Chapter 1630 – Medicine

Solant watched as the last of the Krath resistance was swept from the field. They’d lasted longer than she’d expected, a testament to how tenacious they were as enemies. She had a respect for the slug tribes. As enemies, they were everything the little general could ask for: cunning, vicious, willing to sacrifice in order to achieve victory, canny in the ways they utilised their advantages.

Their defeat in this campaign was simply a matter of planning. Solant had prepared for this outcome from the very beginning. With the power of initiative, the Krath had been forced to react, always on the back foot. So long as they hadn’t succeeded in cracking the fortress, then the Colony was assured of victory.

It came close, closer than she’d thought it would, but thanks to the heroics of the battalions, the sacrifice of many of her siblings, and the unrelenting will of the Eldest, they had held firm. Now it was time to reap the reward.

“I suppose you think the work is done,” Mendant snapped as she walked up to the general. “Did you forget we still need to heal this massive thing?”

“Of course not,” Solant replied calmly, patting the irascible healer on the carapace with her antenna. “I’m well aware of the work that still needs to be done, have no fear. You will be given all the time and support you need.”

Mendant huffed, not appeased in the slightest.

“Oh? You’re going to give us more time, are you? I expect you’ll shut down the mana flowing down from above, then. Wouldn’t want the heart to fill up too quickly now.”

Solant clacked her mandibles with regret.

“Sadly, I do not believe we are able to shut off the flow once it has begun. Needless to say, the faster we can fill the heart and have it start to spread our concentrated, cleansed mana, the better.”

The healer shook her head, disgusted.

“Typical,” she said before walking away, muttering to herself. When she reached a group of healers busy working on a section of wall, Solant could see them discuss amongst themselves for a moment before the entire group turned to stare at her.

“You should be careful not to get injured any time soon,” Leonidant advised her.

“I think you might be right,” Solant agreed.

Of course, they could shut off the flow from above, but she wasn’t wrong in saying it was important to fill the heart as fast as possible. If they let the cleansed mana trickle in and slowly dissipate, it would be eaten up by the fifth in no time at all. Only by pumping out highly concentrated energy would they be able to achieve their aim: a full conversion of this entire section of Dungeon.

Which meant the healers would need to make sure the entire heart didn’t fall apart over the next hour or so—a daunting task, to say the least.

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“They’ve been doing a good job so far,” Leonidant pointed out. “Look at the floor.”

Indeed, the lower reaches of the heart had been fully healed already. Where once it had been a yellow-grey, slime-covered mass of pallid flesh, now it was a hale and hearty red, beating stronger than before.

Of course, there were still the holes that the Mother Tree had punctured through the walls that needed to be closed over, but hopefully they wouldn’t pose too much of a problem. Solant put the healers from her mind and turned her attention to another issue.

The whirlpool down below was still there, the cleansed liquid mana reacting violently to the sludge left behind by Theorazzn. She hadn’t expected it to succumb quickly, but it was lasting much longer than expected, which meant it was consuming more mana than she’d allowed for.

At least it was finally starting to go down. It would take a few hours, she guessed, but eventually the pool would be eradicated entirely, no longer able to corrupt the heart from within.