Chrysalis

“How are the demon traps holding?”

“Barely!”

“Then reinforce them, dammit!”

“I can’t just poke them with an antenna and then they become stronger. I need time to design, materials to build with, ants to do the building. Those are huge construction projects, we can’t just ‘reinforce’ them!”

“Right, sorry.”

Sloan rubbed her antennae against her carapace, trying to calm herself down. The carver, Carpentant, also soothed herself as they took the temperature out of the argument.

Which wasn’t easy inside the third right now. With the mana thickening by the hour, the air only grew hotter and hotter, to the point it had grown oppressive. Ants didn’t mind a bit of heat, not at all, but they weren’t amazing at regulating their temperatures. If things got much worse, they’d need to distribute enchanted equipment to every member of the Colony in the stratum.

“Are the farms at least producing cores and Biomass? They’re working?”

“Oh, they’re working. Too well! There’s so many demons crammed inside that we’re getting double the amount of cores we expected. The workers in charge of maintaining and operating the farms are overwhelmed, but there aren’t enough of us to help them. We need more ants!”

“If you get the numbers you need, will that stop the farms from breaking?”

Carpentant thought for a long moment. It wasn’t a simple question, but the wrong answer could have grave implications. It was already a difficult proposition to contain the mess that the plains had become. If the monsters within the farms broke out….

“If you give me what I’m asking for, plus another ten percent, we’ll have enough to properly run the farms and look to reinforce the structure.”

almost collapsed as pain shot

to squeeze out. “Everyone is

Carpentant shrugged.

one who has to distribute resources, not me. If you tell me no, I’ll go back

the

need,” she promised, “but

do,” Carpentant grumbled. “Feel sorry for them being thrown into a mess like

would have wanted for them either, but I’ll provide extra security as well to

froze before

“That’s appreciated.”

scratching out a few lines of scent and replacing them. The next wave of reinforcements

the Colony had made when planning

she completed her new distribution plan and put

muttered as

really need a

rise up and down and wheel around her smithy. She claimed it freed up more legs to work

stream ran in both directions, toward the wall and deeper into the nest, requesting medical treatment,

and began to race along the paths, keeping pace with the ants on her

passage was six lanes wide, three in either direction, with another six on the roof, split the same way, and she was barely able to keep up in the middle one. To her right, scouts flashed past her as if she were standing still, whereas on

All for efficiency.

ants bustled all over the surface of the nest. Within the grand fortress, there were well over a hundred thousand of her siblings at

rushed up as soon as she

to the front?” she asked, snapping a