Chrysalis

Once Tiny, Crinis and I had refilled our cores and Morrelia had snacked on her travel rations we set out once again, this time moving slower and taking more care as we moved. We weren't trying to chase anyone down and stumbling under the eye of big momma Croc was not something we wanted to experience. I made sure I was training my external mana manipulation as we moved, putting those sub brains to work and making them earn their keep. This had the added benefit of slowing down the drain on my core since I was able to capture the mana in the air and pull it in to replace my losses.

I did try and see if I could sense where the mana I lost went, perhaps to see if I could retain it, drag it straight back into myself and therefore never lose any mana at all, but I failed. No matter how I tried I wasn't able to sense where the mana that left the core went to, whether it bled out into the air, was consumed in some way by my body or just vanished out of my core via some extra-dimensional portal.

This could be a research project for the colony one day down the line.

Morrelia seemed to know what she was doing, leading us down farm tracks and dirt roads to locate isolated clusters of homes that we would investigate in the hopes of locating survivors tucked away in cellars, barns or attics. I was surprised by our strike rate, we did manage to find a surprising number of people who had taken shelter from the monsters and managed to hide themselves.

survivors, Tiny cracking open the cellar doors with his bare hands, I'd been shocked! How the heck had the monsters managed to

that the monsters aren't the best at checking the nooks and crannies. They may have been put under the compulsion of their Croc overlords through some mechanism I have no

treatment. Burnt to the ground, the buildings smashed in and the people eaten or scattered, but the smaller

stick their heads out into the open air in case a monster happened to be nearby, half of them either attacked or hid from myself, Tiny and Crinis before Morrelia could calm them down. I thought we'd have a hard time convincing the people to move, so fearful were they, but each time we managed to uncover another clutch of starved, desperate people, Morrelia managed to convince the of the security that

people pack whilst us monsters sat about at a calming distance. We had tried to assist by lifting and shifting things but Morrelia suggested we move to one side and allow the people to get themselves organised

do hope that Morrelia emphasised the presence of an entire colony of monsters living right next to this village of survivors. If any accidents were to occur,

We had a couple of run ins with bands of roving monsters, smaller ones this time, without any of the more evolved Croca beasts. We were able to clean those up without much stress, and I made sure to grind