Chapter 1426 – Construction

“What in the name of The Queen are they doing now?” Tungstant demanded.

Cobalt turned to look behind her. The edge of the safe-zone had drawn close, much closer than either of them had expected it to be, and that meant there were thousands of ants in position up and down the width of the tunnel to defend it.

Not only were they defending it, there was all sorts of activity—loud, distracting activity. Monsters roared, squelched and gurgled over and over again as the ants utilised strange, enchanted equipment to do… something.

“Should we tell them to try and be quiet?” Cobalt asked.

“Working on a modular fortress is tricky work,” Tungstant grumbled before looking up, “but I suppose they have their own difficulties.”

Right now, they were tussling with a giant, mould covered turtle-looking thing. The monster snapped and gurgled at the ants as they laboured to bring it down without leaving the safety of the blue mana.

Both carvers turned their minds back to the build plans in front of them and tried their best to keep the distraction from affecting their work. Normally, they wouldn’t have an issue, but the construction plan for what Solant had demanded they design and build was so inordinately complicated.

Not because the final structure was necessarily beyond anything that they had seen before, but because of the way it was designed. Solant had insisted that the entire thing be built as modular as possible, so that the build teams could work on almost any section, without necessarily having the components around it being completed.

There were limits, of course. Building walls and heavy sections couldn’t be done without weight-bearing support completed. In spite of that, the fifth stratum fortress that they were attempting to build was proceeding, but in a completely piecemeal fashion. Tracking exactly what had been done and when was a nightmare, and attempting to build without knowing what the neighbouring teams were doing made logistics extremely difficult.

In short, it was stressing them out, and all the builders working in the fifth were growing increasingly irritated.

“Have the materials we needed been delivered?” Cobalt asked one of the nearby carvers.

“They have. Somehow,” came the reply.

Caught halfway into a complaint, Cobalt had to shut off her pheromones and grind her mandibles instead. If she could give credit for something, it was that Solant and her logistic organisation were working flawlessly. Nothing had been delivered to the wrong build site, no supplies had gone missing, and everything arrived relatively on time. It was, in Cobalt and Tungstant’s eyes, an ongoing miracle.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Solant had assured them it would work, but they just hadn’t been able to bring themselves to fully believe it. Now that everything was functioning as intended, they still couldn’t believe it was working as well as it was.

“Alright then, let’s get going. Tungstant, I’ll handle the interior if you want to work on the exterior?”