Chrysalis

"With your permission Eldest, I will leave the council and begin to organise a workforce to prepare our initial fortifications" Tungstant said.

I waved an antennae in approval and the small, dextrous ant climbed up the wall and out the roof of the chamber in a moment.

"Alright then. Pitfall traps, tunnels to attack, I like all of these ideas. What else have we got? How is our magic firepower coming along?" I asked.

The two mages in the room, Propellant and Coolant, shifted on their feet as they became the centre of attention for the council. The mage caste hadn't had a lot of time to build up their raw magic handling skills, and were without the benefit of my own extensive spending on brain power when it came to evolutions. Having said that, they were no slouches in the brain game and were able to choose their own elemental gland on evolution. So there had to be some juice there.

"The number of mage ants we have to work with is still limited" Coolant hedged.

There were over a thousand ants in the colony at this time, there were like a hundred new ants being born every day. How few mages could there be?

"How many are we talking about?" I asked.

"Five" Coolant said flatly.

"Five?!" I sputtered.

"Oh, seven including Coolant and I" Propellant offered helpfully.

Holy moly.

do we have so few mages? When fighting against a huge horde, like the

in to reveal teams of mage ants who blasted the front ranks of the horde with deadly fire, torching dozens of monsters with flamethrower like magic before retreating through the tunnels which

council shifted uncomfortably. "We've had most of the hatchlings move into the soldier caste recently" Antionette informed me, "Large numbers of scouts and soldiers have been born. Our more specialised castes have had slower recruitment

could understand,

doing our best to map out the skill paths from scratch and explore methods to raise up the future generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully. "We didn't anticipate a need for a

weak enemies they would have been indispensable. There may be a use for the mages we have, of course, but

Quantity, is a quality all of its own. That's practically the ants

the horde that's coming our way, I need to help with that so I can reach my second objective, which is to level up so

your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant

dip of my antennae, "I only need six more levels. If we're going to battle against

up, "we may have the ability to chip away at the number of weaker monsters but tackling anything stronger is going to be beyond us for a time.

all of the hard work onto me, didn't you? She's

egg laying to a high extent in the lead up to this crisis?" I asked the gathered council, "If we

shouldn't shut down food gathering entirely, surely?" protested Florence, the to this point silent Brood

Sloan assured her, "but rather that we divert

not happy. I understand

that the hatchling training program continues to run

only do with extensively upgraded compound eyes, one of the benefits

equal treatment for the hatchlings still makes little sense to them I suspect, thankfully by virtue of being old they have to listen to me. Hooray for strict

move out for a few hours

rest. We've been pretty flat out for the last few days and I suspect it's going to be hectic for a week or so