Chapter 12 - Consequences of the industrial revolution

Wyverns were known for being descendants of Dragons, they are two legged winged creatures that resembled their ancestors in appearance. Although they looked very alike, they were completely different in everything else.

Dragons, known for their supreme control over mana itself were commonly described as literal natural catastrophes, many are even named after them. Their control over mana was innate, meaning they never had to train it to better than anyone else at it. They were imparted with knowledge from their parents while still in the egg which caused any generation to be stronger than the last one.

But, although they were seemed broken in every sense when it comes to power scales, they were naturally very lazy and had very low birth rates which caused them to be considered legends in a lot of places.

While wyverns didn't have the mana control of their ancestors, they still had a very powerful mana core which made them have absurd amounts of mana. Mana they could hardly control but a lot of it anyway.

When the ants finished eating and transporting the entire body of the wyvern to the nest all that was left was that specific mana core. Roughly the same size as an human head it was considered a very large core, since most of them wouldn't even be the size of a fist.

Evienne had already decided that she would give this to Danny. Since she came to the village, Danny had occasionally asked for mana cores so she could continue her research, she would sometimes also ask for ant corpses so she could study them. Since the Ant Queen gave her approval Evienne didn't have any problem with it.

The core wasn't something that interested Evienne anyway, all she needed was the DNA of the wyvern, with it she could get whatever she wanted. Until now she hadn't mixed any DNA of monsters with mana cores in any of the children but it seemed that the universe was telling her to do it.

"Come here Arachne"

As she got closer to her mother, she was a bit nervous. Although taller than her mother she still behaved like a little kid in front of her, even now her hands were fidgeting in nervousness.

As Evienne extended her hands Arachne lowered her head and she felt a kiss on her forehead and her body quickly got encased in an egg and she fell asleep. The egg was bigger than Evienne and looked quite hard too.

She decided to give some wyvern DNA to Arachne causing her to go through something like a metamorphosis that would force her to born anew, while she wasn't sure she was basically sure that she wouldn't lose any of her memories. It would be like going to sleep, just waking up with a slightly different body.

The mother didn't change much on Arachne, just enough to be sure she got a mana core and would be able to manipulate mana.

After that she got the ants to start connecting the whole forest. Now that it was all theirs, they could expand the nest to cover the whole forest's underground. The ants would be busy for quite a while.

With all the expansion they had been doing their numbers were so large that not even Evienne knew how many of them there were. Imagine if they could all talk through the hive mind.

Anyway, transporting the egg back to the main nest wasn't much trouble since the ants were already there. But the town would potentially suffer a little without Arachne since she was the one that led the monsters in hunting for food.

…

Now on Danny's laboratory, Evienne was trying to understand what she was researching but since she had basically no knowledge regarding mana, she was having a hard time.

"With the wyvern's core I'll be able to make progress a lot quicker since I have a very good energy source now. Really, thank you very much!"

Danny was obviously ecstatic with the core. She had been having trouble with the mana stones since she didn't want to use them as a power source and the cores that the colony hunted from monsters were pretty weak. She just couldn't find anything with a high enough energy output.

Evienne was still pretty confused about what Danny was researching, apparently she had been here for months now and she still hadn't shown any results.

"You know, I was hunt down inside the empire because of my ideas, some higher ups thought I was a threat for their businesses and did everything they could to stop my research even if my ideas were just that. Ideas without anything to prove them right."

She led Evienne towards the biggest thing she had in her laboratory, a giant wheel connected to a few small cylinders.

"I hypothesized, if the energy, in this case mana, inside mana stones when used caused phenomena, like magic. Then every phenomenon we see around us, from the trees shaking to an animal running should also be caused by energy right?"

"That's where I had the idea of trying to prove that theory by collecting that energy, unfortunately if that was right then the rich people trading mana stones could lose all their business so I was outcasted."

But now that Danny was here, in a place that did not care for money, only for its people, she didn't have to be afraid of her research causing her to be targeted again. Here she could finally harvest mana directly from nature.

"I have already proven that mana can be collected naturally, now, with the core you've given me I will try to find a way to store it without causing it to quickly disperse back into the ambient."

Evienne wasn't stupid, quite far from it, she understood the implications of what Danny did. If she really did what she said their little town would go from an underdeveloped little settlement to something that people outside could call futuristic since they would have near limitless access to mana.

When Diana knows this, she will change all her plans. There will be no more, hiding quietly waiting to amass strength. They will be able to go toe to toe with the bigger forces simply because of their economic strength.