Chapter 1427 – The Finest Creation

Purifying the mana of the fifth was not an idea that hadn’t been tried before. In fact, there had been dozens of attempts, throughout the millennia. In fact, historical records indicated that the Folks had made an attempt using specifically designed pets to handle the process, but were eventually driven out by the Krath.

So why did the ants believe they were going to be successful where others had failed?

First, they were able to bring a level of labour and resources to the project that other empires or nations would struggle to match. Even for the Folk, invading the fifth required an enormous amount of wealth, and the constant drain of cores used to fuel their pets became too punishing to continue. The Colony did not, so to speak, use money. As long as they were bringing resources in, they were willing to expend them in the fifth. The number of cores they were willing to spend would be absurd to any other civilisation.

Second, they had developed a rich and thorough community, an entire caste, devoted to the research and rearing of pets on a grand scale. Despite their youth, the Colony had progressed with incredible speed in this field, and were confident in their core engineering. The eventual result, the ‘wuffer’ class of monster, was wholly unique and extremely well designed.

– Excerpt from ‘The Invasion’ by Alberton.

Bella and Ellie were busy. Extremely busy. It was a good feeling, they liked being busy, feeling as though they were contributing, they were ants, after all.

Before them, a pile of wuffers sat on their platform, joyfully wibbling and wobbling as the foul energy of the fifth was piped directly beneath them and filtered up through small gaps before being absorbed by the jelly-like creatures above.

Except, mana wasn’t the only thing being absorbed by the wuffers at the moment.

Ellie extended her antennae to tap one of the wuffers and read its core. A library of information smashed into her mind, but she was extremely practised at this, sorting through the deluge with ease to find what she was looking for.

“This one has reached max level,” she announced, “quick, rotate them out to the top of the pile.”

The controller of this particular wuffer hurriedly stepped forward and ordered her pet to move aside, which it did. They didn’t move very fast, the wuffers, jiggling their way forward with an ungainly backwards and forwards motion.

“Wufwufwuf!” it wibbled happily, and the ant controller gave her pet a generous tickling with her antennae before encouraging the monster to rejoin the pile, but at the top. Another in need of levels took its place and soon they were back to operating at full efficiency again.

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“Are there any close to reaching the sixth tier?” Bella asked.

“Not in this node,” Ellie shook her antennae. “How many more do we need?”

“At least two, but it would be safer with three,” came the reply.

“Safer, or better?”

“Is there much of a difference?”

“Not really.”

The two turned back to look at the platform covered in adorable, wibbling blue jelly-monsters. The wuffers were performing up to expectations so far, but they had discovered something worrying recently which was forcing them to accelerate their plans.

“When was the last time these were checked for stress?” she asked one of the nearby core-shapers.