Chrysalis

The wuffers go first. Well, that’s not entirely true, I go first, since I can survive down there, for a while at least, without any help. Once I plunge myself back into the goop, I don’t descend this time, but wait as the entire contingent of wuffers is lowered down the tunnel after me.

All five hundred of them.

All mooshed together, they don’t appear like separate monsters at all, but rather one big, blobby, ball of cheeriness as they wuff wuff away, perfectly content with the world. The moment they touch the mana of the fifth however, an arcane-chemical reaction takes place.

The happy pets don’t change at all, but the mana around me certainly does. Like a pump is suddenly turned on, there is a massive whoosh of energy as the wuffers suck in a huge quantity of the poisoned mana. Clinging to the side of the tunnel, it’s like I’m inside a sewer and someone just flushed a whole mess straight into my face.

It’s unpleasant, is what I’m saying.

Once the creatures have taken in all they can, the flow settles down and things return to normal. I nervously wait to see if there’s any activity from below, but the monsters down there seem to be chilling for the time being. After about a minute, something changes. From above, the wuffers finish purifying the mana of the fifth, and release that cleaned energy above themselves.

Then they descend a little and the process starts again.

form a solid mass, not allowing a single drop of corrupted energy to slip past them, and filling the tunnel with clean, pure energy

we’re up to for the time being, which is a good thing, since I have to fight them off by myself if they decide to come up here. I mean, things are bound to go straight to heck

burned constantly by acid, which isn’t the best. I’m also still being invaded by toxic mana, which would devour me if I left it alone for mere minutes. But the rings

they

wuffers doing their work until we reach the lower end of the tunnel. I bring myself down into the chamber itself and perch on the roof, out of trouble’s way. Things are pretty much the same down here as they were

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this larger arterial tunnel, things are going to go straight to heck. In preparation for that moment,

feel a mind bridge connect to

ready, Eldest. Prepare for

[Got it.]

be careful using mind bridges down here, every type of mana is vulnerable to corruption from the atmosphere in the fifth. I didn’t believe it when I heard it was so toxic we couldn’t even make a gate down there, but apparently Brilliant ran tests to confirm it. This mana is so virulent, every other form of energy it comes into contact with will become foul and no longer work, or worse. In the case of a mind bridge, the mana will seep into it, then trace the

purified blue mana slowly falls down into the sludge of the fifth. Both forms of mana are thick and slow-moving, like syrup or molasses, but when they come into contact with each other, they fizz, each trying to eat into the other. As the blue mana spreads, it stretches thin, then pools down to the floor of the cavern where it begins to balloon