Chapter 1375 – Once More Into The Breach

It’s amazing how quickly a week can go by when you’re trying to make sure you haven’t jinxed your entire family. In a blink, we are back at the entrance to the fifth, waiting to descend back into the stratum. This time, we’ve scaled up the size of our exploratory team to double what it was before. A thousand wuffers, ten thousand ants, me and the crew, along with our Legion onlookers.

[Are you really sure you want to go down there?] I ask Morrelia. [It’s gross. And not in a casual way. The fifth is almost professionally disgusting.]

She glares up at me, her eyes dark and stormy, like they always are.

[I’ve been there before. Are you worried I won’t be able to handle it?]

[Handle it? Handle what? You’ll be all nice and safe, tucked away in a pocket of purified mana. I’m the one who has to run around in the acid and sludge.]

She looks a little surprised to hear that.

[You can survive in there?]

[Of course! Well… for a while, anyway.]

[I’m impressed. I know firsthand just how hostile to life the fifth is.]

[Bah, no you don’t. There’s no chance a human could get out there directly. At best, you were in a protective suit thicker than my carapace.]

Morrelia hesitates.

[Actually… there is a human who survived direct exposure….]

[Let me guess. Your dad?]

That guy is terrifying. I never want to see him, or his axe, again for the rest of my days.

[Of course not. It was my mother.]

Of course it was.

[What is wrong with your family?!]

[Don’t get mad at me! They’re the weird ones, not me!]

[Your parents aren’t here, a fact for which I am truly thankful, so I can only yell at you about it! Do me a favour and convince them to retire or something!]

[Hah!] she snorts. [Those two? Resigning from the Legion? It’ll never happen.]

Gah. Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[Alright then. Let’s shift the topic to something happier. See you in the acidic, toxic, poison-filled fifth stratum. I’ll be going down first.]

[See you down there,] she nods.

Our plan to manage the descent is almost the same as before. The main adjustments revolve around managing double the wuffers, since a thousand wuffers gathered together in one blob would basically block off the tunnel completely. The ones exposed to the mana of the fifth would do their job and purify it, only to expel the cleansed mana straight into the faces of the second layer of wuffers.

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