Chrysalis

"Get down from there you little varmint!" I yell.

"What even is this thing?" she yells back, still scurrying about on top of the gate as she pokes and prods with her antennae inspecting every nook and cranny.

"It's some sort of spatial gateway that allows instantaneous travel across vast distances and we are trying to learn how it works so we can link our nests together. Now get your butt off of there before you break something!"

Reluctantly, she starts to climb down, still excitedly examining whatever she can.

"You can practically feel the power rolling off of that thing," she exclaims when she finally reaches where I'm waiting at the bottom. "It's incredible! Why doesn't it work?"

Her question catches me mid-thwack and I pause before regretfully retracting my antennae.

"A big part of the reason is that no ant has managed to unlock the Spatial Mana specialisation Skill. Upon learning that skill, and then on ranking it up, knowledge of how to create and utilise spatial mana constructs will be granted by the System and by studying those we are far more likely to be able to understand how these things work and then build our own."

She looks confused.

"We didn't build this?" she points at the gate with one claw.

"Of course not. If we could already build them, how would we not know how to get them working? Obviously this gate was made by others and we are trying to unlock its secrets. It isn't enough to learn how to operate it. We need to learn how to construct our own and operate those. Only then will we be able to establish a gate network throughout our territory and connect our nests."

"Why is it so important to connect the nests?" the hatchling asks.

forward from beside me

unable to support each other. It will be like every nest, no matter how far, will be

nobody can work out how

chip

announces, "I bet it's not

This hatchling…

hear boasting without results to back it up," I poke

are pretty annoyed at this annoying hatchling running around telling them she can do

brushes my antenna off

you like, we can start powering up the gate and you can take a look

be cool, let's have a

all of them rushing this way and that to get things ready. When it's all done, they trigger the array matrix that they've constructed, monitoring and taking measurements as it slowly powers up. Slowly at first, and then with gathering speed, the matrix starts to draw in mana at a prodigious rate, pulling in the energy from the air until the entire gateway is shining brightly to my mana sense. The more energy that gets packed in, the gateway seems to hum as

that sub-harmonic hum that rattles my mandibles but without anywhere for the energy to go, it simply leaks it back out into the air at a slow pace until nothing remains within. When all is said and done, the

I'm amazed at how much

prodigious amount of energy to cast. One of the current hypothesis is that the reason no ant has been offered the Skill is because none have a sufficient mana pool to access it, regardless of the ranks of their

a bad theory actually,

max out my core as soon as possible and see what happens," I assure her. "Who knows? I might

it, I'll be able

hopping up and down with excitement. "Did you feel it? The power! The energy! How does it work? How did it happen? Why did it

to her questions, but

of your business and nobody knows.