[Look at that, Crinis, nice healthy lungs, very satisfying. Seeing this makes me feel like we might have healed the stratum, not just conquered it, you know what I mean?]
Indeed, poking about through the lungs, a place of literal nightmares not that long ago, is extremely satisfying for me. I'd fought and run through here when it was a mess of rot, disease and mucus unlike anything else in the fifth. The horrors I saw that day will never truly leave me, but looking at it now, I feel the burden in my soul ease a little.
It was worth it. So long as it stays this way!
[You don't have lungs, do you, Master?] Crinis asks curiously. [Are you sure this is healthy?]
She reaches out a tentacle and pokes it into the wall, which squishes under the pressure.
[It seems a little weak to me….]
[Of course I… don't… have lungs. I'm an ant! I have spiracles!]
Yeah, of course I don't have lungs. In fact, do I even have spiracles? I don't think monsters need to breathe at all. Crinis sure as heck doesn't have lungs.
[Hey, Tiny, do you breathe?]
The big ape looks at me, confused, then points at his mouth.
[Yeah, do you breathe through it?]
He mimes putting something in his mouth.
[No, I don't mean inhaling food. Would you talk, dammit! I know you can!]
[I think so,] he replies, a little grumpy.
I swear he's actively trying to regress his own brain by not thinking as much as possible, hoping the energy will transfer to his muscles. I've decided I'm going to double the amount of cunning he has in his next evolution. Take that!
Or… will that just make him more capable of coming up with schemes to destroy his own intelligence? It's possible. Definitely possible.
[What about you, Invidia? Do you breathe?]
[I do notssss. But I can if you needsss me to.]
[Uh, no. No, I don't need you to, but thanks for offering.]
[You're very welcomesssss.]
Invidia is so dang polite these days. Just a stand-up monster you can rely on. Tiny, on the other hand….
Monsters are starting to spawn in here in increasing numbers. All sorts of weird blobby things are oozing about, devouring each other. Most of them slide away when we get close, but a few are severely lacking any sense of danger.
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Those are promptly dealt with by Tiny and Crinis.
No longer pumping thick sludge through the arteries behind the walls, the feeling of moving through the tunnels is a heck of a lot more pleasant than before. I have to wonder if the dense mucus has been replaced by a different type of fluid. Given the organic nature of the fifth, is it blood? Or something similar?
My assumption is that hyper-dense mana becomes a liquid, and in the fifth that meant horrendous sludge. Now, it's got to be something else, but I haven't seen it with my own eyes.
We keep patrolling through the web of narrow tunnels and chambers, keeping our senses peeled for interference or even the slightest hint of contaminated energy sneaking back into the lungs. So far, there hasn't been any sign of it, but the lungs are actually massive. I don't think anyone's bothered to properly measure, but it probably covers hundreds of cubic kilometres, if not thousands.
It's Crinis who spots the first sign of trouble on the second day inside.
[Master, I think something is watching us,] she warns me, stirring to life on my back.
With her unique senses, it's incredibly hard to hide from Crinis, even if she is physically blind. Shadows and darkness are like windows she can see through, and her ability to sense mana is on par with Invidia's. Naturally, she can't 'see' as far as I can with the ol' eyeballs, but if something is close enough, she's going to spot it.
[Watching us? Is it slugs?]
I cast my own senses about, trying to spot corrupted mana or the tiny eddies the Krath give off to my gravitational sense, but there's nothing out of the ordinary. As far as I can tell, all around us is cleansed mana, which means this whole place is a death zone to the slugs.
[I'm not sure what it is,] she replies, her tentacles starting to twist in anger, [but I don't like it.]
[Keep an eye out. If it so much as twitches, I want to know about it.]
For the next few hours, we keep moving but with a slightly nervous feeling, wondering just who is watching and if they're trying to get a jump. Crinis can't tell me more details, but every now and again she confirms that whatever it is, it's still there.
After five hours of this, I get increasingly nervous and on edge. Eventually, I can't take any more of it and just burst out with a broad range mental explosion.
[OI! Stop sneaking about and make a move, dammit!]
I have no idea if anything even heard that, but I stand still, glaring at the walls around me. My anger is real! Show yourself!
Eventually, something does show itself, and the moment I catch a glimpse, I tense up. Oozing through the wall comes a monster I've seen before. In fact, I only know one monster that can ooze through a wall like that!
Just before I yell at the team to blast it, I realise that it looks… different. No longer formed of slime and mucus, but rather a deep, ruby-red jelly-like substance. Almost none of the creature emerges, barely enough to be the size of a human.
It waggles at us.
Tentatively, I reach out, restraining Crinis, who immediately wanted to rip it apart.
[Uh… hello? Again?]
The mind bridge connects, and I sense a placid, calm mind on the other side.
[It… has been a long time… since I have communicated… with another.]
The thoughts are halting, as if the monster was trying to dredge up the forms their mind needed to take from a distant memory.
[Thank… thank you… for setting… me free…]
[You're… welcome? I suppose? Please don't eat me… or any other ants?]
[I… will not….]
With that promise, the jelly oozes back through the spongy flesh of the wall and vanishes once more.
Has… has that monster been alive since the fifth was corrupted?!?!
Holy moly!
-x-X-x-
Solant was grateful to have finally escaped the clutches of the healers. Persistent to a fault, they refused to let her go until they had determined the medical cause of her strange behaviour, of which there was none. In order to finally be free, she had been forced to confess that being in the lungs made her feel… uncomfortable.
She could still hear their howls of laughter ringing on the fine hairs of her antennae.
It was worth it to be released. Had they kept her much longer, Leonidant would have launched a rescue mission, leading to possibly the first ever infighting within the family. That simply wouldn't do.
Violence among siblings? Unthinkable.
No, there were many, perfectly non-violent, ways for Solant to get her satisfaction from the healer caste. They would regret their mockery.
"Welcome back, general," Caesant greeted her in the command post.
Everyone was busy, messengers still running in and out in a steady flow, logistics officers keeping up the running tally of supplies and movements, scout marshals updating maps and tracking the never-ending reports coming in from their troops.
Despite the activity, there was a significantly different feeling than there had been during the invasion, when every moment mattered and they teetered on the edge of disaster at every turn. Now, the tension had come down several notches, urgent professionalism replaced with quiet competence.
Solant relaxed… slightly.
"No major issues while I was… indisposed?" she inquired.
"No, general, nothing major. Nothing minor either, to tell the truth. The Eldest has been sending back reports daily, and they haven't seen anything down there to suggest the environment might regress. No sign of the Krath either."
"Let's not let our guard down," Solant said. "Make sure to remind everyone how disastrous a mistake at this stage of the campaign would be."
Even if no one else was, Solant was keenly aware of just how precarious their position was right now. As a result of her decision to bring the entire supply of condensed mana to this depth, the rest of the Colony's territory had become vulnerable. She had no doubt that the fortresses higher in the stratum were suffering and that Krath were pushing at the boundaries of their territory.
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Not to mention the terrible cost in materials and antpower that had been committed to the project. Solant had pulled in the entire output of the Colony to make this invasion a success.
If these depths returned to being polluted, then it would have been for nothing. Who knew how long it would take before they would get another chance?
For now, it looked as if everything was going well and they had been successful in conquering this final stretch of the fifth. For now.
"There's only one blot in the brew, so to speak," Leonidant said, joining the conversation from where she had been waiting near the scout marshals. "Mind you, I could go for a cup of tea."
"What's the issue?" Solant demanded.
"Mana rising in the depths. The pattern has been consistent for the last four days. There's a wave coming."
"From how deep are our readings coming?"
"We had new measurement stations installed just above the sixth. "
That wasn't good news. If the mana was already rising at that depth, then it would hit them sooner than she would have liked. It would lead to the natural mana of the fifth thickening, which wouldn't normally be a problem, but while the cleansed energy produced by the wuffers was able to combat Theorazzn's corruption, the native energy was not.
To keep the contagion at bay, there needed to be a constant injection of cleansed energy into the hearts so they could disperse it throughout the Dungeon. Right now, the Colony was staring down an imminent shortage at the moment they needed a greater supply.
"This… could be a problem," she said.
She'd expected there to be a few more weeks, time enough for the Colony to rebuild their reserves to a point where they could adequately defend. Not being able to get below and trace the earlier signs of a wave developing meant she had been caught unprepared.
Problems were inevitable and not worth thinking about. She focused on solutions.
The Colony needed energy, lots of it. Where was it going to come from?
She'd heard something, a few words only that were currently tickling the back of her mind. Someone had said… yes… they'd mentioned the wuffers… and mucus… while she was in the lungs.
As the memory came back, she snapped her mandibles shut. Mendant had mentioned it while they were touring the lungs. That reminded her.
"Leonidant, two orders of business, both of which need to be seen to immediately."
"I'm listening, general," her sister said, jumping to attention, focus absolute.
"First, I need to know where the healers diverted the mucus coming from the lungs and polluting the arteries as soon as possible."
"I will find out immediately. And second?"
"The next shipment of cake and tea to the healers in this fortress. It is imperative that it goes missing."
Leonidant didn't miss a beat.
"Understood, general."
Solant nodded with satisfaction. Things would work out, she could feel it.
-x-X-x-
Solant and Leonidant looked down into the vast pit together, neither quite sure what to say.
"To borrow a phrase from the Eldest, holy moly," Leonidant muttered.
Solant quite agreed, but looking at the disgusting soup in front of them, she wasn't quite sure if she trusted herself to speak.
What was this weakness? Unacceptable vulnerability in the face of the Colony's need. She could not tolerate it.
Yet, the scene in front was just so nauseating.
So far, the healers and carvers were still learning how to work with the natural network of arteries and veins that stretched out from the lungs like a vast spiderweb. A distribution system on a continental scale that took everything produced by the lungs and spread it out across a truly vast swathe of Dungeon. The Krath had tapped into that network and made extensive use of it in a variety of ways, and now the Colony was racing to do the same.
However, before the lungs had been fully healed, they were producing enormous quantities of toxic sludge. That sludge, if given the opportunity, would corrupt every drop of mana that touched it, multiplying and growing until it overwhelmed the Colony's protections and turned this entire area back into what it had been before.
So they'd found a place to dump it, and this was it.
A vast lake of sludge.
Yet, if that was all it was, that would be fine, Solant could tolerate that. But mixed in with the sludge and slime was an equal amount of what the lungs were producing now, which was a reddish, viscous fluid that foamed and frothed as chunks of unspeakable mucus floated through it. Unable to filter one substance from the other, the healers had been forced to dump all of the lungs' output here, mixing the two together like the world's most unappetising soup.
If that was all it was, then she would still have been fine. But composed entirely of natural energy of the fifth, the reddish liquid was completely vulnerable to the contagious mana of the mucus. The entire lake bubbled and steamed as the mucus churned away, consuming the benign mana like a rabid wolf and causing huge bubbles of mucus to rise up to the surface and burst into showers of sludge.
If that was all it was, then she could have managed. Happily flolloping away in this wonderland of contagion were the wuffers, getting coated and buried in this dreadful mix while cheerfully wuffing away as if they were in paradise.
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The end result was a chaotic, frothing mess that left her feeling decidedly unsettled.
"It may not look like it," Tungstant said from beside them, "but the system here is stable. The wuffers are consuming the mucus at a decent rate and the energy they create is being fed back into the lake. Eventually they'll purify the lot, but it's going to take a while."
"There's been a change of plans," Solant said, mastering herself. "We're going to have to do some work here."
"More work?" Tungstant scowled. "Haven't we done enough lately?"
"We rest when the work is done," Solant replied, "and right now we have a dangerous situation developing."
"What's the problem?" Tungstant sighed.
Leonidant replied.
"Wave is brewing faster than we expected," she said. "With the Colony's reserves so low, we need a ton of cleansed energy and we need it fast."
Tungstant was smart, she immediately realised what they were talking about.
"You want to use this as a way to generate the mana that we need?"
She turned to look back at the vast lake of churning, battling mana.
"That might be a little difficult," she said.
Effectively, what Solant wanted was to turn this lake of warring energy into an endless food source for the wuffers. Right now, the blobby creatures were happily drifting through the lake, chewing up the corruption that they encountered and spitting cleansed mana back into the mix. If they were removed, put onto platforms and their output funneled out into the network and distributed to the fortress reservoirs rather than using it to fix the lake… it could boost the supply just enough to cover the shortfall.
Of course, the wuffers would eventually eat through the entire supply of contagious mana, which is where the output of the lungs came in. If they continued redirecting that flow into the lake, there would be an effectively endless supply of food for the wuffers to dine on.
The more she thought about it, the more it made sense to Tungstant.
"To be fair," she said, sighing, "it isn't that much work. We already have the outlet valves here and the network infrastructure isn't that far away. It won't be hard to connect it up, and we can connect the platforms easily enough."
"Excellent," Solant said, nodding. "I need it done in a few hours."
Tungstant's antennae twitched.
"Excuse me? We don't even have the materials necessary for the construction? What are we supposed to do?! We can't even start for a few hours!"
"The necessary components are on the way and the core shapers are coming to help wrangle the wuffers and provide the numbers necessary for the project. You will have everything you need here within the hour."
Solant, as always, was ruthlessly efficient. Before she came to speak to Tungstant, the necessary steps had already been taken to put the project in motion.
"Fine," Tungstant groaned. "I assume the build teams are already on the way?"
Solant nodded.
"I'll start drawing up plans, then."
"Cobalt is already working on it. She'll be here soon."
The carver could only slump in defeat.
-x-X-x-
Power abounded. An unceasing hurricane of energy that grew, and grew, and grew, ever rising, climbing a mountain to reach a peak that never seemed to come.
Around the sleeping entity, a world of storms raged. Pillars of lightning as thick as buildings coiled like snakes, shattering detonations of sound and light so deafening and blinding as to obliterate normal senses. Winds didn't howl here, they shrieked. Cutting like blades as they sliced through the dense cloud.
Something stirred, a ripple of awareness that rolled outwards from the entity, transferred to the cloud and spread throughout the realm. Instantly, the swooping, darting hunters, as fast as lightning, as light as air, fled into the outer reaches of the cloud. Petty squabbles and meagre hunts were put to the side—this was a matter of survival.
Kygar was waking.
A creature of raw, elemental power, the Ancient known as Kygar the Stormbringer earned his name through no fault of his own. After all, Kygar did not create storms through any conscious action, they simply existed around him, always, endlessly intensifying.
Rising to alertness was a slow process for a creature that slept as deeply as the Ancient. Gradual and patient, sensation and thought returned one piece at a time. The feeling of the wind. The surging, wild mana. Finally, the sense of self.
In an explosion of lightning that ripped away the boiling cloud, the Ancient came to consciousness and beheld his realm once more.
A powerful mind, long held back by slumber, now expanded outwards like water from a burst dam, flooding the domain of Stormcloud and chasing its inhabitants even further away. They could sense the thoughts of the awakened Ancient, could feel the burning hunger within him.
Yet Kygar was patient, for now. Lazily, he drifted, an unformed entity of elemental majesty, revelling in the feeling of being alive once more, no longer locked in a cage of dreaming.
From beneath his realm, mana surged in an unending flood, rising to suffuse his being and saturate his core before going further, out into the Dungeon above to sustain this world he had been born in.
Mana coiled, a tiny wisp of connection that threaded out to him from beyond the boundaries of the cloud. He allowed the contact.
[Carriflare. I have only just awoken. Why do you trouble me?]
[What trouble? I sought only to greet you.]
Even through the slender contact the Ancients allowed between themselves, Kygar could feel the searing heat, the everburning hunger of his fellow elemental. Never content to burn like coals and embers, Carriflare's mind was ever hot and raging, seeking fuel to slake its appetite. No doubt it had leapt at this new stimulus, the first to do so since their realms abutted each other.
[I am certain this is the case,] Kygar replied, knowing that there was a great deal more the Everflame wanted to say.
[You are one of the last to wake this cycle. There will be a gathering soon.]
[Odren is awake?] Kygar replied, rippling with a hint of surprise. The Father of Monsters tended to rise after Kygar.
[I tell no falsehoods,] Carriflare replied, temper rising.
[Of course not,] Kygar said. [I am merely a little surprised.]
Drifting, Kygar absorbed this news. Among the last to wake? A gathering? It appeared there would be less time than usual before events got away from him. Planning and reflection would have to wait. Right now, he needed to eat.
Lighting crashed, striking through the cloud in an unpredictable zig-zagging pattern. Crying in alarm, monsters tried to escape, zipping away at the speed of thought. One wasn't fast enough.
Struck in the core, the creature struggled and fought, deeply resistant to the surging current, yet was overwhelmed just the same. As quickly as the bolt had gone out, it returned, delivering the prey directly to the Ancient, who manifested his gargantuan maw and consumed it in a single mouthful.
It wasn't enough, not nearly, but for an appetiser, it would do. The stirrings of a renewed strength began to suffuse the Ancient's form as he digested his first meal in centuries.
[A satisfying hunt?] Carriflare inquired.
[I take no satisfaction in such things. As you know.]
Despite being a similar type of monster at the time of their birth, there was a great deal of difference between the two. Their attitude to hunting being merely one manifestation of their conflicting attitudes.
[Who sleeps still?] Kygar asked.
It was important to know, much would change depending on who still slept and who had awoken. Plans thousands of years in the making were coming to fruition and Kygar did not intend to be caught unawares, nor snared in the machinations of his peers.
[Zothoth. Yarrum. Yolesh.]
So few. The cycle would soon be reaching its climax. Soon being a relative term for an entity of such age. When all nineteen were awake, the Dungeon would be flooded with mana as it had so long ago. Chaos would reign and only the strong would survive. As it had been before, it would be again.
Except, maybe this time, they would find what they needed.
[Have there been any promising signs this cycle?] Kygar asked.
To his surprise, Carriflare snickered.
[Theorazzn was scolded by a monster in the fifth. It threatened to end him when it reached us.]
Kygar paused for a moment in its slow drift.
[A monster from the fifth has gone against the will of Theorazzn? That is unusual.]
[Not for long. I don't think I've ever seen Morribolg so pleased.]
Carriflare went on to explain and Kygar, patient as a gathering storm, listened and planned.
-x-X-x-
A gathering of Ancients was a myth, often speculated about amongst the cultists who worshipped them, wondering what their gods did deep in the Dungeon. They did not meet. Kygar could not recall a time when he had been in the physical presence of another of the Ancients, with only a single exception.
However, that occasion didn't count, since neither he nor Carriflare had been Ancients at that time. Rather, they had been powerful monsters descending into the Dungeon and trying to reach the centre, to reach the apex of power and unravel the mysteries of their world.
Against all the odds, both had succeeded, but the number of rivals they had left broken or devoured on the way numbered in the thousands.
Even when they had broken to the surface, they had risen directly upwards from their own domains, never crossing paths with one another. Kygar had considered the reason they never encountered each other. It wasn't as if they couldn't occupy the same physical space, but perhaps there was danger in such a meeting.
How long had it been since they had desperately struggled and fought to rise to their current positions? Now they lived in a world where there was no challenge to be found except in each other. Was there a chance that they would seek to devour each other should they come face to face?
Counterproductive considering they were attempting to add to their number, not diminish it.
Whatever the reason, Kygar personally felt no compulsion to seek out his fellow Ancients in the flesh, content to drift, to gather power until the time to storm and rage finally arrived. Only then would he unleash his strength and crash against the walls that constrained him.
For now, the Ancients would speak to each other as they always had… carefully and sparingly. Yet, occasionally there would be a meeting of the minds. A conversation between these peers, the most feared and powerful on all of Pangera.
A Conclave.
Floating in the centre of Stormcloud, Kygar could feel the others stir, their minds extending, reaching outwards, bending around the core of the world, not wanting to draw its attention. He did the same, pushing outwards, extending a tiny thread of thought that wound its way to the others.
Somewhere close to Odren's realm, they met. Monstrous minds linking together through the smallest of possible links, lest their thoughts clash too strongly and damage the Dungeon.
[A FRUITFUL CYCLE,] declared the Father of Monsters. [THERE IS GREAT PROMISE TO BE HAD.]
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Savage and beastly, Odren's mind snarled and growled through the connection. Kygar could almost feel the bare teeth, dripping with saliva and reaching for his throat.
[New fleshhhhhh to carve,] Horgran rumbled.
With a voice like a sharp blade thunking into meat, Horgran's mind thirsted for butchery like a normal monster hungered for Biomass.
[There is little point to the Call if we kill them ourselves,] Kygar stated.
[We have killed before and we will kill again,] Theorazzn hissed.
So virulent and furious were the thoughts of the Decaying One that Kygar instinctively pulled back, not wanting to be infected with it. Cautiously, he approached once more.
It appeared as though the fury of Theorazzn had indeed been provoked as Carriflare had said. That was one candidate who wouldn't make it to the depths.
[It's not OUR PLACE to choose those who live or DIE,] Morribolg cut in.
Rising and falling like a bubble in a bog, Morribolg's thoughts surged and faded in equal measure. Even through the narrow link, the glee felt by the Fetid Earth was clear to all, delighting in Theorazzn's setback.
Before the two bitter rivals could surge against each other, Torra spoke. A rumble so deep as to shudder against the depths of his mind and simultaneously a scream so high it was beyond comprehension, the thoughts of the Dread Dog were enough to unsettle even the Ancients.
[Care not for your bickering. Speak only of what concerns us all.]
[I am not here to listen to others snipe at each other,] Kygar agreed.
A tiny hint of anger sparked inside him, causing the storm surrounding his form to accelerate. Lightning crashed in the depths of his mind, clear to the others connected to him.
[Have we identified the prospects?]
The mind of Syssernix, creature of darkness, was a maze of shadows and whispers, their thoughts little more than a ghostly touch upon the others.
[THE CALL HAS SNARED MORE THAN FIFTY CHILDREN,] Odren snarled gleefully. [EVEN NOW THEY JOURNEY TO MEET US, THOUGH MANY WILL FAIL TO MAKE IT.]
That many? An unusual cycle indeed. Perhaps there was hope after all.
[How close are they?] Kygar asked keenly, thoughts crackling with possibilities.
[SOME ARE CLOSE. MOST ARE FAR.]
Would there be enough time for them to make it? How many would make it past their enemies? If history was anything to go by, not many.
[How many will the Legion hunt down this time?] Carriflare wondered.
[Hack their BONES!] Horgan roared, rage flaring.
[Go, if you can,] Syssernix whispered. [You have my blessing.]
Wordlessly, soundlessly, Horgran bellowed in anger. Kygar could hear the flowing blood splatter in his thoughts.
It was too soon, none of them could leave their realms yet. By the time they could, hopefully some prospects remained alive.
With silent agreement, the Ancients broke apart, no more to be said.
-x-X-x-
Holy moly! What in the name of all that is good and Gandalf is that?!
Hovering a good five feet off the ground and looking like a pulsing mass of… something, the monster is blasting me directly in the bonce with powerful mental attacks. Looking at Tiny, he's probably already succumbed to it and is about to start swinging at me, so I ask Invidia to straighten him out before things go poorly for us.
After staring at it a little longer, I realise where the vague sense of familiarity is coming from. This monster is formed of those weird little blob and rope creatures, the one that tried to suck my brain through the carapace a few days ago! It's like… thousands of them all stuck together to make… this.
A moment later, I realise what this actually is. It's a brain. A floating brain. Which means that little monster thing was actually… like… an individual neuron?
Monsters down here in the fifth are so freakin' weird. I never thought I'd be thinking it got stranger after the corruption was cleansed, but here we are. Well, I can't just stand around and let it attack us. Sorry, brain, you've got to go.
[You have slain level 24 Cerebrum Juvenile]
[You have gained XP.]
I half expect it to dissolve back into its individual, 'cellular' components, but nope, it just collapses to the ground. I'm tempted to take a nibble just to see the basic profile, but I don't really want to. Most of what I eat now is pretty unappetising, but that is truly, spectacularly unappealing.
How do the monsters down here even work? Do they evolve like regular monsters, or do they group together to evolve? Most of the advanced forms of native fifth stratum monsters have been collectives of basic tier one spawns, all rolled together to make a tissue or organ of some variety.
Can they go even further? What if a brain, a bunch of muscles and bones along with stomach, lungs, maybe a liver or something, all team up and group evolve? Do they bond together to make some sort of super monster!?
I don't want to find out and thankfully, I won't have to. Soon enough, this is all going to be someone else's problem and I can go explore the sixth.
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Word came down from above that the wave is building pretty fast, so I'll have to hang around here and wait until that blows over, help batten down the hatches and all that, but once it's done… new frontiers!
Also, ever since the word came down about the wave, I immediately started to notice the density of mana going up really fast. Along with the mana goes the spawn rate, causing way, way more of the tier one monsters to start jumping out into the tunnels, infesting the lungs and tunnels around the hearts.
The more of those little critters there are, the faster the higher tier monsters have started to appear. In truth, the fifth might be the most profitable area for the Colony to set up farms. If the monsters can evolve just by grouping together… although how do they power up their cores then? They'd still need to fight and absorb the cores of their defeated foes.
Still, with mana so thick and abundant here, monsters can form them pretty darn quick. No need to drink the electric water like I did; as long as they get the Levels, they can form one right fast.
I'll leave it to the smarter ones at the Colony to work out, I'm sure they're on it already.
My job is to make sure the mana in here stays clean, which it is, and that the Krath don't show their sluggy faces, which they haven't.
We're in the lower reaches of the tunnels at the moment. Just a few kilometres lower, maybe five or six, and this stratum will give way to the next. I can feel it, the hook in my soul, always there, always pulling. Normally an insistent, steady tug, right now it's more like an impatient yank, ripping at me every time I so much as look in a direction that isn't down.
Just because I went down there for even a moment, the Call has decided that's where I belong. Now it won't stop hurting me until I get down there again. Once I'm there, it'll be content, for a while, then it'll start again, gently at first, pull, pull, pulling at my soul, until I go deeper.
I'm really looking forward to having a conversation with the monster responsible when I get down there. Holy moly, I have some stern words for them!
[Is everything alright, Master?] Crinis asks me.
[Yes, fine. I'm right as rain,] I tell her, pulling myself around and enduring the savage pull of the Call. [Are we sensing anything strange around here?]
[I can feelssssss it,] Invidia rasps helpfully. [The mana issss changing.]
[Well, yeah. The wave is coming. I can feel that much.]
[The sixthsssss. It's risingg!]
What? My antennae wave through the air curiously. There is a strangle tingle in the air, a little hint of electricity.
[You feel that, Tiny?]
The big ape nods, one thick finger pointing to his fur. A shock of energy jumps from the tip of the digit to his body in a loud spark.
Yikes. There must be monsters coming up from below already. That's not good, not good at all.
[Alrighty, we are heading back to the fortress immediately. Let's move!]
-x-X-x-
Things escalate rather quickly after that. Mana levels are skyrocketing, the wave practically nipping at our heels as Tiny, Invidia, Crinis and I make our way back to the fortress. In the midst of four separate hearts, with that absurd velocity of energy, it's getting dense, even worse than it was when I first came through.
It's nuts. If the mana gets any thicker, I think monsters will start to just pop into existence in the air. They're already crawling out of the spongy flesh of the walls and the wave hasn't properly started yet!
Nope, I am not hanging around for this. Even if I can fight off these monsters relatively easily since they just spawned, the sheer quantity of them is enough to make a massive pain in my carapace. Once the tougher monsters start crawling up from the depths, goodness knows what I might end up having to fight. I'd much rather do that from within the fortress than out here in the open.
As far as exploring the sixth during a wave is concerned—NOPE. Dangerous new territory is one thing. Dangerous new territory during a storm of mana that will bring up creatures from the seventh and possibly eighth? Even I'm not that dumb.
When we arrive back at the fortress, the Colony is busy readying the defences for the trial to come. There are thousands of ants crawling over the great walls and defensive platforms. No longer used to suck in mana, many of the precious materials are being pulled up and stored safely inside in case they might be needed again while the mixed ant and non-monster battalions are doing drills in the closest tunnels.
It puts a smile on my dial to see the cooperation between the Colony and the people who've come to live within our domain. Monster and human/golgari/ka'armodo/setsulah/brathian/Folk/magpei. Working together in harmony toward a common goal.
To think it nearly ended with a few ants eating the humans in Renewal. Phew!
Glad I was around that day.
Actually, now that I look closer, the magpei are still fistfighting. Oh, nope, some ants have tackled them down to the ground before they could take off flying. Now what are they doing? I think they're performing some sort of breathing exercise to try and calm the irritable bird-people down? They must have had some success with it, otherwise they wouldn't be trying, but… seriously? If regulated breathing was enough to settle the magpei, they wouldn't have been beating each other and everyone else up for the last few thousand years.
Many of the troops recognise me as I come down the tunnel towards the gate, with a lot of ants calling out to me.
"Work hard, Eldest!"
"Break time, is it? Typical!"
"Out for a stroll, Eldest?"
"Hey!" I snap back. "I've been out fighting for a week straight. A week! I think I deserve some torpor, don't you?"
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That certainly changes their attitude. Or at least, I think it does at first.
"Lucky…" one of the soldiers grumbles.
"Why do you get to work for a week?"
"Boooo! I want to work that much!"
"Unfair treatment!"
"Eldest! I hereby protest the unfair distribution of labour. It is dramatically tilted in your favour and I will not stand for it!"
"OI! You can get back into your battalions and settle down or you'll be in for an extended trip to the sleep cells! I'm the only one who could patrol down there, so I had to stay out. Alright? Sheesh!"
Despite there being further grumbling and muttered protests, something about the 'worker's right to deny rest', they quiet down as I continue to walk past.
Which gives me the space to pay attention to the reception I'm getting from everyone without a carapace.
The priests, of course, have slammed their faces into the ground and are weeping an inappropriate amount, which doesn't feel necessary. If that was all it was, I wouldn't be bothered, but a surprising number of the regular troops, people of all races and Levels in the Dungeon, have kneeled alongside them, hands raised towards me as I pass by.
I really wish they wouldn't do that. Stupid one-armed priest. I thought this nonsense would never get further than him and a few of his most devoted, cranially challenged followers. Apparently, I was very wrong.
When we pass through the open gate and into the fortress proper, I find myself releasing a tension I hadn't realised was there. It's good to get out of sight, I suppose.
"GREAT ONE! THIS UNWORTHY WORM, THIS DUST OF A PERSON, IS BLESSED TO BE IN YOUR PRESENCE ONCE MORE!"
"Loud!"
Speak of the one-armed menace, and he shall appear. Along with a cadre of his fellow priests, all with their staves and antennae hoods, all mushing their faces into the floor.
Wait, if he's here, does that mean I have to ride out the entire wave while surrounded by this moron and his group? Ugh, somehow my day just got significantly worse.
"Priest, what are you doing here?" I ask him, resignedly.
"I AM… I am here to serve the battalions stationed in the fortress, Great One," he says, trembling with the effort to not shout my antennae off.
Great. Just great.
"I need some sleep," I sigh.
Without another word, my friends and I continue deeper into the fortress, where we can finally take a load off and get some rest. It's been a long week, even for me, so I know the others are really struggling. I'm not tired, not physically anyways, and my body is completely healed and fresh, yet battling against the Call has been draining. I could do with some shut-eye.
Hopefully I won't have to hang around the priest all that much during the wave. I'll be out fighting on the platforms for the most part, probably, or out in the tunnels nearby to help ease the pressure.
[Well, we're going to be stuck here until the mana levels go down,] I tell the others as we find a place and start to lower ourselves down the ground, getting ready to sleep. [We should use that time to get you all to the next tier. It's not fair I'm the only tier eight.]
Tiny gives me a mighty thumbs up and a broad grin, eager for the evolution. Crinis writhes, extending a few limbs and waggling them happily. Invidia just smiles, which is rather creepy.
I laugh. Maybe this won't be so bad after all.
-x-X-x-
"This is a slightly different experience," Sloan mutters, poring over the maps and checking the many pages of documentation scattered about, running her antennae along the lines of pheromone text.
"What is?" Victor asks, doing the same thing beside her.
The two were deep in the planning and preparatory stages for the wave. In truth, this was an ongoing process that never really started or stopped. These days, the Colony never did anything without thinking about how it would go on to affect the next wave.
Need to build something? Make it wave-proof.
Need to capture something? Can we hold it during a wave?
Lines of defences, methods of communication, gates, troops, trade, everything had to be done with the waves in mind. As such, the Colony's anti-wave strategies were an ever-evolving calculation of risk and reward.
Of course, Solant's invasion had thrown a massive wrench into those preparations, soaking up the output of the entire Colony for almost a year. The final push had demanded carvers and mages be pulled from all over the territory, which hadn't happened in the leadup to the last few waves, and it had been rough. So now, the two generals were playing a hectic game of catch-up, trying to put everything in place before a disaster befell the family.
"I was just thinking about the vertical span of the territory," Sloan said, still shuffling and shifting, her many-faceted eyes focused on the task at hand. "By our last account, the land claimed by the Colony covers around a thousand vertical kilometres."
"So?"
Reaching out one leg, she snatched up a page and pushed it towards her sister.
"Look at this. The lower levels of the fifth are expected to start experiencing the wave three weeks before it reaches the first."
"It's not that much different than last time," Victor said after swiping through the document.
"Only a few days," Sloan agreed, "but it says something about how far we've come, doesn't it? We span so much land that there's this massive lag between the peak of the wave from the bottom to the top."
Victor took a moment, raising her head from the frenzy of work in front of them, and thought about it.
"You know what? That is interesting. I wonder what the exact lag time from the first touch of the wave to it reaching the surface is."
"We can find out easily enough," her sibling replied. "Our gates work into the fifth now. It's simple to pass messages back and forth."
Simple patterns of observation were enough to tell the Colony that the waves were getting more severe as time went on, so they knew what had sufficed before would not necessarily hold the next time. As such, their countermeasures and defenses were in a constant state of build up, but there were so many unknowns to deal with this time that there was a certain level of anxiety in their work.
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After all, the Colony was now, more or less, directly connected to the sixth, with no buffer zone of Krath between them and the monsters below. When the beasts from the depths rose up, there was no contagious mana to weaken them, no parasites to infest and drain them.
It would fall on the Eldest to do the bulk of the work, they knew that, but a plan that relied on a single individual to succeed wasn't much of a plan. Thankfully Solant had taken on responsibility for managing the fifth, so they were able to largely focus on the rest of the territory, which was absurdly large at this point.
"How are preparations in the third looking?" Victor asked, busily flicking through documents.
"We're having trouble making sure the demons call off their scheduled conflicts this time around. There's a few they have prepared and are really looking forward to."
Victor sighed. Keeping the demons within their territory happy was a constant juggling act. War demons, slaughter demons, battle demons, blood demons, all sorts of demons, had to fight. They didn't just want to, they needed to. It was their obsession and core to their being. As a result, demon society, such as it was, resembled loosely organised chaos at the best of times, since no demon would ever fault another for following their obsession.
Unleashing their need for conflict in scheduled battles between cities was a longstanding tradition that the Colony had done its best to work with. During a wave, however, they would rather not have such distractions.
"Did we offer them a hunting prize for who can take down the largest wild monster in the wave?"
"We did."
"Did we up the prize?"
"We did."
"Dang it. Is there anything we can do?"
"There is one thing…"
"What? Oh. Oh, that would cause all sorts of problems, Sloan."
"I agree, but will it solve more problems than it would create?"
Victor considered it for a moment, then a moment more, gnashing her mandibles together as she thought.
"Barely," she conceded unhappily.
"I'll send word that the demon Tunnel Ball league has been approved."
"What a mess," Victor groaned, then shook off her worries. That was a problem for future Colony. Present Colony had plenty of other issues to deal with.
"What about the second? Are the cities prepared?"
"They're being a little casual about it this time," Sloan replied, a little miffed. "We've been too successful at defending them from the waves, I think."
There were dozens of once-independent cities that the Colony had claimed in the second, and they, of course, helped to protect them during waves and allowed use of the gate network to move goods and troops back and forth. It had been a successful system, but it was a problem if they started to become complacent. After all, to the Colony, their nests were the first, second and third priority. If push came to shove, they would abandon those cities to protect the young.
Most of the Queens were still positioned in the first and second strata, since the third was inhospitable and the fourth too exposed. The fifth was naturally not a consideration at all.
"It might be wise to fire a shot across their carapace," Sloan mused. "Why don't we tell them that the ant garrison will be diminished this time around. Let's say… cut it in half."
"In half? They'll be hit by the wave in less than two weeks!"
"It'll put a fireball in their houses, but we don't actually remove any of the garrison, just spook them."
Victor looked at her sister for a moment.
"It'll only work once, they won't believe us the next time."
"If they're smart, they'll get the message and we won't have to do it again."
Both generals considered the likelihood of the cities being smart.
"Future Colony problem," they said together and got back to work.
-x-X-x-
Watching the wave break in the fifth, in the real fifth, is unlike anything I have ever seen before in the Dungeon. It's disgusting, so that's the same, but in an entirely different way than before.
It's better, I can say that much.
When the wave officially hits, it starts as all the others have, a rolling tide of power that sweeps up from below, booming like thunder. In its wake, the mana is thickened to the point where spawning rates immediately begin to shoot out of control, monsters manifesting at the slightest concentration of power.
As it turns out, the new, cellular monsters that have been spawning in the cleansed section of Dungeon here don't need all that much energy to spring into being. Which means the second the wave rolls through, they start popping out of the walls almost immediately.
And there are lots of them.
Blobby balls, weird-looking tissues and strange dangly things start tangling with each other the moment they spawn, formed out of raw mana pulsing through the walls. Within a minute, the inner surfaces of the tunnel I'm looking at are covered. Completely covered. Not slightly, or mostly, totally.
And then it keeps going. There are so many of them spawning they start to push the ones who spawned first off the walls and ceiling so they literally start raining down onto the carpet that already exists below. Eyes boggling, I look up, and sure enough, they are raining down on the fortress, dropping off the roof hundreds of metres above.
This is… going to get messy.
The fall isn't enough to kill them, they're made of sterner stuff than that, but the fighting… In five minutes, the fifth has started to resemble the third with its infinitely spawning little demon larvae battling on the plains.
Except the process of evolution here seems to be turbo charged. In no time at all, groups of monsters have started melding together to form larger, more powerful entities, and then going at each other, battling hard, considering they were born only a few minutes ago.
In short, it's absolute chaos, not that I would expect anything less during a wave.
[Alright, Tiny. If you see something get too close to the platform, punch the heck out of it.]
He looks at me, then looks out towards the tunnel, then down at his fist. He points.
[No, that's too far.]
He points again.
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[Also too far.]
Tiny looks sad, then perks up, his bat ears standing straight. He points excitedly.
I sigh.
[I'm going to have to draw a line, aren't I? Give me a second.]
Using a Gravity Well, I lift myself up and drift out into the tunnel. Small monsters start flopping onto my carapace immediately, but I ignore them for the moment. Using an antenna, I point.
[Anything that crosses this point, you can punch, but only if it's big enough to look dangerous. If you punch every little thing, you'll just waste your energy.]
Unlike me, Tiny can get tired. That wouldn't stop him from completely exhausting himself punching out tiny tier one monsters, though.
[Am I clear?]
He nods, holding up both fists as his eyes dart about, waiting for something, anything to cross the line.
I sigh and drift back, making a quick Fire Domain to burn the invaders off my back before I set down again on the platform.
[You're here for eight hours before Invidia replaces you, alright? You have to make sure you have enough energy to last your whole shift.]
BAM!
Tiny's left stabs forward like a lightning bolt, a blast of energy shooting from his fist to strike hard against his target, a tiny, inoffensive creature that had wibbled just over the line I had indicated.
[Tiny….]
He gives me an apologetic grin and a thumbs up before resuming his boxing stance, both fists tucked up under his chin, left foot forward and knees bent.
Well, I'll be checking on him pretty regularly, so he should be fine. I'll leave him to his business. At least these new monsters don't seem as offended by our presence as the old, corrupted ones were. Those nasty things would run at us headfirst the moment they saw something that wasn't fouled by the infection that created them.
I probably shouldn't say that, it's way too early to make assumptions. With the added fuel of the wave, tier four and five monsters are going to rise from the muck extremely quickly. I'll be interested to see what they're like, how intelligent they are and how they feel about us being here.
For now, though, the defense is on.
Frankly, it should be pretty easy here. It's out on the fringes, where the Colony's land butts up against the areas still held by the Krath, that I'm worried about. Vibrant, Sarah, Brilliant and Solant are concentrating their efforts up there for the most part, leaving me and the gang here to make sure nothing from the sixth gets past us.
I leave Tiny to his work and head back inside the fortress where Crinis and Invidia are waiting.
[Are you sure he's going to be alright, Master? He can be… unreliable… sometimes.]
Crinis blobs onto my back while Invidia flutters over and lands next to her. I keep heading deeper in, looking for a quiet place to go through my menus.
[Tiny is reliable, he just needs guidance,] I say, confident in the big ape. [I'm willing to bet that by the end of his shift, he will have pushed himself right to the very limit of his strength and be on the verge of collapse, but he won't have let anything through that he shouldn't.
[Obviously, it'll be dangerous if something strong turns up right before the shift change, but Tiny will pull through. He always does.]
I reach back and give them a pat on the head.
[And then it'll be your turn. Make sure to grind the Skills you need to focus on as much as you can. By the time this is done, you'll be ready for tier eight!]
-x-X-x-
At first, word of the Colony's achievement in the fifth spread slower than one might have thought. Simply put, nobody believed it. A group of ants had successfully conquered what had eluded the entire world for millennia? It was nonsense, a joke, easily dismissed, and anyone spreading such drivel was laughed out of the room.
Preposterous to even suggest such a thing.
But then, the evidence started to appear. Materials and goods that none had ever seen before. Miracle cures, strange objects infused with what came to be known as Bio-mana, at the time a never-before-seen type of energy.
All of a sudden, multiple powers of Pangera, even the Atreum Empire, were launching their own offensives into the fifth, something that hadn't been attempted in centuries. A frenzy gripped the entire Dungeon, the entire world, and suddenly the doubters started to turn back to the ants, feeling a little foolish.
- Excerpt from 'The Breakthrough' by Magion Scholar Werilos
"Bookings are full," Merchant said happily, her glasses glinting in the sunlight.
"We could have filled the slots eight times over," Secretariant noted with satisfaction, snapping shut the leather-bound book she held in one claw.
"Demand is high and supply is perilously low," Merchant chortled. "And I happen to be the one with the monopoly."
Every name on that list represented a small fortune. It turned out, the appetite to get access to the sixth stratum was strong indeed. She had opted to let participants bid for their spots, and the result had been a feeding frenzy.
No doubt most of the names were hand-selected specialists, picked out by empires, trading conglomerates and kingdoms, sent to investigate and make sure their competitors didn't get an information edge. It didn't matter much to Merchant, she had promised them access, that was all.
"Are you sure we should even be selling these places?" Secretariant wondered, hesitant to question her leader. "We've worked so hard to get that access. Is it right to just give it away for money?"
Merchant looked out over the shimmering ocean of the fourth, letting the warm light and Life Mana suffuse her being.
With the wave this close, the waters were beginning to churn with increased monster activity. Sailing on the lakes was too dangerous now, meaning all trade needed to be conducted through the gate networks. Without competition from merchant vessels, prices to access those gates soared into an all-new stratum, cutting profit margins to the bone.
Until the latter half of the wave, when supplies started to dry up and buyers were more desperate, there was almost no point moving anything of worth. So for now, she was stuck, kicking her six heels in the mountain nest carved out by her family.
In many ways, her loyal follower was correct. If the Colony chose not to sell, then access to the sixth was literally something that couldn't be bought. Priceless. Yet there was danger there.
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"If we don't sell it to them, then they'll eventually decide that it's a heck of a lot easier to seize access to the sixth from us than the Krath," Merchant replied. "They'll form alliances, mass their forces and knock this mountain down, eager to take away what we earned for ourselves.
"This way, we are the cooperative ones, we're giving them what they want, so they plot and scheme against each other, not us. We will still have the advantage, we get to go in first, and the territory beneath our holdings in the fifth will inevitably belong to us. After all, we have advantages that they don't."
"Which are?"
"We're monsters!" Merchant laughed. "Adaptable, immune to mana poisoning, stronger, faster, bigger, better. The Dungeon was made for us, not for them. We also have the Eldest down there, don't forget. They'll be the forerunner. I don't care who the other races send, they aren't going to outperform our Senior."
With the Eldest leading the charge, the Colony would storm into the sixth like a tidal wave. Hopefully they would take it a little more slowly and more carefully than the invasion of the fifth, though. The total cost to the family for that adventure was enough to cause cramping in Merchant's core. What they'd made back so far was a drop in the bucket compared to that unfathomable expenditure.
"Alright, I'm bored," Merchant said, snapping her mandibles together decisively. "I haven't sold anything in minutes."
"You have businesses working even during the wave," Secretariant chided her, "you're still making money."
"It's not the same and you know it," Merchant refuted.
She was possessed of an energy that never seemed to fade. A drive to pursue, to improve, to develop! Did the others feel this way, she wondered? Was Vibrant constantly thinking about speed?
Pointless question.
Was Brilliant always thinking about being annoying and outsmarting people?
Very pointless question.
Did Solant ponder logistics, strategy and tactics all day every day?
This truly was an entirely wasteful line of inquiry, Merchant reflected to herself, clearly they were all as obsessed as demons were with their own line of speciality.
"I had an idea," she said suddenly. "You are, of course, aware that it's possible to buy things before they are made?"
"Contractual sales of future goods? Of course," Secretariant said.
"That name is so cumbersome… we need something better, something snappier. Temporal sales? No. It'll come to me. Anyway, I can buy a harvest a year in advance from a farmer. And then, if I so choose, I can sell that contract to someone else, taking profit or loss depending on the market conditions. Right?"
"Right," Secretariant said slowly.
"But it's a cumbersome process, wouldn't you say? Trading halls, guilds, cooperatives, each of them has their own list of contracts, their own rules and standards, finding buyers is annoying, settling the exchange takes too long, it's overall extremely inefficient."
"So? That's how it's been done for a long time. Are you intending to try and make changes to the system?"
"You might say that," Merchant mused to herself. In her mind's eye, she could see the future unfolding, could see the very place she stood becoming the center of a new type of market. Merchants from all over Pangera would gather here, to buy and sell based on the standard that she designed, using contracts regulated by the Colony on an exchange that updated in almost real time, connecting sellers to buyers almost instantaneously.
"We'll be busy with this one for a while," Merchant said, pulling out a cigar and lighting it with the click of one claw. "Take some notes, if you please."
-x-X-x-
An Avatar of storm and fury, the Guardian that the Eldest referred to as 'Tiny' is a fierce and mighty defender of the Colony. Apt to strike first and ask questions later, the Colony has often found that Tiny is best deployed in a defensive location, lest he spark an unintended conflict.
-Excerpt from the private notes of Historiant
Tiny loved punching. It was a simple pleasure, he didn't deny that, but one that he found an endless satisfaction with. The coiling power of the muscles, the combination of balance and strength, the unwinding rotation of the body and the furious crescendo of power unleashed from his fist. It was enough to make his long fur stand on end… if it wasn't already due to the lightning charge that ran through his body almost constantly.
His powerful musculature, attached to his granite bones, made his base of strength perfectly stable, an electric charge just building and building, yearning to be released.
A flicker caught his eye and Tiny turned, staring hard. There it was, a monster, creeping closer to the line. His mMaster had drawn the line, and Tiny had stared at it for so long, and so hard, that it was practically a real thing in his mind, a blazing stripe of red that ran all the way around the tunnel. Anything and everything that stepped across was fair game for Tiny to punch, but he knew he couldn't punch everything. If he did, he would get tired, and then be unable to punch the things that really needed to experience the power of his fist. So he settled for punching most things.
Right now, he hadn't hit anything for over a minute and twelve seconds, so he was perfectly fresh and willing to hit whatever peeked over the line.
Yes… it was coming closer. A strange monster, it looked more like a carpet of fibres, undulating and red, than a real creature, but it was a monster for sure. He could sense the mana of its core. Barely. Tiny wasn't good at sensing.
But he was excellent at punching.
He stared. And stared. And stared. In his mind's eye, he had punched the monster over a thousand times already, fists of pure intent flying out of him hundreds of times a second.
Finally, finally, the monster wobbled over the line by little more than a millimetre. It was enough.
A sense of peace settled over Tiny instantly. The waiting was over. There was no longer any need to hold himself back. Electricity would flow once more.
Raising up to his full height, Tiny bounced on his feet, once, twice, three times. He rolled his shoulders, enjoying the surging electrical power that began to spark from his fur, rippling across the lightning- shaped silver fur on his arms. In one smooth motion, he tucked his fist, drew it back and rotated his body.
At the same moment, power surged throughout his body. Reforged with Tempest Glass, his twin lightning mana affinity gLightning Mana Affinity Glands were engines that beat in time with the unrelenting force of the Storm Heart that pounded within his chest. As he reached the peak of his rotation, coiled like a spring, that vast ocean of raging current slammed into the Storm Generator, magnifying, twisting in on itself within the manifold until finally he began to unwind.
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Rotate the knee, the hips, the shoulders. No wasted motion, perfect form from start to finish. Don't extend the fist towards the target, aim to punch through it, and Tiny did.
At the same time, the Bolt Channels in his arms ignited, accepting the unleashed fury of the Generator. Lightning crackled, so bright as to be blinding, bonding into his Fulmen Silver Infused muscles and strengthening them.
His Skill ignited, the first of pure energy sparking into existence around his own. As irresistible as a collapsing mountain, as inevitable as the raging storm.
In an explosion of blinding radiance, Tiny's straight right was unleashed.
The monster exploded, the rock exploded, a lot of rock exploded. When the deafening crack faded and the blinding light dimmed, Tiny was left, fist extended, a satisfied grin on his face with the remnants of lightning crackling over his fur.
That was a nice punch.
Name: Tiny
Level: 257 (Mythic) (VII)
Might: 1050
Toughness: 400
Cunning: 30
Will: 88
HP: 800/800
MP: 1519/2220
Skills:
General:
MasterDivine Athletics (VI) Level 46; FlashFlicker Dash (V) Level 32; Grandmaster Dodge (V) Level 74; Expert Flight (III) Level 20;
Mana:
Defensive:
Dazzling Fancy Feet (VI) Level 45;
Offensive:
Kong Fist Arts (VI) Level 101; Cloud Piercing Uppercut (V) Level 78; Meteor Leap (V) Level 74; Grandm Master Heavy Smash (V) Level 80; Grandmaster Grappling (V) Level 63; Punishing Smashing Blows (VI) Level 4; GrandmMaster Ape Jab (V) Level 40; Advanced Magic Counter (II) Level 10; GrandmasterDivine Kong Combo (VI) Level 15;
Mutations:
Senses:
Physical:
Fulminating Enhanced Musculature +35 (Fulmen Silver Infused Flesh); Fortifying Current Bones +35 (Earthblood Basalt); Storm Inducing Meteor Legs +35; Thunderous Sonic Enhancer +35; Park-Fueled Energy Conversion Gland +35; Loom-Woven Shadow Wings +35; Shocking Tesla Fur +35; Regenerative Storm Fists +35; Unending Storm Heart +35; Hardened Regenerating Tendons +35
Mental:
Mana:
Storming Lightning Mana Affinity Gland +30 (Tempest Glass); Storming Lightning Mana Affinity Gland +30 (Tempest Glass); Arcing Lightning Ignition Gland +30; Arcing Lightning Ignition Gland +30; Manifold Enhancing Storm Generator +35; Instant Transmission Bolt Channels +35.
Species: Elder Kong of the Storm Summit (Mythic)
Skill points: 311
Biomass: 68
-x-X-x-
Known to many in the Colony as 'The Shadow', Crinis, as her Master named her, has always served in her own way. Often, that has led to… unexpected consequences for the family, but her oftentimes fanatical devotion to the Eldest and, through him, his family, has always been her guiding light.
- Excerpt from the private notes of Historiant
Yes. Yessssss. They were drawing closer, and Crinis could not be more delighted. Her limbs twisted and writhed, eager to inflict punishment, to inflict pain, to inflict… justice.
Her Master had declared that this platform, and this fortress would be protected, so Crinis would protect them. With extreme prejudice.
The line that had been drawn before Tiny's shift was… not exactly the same as it had been, mostly due to the fist- shaped craters smashed into the rock, some of which were still smoking and crackling with latent electricity. As a result, Crinis was free to exercise a little more judgement when it came to which monsters were fair game and which weren't.
Freedom she exercised as frequently as she could.
No longer tormented by the acrid environment of the fifth, which ate into her shadowy flesh extremely quickly, she was now able to extend her limbs out beyond the platform without worry. In fact, she could leave the platform entirely if she wanted to, and on this occasion, she did, sinking down into the shadows, her body slipping from one reality and into another.
Saturated with her Shadow Mana, every patch of darkness became a door, and in that strange and lightless realm, Crinis became an all-seeing being, her reforged Eye able to see the absence of light in all directions, all dimensions. As she extended her power, weaving into the shadows of the tunnel, they too became open to her eye and she peered through them, hunting for her prey.
There they were… insufferable… ignorant. Mere beasts daring to snuff around the family that her Master had built. By extension, her family.
FILTHFILTHFILTHFILTHFILTHFILTHFILTH!
Within the shadow, Crinis writhed, ten thousand limbs twisting and gripping, trembling with anger. She only needed to wait a little longer. A little longer and they would be close enough to the line that she could justify acting to herself.
After all, she would never disobey an order from the Master.
It wasn't threatening, not really, just a pack of monsters that had grouped together into a single entity as these new spawns were liable to do. Hardened, spiky, it wasn't like most of the fleshy monsters she had seen so far, but that didn't mean it wasn't vulnerable to her powers.
The moment it drew near enough, Crinis grinned three malicious grins as she rose out of the darkness like an avenging angel.
Her body unfolded. From , from a small ball no larger than a human, she grew, expanded, more and more limbs separating from the mass until they filled the tunnel around her. Not that any could see it.
The Light Annihilatorion Gland activated, sucking in any and all illumination and consuming it, gnawing on the cursed luminescence and breaking it down, converting the energy to yet more darkness. Crowned with shadow, Crinis revealed the core of her form, three maws open wide, ready for the feast.
It sensed her coming, because of course it did. The creatures here in the fifth were sensitive, most of them not relying on crude organs like eyes to observe the world around them. Either detecting her mana, or as Crinis suspected, her flesh itself, it turned towards her, bristling with bony protrusions.
Almost tenderly, Crinis reached towards it from nearly almost every direction at once, in no hurry to end the conflict. At the tips of her most precious limbs, the Soul-Seeker Cilia glittered, ready to invade and conquer the creature's mind.
Shards of bone fired from the monster, soundless and without warning. Hardened spikes ripped through her limbs, punching holes in her flesh that began to ossify and harden immediately. Unfazed, Crinis simply detached the affected limbs. There , there were plenty more where those came from.
As she drew closer again, the monster repeated the trick, but she was prepared. Her flesh turned translucent, turning from material to immaterial, allowing the bones to slip straight through at the cost of her mana.
Back to material again, she enfolded the monster in her limbs, wrapping it tight and lifting it from the ground. Unhooking her barbs, Crinis began to saw.
She may not be strong, like Tiny, or as good at magic as Invidia, but she was patient, and played to her strengths, striking from the shadows and mastering her Skills.
It took time to grind the creature down, but her reset barbs, forged of Shade Diamond, grew sharper the more darkness they soaked in, and she had fed them a lot of darkness.
When it was done, she dropped the Biomass into her maw and crunched down, starting to fold her body back up again, packing her malleable flesh back into a dense ball before she slipped once more into the shadow. Slowly, the light returned, revealing terrified monsters, traumatised by what they had seen and sliding away from the line while trying not to draw attention to themselves.
Seeing the developing situation as she reappeared on the platform, Crinis sighed, disappointed. How long would it be before they grew brave enough to return, or for new monsters to spawn and creep closer? Too long.
Checking on the clone she had slipped inside her Master's carapace, she saw that he was still where he had been before. Perhaps he was sleeping? He deserved a rest.
She'd been told she needed to work on her Curse Magic, so she might as well get to it. Pulling together the Construct, she began to curse every monster in range. It would do to occupy the time until they forgot the most important lesson: that Crinis was to be feared.
Name: Crinis
Level: 241 (Rare) (VII)
Might: 250
Toughness: 250
Cunning: 250
Will: 200
HP: 500/500
MP: 660/660
Skills:
General:
Divine Shadow Flesh Manipulation (VI) Level 20; Omega Tremor Sensing (VI) Level 101; Terror Inspiration (VI) Level 44; Nimble Tentacle Walking (V) Level 11; Grandm Master Stealth (V) Level 20; Grandm Master Shadow Shaping (V) Level 71; Master Mental Warfare (IV) Level 35; Grandm Master Target Seeking (V) Level 61; Expert Spying (III) Level 15; Expert Observation (III) Level 10; Expert Tracking (III) Level 9; Advanced Presenceless (II) Level 8;
Mana:
Advanced Mana CraftMana Weaving (VI) Level 22; Grand Finer Divine External Mana ManipulationGripping External Mana Manipulation (VI) Level 38; Advanced DarkAscended Shadow Magic Affinity (VI) Level 36; Layered Mind Magic AffinityGrand Master Mind Magic Affinity (V) Level 71; Master Curse Magic Affinity (IV) Level 35;
Defensive:
Master Tentacle Parry (IV) Level 33;
Offensive:
Grandmaster Grappling (V) Level 56; Grandm Master Shredding (V) Level 11; Horrific Dismembering (V) Level 36; Grandmaster Tentacle Fu (V) Level 67; Expert Shadow Striking (III) Level 10; Expert Mind Invasion (III) Level 18; Advanced Tentacle Strike (II) Level 8;
Mutations:
Senses:
All-Seeing Mana Sensory Gland +30; Shadow Eye (Vanishing Darkness);
Physical:
Efficient Resistant Shadow Flesh +30 (Immaterial); Atomising Ion-Void Maw +30; Unlimited Endless Dimensional Stomach +30; Quad-Legion Tentacles (Darkness Flesh); Hardened Sharpened Diamond Barbs + (Shade Diamond); Ripping Visceral Teeth +30; Immaterial Flesh Generator (Void-Core) +0; Deep-Fathomless Light Sink +30; Hyper Shade Phase Organ +30; Atomising Ion-Void Maw +30; Atomising Ion-Void Maw +30; All-Shape Cell Structure +30; Madness Lingering Soul-Seeker Cilia +30;
Mental:
Symphonic Tentacle Conductor +30; Symphonic Tentacle Conductor +30; Light Annihilator; Clone Mind
Mana:
Expanded Compressing Reservoir Shadow Magic Gland +30; Flesh Conversion Gland;
Species: Dweller in Darkness
Skill points: 84
Biomass: 149