Chrysalis

"They found WHAT?"

Pulled aside by Sloan during a break in the fighting, she drops some heavy ordnance on me.

"Tier eight demons," she repeats grimly, "fighting in the deepest layers of the third stratum, right beneath the land claimed by the Colony."

Pants. This is the last thing we need right now. We've got these termites to deal with, along with the ka'armodo pulling the strings as well as acting aggressive along our border in the third. There might be hundreds of thousands of us by now, but even we can be stretched too thin!

"I'll have to go back up there," I declare, firm in my conviction. "Nobody else in the Colony is equipped to fight them, not without suffering extreme casualties, so I'll do it."

Sloan slaps herself with an antenna as if frustrated by my reply.

"What?" I ask defensively.

"Eldest. You might be the strongest member of the Colony, but you cannot do everything yourself. Grokus was only tier seven and he came close to killing you. If you were to go head to head with a tier eight, what do you think the outcome would be? Honestly?"

Well, if I think about it that way.

"I would be flattened like a pancake in a machine specifically designed for the purpose of crushing pancakes to be a single atom thick… would be my guess."

"I don't understand all of that, but I think my point got across. Even if these demons had abysmal quality evolutions, they would still be far above you, and there are two of them. Any thought you have of defeating them yourself needs to be cast aside."

It feels kind of sad to be pushed aside like this in a moment of crisis, but she certainly has a good point. I can't very well yell at the Immortals for trying to throw their lives away and then replicate that behaviour against even worse odds.

"All right then, so what is the plan then? I presume we aren't just hoping they won't come for us."

Now she looks insulted.

"Of course not. We are in the process of putting together a strike team of tier seven demons that we can call on in the event these powerful enemies find us. Observation and deep scouting operations have been increased dramatically and teams of generals have been put in place to game out possible scenarios. We are doing all that we can."

I have a question.

"Generals aren't really the smartest ants. Are we sure you should be the group in charge of the theory crafting?"

of the soldier caste, obviously, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. Not

of insulting

what I

to ask, Eldest, was

skills that need to be upgraded and a fair chunk of Biomass to spend after all the fighting we've been doing down here. I take a quick look at my status

at eighty one," I say, more than

point! Tier seven is approaching

anything happens with these demons. Jumping two tiers is too much even for you, Eldest, but

the coolheaded general, I can't help but look up nervously. The

feel like I should head upwards. Even if only for a little

anyway. Once I'm confident no mass invasion of lizards, or uprising of uber demons is around the corner, then I can back down and continue to chomp on termites as we gear up for

my proposal for a

will help settle a few nerves. You must ensure that you are back within two days. I worry that after that much time the enemy

I'll get the group

been fighting all over the place recently so it takes a

to the third

as she heaves breaths that sound like the forge bellows operated by the Colony in the

a minute… I'm still…

[Oh, shoot. My bad.]

a few minutes for her to get a better hold of herself before

better at

smiles, as much as

hard. I still lose

So, about

hesitates before shaking

helping here and I'm making a lot of progress with my own problems. Besides, I don't want to

fair enough. Don't go too wild down

[I will.]

it's off to the gate. Back up toward the trunk of the world tree, past the village, up the roots to where the gate stands waiting. After so much time fighting against the hated enemy, I'm almost looking forward to going back to the blazing hot land of the demons. All that smoke, and ash, and … and… what the hell am I looking forward to

well. Here we

me, glowing with incredible mana that makes no sense to me. Wait a second, what am

"Brilliant?"