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17 - Quenched Fire

Sledge seemed just about on the verge of panic… Grey looked at him. “Don’t worry so much. All of us have the Intimidating Shout feature now. We can get out alive regardless… and if need be, just keep coming back, whittling them down. Besides…. Even if fire doesn’t hurt them, I bet they still need to breathe. Could Stacktopus carry her over the nest, so she could pump more fire down into it, smoke em out faster?”

He glanced at the onrushing swarm. “Plus…. I spent hours last night filling more jars with venom. It’d be a shame not to give them a shot.”

Holding his shotgun in one hand, Grey took one of his jars out of storage; the vile concoction a mix of oil left behind when dumping out the olives and at least a pint of hideous green-black liquid… and hurled it forward like a grenade; it shattered on the face of one of the workers… and then splattered across the others.

Seeing what he was doing, Shockwave targeted ones closer to the nest with his next blast… and over the next few seconds, most of the ants around the one he’d struck started to slow… and then stop, going practically immobile, just twitching slightly. Only a handful were still moving, and the ones that were, were moving sluggishly.

Emboldened by the success, he tossed another jar… and another. As the stragglers kept coming in, Sledge started casually crushing them… and soon, there was a veritable wall of paralyzed ants coming down the trench.

Sledge nodded… and looked up. “Stack, Star! Did you hear Grey? What do you think?”

Star had abandoned her place on the left side of the trench, approaching them…. Watching Grey toss another jar; this one another mayo one. “Not the best idea. My magic fire will ignite anything flammable… but doesn’t make smoke on its own. I want to focus on getting all five ranks of fire blast, so I can be absolutely kick-ass by level ten… but I might need to branch out. Get lightning. Or Ice. None of the upgrades for Fire blast let it kill things that are fireproof.”

Grey looked at her thoughtfully. “So if I took some skeletons, covered them in asbestos, they could survive you?” He tossed yet another jar. Stacktopus dropped down low, shoving the mass of dead ants that was forming, as they’d started to climb out of the trench towards Shockwave; scattering them along the trench length, instead of in one big pile.

“Up to a point. One of the upgrades lets me cook the insides of things if only the outside is fireproof. So it would work right now, but not in a few levels.”

Nightfire definitely had her own fire magic maxed out. Maybe if he threaded whatever it was with asbestos, all the way through? Honestly… these fire ants might be great, depending on how fire resistant their guts were.

Working with these people might have additional fringe benefits. As he carefully weighed the next jar in his hand, he glanced at her. “I’d like to make my undead as fireproof as possible, if I can find a way. When we’re fighting something more… normal… it’d be good to have something that can delay the enemy and make them build up into a big pack…”

He lobbed it over the swarm. “And you blast it with a fireball, leaving only our side intact. I doubt all the nests are gonna be fire. Some might be…”

“Fuck!” He pointed at the sky…. A swarm of flying ants was almost on them. He raised his shotgun, opening fire; two of them slamming into the ground as their wings were shredded, Star slammed a fireball into them… actually frying the wings, apparently the fliers weren’t fireproof…

And the envenomed Soldier ant zombie spat a stream of venom at them… getting some on Grey… as well as Star… who quickly rubbed as much of it off of her side as she could… only to collapse to her knees.

“Damnit. Whats your Endurance?”

Star held herself up, bracing herself, focusing on breathing… as Sledge and Grey looked on, concerned. “Its…. enough. I… will make it. But…. Its…. bad. I…” She inhaled deeply, steadily. “Just.. just.. Get me… out of here.”

He looked at her, then at Sledge. “Take her back to the van, let her rest. We’ll handle this as long as we can… then just shout at them and back off.”

He looked at the soldier ant zombie… he’d mentally commanded it to attack any ants that came in range. He hadn’t expect this.

“...I apologize. This is my fault. I’ll need to find something to help with venom before we work together… if we do.”

Sledge nodded… and looked up. There didn’t seem to be any more fliers. “No way you could’ve known. Comes with the territory. We’re not backing off just yet. I…think this will help.” He opened a pouch at his belt, revealing a syringe.

“Sorry, Star.” He stepped up… and jammed it into her shoulder, as Shockwave called down another burst of lightning on the encroaching swarm.

She suddenly went wide-eyed… her breath became rapid, she jerked upright…. And focused on Sledge. “Fuuuuuck! I gotta do something! I need to do something! Now! Now!” She was flushed, hyped up… and turned to the swarm of ants… and started blasting at the nest itself, shrieking… sending fireballs at it, each smacking into the mix of sand and dirt… at first, with little effect, the ants just running by.

Sometime after the tenth blast… or perhaps the fifteenth… the sand making up part of the nest had begun to melt… and the ants were starting to get trapped. She kept right on firing, even after the swarm had stopped coming, the main entrance of the nest filled with molten glass…

Finally, she seemed to run out of juice… and just dropped, unconscious… her breathing still fast… but otherwise, okay.

Grey stared… as the last big clump of ants outside the nest was taken out by another lightning burst.

“...Okay. Its gonna take em some time to dig out of that… assuming the smoke doesn’t kill them. Why don’t you take her back…. And we’ll just keep watch.”

Sledge stared at her for a moment, then at Grey. “...Yeah. I think I might just do that.” He glanced over at Shockwave… and the lightning mage started walking their way.

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“This… was crazy. These ones are bigger than the last batch. Not much, but a little. And fire? Shit. Honestly, Grey… there might’ve been the whole venom slip-up… but I don’t think we can afford to lose you for the next one. We might run into some lightning ants, next time. Or god knows what.”

***

The next hour was fairly boring. He could feel the energy entering his body as the ants beneath them suffocated and died; and Shockwave hit level 8, which was a good sign… there was even a moment of excitement when a sudden bulge appeared in the earth; Shockwave readied a lightning bolt, Grey leveled the shotgun….

It was most likely the queen trying to break out. But… she didn’t make it. Instead, suffocating, trapped beneath the earth.

He tasked his undead ants with gathering the fire-ants into a pile… and dumped the existing ant corpses into the same pile; aside from the Soldier Ants that were left. He could feel, somehow, that if he empowered these ‘Fire-Ant’ soldiers with venom, they’d get a shorter range… somehow poisonous fire blast… instead of the long splatter of acidic venom the originals got.

For the workers, though? A little bit bigger, heavily fire resistant, almost immune… and he felt like they were still only level 1, so he could control twelve at once in a pinch. He stored a couple dozen of the Fire Ant soldiers for later use, and a pile of the regular fire ant workers…

Eventually, after all the corpses were gathered together, Star had recovered… and while she seemed a bit… out of it… she came back out to the pile with the others, for the pivotal moment; when Stacktopus floated down…. And bored a hole with his magic into the chamber where that bulge had appeared.

A sudden burst of smoke revealed the hatchery; the queen’s chamber, the eggs, the larvae; the queen was, of course, enormous. Not built for war, but for laying eggs, but still… each of those mandibles was at least four feet long, and came to a jagged point.

This time, Star stayed back; the adults were fireproof, so the eggs might be as well; as Sledge and Shockwave started crushing the eggs… the zombie ants just walking right past them, collecting corpses, dragging them to the pile… four of them working together as if by instinct, dragging the Queen without being ordered.

When it was finally done, Sledge looked around at all of the ants, then at the group. “Well, folks.That’s another nest cleared out. Two of us hit eight, two of us are almost there. One more fight… anything really.. Will push me and Star over the edge.”

Grey nodded… and pointed at the enormous pile of dead ants. After a few moments, he was able to loot the giant mass.

Looted: 5,176 Fire Chitin plates, 207 Liquid Fire Sacs, 25 Fire Soldier Ant Mandibles, 2x Fire Queen Mandibles(Large)

This time, instead of placing it all in storage, he let it form in the real world; a massive pile of neat red squares, of a tough, flexible material, another pile of red, practically glowing orbs, and of course the blade-like mandibles.

He looked at the Queen mandibles for a moment, then at Sledge. “I strongly suspect a little work would turn these into weapons”

Sledge studied the two for a moment… and nodded. “...Same. I bet it’d even become a flaming greatsword. And the regular soldier ones could probably be… hmm. Sabers, maybe?”

He glanced around, then at Grey. “We normally split things four ways, after everybody takes what would actually be useful for them. Not sure if we can actually carry this much…”

“Five ways works.. And I can store most of it myself... Apparently there’s a glut of regular Ant Chitin on the market; but maybe this Fire Chitin will have some demand? I think I can use the liquid fire sacs to make a zombie fire ant still spit fire… or we could probably make an incendiary grenade out of them… or flamethrower ammo…. All sorts of possibilities.”

He could store all of it himself; but if he did, there’d be no place to stand in the storage unit. Not that it was that important, but it was handy; he could use that as a place to work on things, if he actually learned how. Which…. He probably should.

Sledge looked thoughtful. “Hmm. We sell or trade the Chitin for armor, sell all the mandibles, I keep the Queen ones to try to make swords, and we let Grey have the fire sacs?”

None of the others seemed to care too much. Stacktopus floated closer. “I could use some grenades; I can throw them further… and more accurately… than any of you can. It’d be a better way for me to contribute to fights.”

Sledge glanced at him. “You… realize you do most of the work, right? The trenches, the barriers… if it weren’t for you, we’d be standing in the middle of an open field with ants charging from every direction… or trying to fight them right at the nest entrance.”

The squid bobbed up and down a bit; Grey had no idea what it meant.

“Still. The more we can contribute, the better it’ll go next time. I don’t see these getting any easier. The whole world’s getting stronger with time.”

***

As they headed back into town, Sledge looking for more nests, or beasties, that needed to be slain, Grey messaged the same leatherworker again.

~Would it matter if it was Fire Chitin? My team wiped a nest of fire-breathing ants, and their stuff should be, if not more durable overall, at the very least extremely fire resistant.~

This time, the response was much faster.

~How much you got? I’ll pay you a hundred bucks a square.~

That was some easy math. Over 500,000$.

“Hey guys. Apparently the fire ant chitin is actually worth something. Got an offer of 100$ a square.”

Sledge gave a nod… and looked at the others. “Maybe ask for them to make us some armor… Hmm. How much does it take to make armor?”

Grey frowned. “There’s more material in one of those squares than most pieces of armor, but you gotta cut it into so many tiny shapes and put it all together for gauntlets, chestplates, so forth… I think its probably only one per, just a bunch of time and effort.”

Sledged looked around at the group. “...Offer the whole lot for… four hundred thousand and armor for the five of us?”

“Hmm. He usually charges thirty K for a full suit of armor. Can Stacktopus wear armor?”

The squid bobbed up and down again. “Yes. Just a torso, though; can’t armor the tentacles. Its easier to make armor for us, but only magic stuff can protect anything but the body.”

He turned back to the tablet. ~Five thousand, one hundred, and seventy-size pieces. If you’ll make me four suits of person-sized armor, and one torso protector for a squid, half a mil for the lot.~

~I won’t have the time myself, I’m still doing the EPPD stuff. But I’m training some apprentices right now to do the work. I can’t promise Rare, but I can promise Uncommon… but deal, if that works.~

“You guys good with a full suit of fireproof, Uncommon, armor, and a hundred grand apiece?”

Sledge nodded. “Hell yes. It’ll be great to have something other than the chest-plate fix itself.”

None of the others seemed inclined to argue… so Grey put in the address, setting the GPS coordinates; even if he didn’t use it as much while adventuring, since he was certain they’d meet enemies with other sorts of attacks, this would be exactly what he needed while fighting someone like Nightfire. Unless he found better fire-resistant gear later….

The armor they were, hopefully, about to get would be of significant use in achieving his objectives.