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 to address the

nests using one gate network, then we will be able to spread much further, much faster without running the risk of being unable to support each other. It will be like every nest, no matter how far, will be no more than a few steps away from every other nest. We can never be trapped, never be sieged, not by normal methods. If

work out how

I chip in, "not

will," she announces, "I bet it's

This hatchling…

you have that much confidence, let's see you do it. I don't want to hear boasting without results to back it up," I poke her with an antenna. "There's a hundred ants in here, all of them older and

most of them are pretty annoyed at this annoying hatchling running

she brushes my antenna off

the gate and you can take a

cool, let's

the team know and 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

without anywhere for the energy to go, it simply leaks it back out into the air at a slow pace until nothing remains

was quite something, I'm amazed at how much mana it can hold,"

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 other magic

theory actually, it would make

soon as possible and see what happens," I assure her. "Who knows? I

all, my quest for the mythical Gravity mana specialisation continues and perhaps I've been denied that Skill for the same reason. Only time will tell. Once I’ve mastered Mind Magic to the point I need it, I'll be able to go

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

see she wants answers to her questions, but tough luck

your business and