Chrysalis

These things seriously don’t want to become biomass so bad they’re going to reconstitute themselves from tiny chunks of goop?! How are they even alive?! I feel like I’m fighting the fifth stratum equivalent of Leeroy and the Immortals. Did this monster put all of its evolutionary points into cheating death?

The individual blobs writhe and roll over the floor, leaving a sizzling trail of acid behind them as they go. My fellow ants are hesitant to engage, wary of spreading toxic mana throughout the safezone, whereas Tiny is enthusiastically smashing every bit of ooze he can see into ever smaller pieces. He doesn’t seem to be successful in actually finishing them off, though. No matter how small the pieces get, they start to pull themselves back together all the same.

That doesn’t make any sense, there has to be a core in there somewhere. Well, I suppose there doesn’t have to be, but a monster that evolves without one is hardly going to be strong at all, no matter how far they go.

Or perhaps cores can take a different form? I was offered an evolution that basically turned me into an insubstantial wisp of energy sort of thing. Where the heck would my core go in that body?

I have to say, if we manage to find a way to finish these lousy things but don’t get a core out of it, I’m going to feel cheated.

There are globs of these monsters all around me; in fact, some are even on me, having showered everywhere after my cataclysmic bite. The acid burns fiercely as they slowly crawl their way together, leaving slime trails on my precious carapace.

I am having none of this!

Time to spin up the omni-elemental construct! Soon enough, I have a powerful stream of water blasting myself clean and a roaring burst of fire attempting to cook the goop as they try to merge.

Of course, it doesn’t work that well. The fifth seems to have known instinctively that burning everything here with fire would be most people’s reaction to seeing the place and has built in resistance accordingly. The more I attempt to burn the stuff, the less effective I’m sure it’s being. The outside of every chunk is being cooked, but inside? No effect, as if the slime hunks were sacrificing an outer layer to fireproof themselves.

SERIOUSLY?! Just how resilient are these things? This is getting ridiculous.

All around me, the goop piles are growing larger and larger as more of the masses pull themselves together. Limbs are starting to reappear, and soon enough, some of them will be whole again, as if I’d never hit them with an empowered void chomp at all.

VOID CHOMP! To think a monster exists who can just shrug it off as if it

report any instances

destroy these things, and

and the safe-zone, switching my regular

almost-white fire blasts forward, instantly raising the temperature of the entire tunnel. Surely,

like exposing the monsters to a rocket engine than a flamethrower, a whole

it actually works!

wiggling their way back together, but the larger masses

So frustrating!

I haven’t worked out a solution. I suppose

about the little pieces, but when they get big enough, smash them apart again. I’ll

[Fine…]

away inside the purified mana, but he’s only made the problem worse, spreading toxic goo all

way to

small pieces and burn them, but not everyone has access to

cutting through a dozen of them and flinging the pieces apart,

ask desperately, [do you have any ideas on how

demon’s voice purrs in my

can

suppose