Two weeks into the wave and all I’ve been doing is grinding. Now, I’m as big a fan of grinding Skills as the next person. In fact, my dedication to mindless repetitive tasks has become legendary all throughout the lands! Anthony the dedicated, they call me!

Gah. Even the self-help pep talk is failing to do anything at this point. My three loyal associates are doing their best to get all the Levels they can and I don’t want to interfere, so what can I do other than sit here and fight, grinding my own Skills as I push towards my new fusions? Perhaps it’s a character flaw, but I seriously struggle with this repetitive grinding! My brain doesn’t want to sit still! Having multiple brains, each controlling multiple mind constructs, doesn’t help the problem, it makes it worse!

Can you even imagine what it’s like to be bored in thirty-six different brains?!

I’m literally hanging off the roof, juggling fireballs off shields while rolling balls of rock through an obstacle course using force magic and I’m booooooooored!

Of course, that’s not all I’m doing. Whenever a new monster rolls up the tunnel or pops out of the wall, I’m forced to enter combat and dispose of them, which happens every few minutes. Then there’s the mind-bendingly difficult external mana manipulation practice I’m putting myself through, burning my brains to try and move mana inside my opponents, or shift the energy at the very limits of my range. It’s exhausting work, only it isn’t because I can’t really get tired.

When I finally notice the toxic miasma creeping up the tunnel, I’m almost glad to see it. Almost.

“You might all want to move back,” I warn the ants behind me.

It’s on the very edge of my awareness now, a slow moving sense of virulence. When I reach out to take hold of the mana, I can almost feel it trying to cling to me, to infect me via even the touch of my mind.

Yuck.

“In fact, you’re probably going to need to spread the word to the others in case they haven’t picked up on it yet. The fifth stratum monsters and mana are arriving.”

“Yes, Eldest!” comes a snappy reply and I can hear them scurrying off behind me.

It’s not like we weren’t expecting this. I fought a monster from the fifth before, but this time we are sitting directly over the top of it. With how much that mana loves to spread, I’m not shocked at all to see it sliding on up the tunnels to the bottom of the nest.

I am NOT looking forward to exploring the fifth stratum. Not even a little bit.

I wait for more monsters to come, but perhaps unsurprisingly, none appear. With the evil miasma of doom making its way up through the tunnels, I can only assume the regular spawns are getting melted before they have the chance to sniff out the Colony. Which means more time for grinding Skills! Whoo.

An hour later, I get my first sighting of the goop. The air in the tunnel ahead of me begins to darken and almost… thicken. A green haze wafts about, and not like, a healthy, full of life haze, but more a ‘melt your face off’ kind of haze.

Naturally, there’s only one thing to do! Dragon’s Breath!

My concentrated fire breath spell packs quite the punch, if I do say so myself. The flames rockets forth, burning the ever-loving heck out of everything for over a hundred metres down the tunnel. When the flame clears, so has the haze, but it doesn’t take long before it starts to creep back. As if it would be that easy.

Somewhat because it’s necessary, and somewhat because I’m desperate for something to do, I advance down the tunnel and away from the nest, burning out the toxin where I find it. The stuff is already doing a number on the lower tunnels; the normally abundant life mana, and the abundant grasses, flowers, plants and other cool stuff that comes with it, have been subsumed. Everything I find is withered and corrupted, starting to emit the poisonous mana instead of its own natural variety.

Holy moly. This stuff is seriously gross.

The ability of this mana to infect whatever it comes across is way too potent. How the heck has the fourth managed to stay free of it for so long? Does it only creep up here during a wave and then descend when it's over? Or do the people here have to actively fight it off constantly?

At any rate, this is what the Colony is doing all over the base of the nest now. Using whatever means necessary to prevent this invasive mana from entering the fortress, no matter the cost.

In the process of annihilating every hint of poison with Dragon’s Breath, I come across my first monster in a while. Unfortunately, it’s not something from the fourth.

The further from the nest I go, the worse the infection is, until I round a corner and find it opens into a cavern, the centre of which contained a pool of water not long ago. I say contained, because that water has been converted into a pool of noxious snot. At least, that’s what it looks like. In fact, the walls, ceiling and cavern are starting to drip with… questionable-looking goop, strands of it sticking and stretching from rock to rock. Already, it looks like I’m in a different stratum altogether!

That’s when I see it.

Emerging from the pool comes an eyestalk, quickly followed by another. At the tip of each, a burning red orb rotates freely, until they spot me, at which point both lock onto my position and the rest of the creature begins to emerge.

Imagine a slug the size of a truck. Now make it really wide. Now cover its back in waving tendrils that ooze out a constant flow of bright green goop. That’s pretty much what we got here. The goop is so bright I worry it has more in common with nuclear waste than it does some sort of slime. There’s no way I’m getting anywhere close to that thing. It shall burn in purifying flame.

Dragon’s Breath!

The fire roars like its namesake as I bring it to bear upon the slug… thing. I hold it there for a full minute before I release the spell to see what’s left of the disgusting monster.

To my shock, it appears almost completely unharmed. Even more shocking, it’s gotten a lot closer! I don’t believe in stereotypes, but shouldn’t you be a lot slower?!