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.”

it was calling for

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

Just in time.

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

the core shapers grudgingly responded, the pets raising their tendrils

gap, but didn’t break through the haze that filled the tunnel in front of them.

and more. Squelching, wet gurgles of rage bounced off the slime-coated tunnel walls to reach them

the tunnel,

tunnel ahead was swept with an 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

screamed even louder,

fire mages cut off the blaze at the last second and scuttled backward, huge soldiers rushing

wall of chitin was four soldiers deep when the first slug arrived, 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 wounds, the slug pushed forward, discharging

stubborn and more than one soldier battled on with

shot forth blasts of pure gel that clung to the ooze whenever they came

into the temporary fort. The

wuff, wuff!”

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

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

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

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 been fighting abdomen

The next time Solant returned, she was determined they

under escort in the next two minutes. Everyone who is healthy will remain here and form the defensive line as we pull

turned to the core