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Chapter 1525 - The Flow
🕑 Added 2025-01-22 00:53:51 +0000 UTCAdvant, loyal Soldier of the Colony and member of the Council, stood alongside her sibling, the general Sloan and watched.
“It’s doesn’t quite hit home until you see it for yourself,” she noted.
“I’ve been here for three days, and I still can’t quite believe it,” Sloan replied. “Getting the reports is overwhelming enough, but this… this is beyond my imagination.”
The two stood, clinging to a wall as they looked down over the connection between the fourth stratum and the fifth. Deep below the mountain that the Colony had turned into their nest, the transformation that had taken place here was nothing short of baffling.
Where once there had been monster infested tunnels turned into staging grounds for the invasion, now there lay a hub of industry without rival anywhere else in the Colony’s lands. A new portal network had been established, the extravagant cost deemed justified in order to save the time it took to shift materials from the mountain above to below, and from those portals an unending stream of all that the ants created poured out.
Reinforcements, healers, medicines, new trainees for the militia, metals, wood, precious stone, ores, cores, Biomass, everying.
It had proven to take too much time to carry objects through the portal so the carvers had laid down tracks and devised carts that could bridge the gap caused by the width of the portal itself, just so they could move things through that little bit faster.
The two Council members watched as the fully laden carts streamed through the magic gateways, being sorted and shifted to different paths that would take them to specific warehouses to be unloaded. Already the surrounding tunnels were stuffed with storage, the defensive line pushed further and further out to accommodate the necessary space. Peeling the Dungeon veins from this vast chamber alone had been a mighty work, not too long ago it would have been beyond the Colony’s skill entirely.
And all of this, everything that came through, everything that was processed, all the materials, all the ants, all the humans and golgari and various other races, all vanished down the shaft into the fifth stratum.
“Solant has somehow managed to leverage the production of almost the entire Colony,” Sloan noted. “We are sending down ten thousand ants a day, and still she wants more.”
“Are our casualties that high?” Advant fretted. “We shouldn’t be throwing away the lives of our siblings.”
“You’ve seen the reports, the casualties are far lower than what we might have expected going into this, but the injury rate is staggering, and the time to heal wounds sustained down there is much longer than the norm. Every healer we can spare across the entire Colony is down there already, and it isn’t enough. Look over there.”
The general used her antennae to direct Advant’s attention, and she saw a new facility being constructed, an enormous, ten floored building being built into the vast chamber wall.
“New hospital, the first of six.”
“Six?”
“That’s right. They’re running out of space down in the fortress to accommodate the wounded. Attrition during the wave has proven to be absurdly high. Did you see what the average deployment time for a soldier on the platforms is?”
“Two hours,” Advant said grimly.
“Two hours in the fight, then a week out of it recovering,” Sloan confirmed. “Generals are better, but still awful, scouts and mages last the longest, but even they can’t avoid injury, the fighting is that hectic.”
The two turned their attention back to the shaft, in their minds it had transformed from just an elevator, or a tunnel, into something far more terrifying.
It was a mouth, and it was eating everything the Colony could put into it.
“The fortress is an insatiable beast,” Sloan sighed, “we’re putting in everything, everything that we can produce, and the appetite never gets any lower. All the profits from our trade with the brathian conglomerate are being eaten up by this monster.”
“I thought we were using those cores to graduate more hatchlings?” Advant asked.
“And where are they going?” Sloan snapped, pointing back at the hole in the ground. “It’s not like we can stop it now either. If we pull back, the fortress will be chewed up and toxified in a matter of days, nothing will be recoverable, all of it lost.”
“What are you worried about? Just come out and say it directly.”
Sloan fell silent for a moment, rubbing at her temples with her antennae, a gesture many of them had picked up from the Eldest. Advant knew what was troubling her sister, they all shared the same concerns, but it was better for such things to be out in the open.
“Solant tricked us from the beginning,” Sloan said. “She knew all along just what this project was going to take, the staged expansion of this staging ground is proof enough by itself. If we’d known from the beginning what this was going to require, we would have never gone along with it. There are so many things we need to focus on. Our position in the fourth is still unstable. Shoring up our borders in the third. Training our siblings, raising their Skills and increasing the number of tier six ants across the Colony. The Eldest themself demanded we slow down to focus on such things.”
“Yet it was the Eldest’s idea to invade the fifth,” Advant stated. “This isn’t Solant’s doing, she’s just following orders.”
“I know that,” the general groused. “I’m not criticising her, she just did what she thought was necessary to complete the task put in front of her. What I’m worried about is the stakes. If this invasion fails we will never back the resources we’ve invested in getting this far. It will be a blow to the Colony like we haven’t experienced before.”
“It will be a blow to the Eldest,” Advant said quietly. “Some might doubt their decision making, call into question their judgement.”
“The Eldest has never led us astray before,” Sloan fretted. “We just have to trust that this time won’t be any different.”
As they discussed, the ceaseless flow of precious resources did not pause even for an instant. All of it vanishing down into the darkness, food for the beast.
Comments
DrDankness
Good god didnt even think about that. The healers are gonna become immortal life springs at this point. Anything after this shitstorm will likely feel like a cakewalk
DrDankness
I thought about this. It might be better to mot outright purify the entire 5th lest it attract deeper powers to come up
DrDankness
Maybe for each individual ant it might be less but for the colony as a whole its an insane amount of fighting
DrDankness
Probably a combination of using the cores they do find and the environment making it difficult to harvest more of the cores
Henrique Seraph
Nas a onda já começou né
Gonvas
The healers aren't getting XP only developing their skills. They are monsters, they only gain XP through kills. Sapient system with classes is the one that can gain XP by doing others things class related.
Gonvas
The healers aren't getting XP only developing their skills. They are monsters, they only gain XP through kills. Sapient system with classes is the one that can gain XP by doing others things class related.
DrDankness
Damn you know its bad when the Ants are complaining that its expensive. This must be an incalculable amount of cost
andwhyisit
I suspect that they are using every single core that they can obtain.
Merf
Tiny had a small amount of shadow mana inside him constantly attacking him while he was evolving, so theoretically if an ant evolved while still being damaged by the toxic effects of the fifths mana they could adapt to it in the same way Tiny did. If they are healed before evolving or have the toxic mana purged I doubt it would work
Grey Knight Lord
But what about the cores they are getting from the 5th itself. Wouldn’t that offset part of the cost?
Kail311
I just had a weird idea, Tiny had his evolution influenced by the shadow mana infection he had while evolving, could random ants unlock toxic evolutions because of their exposure to the 5th stratum? Or would the purified mana from the Wuffers interfere with that/ could purified mana affect an evolution?
Aeseof
Oh yeah, no arguing that. The fifth is going to have at least a significant chunk of its real estate turned into a sprawling mega fortress.
Noah
The Healing Branch is about to become the most powerful unit in the whole colony. They have to be leveling like crazy with these conditions.
Noah
The other powers are gonna want a piece of it, but the Ant’s entire evolutionary strength is all leveraged towards defensive battles. If the Ants can actually tame the fifth, then they are gonna turn into a juggernaut that’s just as difficult to displace as the Krath. They are gonna have impossibly complex fortresses spread throughout the stratum.
Noah
If they can actually tame the fifth, then it becomes the springboard which lets them compete directly with all the other great powers. They’d literally have sole control of an entire level and a huge area to expand within
Noah
The healers are definitely earning massive EXP, and once they level high enough the soldiers will start gaining massive EXP as well
Brandon14754
Also it's not just about exp for levels but also for skills
Brandon14754
@alt31415 two hours during a wave when spawns are up like 1,000%, that means they'd be fighting monsters equivalent to like weeks on normal patrol, normally monsters only spawn from spawn points and stay in their territories
Wensber
Thanks for the chapter!
Aeseof
That advantage is a double edged one. Once the fifth is tamed and purified, the powers are gonna want their piece of it.
Anthony Romanov
Also help with relationships with native powers. Every wants resources from 5th. And having permanent outpost is equal to one of Wonders of Dungeon.
Anthony Romanov
I agree and it needed to happen soon as Colony grows the more picky they become with resources. This push isn't just into 5th its massive utilization of resources that Colony would still be wondering what to do. It strengthen logistics not just to 5th but any future project Colony would want to apply to.
Buck
Great chapter. Really puts into perspective just how much the invasion of the 5th has cost the Colony. It also really shows just how right Solant was to say that logistics are what win battles and wars. I served 3 years on active duty in the US Army. One thing I learned while serving is that for every 1 combat soldier deployed, it requires 4 to 5 support troops at a minimum to keep them battle ready and fighting fit. TFTC!
Runaway_Cactuar
Assuming they're fighting the Wave and the best the slimeballs could throw at them? It's not nothing, that's for sure.
alt31415
But ARE they gaining massive EXP? 2 hours of fighting and 1 week of recovering, if you remember.
Rick Delallata
And this is just them holding for the wave. No telling how many more waves they might have to endure before they conquer the 5th
Runaway_Cactuar
I'd appreciate Sloan's point if the story is set in this world. But in the Dungeon, the value of an army gaining massive EXP is never low. Especially when they have loads of enemies looking to take them out. Also, the 5th is prolly one of the few unoccupied areas the Colony could expand to without pissing off somebody. As much as I like to laugh at Anthony bumbling his way to an empire, this was a good call.
Ian Levy
They will be the second faction with access to the deep dungeon and one that will be better able to utilize the resources of everything by past the 5th
Aeseof
Oh, definitely. I was including that in controlling the only stable foothold in the fifth in my head
BelligerentGnu
More than that, what kind of resources are in the fifth that have been completely unavailable until now?
Jac Onue
A good remainder of why none of the other races managed to do what the colony is doing.
Aeseof
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger... In this case, the potential benefits far outweigh the expense. This will help them get more tier 6 and 7 ants. They'll gain the first solid foothold in the fifth, and dominate it entirely. They'll have the Chal firmly in their corner. The cost will be extreme, but I honestly can't think of a faster way to grow the colony's combat power.
kev mil
Tyftc
No_Creative_Name
But if they hold, the evolutions for these ants that survive will be insane! Hold on colony!
