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 come

the tunnel fort was complete: sturdy walls, narrow opening, firing lines for spells and acid, along with

Just in time.

positions when the haze seemed to thicken, imperceptibly at first, then in a rush,

responded, the pets raising their tendrils and happily wuffing

was enough to prevent the miasma from flowing through the gap, but didn’t break through the haze that

they heard the first roar, then the second, the third, and more, and more. Squelching, wet gurgles of rage bounced off the slime-coated tunnel

tunnel, one minute.

well below freezing, pelting every surface with a barrage of frozen water. Thirty seconds later, they pulled back and

monsters screamed even louder, and

mages cut off the blaze at the

the soldiers lunged and chomped, their mandibles sizzling as they bit into the toxic flesh. Heedless of

goop, but it was stubborn and more than one soldier battled on with a sizzling,

Opening their mouths wide, the wuffers shot forth blasts

slug died, still burbling in fury, and the soldiers hastily pulled the Biomass into the temporary fort. The wuffers descended on it with

wuff!” they

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

had fallen in the furious fighting. The price they had paid for the pitiful progress that had been achieved made her want to chalk up the

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

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 with corrupting miasma. Without the wuffers counteracting the poisonous mana, the ants would have

transparent jelly-caterpillars were only tier three. The next

returning under escort in the next

turned to