Chapter 1766 – Defenders Reborn

We fly through the closing window in the wall of ooze and crash down on the other side in a heavily infected tunnel of nastiness. Immediately my healing network, already fired up from the spear attacks, is put to use as the incredibly dense mana begins to eat away at my carapace, chew at my joints and nibble on the fine hairs that coat my antennae. Thankfully, my eyes continue to be resistant to the damage, so I don’t have to worry about that too much.

Checking on the Pure Core, and yep, it too is vacuuming up the corruption and annihilating it. Which is interesting, now that I think about it. As far as I know, mana can’t be destroyed, merely changed, so the Core can’t be getting rid of the energy completely, it has to be going somewhere. I’m a little suspicious of what the little snails might have done now. Are they feeding on the corruption somehow? Or what it becomes when the Pure Core is done with it?

I’ll have to ask them next time I’m up there. Or… I can try, I suppose. I’m not sure how one talks to a singing snail.

Putting my legs beneath me, it’s time to start worrying about my guards again. I might be perfectly fine here for the time being, but they surely aren’t. Once again, it falls on my carapace to defend the ants who are supposed to defend me.

“Alright then, how are you all holding up? Need some healing?”

Except, when I turn around, I see nothing. Because of course I don’t, they’ve gone and hidden themselves again!

Annoyed more than anything, I reach into the Vestibule to track them down, except, the Will I get from them is kind of… fuzzy. Well, not fuzzy, but… wrong. If what my Vestibule is telling me is true, then not only is Protectant sitting on my back, she’s also running up the wall on my left and scouting ahead.

“Protectant.”

A sullen pause.

“Yes, Eldest?”

“Are you in three places at once?”

“No.”

Hmmm. I check the Vestibule again.

“Are you in four places at once?”

“… Yes.”

“You took one of those super weird evolutions, didn’t you?!”

“It’s not weird,” she says defensively, finally revealing herself to be sitting on my head. I hate when they do that!

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“Get off of there,” I demand, swiping at her with my antennae, but as always, she clings tight and manages to avoid my clumsy strikes. If I really wanted to get her off of there, I’d have to exert more effort than I’m willing to expend right now, so I give up, as always.

“This evolution provided several key advantages that overcame the drawbacks in our eyes,” she informs me snippily, settling back into place on top of my head.

“The super weird evolution, you mean?”

“Just because we now have multiple bodies doesn’t make it weird!”

Seems pretty weird to me.

“So, let me get this straight, there are four of each of you? Meaning I don’t have twenty bodyguards anymore, but eighty?”

“There are only twenty of us, but eighty bodies, yes.”