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 her

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

Carpentant shrugged.

not me. If you tell me

greater chaos on the plains and costing the ants an enormous haul of

the ants you need,” she promised, “but they’re likely to be fresh graduates. Is that

grumbled. “Feel sorry for them being

them either, but I’ll provide extra

irritated carver froze before

“That’s appreciated.”

the chamber, Sloan sighed and went back to her planning documents, scratching out a few lines of scent

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

her new distribution plan and put

check on the fortress,” she muttered as she rose

really need a chair, they were perfectly content to work while standing, but it felt nice

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

deeper into the nest, requesting medical treatment, or supplies, or any number of things. She was

and began to race along the paths, keeping pace

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

All for efficiency.

was a staging ground and ants bustled all over the

as soon as she saw Sloan heading to the

front?” she asked, snapping a one antenna