Chrysalis

Ah, the fifth. Such a lovely place to be. I mean, the acid isn’t all that enjoyable, but what this stratum lacks in good atmosphere, it makes up for with hospitality.

A disgusting, bloated lobster comes running at me, its eyes boiling with rage, and hissing globs of unspeakable goo bubbling up from its carapace so fast the monster leaves a thick trail of ooze behind it.

I mean, what do I even do? I don’t want to bite the thing. If I actually manage to hurt it, my mandibles will probably melt off. Its claws don’t seem any more appealing than the rest of it. It has four, because of course it does, and the pincers look more like mouths than anything else, each of them streaming virulent yellow bile.

Let’s just say, it isn’t the kind of fight I really look forward to.

Gravity Bomb!

A smaller bomb rips into space and howls toward the offending monster. Unthinking, the beast runs straight into the spell and vanishes as the bomb expands to consume whatever it can.

The lobster screams and rattles, and for a moment, I can see it flailing wildly, bits and pieces pushing out of the void, but only for brief instants, until the spell eventually winks out and the lobster, now missing a large chunk of itself, slumps down defeated. Yeesh. I’m having to do this more and more as time passes. That monster was almost the same size as I am, so it can’t have been too low of a tier, which means I would have loved to get my mandibles on the core.

over the place like they’re firefighters trying to hose down a petrol station before it can explode. Even one of them can put a serious dent in the good work the wuffers have been doing, setting all of us

major threats for the time being, which gives me a little time

dug into the floor of the tunnel to move both toxic

of tunnel that has no

use these ‘nodes’ of wuffers in strategic positions to support each other and maintain the clean mana zone, so this is the test run

we can maintain a whole pack of five hundred wuffers at every section. I have no idea what cores these little globs are made of, but we can’t have

going out there, Eldest?” Brendant calls out to

respond, “but I’ll need a break in around ten

more will always come in. While I’m at it, I trip my regeneration gland and feel a brief moment of relief as

the Vestibule am I able to remain out here for as long