No one moved until the three captains came out of the cavern, but the first thing they said after coming out was, “What are you all waiting for? Come on, let’s go. We have some vegetables to cut. All those who kill less than five enemies will not get dinner tonight.”
But the words had different meaning and everyone seemed to have understood it too.
We understood that the only part left now was to fight an old style war while we had more numbers than our opponents.
Some comments did fly between the comrades,
“Wha-!””
“For real!”
“What should I do? I am not great at killing?”
“Haha, looks like today is my day. I’ll eat fifty ants worth of food tonight.”
But captains snorted hearing such comments and commanded.
“Are you ready? LET’S GO!!
“CHARGE!!”
“Hoooooo!!!”
And our pincer attack in retaliation to the enemy death trap started. Our enemies might have won the war, but their luck just washed up the moment their soldiers failed to keep our army captivated in the cavern.
“We should move too.” Vice leader said and we started rushing toward the enemies.
Our enemies must have probably heard our war cry, and felt the ground trembling, because the expressions that those at the back of their line gave were simply priceless.
“Th- They are here! The Enemies are here!”
The enemy soldiers shouted, but their voices soon got drowned by our excited shouts and the struggle to see who would kill more started.
“Kill them all!”
“BURN THEM TO THE GROUND!”
While running I saw our soldiers mulling, cutting, stabbing, tacking, jumping over, falling down, dragging the enemy soldier away, and my blood started boiling.
I jumped on one scared and cowering soldier the moment I reached the line, and stabbed him in the chest with my mandibles.
“AHHHH…!” He shouted and I saw his friends coming toward me and smirked.
I lifted his body with my mandibles and threw it at them.
The ant dropped on them like a catapulted stone and broke their line.
“Good job, but not good enough.” Vice leader commented as he passed by me and ran to the broken line glowing pink.
He reached the middle of the fallen soldiers and stung one of them full of poisons. Lifted another and dug his stingers into his head.
Threw him on the one running toward him and jumping over the head of one ant, stabbed his mandibles directly into the head of the one behind him; killing him on the spot.
“I can do that too!” I shouted, remembering that I also had a skill which could inflict massive damage to a whole group.
I ran forward and jumping over the heads of various soldiers who were trying to catch me mid flight and stretch me out with sharp mandibles, I reached the other side and dropped on one of them like a missile.
He moved act, but with me using my moment to stab a spike right in his head, he didn’t get a single moment to do anything and I stabbed my leg directly into his head.
“……”
The onlookers stared at me in terror as I removed my leg from his head.
After checking with perception that there was no brother in five centimeter radius of me, I activated acid mist.
“Let’s dance.” I shouted and in three centimeters around me everything got covered in a yellow mist of acid.
The enemy soldiers around me flinched at first, but seeing that the mist did no harm to them, they snorted and started walking toward me, but before they could reach me, my evolved acid started its work.
“What is this!”
“AH! I’m melting, I’m melting.
“BURNS, it BURNS!”
“HELP---!”
<>Critical Hit<>
<>Critical Hit<> x4
{Acid mist has risen to lv 3}
The mist spread across the enemy ranks like a wildfire and everyone who came near me and had less than ten levels in acid resistance were all burned through by it.
I saw the gruesome effect of my yellow mist sticking to their bodies, burning through their exoskeletons like it was made of butter, and then raising their flesh on fire.
I shuddered seeing it happen, but that wasn’t all, their eyes, which had no protection to boot, became liquid the moment they entered the mists range.
The whole ordeal was simply too horrifying to look at.
But I didn’t stop moving. No matter who came, how much they cried, how much they yelled, shouted or cursed, I didn’t stop.
The more I moved, the greater became my damage area, and more became the number of soldiers who got affected by my mist.
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Although rapidly moving through their ranks diluted the effect of the mist, but I was able to help decrease the enemy resistance which in turn helped my brothers kill them without even sweating. So it was a win-win situation.
The best thing I could do for them was to kill them as quickly as possible, but I didn’t do that.
There is a thing called will and to break the will of the enemy soldiers, I let the acid melt and burn their bodies and left them alive so that they could scream and shout to their hearts content.
I played the role of devil to break the wills of those arrogant black ants who thought that a death trap would allow them to butcher us!
I decided to make sure that none of them bastards would be having a single thought about returning alive.
And at the same time Fury activated.
I lost the little bit of respect and empathy that I had for my enemies, and charged through their ranks like a cold blooded murderer. I ran around jumping, killing, stabbing, slashing, and dealing them massive damages with my mist.
I wanted to kill, decapitate, rage, burn the whole lot of them to ground, but unfortunately I was just a single novice ant.
The battle was taking its toll on my body and mind, and after a minute of running around like a savage my mana ended up hitting the rock bottom, and the reign of acid mist ended.
But I still didn’t stop and started the war of endurance between me and the enemy soldiers.
It wasn’t like I wasn’t getting hurt in the process. The deeper I charged, the stronger got my foes, and the harder their hits became, but my health regeneration added with furies effect let me cut their heads to my heart content.
*Level up*
[All skills level up by one.]
I was still killing, raising my legs and stabbing them, opening my mandibles and cutting heads, when I felt a hand on my shoulder, I hurriedly turned and covering my leg with acid moved to stab it through my foe, but then I heard something.
“You can stop now. It’s over. We have won the war.”
I knew I had heard the voice somewhere before, but I couldn’t stop my leg and it stabbed right through the ant.
I shuddered thinking that I had killed one of my brothers, but right then a huge surge of pain crawled up the leg I had stabbed with, and made me understand that I had broken my leg.
*Smack*
“Ahh…!”
At the same time the ant smacked me across my face and sent me flying.
I flew through the air and crashed onto the ground. I rolled and rolled, until the energy from the punch dissipated and I was able to stop.
My fury ended or I should say that the punch put sense into my brain and made me remember who the voice belonged to.
“Huck…!”
I hiccupped when I looked up and saw that the voice and the person who had punched me was my brute captain.
“Come here he said.”
At first I didn’t wanted go anywhere near him, because he looked too scary at that moment. But after thinking for a moment, I sighed and applied heal to my broken leg.
{Heal has risen to lv 5}
A white glow covered my leg and then entered inside it. Seeing the condition of my leg improving, I looked back at the captain, nodded my head, picked myself up and started walking toward him.
Looking around I saw that the war had ended, and everyone was looking to the left. Following them I also turned my head and saw that the enemy commander had been captured and was made to see his soldiers being beheaded.
I kept on walking while seeing the heads of the enemy soldiers being cut, and ended up colliding with the captain.
I hurriedly turned my head to face captain and stepped back. He lifted his hand and I got ready to receive whatever punishment I was to be given, but instead of making me run errands, he gently patted my head and spoke, “Well done. You… can stop now. It’s enough.”
----------------------------------------
With that, the war had ended.
The enemies had less than four thousand soldiers and we were almost double their number.
No one was taken captive and every single one of them was killed without regret or sympathy.
The enemy commander was made captive and forced to watch his soldiers getting chopped up like vegetable.
“You fuckers might have won this war, but we’ll win. You can laugh all you want for now, but don’t worry our day will come. We’ll be the one having the final laugh. Haaha…! Gwack!”
But no matter how much he cried, he was made to watch the death of his soldiers, his brethrens.
Seeing the last of his soldiers getting killed, his eyes turned red and he shouted out.
“Kill me too, fuckers, kill me too! Don’t think I’ll ever tell you the coordinates of our new colony. Do whatever you want to do, but I’ll never tell-You- Anything!”
But our commander simply smirked and nodded his head to the two captains standing behind him.
Upon getting the signal they first tore the enemy commander’s wings from his back.
*Rip*
A very unpleasant sound was emitted and made me cringe.
“AHhhhhhhhha! You mother fuckers….! FUCK…!”
But that wasn’t the end, we all saw as the two captains then cut all his legs, removed his abdomen, broke his mandibles.
I felt bugs crawling all over my body seeing him getting ripped apart while he was still alive.
But the captains didn’t stop at that. In the end our commander lifted his drooling and trembling head and spoke slowly, “You think I need to know where your colony is? I’ll just let them come. Do you still think that bitch of yours will be able to give birth to more warriors than what we already have.”
Our commander snorted and left the invalid head of the enemy commander to hang in the air. He nodded his head to the captains who were ready at the moment’s notice and upon getting the signal, they severed the almost dead enemy commander’s head from his neck.
The moment his head dropped on the ground, was the moment our commander gave his final speech, “Everyone… Good work. Tomorrow we’ll return and tonight…” He smirked, “We’ll feast!”
“Hooooo~!”
Before the feast, the mourning for our 3000 dead brothers and sisters was held. We prayed for their souls, and then feasted to our fullest.
We were happy that we had won the war, but the feeling of loss didn’t go away. It was still there and would probably stay there for a long time.
I saw vice leader standing at the side and looking above at the night sky. I slowly walked to him and stood by his side.
“What are you looking at?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer and continued staring at the stars in the sky.
Seeing that he wasn’t in the mood to speak, I choose to stand by his side instead and joined him.
We stared at the sky for five minute and he finally spoke up,
“Don’t you think those stars are pitiful?” I turned to look at his face.
His eyes were misty and voice sounded lost, but he didn’t stop there and continued with,
“I just don’t understand how they can bear with the solitude? How are they able to come out every night and shine like that? Don’t they get tired of it?”
I knew what he was talking about, and remembered an old saying.
“I heard that the stars are the dead trying to light the path for their loved ones.”
He turned his head toward me and stared at my face, before he turned back to look at the stars.
“That explains it.” He said, “If they are shining for their loved ones, then that explains their tenacity.”
He didn’t speak for a long time after that, but when he did, he asked me a question which I had no answer for.
“Do you think Chichi is up there too? Looking at us right now and lightning a path for us?”
Or maybe I did have an answer.
“She is probably sighing and mumbling, ‘Why are they not walking on the path I’m trying so hard to light?’”
*Pfft*
Vice leader smiled hearing that and said, “That’s right. She definitely is.”
.
.
The rest of the night vice leader told me the stories of his childhood and we laughed together. The night passed away in silence and on the first ray of sunlight we started walking toward our mound, our colony… our home.