Chapter 1419 – Heartbeat

“Yessss! Look at them burn! Burn them all!”

Coolant watched as her fiery sibling unleashed her devastating magic upon the encroaching slime monsters. As she channeled her spells, Propellant herself burned red hot, flames rising from the mini-volcano on her back as she launched gobs of lava and bars of almost liquid blue fire at the creatures of the fifth.

“I would estimate that your spells are only twenty percent effective,” Coolant observed in her usual, clipped, chilly tones. “Despite all of the evolutionary energy you poured into maximising your fire magic. Such a waste.”

Propellant rounded on her sister, her anger flashing hot.

“What?! You’re one to talk! You spent all of your energy making yourself even icier, and just how effective is your magic down here? It’s even worse than mine!”

“There is a utility to water and ice magic that has yet to be fully realised,” Coolant replied, clacking her mandibles dismissively.

“Hah! You think anyone in the Colony is falling for this ‘it’s good but we don’t know how yet’ line of reasoning? You’re fooling yourself!”

“Jumping to conclusions? I would never have expected you to make such a rushed judgement,” Coolant observed, a hint of sarcasm coming through in her pheromones.

The two sisters stared at each other, one growing colder, the other hotter, by the second. Finally, they both turned away with a huff and put some space between themselves.

“Have we eliminated everything in this section of tunnel?” Coolant asked after a moment.

“I believe so,” Propellant replied, “though I did most of the work!”

Refusing to rise to the bait, Coolant merely sighed and began to focus on her more esoteric senses. It was difficult to do anything in the fifth, even to use mana sense properly. The toxicity of the fifth was so all-encompassing, everything that touched it broke down, even mana. Communicating via mind-magick was impossible through a certain amount of toxic mana. The messages became corrupted, and any bridge constructed would eventually fall apart.

It was the same principle that prevented gate travel through the stratum.

“The safe-zone is pressing back against the vent,” Coolant observed, “but it’ll still be some time before it’s fully overcome.”

“Will we ever be able to eliminate its influence completely, so long as it continues to vent?” Propellant replied, irritably.

Anything she couldn’t solve with fire tended to irritate her these days. She did have a point, though. There was no way to know when the vents would stop, or if they ever would at all. This incident had set the invasion back significantly. Despite all the work that was still ongoing, the safe-zone, inevitably, was shrinking.

“We need to rejoin the others,” Coolant declared, and the two turned their backs on the open tunnel and moved deeper into Colony-claimed territory. Several ranks of troops closed behind them, on high alert given the current crisis.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Not far away, they found their mage squads working feverishly. New pipes needed to be laid, the network needed to be adjusted in several places, and even small adjustments created imbalances that affected performance. Even pipes that didn’t need to be moved still had to be adjusted. Until the vents stopped spewing out mana, the wuffers would have to prioritise consuming that energy above other sources.

“Have there been any changes with the vent?” Coolant asked as she arrived amongst the bustling ant mages.

“Nothing,” came the swift reply. “The rate has remained steady since you left, as has the density.”

No change at all. Well, it wasn’t getting better, but at least it wasn’t getting worse.

“Keep working on the pipe network. Coolant and I will inspect the vent again while we have the chance,” Propellant growled.

“We won’t have long,” Coolant reminded her sister. “We need to reinforce the tunnel defence again soon.”