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 through

ants,” she managed to squeeze out. “Everyone is desperately

Carpentant shrugged.

it’s going to take. You’re the one who has to distribute resources, not me. If you tell me no, I’ll go back and make the best of it, but I think we both know what will

causing greater chaos on the plains and costing the ants an enormous haul of cores and Biomass, resources

“but they’re likely to be

sorry for them being thrown into a

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

irritated carver froze before she

“That’s appreciated.”

Sloan sighed and went back to her planning documents, scratching out a few lines of scent and replacing them. The next wave of reinforcements from above had been allocated

over the top allowances the Colony had made when planning to resist the wave in the third stratum, the Dungeon had surprised them yet

the new ‘scent pen’, she completed her new distribution

on the fortress,” she muttered as she rose up from

didn’t really need a

smithy. She claimed it freed up more legs to work with, which was another aspect to the

was immediately enveloped by the flood of messengers. A constant stream ran in both directions, toward the wall and deeper into the nest, requesting medical treatment, or supplies, or any

race along the paths,

own designated speed. This particular passage was six lanes wide, three in either direction, with another six on the roof, split the same way, and she was barely able

All for efficiency.

the surface of the nest. Within the grand fortress, there were well over a hundred thousand of her siblings at present, every one of them dedicated to

up as soon as

What brings you to the front?” she asked, snapping