Chrysalis

What is given to us when a monster dies by our hand? Experience. This is the benediction of the System, this gift allows us to grow, to uplift ourselves. Every monster slain is a single brick in the Path that we tread to achieve our perfect self. Since the Divine Descent, when the System made itself known to us, this has been our manifest destiny.

Yet there are questions. How can we best apply ourselves as we walk together on this road? Is there a way that we may devote ourselves more ardently, pursue our purpose more completely?

The great Church of the Path has devoted itself to these questions for thousands of years, desperate to seek a more complete truth.

When a monster is slain, we gain experience for the deed, we grow from the gift of life that we have taken and lay claim to a portion of the experience within the beast. But what of the rest? The experience gained is but a tiny fraction of that possessed by the fallen foe. How can we allow this Holy Sacrament to be squandered in such a way? It's an unthinkable heresy, akin to scattering the Divine upon the ground like rubbish.

Due to the unceasing labour of the faithful, we have been able to ensure our strides are longer, our steps firmer, as we walk along the Path.

Let none of the harvest go to waste. What the Divine has sowed, we shall reap in full.

Excerpt from the 'Book of the Path'

Where one termite goes, many more are sure to follow and it doesn't take long to prove this maxim correct. After Tiny egregiously annihilated the first termite to show itself, another soon rounds the corner, followed by another, then another. The tick-tack clack of claws on stone continues to build as thousands of insectoid enemies converge on our location, their mandibles flexing with hunger for ant flesh.

I need to feel out their locations and general numbers. There's a lot of them,

the drop. If a lizard

[Yesssssssssssssss!]

[SMASH!]

[As you wish, Master.]

hard, heating up my brains as a dozen strings of mana rise under my command. The mana flows and force mana falls into the waiting hands

conversion of magic energy into kinetic energy, and I've been using it to punch my opponents about the place. A force bolt is effectively a little ball of condensed kinetic energy, and I've been piffing them all over the place like magical baseballs, but really, I should have been using spears from the start.

fling them at the encroaching termites the moment they're ready. Just for good measure, I unload a

POW! POW! POW!

piddling stuff I was born with launches through the air, sizzling harshly as it contacts the enemy. Take that, you damn termites!

the gravitational gland as they swarm faster and faster. I can even feel them

foes closes on us, it's time for my comrades to launch into action. Literally sparking with joy, Tiny jumps into the fight, his fists flickering in and out of sight as he punches with such speed and force that my eyes can't track it. All I can see are bright flashes of light as his skill executes and produces devastating fists of pure energy that extend well beyond his reach

must have reached a new

crackle with power and boom like thunder when they land, roasting the target monster and zapping those around it. Combined with his ever more fancy feet, Tiny unleashes a terrifying barrage upon the enemy

hundreds, if not thousands of enemies at a time. In this fight, she doesn't need to employ any fancy tricks. No shadow games, no wasted mana. Instead, she rises from my carapace,