves.

There was actually another pleasant surprise when he arrived. The four elves were meant to be level 13 elites, but they were all level 14. The Golden World Tree had sensed their creation, and for some reason had been able to imbue some strength into them just before they hatched. The clone had already talked to the tree, and it had confirmed that it really liked this new drone. As long as they were made in range, it would strengthen them whenever she could.

To the Golden World Tree, it took an insignificant amount of energy to strengthen these elves. However, a level each for a full troop was a huge boost; most importantly, this meant the level 9 clone would be able to create full level 16 elites, almost no worse than the main body!

* Users of the Thunder Cannon.
* Rune knights were affected by the limits of their rune slots and carrying capacity, but from the looks of it these guns only needed the user to be strong enough to withstand the recoil. While that still meant warriors at equivalent levels, the requirements were relaxed significantly enough for it to be possible to make a thousands-strong army of them!

### **Druids**

This satisfaction turned to joy when he was informed that she could now create true druids, capable of using nature and life spells. The only difference was that they couldn’t morph into animals, but that wasn’t his goal in the first place. He could get magical beasts created, but spellcasters were more difficult. This was similar in principle to how he sacrificed some stealth with the night elves to gain strength and defence. He didn’t need scouts or assassins, he needed warriors.

* Grade 5 Bramble Spells
* Grade 6 Sunflames

The druids were so powerful as a whole that they didn’t even need any knights to defend them; a full bombardment of sunflames formed an ocean of fire that swallowed the draconians in moments.

### **Hive of Life**

As he went through the other data about the evolution, Richard suddenly discovered a strange special unit in the list. Just Like Phaser, Zangru, the unicorn, or the astral chrysalis, she would be using her excess energy from the level-up to create what she called the hive of life. This was an enormous tree that could absorb nutrition and energy from the plane it was in, converting that to pure life force. It could provide some protection from the will of the forest in its radius of influence, and once it had enough life force it could even form a fruit of life that granted ten years of life to a human.

The hive of life was named for the hexagonal pods within its trunk, containing a large amount of nutrients and life force. A night elf could recover even from heavy injuries if placed within.

## Level 10

Richard new that the peace with the reapers was only momentary. With the enemy base still functioning, they were only gathering more and more power for their final attack. Unfortunately, going over and trying to destroy it directly was effectively a suicide mission even for an epic being.
He used the time to revise his strategies, deploying drones and troops to reconstruct new lines of defence. The night elves from the Forest Plane were also being teleported out from the Forest Plane, steadily streaming into Faelor. A mass of divine crystals had already gotten the clone to level 10, and her regular elves were level 16 and the elites a level higher. She could even work two days straight at a time to produce actual saints!

Richard had already abandoned any hopes of survival if he only relied on his resources in Faelor. While this would reveal his trump card to the rest of Norland, he saw no other way but to use them.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Book 8, Chapter 86
2. ↑ Book 8, Chapter 89
3. ↑ Book 8, Chapter 78
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Book 8, Chapter 104
5. ↑ Book 8, Chapter 87
6. ↑ Book 8, Chapter 87
7. ↑ Book 9, Chapter 41