He glanced at the ritual circle he’d carved into the pavement, and at the line of cars involved in the pile-up… and then to Sledge. It would be easy enough to grab a pile of bones while they were working; unless he was making a sentient undead, he didn’t think they even had to all be from the same skeleton; but he didn’t want to alienate them.

“Leveled up, got the undead thing at the basic level now instead of just halfsies. I can make about a dozen undead now of the worker-ant size… or half a dozen of the soldier ant… or a human… size. I wouldn’t mind pulling some skeletons out of the wreckage, but if our telekinetic friend can grab some bodies for me to work with….”

Sledge nodded. “Yeah, that’d be fine. They’re gathering up all their dead in one spot to bury, and working on reshaping the mound…”

“...Huh.”

Sledge glanced at him. “Something cross your mind?”

If he just piled hundreds of ant corpses into a tomb, he could probably animate them, a dozen at a time, spending hours to recover mana so that he can do it multiple times, order them to kill, and just keep the whole mess trapped… and then poof. As soon as someone opens it, killer undead ant swarm. Wherever he set the trap for Nightfire, that should definitely be part of it. Figure out a way to make them more resistant to fire, too. Maybe soak them in some sort of flame retardant?

“...I can actually handle this myself. I’ve got Stealth good enough that I can probably reach the pile, so long as I don’t get too close to the ants. I can just dump a bunch of dead ones into my extradimensional space… and get back.”

He nodded. “Cool, cool. And you’ve got the same shout thing if you need to break and run, so even if they spot you it should be fine. Just try not to use it, so we can get them bunched back up again.”

Grey gave a short nod; and closed his eyes, focusing.

At first, he went completely invisible, sitting on the seat of the van.. And then turned into a vague blur of movement as he stepped out; it was obvious something was there from up close, but just what it was… hard to make out.

So long as he didn’t run too fast, he should be fine… and as he casually jogged through the battlefield, the ants didn’t seem to pay him any mind; grabbing food and carrying it down into the nest; and grabbing dead ants, dragging them… over to an enormous hole.

There were dozens of ants, working together to fill the grave, and he wasn’t sure if there were as many living ants as dead ones at this point; and what was extremely clear was that none of the Soldier ants were still alive, as he didn’t see a single one of them still moving.

When a group of ants left to grab another pile of bodies, he stepped in close… and started adding Ants en masse to his storage, grabbing all the Soldiers he could, then filling the rest in with workers… he didn’t want to completely fill it with ants,

He looked at the pile. The Queen ant was too big; he couldn’t bring her back as an undead, so best leave her be. Did Ants.. loot anything valuable? If the pile was all together, could he loot them all at once,

He laid a hand on one of them, and thought the word ‘Loot’.

Looted: 4,352 Chitin Plates, 142 Acid Bladders, 125 Soldier Ant Mandibles(Medium), 2x Queen Ant Mandibles(Large)

Congratulations! Title Gained!

Looter: If you or your allies assisted with a kill with a system-connected weapon or ability, you may loot them from 25ft. Away. Looting enemies you did not assist in killing requires direct contact as normal.

He blinked. The Soldier Ant mandibles, he could somehow see in the storage space; each about the size of a shortsword, or a long dagger, a good, solid, chitin blade, extremely sharp on the tip and one side. While the Queen ant mandibles… pretty much a sword blade. He didn’t know how crafting worked with all this, but was fairly certain that you could pretty easily turn all of those into Uncommon-grade weapons.

And the Chitin? Could probably be turned into armor in a similar fashion. He needed to check.

The ‘Looter’ title was interesting. He hadn’t read that in the guide; how many things had associated titles? Would he get titles for his Undead? For using Stealth?

With him just standing there on the edge, not moving at all, he remained invisible, worker ants dragging corpses past him….. Though they seemed disturbed. Antenna flicking in his direction. Could they… smell him? Sense him somehow?

He started heading back to the van. He had all that he needed; and judging by how few workers he could see, and the floating squid already working on adjusting his trenches… it should be time to get to work, soon.

***

As he laid the six most intact soldier ant corpses by the circle, Sledge was talking to a State Trooper standing by the highway; the lights weren’t on, there didn’t seem to be a disturbance… but he immediately thought of the fact that he’d used the revolver to kill ants. He was unidentifiable at this point… but…

Something to be concerned about.

This was actually the first time he saw Sledge’s face; skin almost as grey as Grey’s own scales, the man was clearly an Orc; not a bad choice, for his profession; and he towered over the smaller, scrawnier human policeman.

The trooper watched Grey lay them out, and walked over, beside Sledge. “Hello there, sir. Don’t mean to interfere; there’s definitely no law regarding handling ant corpses, and even if there were, I wouldn’t be enforcing it these days. Mind if I ask what you’re doing?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Grey studied the policeman… and nodded. “I’m going to take these ants.. Bring them back… and use them as a shield to help fight the others when we go back for round two. By the way, Sledge…”

He studied the Orc a bit closer. Larger, heavier, jaw. The head a bit bigger, the eyes a bit smaller. Pronounced differences from a human, but not that bad.

“I got a good look up-close at the nest. We cleared all the Soldiers, and most of the Workers, out with the first batch. The spot where the Queen burst up out of the ground is probably gonna be where the eggs are. I dunno how you talk to Stacktopus while he’s up there, but I’d bet if he were to dig down into that chamber…. The whole nest would come swarming in to re-bury it and try to attack him. And all thats left… is the workers. Hundreds of them; maybe even a couple thousand; but not nearly as many as we already killed.”

Sledge nodded, and grinned. “Yeah. The guide actually suggests finding the queen’s chamber if possible; if you can get it exposed to the air, the ants will ignore everything else and rush it to protect that. So…. perfect environment for area of effect attacks. Good thought.”

The trooper chuckled. “You know… I thought this was going to be the end of the world. But we just might manage to pull this off. There’s another few nests down the highway; some smaller, some bigger… and a bunch of groups just like you working at cleaning them out.”

He glanced around at them. “Now, just to be clear… if any of you folks aren’t from the US, I don’t care. I’m not ICE, and this won’t effect you, you can just head home or keep doin what you’re doin. But they’re asking anybody who decided to change their race or gender when they hit level 5 to get a new ID issued as early as possible. They’re gonna be asking us to stop anybody who aint human and check going forward, and, well… we’ll have to detain you while they get a new one made out for you, or longer if you can’t prove who you are.”

Grey glanced at the others; two elves, an orc, a serpentfolk… and a flying squid. None of them matched their original IDs at all. Serving a warrant on somebody was going to become extremely difficult… and anybody who had one was undoubtedly going to change and try to hide it.

His own plan to avoid attention for issues in Fort Tazewell was both completely predictable and likely to fail if he didn’t procure a good fake identity. He needed to check out that trucker, Martin, to make sure it would work in a pinch. Or find another.

“Understood. Though it may be a bit difficult getting home for a while.”

The trooper glanced at the pile-up of cars, and grimaced. “Well. That’s true enough. But we’re getting better. Things will be back to normal soon.” He slowly trailed his gaze along the wreckage. Normally a pile-up like this would be cleaned up that day. Here… they’d shoved it off the road onto the shoulder and left. Probably taken IDs of the dead, too, but…

“Soon…” He seemed to be talking to himself as he headed back to the patrol car.

Sledge shook his head, and turned back to the others. “Well then. Once Grey there has his pets in order… we can go finish this. If you folks don’t mind, I’d like to start with the trench from before… and you guys can hold off a bit, take it easy, until I get the tier three Ant-Slayer achievement, so I can do the shout too… as soon as I get it… we have Stack breach the egg chamber. And when the swarm gathers…”

He punched his palm with his fist. “Bring down the hammer.”

***

In many respects, this attempt worked much like it had a few hours before. One of the undead soldier ants walked to the nest, carrying a plastic walmart bag filled with a bundle of smoke-bombs and an emptied-out olive jar filled with venom; and when the smoke burst out of the nest.. The ants swarmed out.

With five of the soldier-ants guarding his sides, his spellcaster allies only blasting the most heavily gathered swarms… Sledge got to swing his hammer for a good solid ten minutes, crushing dozens of ants at a time… and when the moment arrived, he let out a loud whoop of celebration, backing off a bit, and gesturing at the squid with his hammer.

All the while, Grey had simply been shooting into the mass of ants, wondering if he was going to get the next Ranged slayer title… or how many kills that took.. And when the squid burrowed into the former queen’s chamber, on call… it was like a siren call.

Somehow; perhaps the scent? All of the ants knew when the chamber was breached… and ignored Sledge or the others… swarming towards it… literally forming a protective barrier over the hole with their bodies as they prepared to re-bury it, even as the smoke from the bombs was released into the air through this new chimney.

And now… when Star blasted them with a fireball, over a hundred of them died at once, bodies crackling and popping as the moisture inside them vaporized… and within another few minutes… it was over.

The zombie ants finished the last of their living cousins as the group gathered around the egg-chamber; now clearly visible and exposed to the air, thousands of glistening white eggs and hundreds of helpless, pale white larvae.

These eggs; normally so small you could only see them when clustered together; were each the size of a fist; and the smell of rotting food filled the air, alongside some other, sweeter, smell.

Grey looked around the chamber, then at the two spellcasters. He examined one of them for a moment.

Star(Insect-Slayer III) Level: 7; Spellcaster, Moderate threat

He blinked. Only one title visible? Was only the highest-tier, most rare title a person had visible? He glanced over at Sledge;

Sledge(Insect-Slayer III) Level: 7, Warrior, Extreme threat

And decided to simply ask. “Hey, Sledge. Do you know what decides what gets shown when you examine somebody?”

He chuckled. “Yours shows Vehicle-Slayer, and mentions its a Front-Runner. It shows whatever title you’ve got the fewest other people have, unless you pick a title you want to show off.” He was looking around the chamber at all the eggs. “It won’t show somebody’s other titles or stats or anything… but its supposed to say whether you can take the person in a fight, and any weaknesses you can detect, or strengths, if you level it up more, so examine new stuff as much as you can. Star, care to do the honors?”

The elf-woman nodded; and reached out with one hand; a much lower-intensity heat this time, just spreading as a wave, as she swept it across the chamber below them… the eggs popping, the larvae shriveling.. And after what must be to her a trivial effort… it was over.

Sledge sighed… and looked out at the desert heading off to the east. “Well. That was… an experience. Everybody hit seven?”

The two elves both nodded; the squid gave a gentle bob up and down of assent.

“Lets loot the corpses, then, and we’ll grab dinner to celebrate… and figure out which one we’ll hit tomorrow.” He glanced at Grey. “You’re welcome to join. Both for food, and the next hunt, unless you plan to move on.”

Shockwave slid his smartphone out of his pocket. “That is a good idea… but there’s actually an alert on. Swarm of wasps the size of a car, nobody knows where they’re based out of, one of them was spotted a few minutes ago carrying a few people off. The Chosen covering central texas are already here, hunting, but they can only be one place.”

Grey blinked. “Chosen covering central texas?” Did that mean…

“Yep. Golden Boy and Nightfire. Have you met them?”

“...Yes, actually. I thought they were just passing through though, dealing with emergencies. ‘Covering’ central texas?”

Sledge chuckled. “Yeah, the Chosen paired up.. Not sure if thats literal spouse sort of thing, or just made teams… and split the world up. They form big groups if need be, but if there’s an emergency in texas and they only need one or two… those are the ones that show up.”