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.

few mages? When fighting against a huge horde, like the one coming to

Tunnel entrances falling 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 collapsed behind them, leaving decimated and

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

could understand, but

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

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 that can be

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

to help with that so I can reach my second objective, which is to level up so

close to your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant asked, sounding oddly

levels. If we're going to battle against creatures as

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

hard work onto me, didn't you? She's technically correct, but that doesn't

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 we don't survive the upcoming battle then the colony will

protested Florence, the to this point silent

that we divert a significant portion

and her fellow Brood Tender were clearly not happy. I understand it, less food coming in means less brood.

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

each of them at the same time, something you can only do with extensively upgraded compound eyes,

on equal treatment for the hatchlings still makes little sense to them I suspect, thankfully by virtue of being old they have to

be ready to move out for a few hours will

rest. We've been pretty flat out for the last few days and I