Chrysalis

It turned out, monsters from the fifth didn't much like it when you took their slime away. An hour after first deploying the ‘Wuffers’, as the ants had begun to call them, much to the annoyance of the core shapers, they saw for the first time how the slugs would react when they saw someone messing with their precious goop.

How could Solant describe it? They went absolutely, one-hundred percent, without exception, gonzo crazy.

A fat toad monster hopped around the corner and saw the wuffers happily huffing and puffing, soaking up the slime and purifying it, and grew still. Naturally, the ants had sprung into action, recovering the slow-moving pets and taking up a defensive formation.

What they didn’t expect was for the frog to unleash a mighty croak, the explosive exhalation filled with mindless rage, before it hurled itself headlong toward the massed ant position. Such was its anger, the monster fought completely heedless of its own survival, throwing itself recklessly into the jaws of the soldiers, trying to crush them with its mass whilst it lashed out with powerful legs, lashing tongue and toxic bile.

Many were wounded, despite the fight being thousands against one, and Solant was not pleased.

In the midst of reprimanding her soldiers for their slow reaction, and blaming herself for not foreseeing the situation, she sensed something might be a little off, and stared hard into the haze-filled depths before them.

“Let’s pull back and fortify,” she ordered crisply. “I want tunnel fort three dash two constructed in five minutes.”

“That build is allotted seven minutes,” her lead carver and fellow broodmate, Subutant, stated.

“We don’t have seven,” Solant replied shortly and the carver dashed away, issuing a flurry of instructions to her fellow builders.

“What do you see?” Sumant asked, bracing in the frontline along with the other soldiers as they began an ordered, step by step retreat toward the mountain fortifications.

“That frog would have been heard for kilometres through these tunnels,” Solant replied, watching the haze intently.

“You think it was calling for reinforcements? It didn’t seem that intelligent.”

don’t think it was calling for them, but I think they’ll come

minutes, the basic outline of the tunnel fort was complete: sturdy walls, narrow opening, firing

Just in time.

their positions when the haze seemed to thicken, imperceptibly at first, then in a rush, growing so dense that Solant could barely see ten metres

core shapers grudgingly responded, the pets raising their tendrils and happily wuffing as they unleashed

the haze that filled the tunnel in front of them.

the second, the third, and more, and more. Squelching, wet gurgles of rage bounced off the slime-coated tunnel

and fire the tunnel, one minute. Quick!”

surface with a barrage of frozen water. Thirty seconds later, they pulled back and the fire mages stepped forward, igniting the air itself in a furious blast. Rock groaned and cracked

louder, and

blaze at the last second and scuttled backward, huge soldiers rushing

projecting wildly forward. Prepared for the injuries, the soldiers lunged and chomped, their mandibles sizzling as they bit into

stubborn and more than

the wuffers shot forth blasts of pure gel that clung to the ooze whenever they came into contact, acting to counteract and

soldiers hastily pulled the Biomass into the temporary fort. The wuffers descended on it with apparent joy, settling atop

wuff!” they

another, then a toxin elemental, then a

than a hundred had fallen in the furious fighting. The price they had paid for the pitiful

the lessons learned were a rich reward indeed, not to mention what they had learned about

thrown their lives away to try and coat the ants with slime and acid, to fill the position with corrupting miasma. Without the wuffers counteracting the poisonous mana, the ants would

were only tier three. The next time

ordered. “I want the most wounded to be returning under escort in the next two minutes. Everyone who is healthy will remain here and form the defensive line

to the core