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.”

pain shot through

squeeze

Carpentant shrugged.

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

and costing the ants an enormous

“but they’re likely to be fresh graduates.

sorry for them being thrown into a

have wanted for them either, but I’ll provide extra security as well to make sure you all stay

carver froze before she

“That’s appreciated.”

lines of scent and replacing them. The next wave of reinforcements from above had been allocated already, but now had to be

the top allowances the Colony had made when planning to resist the wave in

new ‘scent pen’, she completed her new distribution

muttered as she

didn’t really need a chair, they

and wheel around her smithy. She claimed it freed up more legs to work with, which was another aspect

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

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

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 her left, soldiers rumbled along at a much slower pace,

All for efficiency.

nest, she found herself only a kilometre from the outer wall. The area at this exit was a staging ground and ants bustled all over the surface of the nest. Within the grand fortress, there were well over a hundred thousand of her siblings at present, every one

soon as she

What brings you to the front?”