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.

mages? When fighting against a huge horde, like the one coming to kill us right now, more mage

could see it in my 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 monsters with flamethrower like

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

I could understand,

to map out the skill paths from scratch and explore methods to raise up the future generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully.

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 said for

quality all of its

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

next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant asked,

more levels. If we're going to battle against creatures as strong as those coming our way, we're going to need

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

didn't you? She's technically correct, but that doesn't serve to

to prioritise food gathering or egg laying to a high extent in the lead up to

to this point silent Brood Tender, "without

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

happy. I understand it, less food

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

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

little sense to them I suspect, thankfully by

out for a few hours will you, Senior?"

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