Chrysalis

Two weeks into the wave and all I’ve been doing is grinding. Now, I’m as big a fan of grinding Skills as the next person. In fact, my dedication to mindless repetitive tasks has become legendary all throughout the lands! Anthony the dedicated, they call me!

Gah. Even the self-help pep talk is failing to do anything at this point. My three loyal associates are doing their best to get all the Levels they can and I don’t want to interfere, so what can I do other than sit here and fight, grinding my own Skills as I push towards my new fusions? Perhaps it’s a character flaw, but I seriously struggle with this repetitive grinding! My brain doesn’t want to sit still! Having multiple brains, each controlling multiple mind constructs, doesn’t help the problem, it makes it worse!

Can you even imagine what it’s like to be bored in thirty-six different brains?!

I’m literally hanging off the roof, juggling fireballs off shields while rolling balls of rock through an obstacle course using force magic and I’m booooooooored!

Of course, that’s not all I’m doing. Whenever a new monster rolls up the tunnel or pops out of the wall, I’m forced to enter combat and dispose of them, which happens every few minutes. Then there’s the mind-bendingly difficult external mana manipulation practice I’m putting myself through, burning my brains to try and move mana inside my opponents, or shift the energy at the very limits of my range. It’s exhausting work, only it isn’t because I can’t really get tired.

When I finally notice the toxic miasma creeping up the tunnel, I’m almost glad to see it. Almost.

“You might all want to move back,” I warn the ants behind me.

It’s on the very edge of my awareness now, a slow moving sense of virulence. When I reach out to take hold of the mana, I can almost feel it trying to cling to me, to infect me via even the touch of my mind.

Yuck.

to spread the word to the others in case they haven’t picked up on it yet. The fifth

a snappy reply and I can

over the top of it. With how much that mana loves to spread, I’m not shocked at all to see it sliding on up the tunnels to

NOT looking forward to exploring the fifth stratum. Not even

miasma of doom making its way up through the tunnels, I can only assume the regular spawns are getting melted before they have the chance to sniff out

of the goop. The air in the tunnel ahead of me begins to darken and almost… thicken. A green haze wafts about, and not like, a

there’s only one thing

out of everything for over a hundred metres down

The stuff is already doing a number on the lower tunnels; the normally abundant life mana, and the abundant grasses, flowers, plants and other

This stuff is seriously

potent. How the heck has the fourth managed to stay free of it for so long? Does it only creep up here during a wave and then

is doing all over the base of the nest now.

of annihilating every hint of poison with Dragon’s Breath, I come across my first monster in a while. Unfortunately, it’s