Chapter 1764 – Boiling Corruption

With Crinis, Invidia and Tiny here, shoring up the defences is an easy enough task. Send them out and let them go to work. Tier seven monsters are nothing to sneeze at; they can help tip the balance all on their own. At the very least, they’ll take the pressure off and give the Colony a chance to regroup.

It seems as though everything is concentrated in the tunnels beneath this fortress. Only the strongest, highest tier, highest level battalions are allowed to fight here, and the Krath are holding nothing back. They’re determined to prevent us from getting any deeper and have done everything they could to stop the purified mana from flowing deeper.

Heck, from what Brendant tells me, they’ve been successful in pushing us back! Obviously we can’t allow that to stand.

Also, it turns out that my templar are here too. They’ve been fighting in the fifth while I was asleep, doing what they could to keep my family safe and assist the non-ant members of the battalions. I’ll have to thank them for that!

First, though, I need to get down to the front and see just what the heck is going on.

After my rampage higher up, I’m filled with confidence. Blasting through four Krath outposts like they weren’t even there has me thinking I can resolve this situation easily. However, when I actually step out onto the front, I’m forced to recalculate a little.

It’s clear that the Colony has tried to recreate the platform system that we used during the first wave down here, separating the platform from the rest of the terrain and using it as an intake point for mana. The Krath, however, are not having it.

Once I step out onto the platform, the problems become immediately apparent. We appear to be surrounded on all sides by a tidal wave of mucus. Not just a small tidal wave either. This thing is kilometres high, a slowly moving disaster that rolls closer at a glacial pace while the battalions fight desperately to push it back.

I stare at it, my mandibles hanging wide in shock. How in the name of heck did the Krath manage to produce this? It’s insane! If it actually manages to close the distance, it’s going to engulf the entire bottom half of the fortress! If that happens, it’ll eat through the walls and destroy the interior in a matter of hours. Yikes!

Of course, the mucus is not the only thing the stalwart defenders of the Colony are having to deal with. Bursting through the slime is a constant stream of maddened, berserking monsters, desperate to eliminate the cleansed mana and spread their filth and corruption. Even defeating them isn’t enough, since parasites and other nasty things jump out of them the moment they go down.

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The stench, the awful, awful sights, the sounds of endless battle and desperation. Ah, it’s like I never left.

Amongst all of this chaos is the hidden hand of the Krath. There are thousands and thousands of them out there, or so I’m told. Using their strange magic to strike at the defenders when they see an opening, engineering the terrain and manipulating the native monsters to stream towards us. Apparently there have been dozens of capture attempts every single day recently as the slugs have ramped up their efforts to obtain an ant and convert it to their cause.