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

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

Carpentant shrugged.

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

and costing the ants an enormous haul of cores and

“but

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

not what I would have wanted for them either, but I’ll provide extra security as well to

irritated carver froze before

“That’s appreciated.”

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

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

‘scent pen’, she completed her

muttered as she

despite the need for varying sizes. They didn’t really need a chair, they were perfectly content to work while standing, but it felt nice to rest the legs

down and wheel around her smithy. She claimed it

nest, requesting medical treatment, or supplies, or any number of things.

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

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 her left,

All for efficiency.

from the 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 of them

soon as she

the front?” she asked, snapping a one antenna