Chrysalis

I'm exhausted and my mandibles are aching something fierce after all that digging, but is it time to rest?

NOPE.

Those damn pupae are teasing me with their very existence. The twenty large casings are resting against the side of a chamber, taunting me with their stillness. Within them, the hope of ant kind is taking the final steps of their gestation, turning from a grub into something more, something incredible. The ant species to end all ant species.

At least that's what I'm hoping for. If they suck I'm going to be really disappointed…

It shouldn't happen though! I reinforce my own positive mindset. They are going to be great, I've put so much effort into creating them and into making sure they'll get a solid boost to start out their new lives, surely they'll be great!

The closer this project is getting to fruition the more stressed I'm getting.

Put it behind you Anthony, put all of it behind you!

Focus on yourself for a while, treat yourself. To what should I treat myself? To skill training, of course!

Not only me, Tiny and Crinis have been roped in as well.

our knowledge of the system has greatly expanded and the weightiest nugget of wisdom to come out

been putting too much emphasis on evolution and the energy within my core, I was ignoring two aspects of the holy trinity

instead of thriving, and the other trees wither. Only

was of the fourth rank he'd nearly slapped me out of sheer shock and in the process lost his only remaining hand. At least now with Shattering Bite advancing I have one fourth rank combat skill. Advancing skills,

take part in that

grind like

most important thing to grind? Of course its

of. I'd thought I'd made use of an awesome hack in using my free magical

that having the gland doesn't give me access to what I really need to make use of it, which is the spell forms. I have the generic spell shapes that

he'd never seen Gravity magic before, he was sure it was a particularly advanced form of mana, which means that the skill I

get access to it, I have to level up my basic affinities, which will unlock the next rank of affinities, and so on until I finally get to

next wave of affinity skills will unlock. That is my most immediate goal. Apparently the exact types of mana that unlock are not necessarily set, and

all of the basic affinities to the third rank and then fusing them to form the skill Elemental Mana Mastery, which gives powerful boosts to the basic elements. Most local mages aim

Rush to the top!

skills, repetitively, endlessly, mind numbingly. For me, that means forming and releasing the ice mana construct over and over again, casting water and ice spells at everything I can see. The walls, dipping into the Dungeon and launching them at monsters,

situations against monsters gives a much faster boost than just hitting the walls but being as mentally exhausted as we are, I don't want

this, we grind,

focusing on her tentacle skills, grappling shredding, dismembering. After much persuasion, I eventually get a mortified Crinis to attempt to use her skills on me, thinking that as a highly evolved monster she'd get more experience using