Chrysalis

The Queen is holding up incredibly well. In fact, if I hadn't been sneaking the odd peak at her with my mana sense on I wouldn't even know that her core was leaking energy. The brilliant radiance of her core has already faded to half of its full lustre. After five days on the move the whole colony is tired and desperate for rest. It's almost a shame that we aren't a nomadic ant species like the army ants.

Mind you, those buggers are completely blind, so if I'd been born as one of those separate from the colony there is no way I'd have been able to survive until now. Also, the entire reason those ants are nomadic is because they are so numerous, and so ferocious that they strip the land bare of everything they can possibly eat, forcing them to move to a new location constantly. There is a lesson in that for our own colony going forward. We can't be so greedy as to strip the land bare, intake will have to be managed. Well, that's in the far future if we ever manage to grow enough to dominate our environment.

…

An ant can dream dammit! Don't look down on my humble ambitions!

All I want is for my family to rise! To be ascendant!

It's a lot for a few ants to take on but with a bit of grit and a heck of a lot of tunnel digging, I'm sure we can make it!

We have arrived in our new land! A blessed place full of monster infested nests and forests. Battle awaits around every corner and that means only one thing. Biomass!

This colony is hungry!

We need food!

the boundary separating the lands of Liria from the untamed wild. Despite keeping a close eye behind us we never saw pursuit from the humans we had left behind, which surprised me a lot. Once we made it over the border the tension I'd carried inside, expecting an attack to arrive at any moment in retaliation for our grand theft core, evaporated. There is no way they'll

the hopes of flushing out a monster. Whenever we run into some surface monsters they either attempt to flee or leap out to attack! The former are shot with acid until they can't move and the latter are promptly ripped to

forced to eat some of it in order to force away my hunger. I get a bonus point for new source but nothing else. These creatures are so weak they provide nothing to myself

find a section of Dungeon close to the surface that we can occupy. The Queen absolutely has to be inside the mana

us workers and we hustle here and there trying to find an entrance. After two days of desperate searching, when the panic in my thorax was reaching critical mass, we finally succeeded!

sheer numbers, a minor helping of gravity magic and Tiny's judiciously applied fist the digging work begun immediately. With over a thousand workers getting their faces stuck right into the work we are able to tunnel down into the Dungeon and occupy it through sheer numbers. Up above, the hill is rapidly forming. Once the Queen is safely ensconced under the ground, calmly regenerating

own private chamber once again with the upper reaches of the ant hill. The cores are safely stored within the wall and the four of us settle

"Why are we resting?"

"Be quiet, Vibrant"

…

a new day! So many things to go about doing I can't even decide