Chrysalis

What is mana? It was an embarrassingly long time before the tower had anything even remotely approaching a satisfying answer to this question. Even now, we have no real way of knowing if we are correct, since we don’t know where it comes from, how it's made or where it goes. We know that it existed on Pangera before the Dungeon broke the surface. It's possible that mana has always existed on Pangera since the pre-history times, but that's another thing we cannot confirm.

The deeper one goes into the Dungeon, the more dense it becomes. This, we have known for a long time. There has been a lot of argument over whether the mana was emanating outward from the centre of the planet, or being drawn from the outside inward. A great deal of effort was put into tracing the mana flows on the surface and most studies have been inconclusive on this issue.

As to the nature of mana itself, who knows? It's a type of energy. It's malleable. It can be changed into a massive variety of other forms of mana, each with their own attributes, strengths and weaknesses. It's tied into the natural world, as it replicates things that are possible without it. Sometimes. Other times it achieves things that are impossible without its use.

To this day it baffles us, though we use it extensively in our daily lives and research.

• Grand Mage Trissitan of the tower.

The mana was rising. It wasn't a dramatic issue in the present moment, but should this extermination drag out, it might cause problems. The spawn rates have already begun to rise, if it were to become another Wave…

his head. It wouldn't come to that, so soon after a wave had just completed. There hadn't been two such events so close together in the history of the Empire of Stone. It would be foolish to adjust his strategy to accommodate such a freak occurrence. The levels were still within tolerance, no doubt they would peak soon and then continue to decline until mana levels returned to

view. The mission no longer existed, the tent around him turned to black and even the myriad of sounds of the camp that had intruded

the stillness,

placed in on the prepared cloth spread before him. Once, twice, thrice he cleaned its surface, ensuring that not a speck of dust marred it's perfect surface. Only then did he take the stone seed and slowly tap a small amount into the palm of

the dust, strong and vibrant, through the rock of his true skin. It was tantalising. Sunk deep into meditation, he ignored it and stretched his hand out to the blade. Before he opened

As he allowed the seed to trickle from his palm onto the surface of the blade it greedily drank it in, absorbing the mineral and the mana it contained to strengthen and sustain itself. It was almost a waste to awaken the blade only to cut insect trash,

emitted a faint light as he slid it back into its sheath. It would take time to digest the meal he had given it, but in time it would put forth a measure of its true power. Ritual complete, the

He was tired of these pests spitting at his camp, it

as she was quick enough. It was one of the reasons her mutations continued to emphasise speed. The faster she went, the easier things got, so why not just keep getting faster? She couldn't wait until her next evolution. The sort of speed she'd

Senior! Where are we going?" Emilia, her

Vibrant laughed.

to go down? Better than

tunnels, her and her loyal followers, each and every one of them built for speed. The entire group was tier four now, a fearsome group of insects to be sure. They fell upon everything in their way with ferocious, coordinated strikes and devoured the Biomass like a school of sharks before sprinting to catch up with