Chrysalis

Before Crinis can dive headlong into the enemy and give herself a terminal case of toxic mana poisoning, I rush back to the safe-zone, alerting the ants as I go.

“We’ve got an attack! Weird… things coming out of the river!”

Once I’m close enough, I use my antennae to try and scrape Crinis off my carapace and fling her into the purified mana, but she clings onto me, refusing to go. More accurately, she lets her body become shadow, and my antennae just slide straight through her. Heck of a trick.

[Crinis, get into the safe-zone, that’s an order.]

[I want to help fight!]

[Sure, do it from inside there. Go! Shoo!]

Unable to resist a direct order, she has no choice but to accede to my demand and slink back inside the blue mana. Invidia is already there, hovering over the blob of darkness, healing and cleansing her of the infection she’s accumulated.

Seriously, eating the things that live here is dangerous business. If we could work out a way to clean the Biomass so we could consume it safely, that would go a long way to helping us break through the stratum.

Considering there’s literal tons of inedible monster coming towards me right now, it’s a bit unfortunate we haven’t worked out that solution yet. Ah well, no time to worry about it now, I’ve got weird… slime things to destroy!

the way down the length of this tunnel, which means there’s a good stretch of it within the safe zone, and of course there are enemies emerging in there

that they hate and try to destroy it, but actually being inside it? Let’s just say it doesn’t seem to agree with them. The moment the monsters emerge, they writhe in pain as the mana which is safe for us proves to be deadly toxic to

of them jumped the gun when I got too close to the river. As it stands, I shouldn’t need to help out with that part of the fight, considering who else is

in there! I’ll deal with the

its rightful place, this narrative is not

stretch across his bat-like face. With a primal roar, the

be able

lot of punishment only seems to

me, what the heck am I going to do? I don’t want to get too close to these things; I’ve already got a dangerous level of toxin exposure, and getting wrapped up by half a dozen of these things wouldn’t help the situation. With the bulk of my mind-constructs devoted to purifying myself, I guess I’m going to have to go about this the

move, leaving a trail behind that will have to be cleaned up later. Ugh, these things are awful. This might get a

squelching and slurping as they use their many limbs to propel themselves forward. Every now and again, I catch a glimpse of

like an awful, fifth stratum version of Crinis gone wrong, aren’t they? If she’d been like this the

let’s see how

limbs toward me, trying to latch on and poison me further. Using my reflexes and forewarning, I dodge efficiently out

VOID CHOMP!