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.

and drawing on his knowledge, our knowledge of the system has greatly expanded and the weightiest nugget of wisdom to come out of that was the

within my core, I was ignoring two aspects

drowning instead of thriving, and the other

out that none of my combat skills was of the fourth rank he'd nearly slapped me out of sheer shock and in the process lost his

time has come to take part in that most sacred of all system related

like there's

most important thing to grind? Of

frustrating thing that Beyn had enlightened me of. I'd thought I'd made use of an awesome hack in

been a massive waste since I'm now able to produce those mana types now without too much stress. The problem is 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 I've been using, but according to Beyn, every mana type has particular spells

of mana,

I have to level up my basic affinities, which will unlock the next rank of affinities,

exact types of mana that unlock are not necessarily set, and can vary from individual to

a powerful skill fusion available by levelling 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 for this elemental path apparently, but it seems like a waste to me. The higher ranks of magic will surely also have potent fusions available,

Rush to the top!

and I settle in to grind our 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, at Tiny once by accident,

combat 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 us diving into frenetic combat. Keeping to the upper tunnels and picking on some plants is as much as I'm willing to commit to at this

this, we grind,

shredding, dismembering. After much persuasion, I eventually get a mortified Crinis to attempt to use her skills on me, thinking that as a