The nice thing about having this flame is that it illuminates our surrounding, giving the sweet light of… light, into this dark world of shadow . That's great . I'm a huge fan . The bad part about it is that we essentially light a signal fire to all of the monsters with the eyes to see it . Perhaps they can even feel the flickering heat my orb of flame emits . It seems unlikely, but it's the only source of heat I've found down here, maybe they can .
After we leave the crab cavern, it quickly becomes apparent that whatever creatures have been flicking about on the edge of our awareness have continued to track us . Crinis was the first to notice, with her highly sensitive ability to track mana sources . Whatever they are, these monsters are slick, able to sneak away anytime we try to get an eye on them . They're also smart . Perhaps a pack monster . There's quite a few of them out there, enough to keep tabs on us from all directions at once . Organised, numerous and cunning . I don't like it . At least I can assume they're weak, otherwise they would have come for us already . They know where we are, they know we're alone, it's perfect . Clearly, they think they still cannot take us . Which means they're waiting for an opportunity or for juicier prey to come along .
It's frustrating, but since I can't seem to hunt these creatures down and fight them on my own terms, I'll just have to keep moving forward with the expectation that whenever we get into a fight, we might also have to deal with a pack of slippery somethings . I wonder if they didn't jump into the crab fight so they could watch us fight? If so they might be smarter than I thought . Or perhaps they were busy feasting on the little crabs that escaped .
Whatever, it's time to move on!
Our business done, Tiny, Crinis and I get mobile once more and hit the road . Except in this case it's less of a road and more of a horrific, dark, stone coral jungle of death . With the flame burning bright, we're able to navigate a little more carefully, which helps a great deal . The atmosphere down here is oppressive . Despite being an ant, I find the coral jungle kind of claustrophobic . There's no order, no pattern . Instead of neat tunnels and friendly scent trails, there's just a tangled mass of pain the backside .
[I've had it! Let's see if we can get a little height!]
[Master?]
[We saw that the stone corals and plants reached up to a point and then stop right? We could climb up to the top of the corals and then walk along that . We don't have to struggle to push our way through the this mess . If we sense anything below us, we can crawl down and fight it, right? So we should cover way more ground this way!]
[Okay!]
Crinis is happy enough to agree . So we start to choose paths that take us a little higher in this mess and I immediately notice that the higher up you go, the more free space we see . It makes sense that things would free up I suppose . The other thing I notice is that with more space comes more monsters! Whoo!
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After squeezing our way up we run into some more spiders, a lower tier than that nasty bug we fought up in the tunnels but assuredly the same base species . The moment he sees them, skittering along the stone and baring their fangs at us, Tiny goes nuts . Lightning crackles and flashes across his hands, so bright I can barely see and he blasts every spider he can see with both barrels . A dozen of the eight-legged pests are exterminated in moments before he then decides he's not satisfied blasting them from a distance and runs in to get his fists dirty .
I think he's holding a grudge against these spiders . I suppose it can't be too comfortable having this mana ripping up his body constantly . He doesn't seem to react much to what I'm sure must be a quite painful ailment, but clearly he's mad about it!
[Let's go and support, Crinis!]
These spiders appear to be only tier two or three and we make short work of them . I crunch any that come close with my mandibles and flare my fireball every now and again to scare them which makes them easy pickings for Crinis . In short order, thirty of the hideous beasts have been destroyed and it's time to feast once more .
[Make sure to gather up any cores that you find guys!] I remind my pets as we munch on the Biomass .
Our income of cores has been fantastic down here . The spherical mana stones seem much more common in the Second Strata, as opposed to the first . Up there maybe one in five monsters had a core unless they were close to a source of mana they could absorb, down here where the ambient mana is so many times thicker the ratio is closer to one in two . For monsters tier three and over, it's more like ninety percent . It seems that creatures who don't form a core run into a wall pretty quickly, outclassed by their kin who are able to absorb more mana and gain more from each evolution .
I made the right call, all that time ago! I knew I was right! Forming the core immediately was absolutely the right choice . It's nice to have ones' choices reinforced in such a direct manner .
I gain a few Skill levels from the fight and another thirty Biomass, which is a nice haul . Tiny did most of the damage, so I didn't manage to level, but crucially, my Fire Magic Affinity reached level five so I can rank that skill up . The knowledge of new, totally sweet fire magic starts to seep into my brain the moment I confirm the upgrade, dropping my available skill points down to nine . To make matter worse, I pick up the Earth Magic Affinity, putting them down to eight . They seemed to plentiful at one point, now I'm starting to run dry! Ah well . Hopefully I'll start to level faster once we get into some more fights .
It shouldn't take long before we find a few, maybe up on top of the corals there'll be more action .
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