This wasn't good. No, it wasn't good at all, to the point where the Core wondered if it had screwed up. The rocks falling from the ceiling was meant to have destroyed everything, including the death of the [Undead] Worm. Any thoughts about it being abhorrent were promptly flushed out of its mind, the idea about being screwed due to the creation being much worse. The idea of being swallowed whole was definitely among the fears gained in those seconds.

The Worm was not of normal proportions, able to open up the front of its body completely, splitting in every direction. The teeth seen before had multiplied as if the Queen had boosted its potential to a higher degree after the power-up. The Core didn’t care too much about that detail, however, too focused on how exactly it was meant to have any chance of surviving its attacking.

Another avalanche of rocks hitting it! That was the right answer. The Queen could use its tendrils to defend herself, yet there was little chance she would be able to stop them all entirely. With how large the Worm had grown, nearly coming up on reaching around the entire inner sanctum, there was no chance she would be able to side-swipe all the rocks without missing a few. And just one severing would be more than enough to cripple it.

Gathering its Mana once again, the Core sprouted hundreds of Mana-Lines upwards, hoping to reach the new rocks above. With how much had fallen, the ceiling had been raised higher and higher from where the Core was positioned, forcing more time to transpire before it could form the Lines right. Yet, that mattered little as long as the Panels were made-

‘Oh, don’t you even think about it!’ the Queen all but screamed, an Tendril of Black Mana smashing against the cluster of created Mana-Lines. They were all near-instantly consumed, the Panels created being less of a buffer than the Core had expected. And the Blackness would have continued to travel down towards the main part if not for the Entity severing the connection before it was too late. Though it almost was, the speed of Mana more than one would have guessed.

The Worm was trashing around, getting to grips with how much it had grown. As the [Queen of Hollows] continued to let the Energy around fall into the creature, however, it began to slow down in its trashing, appearing calmer, more docile. It was as if… it was being bent to the ant’s Will. It was a sight that didn't need to happen. It needed to be stopped. Think! The Core needed to think. The Creature, for whatever else there could be, needed to be anything but open for manipulation. It needed to be in a berserker-like state constantly, without the ability to do anything but trash around.

Harm. Any creature commented on being harmed. It disliked it. How would the Core harm it? Rocks from above were cut off. There had to be another method of sending it, though. What- The sides! What had been tried with the sides? Exploding rocks and Basalt. Both had shown the ability to explode the moment that a little bit too much Mana was inserted. What happened if way too much Mana was put in? A bigger explosion is what the Core hoped for.

Using the Stone just beside where the Mana-Line was so that the Queen had no chance of stopping it, the Entity pumped the one ton of stone with as much Energy as the Core had at its disposal. And it just kept felling the material, not wasting a single second on anything else but that. It reached fifty Mana within the second and couldn't handle anymore at that point.

Splinters, fractures, and whatever else appeared on the rock's surface before the energy within caused an extreme meltdown of the Material, Red and hot material raining down on the Inner Sanctum at higher speeds than anything else the Core had ever seen. It was extreme in its effects, the degrees high enough to make the exoskeletons begin to melt. Even the air was hissing as the structure of the Worm began to degrade.

Yet that didn't last for long, the intake of Black Mana only increasing. And with the flood of energy came a flood of reparations, the Black Mana flowing across the surface of the worm with a flourish. Every dent and piece of exoskeleton harmed came back in mint condition, nothing wrong compared to before. In fact, it had improved, the colour darkening, becoming more in-tune with the Darkness. It was only getting calmer and calmer. It hadn't even reacted to the damage, only caring about the slow turning towards the Queen. The thing was completely in the Queen's control.

No! That couldn't be accepted. The Core refused to accept it. There had to be something else, something smart, something that could be done. Stone and damage did nothing to distract it, and any attempts to kill it were met with the Queen stopping the Core. But there had to be something else. What would stop the creature from calmness and make it grow mad? What could make the Darkness grow to a beserk-like state?

Yet again, the answer was nothing but White Mana, its ability to impede and taunt the darkness being exactly what was needed. And with the Core never stopping the suction of energy from its surroundings, things were about to escalate to an extreme degree. Converting the Mana instantly, there was nothing else to be done. The White Mana shined out of the Core like nothing before, the brightness creating a shadow of the Darkness on the wall, it working as a solid that stopped the light from shining through. It was a moment of silence before chaos reigned.

The Worm, so silent a moment before, grew berserk with the second, trashing its head over to the source instantly. While its massive size might have hinted towards there being a more slow process of movement, it was like a lightning bolt, its body working like a coil from the current position. It sprung towards the end of the Mana-Line, the point where the Core had used the enlarged Sphere to use a hundred Mana at once. And with nothing else to it, the bright light of White Mana was swallowed whole, stopped from shining through the power of being digested by an even more powerful Darkness.

Not that the Core gave up without a fight, it stopped at nothing to power the White Mana still inside the creature, the connection working perfectly no matter what material was beside them. The Entity gave it more Mana than it likely should have, bordering on five hundred total before the Connection was finally lost to it, the Darkness having grown too powerful the constant feeding. The abilities granted by being able to surround one’s enemy was too large an advantage. the Core knew that it would have taken more than double the Worms Mana to beat it from such a position and it barely had enough to match it in equal fights. And that was also discounting the fact that the Queen could simply help while being further away, granting it more Mana than it would need. The Entity was without hope. It needed to get the Worm into a position where it couldn't possibly win, one where the amount of Mana didn't matter.

But that would mean that- Yet that would also- However, one could… There was nothing. The Core was blank, every strategy not being possible without having another problem already solved. Yet that problem required another which also required the original problem solved as well. Nothing could work in the current conditions. When the [Queen of Hollows] and the [Worm] worked together, there was nothing which could be done, both unstoppable to the Core. A thousand [Giant-Ants] could do nothing against them, their shared power simply too large. A [Undead] did not tire, did not make mistakes. They worked mechanically, always able to regenerate from every non-lethal blow. And since every blow from those beneath was just that, the Core knew it was a losing fight. Only it could kill both yet they each supported each other's weakness.

Did the [Queen of Hollows] even have a weakness? The Core wondered as such as it tried to send out a burst of White Mana against the INtelligent Ant, hoping that it would cause a distraction that would matter for more than ten seconds. Yet that barely made any difference. Before the Energy had any chance of getting close, there was both a multitude of Dark Mana-Tendtrils and a Worm ready to head against it. Nothing could be done. It was untouchable by current means, the sheer power needing to overcome it not being something that the Core held within its reservoirs. It could perhaps have enough power to combat a single one of them at a time, yet the requirement of not being likewise killed at that same time was nothing short of near-impossible.

‘Are you having fun?’ the Queen asked, which made the Core pause from its wondering. It had grown unsure of how to proceed, causing the two sides to sit at a standstill, though the queen used it to further power up the massive [Worm]. ‘You must think yourself invincible in your current position, right? With us being so far away from that shiny heart of yours, there would be no way for little old me to ever come close to hurting you. But… I am afraid those feelings of security must vanish. You have caused me too much pain for me to ever think any trick of mine dirty.’

And then she threw a compressed ball of Black Mana directly into the Core’s last sphere of the Mana-Line, one which held over two hundred concentrated Mana. And that was all devoured by the Darkness within the second, with it only wanting more and more. Which was where it all began to go downhill.

The Core was without mercy, was without being merciful. But so was the Bolack Mana, it did nothing but consume for its own betterment. And that meant it would take more Energy in the easiest path possible. So when the Core had used some quite hard panneling to direct Energy as easily as possible, there was truly only one way the Black would spread towards. Going at a rapid fifty meters per second, the Black Mana rapidly headed towards the Core’s main domain, the energy-consuming everything on every step of the way there. Nothing was allowed to remain, no sight of anything. Which wasn't good at all, the Entity without any idea of what was happening at that moment. It knew the Queen was without mercy, it knew that she intended to kill the Core quickly, and it knew that it had to act quickly lest the monarchs wish for becoming truth.

And so it tried to separate one of the points that the Black Mana hadn't reached. A quick severing should have made it all too easy, right? With no direct connection, the Black Mana would sure just move on with its life and spread to somewhere else. Well… that was perhaps true for anywhere else, yet when that was either through solid stone or solid air, the Darkness would still choose the air method, meaning that it never actually slowed. The only thing wasted was the Core, thinking that it had done well enough to stop its incoming demise.

Four seconds were left until it hit the split that end up with the Core’s having to way to defend itself. Four seconds to think. Maybe three and the last to act. The first half of the first second had already passed and there were no ideas in the Entity’s mind. It had no clue what to do, what to think. It could only… there it was. It just needed to separate it. Separate as in doing more than just cut the ties. Three full seconds were left and those would all be spent making sure that it would form into a reality.

The first was spent utterly severing the bonds, making any connections impossible. The next second was spent creating a solid stone wall, one meter thick so that the Black Mana wouldn't instantly ignore the lack of Mana there and simply wait a second before digging into the tunnel regardless. And the third second was spent thickening that wall as much as the Core possible bloody could, destroying the Mana-Line while also filling the hole back up with solid Stone. It even used dirt intermittently to make sure that the pure material wasn't enough to interest the Black Mana. It dared not send out a pulse of Mana to see if it was following or not, knowing fully that the act of doing so could turn a negative-positive. It couldn't handle the backlash that would be caused.

Reaching the end of the Mana-Line, everything filled up perfectly, the Core was forced to sit in wait for the next ten seconds, desperately hoping the Darkness hadn't followed. If necessary, it was ready to try and cut off the Manalock room to see if that would stop it and maybe even use White Mana on the opposite side as a distraction of sorts to let Mana dissipate between the rooms. Yet that was saved for the emergency, the Core currently counting the seconds to make sure nothing happened.

The first five passed by without any sign. At the seventh a rumbling was heard but nothing else. At the tenth, the pressure building inside the Main Domain was finally released. The Core knew first hand how quick the Black Mana was. But it also knew that it wasn't one to slow down much. If it hadn't reached the Core’s Domain at that point, it wouldn't happen at all, allowing the Entity to take a big mental sigh without worrying about its impending death.

Or, at least not the impending death from the Black Mana sent out at that moment. For there was still another source coming. The [Queen of Hollows] and the Worm were clearly not two beings that would simply sit around in silent waiting. The Queen had already said that she sought what was beyond the Core’s Domain. If it was already dead, the Intelligent Ant was likely expecting to just walk out with its remaining ants and call it a day.

For there was likely a lot of those left. The Colony of Ants had shown clear signs of constant going out to scavenge, hinting towards at least a hundred being outside by the time that the Core crashed down the tunnels. And while the tunnels outside of the intended places had likely crashed down as well, the Entity was wise enough to know that it needed to prepare for an army.

An Army of Ants that wouldn't stop at anything, An Queen-Ant powerful enough to kill the Core in one fell swoop, and a Worm that had enough power to simply ignore the White Mana thrown at it.

Each of the three points needed a strategy to be taken care of while the other two parties could still assist without any issues. That… was quite a hard task. With the Queen likely having a strong desire for bringing along all the remaining ants, It was clear that somewhere close to thirty minutes would transpire before they came running. But that still meant the Core only had thirty minutes as a maximum before it needed to be ready.

A hundred normal ants, one powerful ant, and a creature able to swallow a large part of the Core’s entire domain. The Core felt a small bit of sarcasm coming from its mind as it believed that thirty minutes was much too long a wait since it would win so easily.

‘Come along and meet your death, foul Queen.’ The Core couldn't help but exclaim, unable to understand where such a thought had come from.