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.

huge horde, like the one coming

to reveal teams of mage ants who blasted the front ranks of the horde with deadly fire, torching dozens of monsters with

few members of the 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 rates for

could understand, but

and I have been 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 number of mages at this stage and wanted to take more time

would have loved to have more mages right now. To clear away large amounts of weak enemies they would have been indispensable. There may be a use for the mages we have, of course, but there is a lot

they say: Quantity, is a quality all

we need to whittle down the horde that's coming our way, I need to help with

to your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant asked,

to battle against creatures as strong as those

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. If the Eldest can evolve then that task will be in capable

the hard work onto me, didn't

that we don't need to prioritise food gathering or egg laying to a high extent in the lead up to this crisis?" I asked the gathered council, "If

protested Florence, the to this point silent

we cease food gathering operations completely" Sloan assured her, "but rather that we divert a significant portion of the soldiers currently

were clearly not happy. I understand it, less food coming in means

ensure that the hatchling training program continues to run unabated. Each new hatchling deserves the

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

the hatchlings still makes little sense to them I suspect, thankfully by virtue of being old

be ready to move out for a few hours will you, Senior?" Sloan

to evolve and we all need some rest. We've been pretty flat out for the last