“A full minute.” Minerva laughed when Morrelia turned a wide-eyed stare at her. “Almost died for it, though.”
“That’s longer than most monsters from the fourth will last out there…” Morrelia muttered.
“That’s what I mean. Don’t compare yourself to someone as abnormal as your mother.”
“Your tone is getting on my nerves, Titus,” Minerva growled.
“Are you going to do anything about it?” he countered.
The two glared at each other, but under the surface level of simmering anger was something else that Morrelia did not want to explore.
“What happens if I continue to widen the mana channels in my body? The amount of mana I can handle goes up, but what about acclimatisation? Wouldn’t there be powerful side effects?”
Both parents turned to her, but it was Titus who answered.
“In short, yes. If you manage to pilot a Praetorian suit, you’ll never be able to walk normally on the surface again.”
He held up a hand before she could interrupt him.
“Obviously, your mother and I were able to return to the surface, but there were several key conditions. First of all, the process to reacclimatise to low mana environments was… extreme. Secondly, even after that extended process, we needed to take liquid mana supplements to keep us alive. Once your body has gotten used to having that much mana inside it, there really is no going back.”
Morrelia absorbed this in silence. She’d suspected just how difficult the process of returning to the surface had been for her parents, and the more she learned, the more she understood how hard, and how rare, of an act what they’d done was.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. “You could have raised us in the fourth if you’d wanted. Why did you put yourselves through it?”
It was Minerva who offered an answer, “Children should grow up under the sun. That’s all.”
107. Colony Assault
From the floor of the third stratum, four giant pillars were rising. Compressed stone, marked with grooves, rotated upward from an enormous base of gathered material. Around the base of each laboured a thousand earth mages, combining their will to enable the great working, shifting thousands of tons of rock with their minds alone.
Hundreds of metres above, lashed with the burning wind and flecks of ash that filled the air of this layer of the Dungeon, yet thousands more ants gripped tight to the sides of the columns as they drew ever closer to the plate above. A barrage of spells fell toward them, deflected by shields and broken apart by yet more mages, but some fell through, crashing into massive soldiers who absorbed the blows with their hardened carapaces.
Atop glittering platforms of pure energy, teams of demons battled in the air, flinging magic and their own bodies at each other for control of the sky, such as it was, around the outer edge of the plate.
Yet more ants massed around the base of the assault columns, grouping together in teams before they began to ascend. The stone would make contact any moment now, and they needed to be in position for the final assault.
The air was filled with flashes of magic, smoke and fire, making it difficult for Sloan to see, but she could grasp enough of the situation from her position on the command hill to make a snap judgement.
“Move out the healer teams, we want them coming in right behind the assault crews.”
“Yes, General!”
“Bring the artillery scouts to the forward firing position. I want the edge of that plate covered in acid in one minute.”
“Understood!”
She fired off orders, and the messenger scouts positioned around her dashed away to deliver her instructions to the dedicated relay stations. A mixture of Mind Magic and enchanted pheromone projectors would be used to spread the word over wide distances in a short time frame. In thirty seconds, her instructions could hit any point on the battlefield.
The demon city above loomed ominously. Iritel, a smallish settlement by the standards of the third stratum, only slightly larger than Roklu had been when the Eldest found it. The petty lord who ruled over it had been the unfortunate recipient of the Colony’s eye and now faced an assault the scale of which could not have been foreseen.
Fifty thousand ants and hundreds of demons were massed against the city, and it could not possibly hope to stand against their combined might. Brixin commanded the gathered demon forces, her demonic heart pounding with glee as her territory was set to expand once more.
Iritel rested halfway up a world pillar that stood dozens of kilometres from Roklu, on the opposite side from the contested land with the ka’armodo. For now, the Colony decided against antagonizing their neighbours any further, though that situation remained volatile.
“Contact!”
A faint rumbling resounded from kilometres above their heads as the slowly rotating pillars crunched into the bottom of the stone plate. The moment they did so, ants rushed up the stone monoliths, and the living carpet that covered each pillar began to spread along the underside of the demon city, the ants clinging to the stone as they made their way to the edge, an enormous drop to the ground below them.
“Get the human teams in position. I want those aura buffs to hit the moment our teams rush over the edge. Tell the demons to unleash their maximum firepower. Are those artillery squads in position yet?” Sloan bellowed.
“Artillery firing!”
There was an extended series of low thumping sounds as four separate batteries of specially evolved scouts launched their enormous payloads of compressed acid into the air. Huge streaks of sizzling fluid arced through the sky before they fell upon the plate. The demons in the landing zones, trying to hold off the encroaching forces were forced back from the edge, lest they be overcome. No sooner did the first barrage land than the second was in the air, then the third.
Once the fourth landed, it was time to move.
Ants flooded over the edges, gnashing and biting at everything they saw as roaring priests and fiery-eyed human warriors leapt from their specially prepared floating platforms onto the plate to fight alongside them. Invigorated by the potent aura buff from fighting alongside their allies, the ants pushed forward aggressively and overran the outer defences of the city.
The landing zones rapidly expanded as more ants reached the upper side of the plate, splitting off in teams to reach their predetermined holding points. Brixin landed on the plate alongside her handpicked team of assistants and pushed hard toward the centre of the city. It was up to her to put down the tier seven city lord. The ants could defeat them, but not without sacrifice. Better to leave it to their demon ally and play it safe.
With their forces already running rampant through the city, the battle was over, and Sloan sighed. She didn’t allow any sign of her draining tension to show, but internally, her mind began to wander. Iritel was only the first city that would fall to the Colony this week; three others were lined up and preparations were already underway, resources gathered.
After several weeks of preparation, the time of expansion through the third stratum had finally begun. A hundred thousand tier three ants had poured down into Roklu over the last few days before sweeping over the Plains of Leng like a great scythe through a field. It was to be their final step before graduating the antcademy, though the Brood Tenders had been reluctant to let their charges into such a dangerous place. To ensure the students’ safety, the Colony conducted a preliminary sweep to eradicate all demons of fourth tier and higher from the area, fed the spoils to the students so they could mutate before they fought, then posted guards around the perimeter to prevent any others from entering the cleared zone.