Chrysalis Chapter 1 The bleary days preceding the panic (114)

1 The hazy days before the panic (114)

Tiny finally wakes up after several hours of grueling defense; his injuries have mostly closed, and the spark of life has returned to his eyes. I am so drained that I can barely string a thought together, so I command him to hold the entrance until I return. I retreat further into the tunnel and simply collapse on my face.

A warm embrace of Torpor washes over me. It feels like being wrapped in a heavy blanket.

Even without closing my eyes, my consciousness slows down, shifting and sinking like thick molasses until my thoughts barely move. This is how the rest of ant-kind finds peace!

When I finally stir several hours later, I feel significantly rejuvenated. The suffocating weight of exhaustion has mostly vanished. That rest, combined with my previous feeding, has sealed nearly all my wounds and restored my HP almost to the maximum.

I am greeted by another delightful surprise upon waking: a dark-colored gem, the core of the Jellymaw I took down. The colony must have extracted it from the leftover Biomass and placed it here for me, acknowledging that I was the one who defeated the creature.

How kind! Truly, the workers are the finest of siblings!

I feel the urge to absorb the core right away, but I hesitate and decide to handle it later. Instead, I stash it in the wall alongside the other cores I’ve stowed in the escape tunnel.

I rush back to the front lines as fast as my legs can carry me.

Tiny is standing cheerfully as part of the defensive wall, with workers crawling all over him. The poor ape is once again riddled with wounds, a clear sign that the wave has not subsided at all during my slumber.

Indeed, the chamber before us remains packed with monsters locked in a violent struggle!

[Do you have enough energy for another offensive?] I ask my ape companion.

Tiny snaps his head toward me and nods, a wide grin spreading across his face.

Of course he does; he loves a good fight almost as much as he loves his food!

With Tiny’s assistance, I trigger the Gravity Domain once more, and we work in tandem to purge the room. Once the area is cleared, I lead the workers out to harvest as much Biomass as possible, securing the colony's food supply once again. Following my lead, Tiny hauls a massive chunk of food into the tunnel and gorges himself before drifting off to sleep, resting while I take my turn on guard duty.

And so, our long vigil begins. Every few hours, we rotate, resting while the other stands against the endless waves of monster spawns. During my second watch, I take the initiative to push out as much loose dirt as I can whenever the fighting lulls. I organize the workforce to move back up the tunnel while I guard the entrance, collecting the earth shifted by the Queen and her digging team at the far end. We transport it to the Queen's chamber and pile it up, partially obstructing the entrance.

By doing this, we manage to seal off part of the tunnel entrance while simultaneously creating a bit more space within the escape route.

I have no desire to close the entrance entirely; while the monsters spawning from the Dungeon are a threat, they are also our primary food source. Every time I wake from my rest, my Gravitational Energy gland is sufficiently charged to maintain the Gravity Domain until nearly every beast in the chamber is slain, providing the colony, Tiny, and myself with the sustenance required to heal and fight on.

However, there is a price to pay. Despite my best efforts and Tiny pushing his strength to the limit every time he wakes, we cannot protect every worker on the front lines. Occasionally, a powerful monster spawns in the chamber and strikes with mana or claws before I can intervene. Other times, battling monsters lose their bearings and stumble directly into the ranks of the ants. While these intruders are always quickly overwhelmed, an unlucky worker or two is sometimes cut down before we can save them.

Those losses are painful. I don't view these workers as mere tools or monsters different from myself. They possess their own simple, childlike intelligence, and I have accepted them as my family; I want to protect them all. We have become quite formidable at the front, and several of my siblings have successfully evolved from hatchlings into workers as time passed. While scouting with my mana sensing, I even discovered that some of the mature workers have condensed a core! That is a milestone truly worth celebrating!

The relentless grind is providing benefits to some members of the colony, even as it wears down our spirits.

After four cycles of combat and rest, the first significant change occurs.

Fortunately, I am the one on duty when it happens. Near the end of my watch, battered and weary from the non-stop fighting, I almost miss the warning signs. I have become so accustomed to watching the battle directly ahead or sensing for heat signatures in the walls and the upper tunnel that I nearly forget my original greatest concern.

The tunnel below.

Mostly sealed off during the initial hours of digging the escape tunnel, the path leading deeper into the Dungeon was never explored by me. I was too intimidated by what I might encounter down there. I had grown so used to ignoring that direction that when the sounds of combat from below shifted suddenly, I didn't know what to think.

At first, it was merely a faint scraping sound buried beneath the cacophony, and I barely registered it. My mind, exhausted from hours of vigilance, simply made a mental note of it before refocusing on immediate dangers.

The sound only grows louder as time passes.

Eventually, the scraping becomes unmistakable, a steady backdrop to the frantic noises in front of me. Then, the echoes from the chambers below change; the rhythmic clashing of battle is replaced by the piercing shrieks of frenzied monsters and a very unsettling sound of chewing.

It takes a moment for my tired brain to realize exactly what that signifies.

The monsters from the depths are climbing up!

A second shock hits me at that very moment. From the corner of my eye, a shimmering light catches the light at a strange angle, drawing my attention just as I’m worrying about the noise from below.

What I witness makes my blood run cold.

The veins of mana, the very energy source of this Dungeon, are beginning to grow into the escape tunnel! As I stare at these new veins, my anxiety spikes.

Not only have the veins started to sprout, but they are spreading so rapidly that I can actually see them moving! It is slow, certainly, but the growth is visible to the naked eye!

This is not good….

HEADS UP!

If you are a new reader starting this for the first time, please be aware that this is not chapter 1, but chapter 114.

The initial chapters have been compiled and moved to Amazon for book one and are being taken down from the web.

For now, you can still locate them on Royal Road (until June), or by joining my Patreon for $1, you can access the entire novel up to chapter 900+ in epub format (also until June).

RinoZ