We entered the mound and about a hundred lofty and confused faces welcomed us.
A new realization occurred to me, as our forces cut through the enemy black ants like a harvester.
The crops in the size and shape of the ants were chopped through by our soldiers. Heads and arms flew through the air at the initial contact like leaves in the wind.
Before the other party could act according to their base defenses, they were mutilated by our forces.
By the time the rest of them came out of the confusion and the initial shock of seeing their friends getting killed by the second, more than seventy of them had already fallen.
"What the fuck is this?"
"Ene-Enemies!!"
“They are the fuckers from the other mound!"
"Go, call the defense, call the soldiers, call...gwack!"
And just like that all the hundred or something ants standing at the entrance died.
I looked around, and as my map gained a level I noticed that this mound was similar to our mound in more than one way.
{Map2.0 has risen to lv 10}
{Special option Tracking is now available to you.}
Tracking – Allows you to track an enemy on the map. Only his position is showed on the map.
{Clarity has risen to lv 9}
Actually on further inspection I noticed that other than having a paler shade of dirt than the one I see in our mound, the ways, paths, even the length of the room looked to be slightly similar to the ones in our mound.
We were standing in a big hall, which had quite some paths going in different direction, and our captain was looking at them said paths.
He could have chosen to move our whole army on a select path and risk being ended up at a dead end, which would not only waste our time, but also give the enemies to signal their troupes outside about our ongoing invasion.
Captains antennas showed how excited, but vigilant he was. He didn’t even take a minute to think the plan through and gave his order.
"Squads, you can see the various paths, you know what to do. The one who finds the queen will get a wish from mother. Ready everyone? Then Charge!"
And following the captains orders, we split our forces and entered the tunnels.
Which for some unbiased reason, we were allowed to choose first.
I asked my team leader what would we do if we encountered more tunnels and pathways up ahead and she said, “Then we’ll split once more, and cover all the different pathways as a team.”
Although we had killed every single ant on the spot, but somehow the enemies still had gotten news of us, and they had already started answering our offence with their defense.
We had just entered the tunnel when we saw the enemy forces coming toward us, ablest in a very low number.
I did a quick count, and it turned out there weren’t even thirty of them. While only five were soldiers and the rest were workers. I even spotted some novice ants in the mix.
"Stop intr-..."
"Charge kill them all! And someone tell the captain in charge!”
“Boss, no one is picking up!”
“Fuck them we can handle these pussies on our own!”
And as if a landslide was meeting with the ground bellow, we both parties collided in the middle of the tunnel.
Running Forward, I jumped over a worker and activated glide. And like I had thought, it worked its charm, and flying over the heads of all the enemy black ants I got to the opposite side or their tail and started my rampage.
Activating concentration, fast processing, haste, Foresight, I fired the air bullet which I had slotted beforehand and like the skill description described a projectile made entirely of wind flew from my mouth and struck the ants back which was standing in front of me.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The impact not only pushed it forward which in turn made all the ants in front of him tumble down and fall like dominos.
I saw my comrades getting excited as the enemies fell down in the middle of their run, and they pounced on them like hungry larvae’s.
I didn’t stop there, I finished the already half dead soldier ant who had taken my air bullet directly on his back by decapitating him with a sharp cut by my pincers, and held onto another ant who was trying to run away.
{Air bullet has risen to lv 2}
Our enemies took a one eighty degrees turn seeing that they were nowhere near strong enough to handle us and started running back, but they couldn’t cover much distance, because we had too many long range attacker.
Well, we even had one team who all members were red fire breathing ants. There was no way the normal workers would have been able to get away with their lives with fireballs lighting their bodies.
“Mages, fireballs, and the rest kill those who don’t die.” Our squad leader shouted in a little too energetic voice and we also replied with the same energy.
“Hoo!”
And Just as the enemy black ants turned, a barrage of fireballs turned half of them into ash.
“AHHH!”
“Somebody put it out, some- AHh!”
But the fire took care of more ants than we needed it too.
And following that I ran towards the enemies. I caught up to one, and jumped on him. My mandibles missed to attach onto his sac, but I still somehow got a hold on his hind legs and pulled on them.
My opponent was a soldier ant, and was much stronger than me stat wise, but my skill [Root] helped me out, and once I stuck to the ground, he wasn’t able to budge me after that.
{Root has risen to lv 3}
He moved and tried to get me off his legs, but I answered him with a bite on his leg, which actually tore it apart.
"Aahhh!"
He screamed in pain and turned around to glare at me, but the scene of me eating him alive horrified him and he started screaming and moving in terror, but I didn’t let go.
{Mandible mastery has risen to lv 8}
{Mandible cut has risen to lv 8}
I activated dissolve, which made my every bite have acidic damage and not only my bites cut his body apart, but because of my high and ever growing acid level its body started melting too.
I had only eaten him up till his thorax, when he took his last breaths and died.
{Acid manipulation has rise to lv 9}, {Acid Creation has risen to lv 9}
I ate his remaining body, looked up and saw the others looking at me with their antennas folded behind their heads, and them whispering to each other.
{Dissolve has risen to lv 6}
I let them be, and noticed that all the remaining ants had been killed by the others too.
Standing back up I noticed the last ants of the bunch being dealt with and nodded my head.
I waited for the level up message to come, but it didn’t. I could only sigh at the ever increasing demand of my levels to kill stronger and more enemies.
Having finished the ants we ran out of the tunnel and once again saw more pathways leading to different places and going in different directions.
"Ants, looks like we’ll have to divide our squad too." Saying that squad leader smiled, and moving with the team black he ran into one of the paths.
I looked at my team leader and saw her talking with the other team members. I got near and heard, "Okay, let’s go."
And choosing one of the tunnels we started running once again.
The tunnel wasn’t endless and had many twists and turns.
After going straight, a left and a small incline, we came across two different pathways.
“We are not going to divide anymore, let’s choose one path and move along.” Team leader ordered and following her we entered the path on the right side.
The tunnel was long and not so wide. And it was a dead end. It actually had burrows in the walls which according to our scout were probably the bunkers, but we didn’t see any ant inside.
The path ending in a dead end not only wasted our time, but also made us irritated. We had to turn around and enter the other tunnel form before.
We ran once again for twenty minutes, while something bugged me, but even after running for so long, we didn't find a single ant.
It was as if the mound had been abandoned or something.
"Did we choose the wrong tunnel?"
"Yeah, where did all the ants go?"
"Yes, it’s too... quite."
And my mind finally worked around the thing which had been bugging me for a while.
{Inspection has risen to lv 4}
“Say doesn’t these walls look newer than before?” I asked my team mates who then giving me a look suddenly started staring at the walls.
“Yes, they do… actually.”
“So what do you want to say?”
I told them it was nothing. Just that my senses were tingling and making me feel nervous.
“So, they probably expanded their mound. We also do it.” Our vice leader spoke and made me feel a little better.
We started walking once again, and just a minute of walk later we saw a lone ant coming from the front.
Our faces turned stiff, then a smile formed on our faces, but then we turned stiff again.
We saw that the lone ant was not really alone, and was actually the front runner who had gone ahead of his group in excitement. In reality, twenty more ants were following behind him, although all of them were common worker ants.
We or rather I felt no pressure from the coming forces, because I knew we were strong enough to handle fifty of such workers alone.
“You three move to the back and cover us.” Team leader gave her instructions and made the two fire ants and only carry to stay behind.
She then told the other soldier ants in our group to follow her and then looked toward me and vice-captain.
“Let’s go.” She said, and as a smile bloomed on her face, as she charged at the enemy troops.
I felt happy for being acknowledged, and followed behind her. Five seconds later we three at the front collided with the enemy troupes.