Chapter 1631 – Journey Through the Dark

I don’t like travelling with Brilliant. Her little… dimensional hops, or whatever she wants to call them, leave me feeling nauseous and headachy. Even trying to imagine how the process works is enough to make my brains throb. How did she even figure out how to do this?! There weren’t any ants in the Colony who had any knowledge of different dimensions, and now Brilliant is out there swimming through them like a particularly loud and annoying eel.

“Are we there yet?” I groan.

“No,” she tells me happily. “Two more hops before we arrive.”

“How is the poison progressing, Eldest?” one of the healers asks me.

We’re no longer pretending it isn’t progressing, eh? Well, it is, that’s for sure. Every cell of my body that is changed makes it that little bit harder to slow it down. I’m holding on as best I can, but my grip is starting to slip.

More and more, I’m worried for Protectant and the others. Each of them took much less into themselves than I have, but are they able to hold it off as well as I can? If not… I dread to think of how they’re suffering.

“Slowly, for now,” I tell her.

For the time being, my thoughts haven’t been affected like they were before. I wasn’t a fan of that, to say the least.

“Once we get you back to the fortress, there will be more we can do. Continue to hold it back as you have been.”

“Of course, what else did you think I was going to do?”

I was expecting to get a kick or two, but my carapace suffers no impacts from irritated healer feet. They must be distracted, which isn’t a good thing. They’re doing their best to keep my body in as good a condition as it can be, whilst also trying to manipulate the invasive mana within. She said they’ll be able to do more for me back at the fortress, but I’m genuinely not sure what that might be. If they have some tricks to help deal with a problem like this, they’re something I’ve never seen before.

“Alright then, everybody aboard!” Brilliant laughs.

“I’m not a ship…” I grumble.

“In this instance, you technically sort of are,” she tells me.

“Are you trying to make me feel better about the situation? If so, it isn’t working.”

“I wasn’t,” she confirms, tapping me on the back. “I think everyone is here, good! Let’s go!”

I brace myself and soon feel the weird twisting sensation that always precedes one of these ‘hops’. There’s a sickening, sucking feeling, and then darkness. Which isn’t too shocking, we’re hopping from patches of total darkness to other patches of total darkness, after all. There isn’t anything to see.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I don’t know what’s making me feel worse. The infection or these dimensional shenanigans.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s the infection. That doesn’t look pleasant at all.”

I raise up an antenna to prod the little mad scientist.

“You can see it?” I say.

“Of course I can! I’m—”

“Nope.”

She huffs.

“—able to see all the mana around me, even if it’s hidden away inside something. You’d be amazed at how much energy is sneaking about, just beneath the surface.”

“That’s kind of impressive. I assume you have some sort of organ for that?”