Chrysalis

[Is there a particular reason why you Sophos are so loud?]

[LOUD? WE’RE TALKING MENTALLY YOU CRETIN. NOT A SOUND IS MADE!]

[Formo! You know exactly what I mean! Every time I form a mind bridge with a Sophos I’ve had my head rung like a bell! Can you tone it down a little?]

[WE ARE SIMPLY EXUBERANT, MY BOY! FULL OF BEANS!]

[I seriously doubt you eat beans, Formo.]

[WELL, NOT UNLESS IT WAS A BEAN MONSTER I SUPPOSE!]

[Just, take it down a notch, please?]

[I SHALL- ahem. I shall try. I must say young Anthony, I didn’t expect that I would see you again. Judging by your change in size, you’ve been quite productive over the course of the wave.]

[Well, once the colony got rolling, the wave was almost more help than it was harm.]

[Hmm. I wonder if you understand why that might have been the case.]

[I’m not sure what you mean.]

[No matter. Come, my boy, let us wander this way. My domicile is found near the forge.]

of us continue our stroll through the Sophos community. I’m not sure what I expected, but the place is much more humble than I had assumed it would be. After my first meeting with Formo, I envisioned the Sophos to be an all-powerful community of core shapers without compare. I’d assumed that they would live

at that. I’d expected that they might treat their pets a little better, considering how much they relied on them. Tiny and Crinis

other thing that struck me is the total lack of Mana Veins here. The walls are bizarrely clear of them, light instead being provided by a series of core powered lighting installations. I was pretty darn interested in learning how the heck they did that but Formo was cagey about it when I asked. Damn you, you bulbous headed

of their skin was green, but some had patches of red, or blue, or even orange I saw. Other than that, their featureless faces appears the same from one to the next. Mind you, they would probably say

don’t see a whole lot of your people around Formo. Is

worked hard to ruffle the Dungeon’s feathers and it doesn’t appreciate it, not a whit! So the spawn rate for Sophos is abysmally

how bitter

work? The Dungeon just up and decided your people were

We don’t much like talking about, but when the opportunity to rant about the Dungeon pops up, who

I

Dungeon tunnels connected to ours, we were the first to come into contact with monsters and battle them. The surfacers ignored our warnings and laughed at our pleas for help. I have to say, their attitude towards us was much the same back then as it is

[That’s terrible.]

began to change. After hundreds of years, we were so steeped in the mana of the Dungeon that the stupid System couldn’t differentiate between us and monsters. In an instant, like a switch was flipped, we lost our Classes, we couldn’t bear young, our levels were gone and only Biomass could sate

a tragedy!

run thing. Luckily we’d relied on our pets from the outset, and they did not desert us. Now we build our settlements around any spawn point we know

the Dungeon? Is it a thing that you can hit? I thought

it runs the show around here. The Sophos may already know about it, or they might pin me down and dissect

the interests of the Dungeon, once you know what it wants. For example, have you seen the Expert Profile

that’s gone on over the last few weeks and I haven’t been bothered to read through them all. I actually unlocked Garralosh’s full profile after eating her Biomass, considering there was only one of her the Expert Profile was unlocked straight away. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet. I mean, I killed and then

have. Those damn centipedes were the

Formo nodded his head.