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.”

was calling for them, but I think they’ll

sturdy walls, narrow opening,

Just in time.

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

pets raising their tendrils and happily wuffing as they unleashed

didn’t break through the haze that filled the tunnel in front of them. As

and more. Squelching, wet gurgles of rage

tunnel, one minute.

intense blizzard as fifty ice mages coordinated to drop the temperature well below freezing, pelting every 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 at the rapid temperature shift and the sludge

screamed even louder, and much,

mages cut off the blaze at the last

screeching, its circular maw wide open and a ‘tongue’ of razor-sharp barbs projecting wildly forward. Prepared for the injuries, the soldiers lunged and chomped, their mandibles sizzling as they bit into the toxic flesh. Heedless of the

water from the mages cleaned out much of the goop, but it was stubborn and

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

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

wuff, wuff!” they

and another, then a toxin elemental, then a toad, then more,

finally finished, Solant’s force had been battered, bruised and almost broken a dozen times. The list of injured ants was far too long, and more than a hundred had fallen in the furious fighting. The price they had paid for the pitiful progress that had been

fifth stratum Biomass, dozens of cores and the lessons learned were a rich reward indeed,

the purifying mist and gel, it would have been ten times as difficult to hold off the assault. The sludge monsters had willingly thrown their lives away to try and coat the ants with slime and acid, to fill the position

transparent jelly-caterpillars were only tier three. The next time Solant

to be returning under escort in the next two minutes. Everyone who

turned to