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.

we have so few mages? When fighting against a huge horde, like the one coming to kill us

mind's eye already. Tunnel entrances falling in to reveal teams of mage ants who blasted the front ranks of the horde with deadly fire, torching dozens of

the council shifted uncomfortably. "We've had most of the hatchlings move into the soldier caste recently" Antionette informed me, "Large

could understand,

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

large amounts of weak enemies they would have been indispensable. There may be a

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

have two main objectives, we need to whittle down 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 that

close to your next evolution, Eldest?"

need six more levels. If we're going to battle against

ability to chip away at the number of weaker monsters but tackling anything

onto me, didn't you? She's technically correct, but

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 cease

protested Florence, the to this point silent Brood Tender, "without food the larvae will

don't think anyone is suggesting that we cease food gathering operations completely" Sloan assured her, "but rather that we divert a significant portion of the soldiers currently acting to gather food to

were clearly not happy. I understand it, less

enough senior workers here to ensure that the hatchling training program continues to run unabated. Each new hatchling deserves the best possible start we can

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

nodded in agreement, more to appease me than anything else. My insistence on 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 respect for

out for a few hours will you, Senior?"

some rest. We've been pretty flat out for the