When I reached the bottom of the pit, I noticed that the mist was thinner. Thanks to that, there was an increase in visibility, so I switched to using my rifle. Nothing beat the power of a bullet that could kill almost anything with a single shot.

The bottom was only as wide as the mouth of the pit with a long, three-meter-wide tunnel that was made out of dirt instead of the mostly stone interior on the upper layer — it looked like it was an artificially made structure. Lunaria said that she entered about a hundred meters in before finding traces of the ruins that she spoke of. But as soon as I took a dozen steps forward, the ground began to vibrate, and soon the sound of something came approaching this place.

“Tch. It seems that we have company.” From the bustling noise, it was no doubt that there would be many of them… and they didn’t sound like people’s footsteps. How troublesome.

“Weird. Yesterday, I didn’t find anything… Even Luna-1’s sensors weren’t detecting any signs of life.”

“Hm, maybe they aren’t interested in a floating lump of metal.” I shrugged.

“How rude!”

I readied my rifle in hand and aimed at the only path forward. Hopefully, the monsters here wouldn’t be too strong or too great in number, considering that I was alone… Lunaria barely could do anything with the drone, after all.

Before long, tens of dog-sized scarlet ants crawled from the direction where I aimed my rifle. They had crimson exoskeletons, red eyes, and large mandibles that looked like they could tear metal.

“Mutant ants!” I quickly checked their information with [Identification].

Species: Great scarlet worker ants (mutant)

Sex: Female

Age: 6 years old

Height: 45 cm

Source Level: None

Source Element(s): None

Stats:

* STR: F (12)

* AGI: F+ (17)

* VIT: F (13)

* SRC: F (11)

* SPR: F (6)

Accumulation Points: 9 [F+]

Not wasting a second longer, I began firing at the ants. They were fast on their feet, able to scale down the distance of about fifty meters between us in mere seconds, but in such a narrow space, avoiding bullets wasn’t something possible. Each shot that hit them managed to pierce their hard exoskeleton and spilled out their guts, dyeing the ground yellowish green.

“Lunaria! Help me distract them! No, hold them off!” I shouted between the loud sound of my gun.

“Will do.”

Frankly speaking, using light wouldn’t work in distracting these mutant ants. What I wanted her to do was to use the new ability that Tuilë had added, which she then did by releasing a wall of electric current.

With Luna-1 holding most of them, the ants were impeded from going further, even if some of them were climbing the cave wall. Thus, I was able to finish them off one by one until there were no ants remaining. Actually, I switched to my daggers midpoint to save my ammo, and after seeing that their numbers weren’t an issue any longer.

However, cutting their exoskeletons was proven to be ineffective, so I had to focus on the gaps between the head and the thorax. Thankfully, I’d asked Tuilë to change the blade with steel that had been further sharpened with a whetstone. Still, it was creepy to see that their bodies still twitched even after losing their heads…

“I’ve to inform you this, Maxim: Listen, while you’re busy killing these ants, they released distress signals in the form of pheromones.”

Hmm… I held my chin, thinking, this kinda reminds me of my new monitor that I purchased in the past.

For some reason, ants were lured toward the gap under the monitor and then fried them. The problem was, they released the same kind of distress signals that lured even more ants. It was such a nightmare that— Wait, this is not the time to think about that…

“Just now, there were no First-Order mutant ants… I’m afraid that there is a colony of them deep within this cave…” Lunaria said.

“Oof, thinking about it is enough to send shivers down my spine.”

I mean, a colony of ants could easily have as many as hundreds of thousands of ants… Even if they were the size they were now, a few thousand would be the lowest estimate — I couldn’t say what kind of danger was present in a mutant ant colony since they weren’t entirely the same as normal ants.

Lunaria then announced, “More mutant ants are coming our way. Be prepared.”

Almost immediately, the ground shook like before but with an even greater force. A large number of ants must have picked up the signal and were rushing here.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Reloading my rifle, I braced myself for the second wave. There were bound to be soldier ants in First Order… That would be my primary target here.

As expected, ants about the size of humans with larger heads and mandibles appeared among the smaller ones. I feared that even with my increased VIT and STR stats, I wouldn’t last long being pincered with their sharp mandibles. These soldier ants were, after all, at First Order — guaranteed by [Identification].

“Lunaria!”

“You don’t have to yell; I can hear you just fine.”

Lunaria did the same strategy as before — blocking the way with the electric wall attack. Our strategy might be crude, but it had proven rather effective. Nevertheless, there were bound to be more and more of those ants invading.

While individually they were weak, together, they were able to achieve stunning feats. Separating them was the correct choice.

Fortunately, the mutant soldier ants’ stronger and tougher exoskeletons weren’t enough to block the piercing of bullets, though the area of damage was lesser compared to shooting the worker ants. It required me at least two shots to the head just to kill it.

“Ugh… This is a no solution…”

Not only were there too many of them, but I was also expending bullets at a rate that would make me completely out of them before they were all killed. In that case, there was only one solution to this: to blockade the ants’ path completely.

“Lunaria, pull back. I’ll blow the cave to smithereens.” I showed a determined face.

Normally, a simple fragmentation grenade wouldn’t be strong enough to cause the cave to collapse, but it was entirely different when it was about a brittle cave that was mostly dirt.

“What? ‘Kay.”

The spherical drone, Luna-1, quickly flew back while maintaining the electric wall.

Having no other choice, I decided to take a risk and threw a grenade in the middle of their formation. When the unpinned grenade left my hand and hit one of the many ants in the center, it exploded and caused that part of the cave’s ceiling to collapse. Smoke and dust arose, wholly covering the blast area.

Meanwhile, I already backed away to the pit’s bottom to avoid the shrapnel, concurrently switching to melee after running out of bullets in the magazine. On my side, there were about fifteen ants remaining and about five of them were soldier ants at First Order.

“Maxim, this drone is out of juice… The rest is on you.” Luna-1 floated into my backpack.

“Uh-oh, I was about to ask you for her help.”

Cold sweat trickled down my back as my racing heart throbbed rapidly. My hands trembling from the pressure of the dire situation I was in, but I preserved; it was either me or them.

With the catalyst daggers in both hands, I leaned against the wall. I knew for a fact that having to face only one side would be the best option when being cornered from all sides. Besides, I could escape with the climbing rope behind me if things got ugly.

“Come and get me, you stupid ants!”

They didn’t understand what I said, obviously, but they were provoked to attack. The large soldier ant before me launched itself at me with its mandibles opening and closing.

Infused with Electro, the dagger on my right electrocuted the ant when I stabbed it below its mandibles. The electrified ant was flailing crazily, but it soon fell limp. Seeing that it died, I threw it at the other ants to block the way.

Seeing their dead comrade, they didn’t stay in place and went for a more aggressive assault by swarming me. I had to use the heat from the Pyro catalyst dagger to scare them. But all didn’t go as anticipated when a sneaky ant walking on the wall made a sneak attack on me by biting me on the back. Although it was only a worker ant, the pincer from its mandibles stabbed into my skin.

“Argh… Fuck!” With gritted teeth and teary eyes, I snatched the little bastard who bit me and tore its body apart.

As I was busy with all that, the other ants used that chance to strike my legs. In that split second, I grabbed the climbing rope to make a big jump and landed on two ants that now stood in my original position. I seized that chance to hack on the nearby ants with my catalyst daggers.

By now, there were less than three mutant ants remaining — two worker ants and one soldier ant… And yet, I was about to run out of energy, as well.

“I’m not done yet!”

In a moment of desperation, I threw my backpack at the two ants at the back and went for the soldier ant in the front. I stabbed my two daggers in its head, frying its inside — fire and electricity worked wonders together.

After finishing the soldier ant, I proceeded to do the same to the last two. They were but worker ants that weren’t even at First Order, hence it didn’t take too much effort from me. Even so, my noodle legs gave out and I fell, heedless of the bloodstains on the ground.

Now lying limply on the ground in a starfish posture, I heaved a long, exhausted sigh… It took longer than expected to face these mutant ants. Thus far, I killed about a hundred or so of them, but seeing them before felt like their number was limitless.

Hang on, shouldn't they be digging a hole to save their comrades? I creased my eyebrows in the sudden realization and peeked at the pile of rocks that blockaded the tunnel about twenty meters deep.

To start with, it was odd that they spotted me the moment I set foot here, and how they came at me with a group instead of one at a time before gradually scaling up in number exacerbated this further. With all that added up, my suspicion that they had commanders in their ranks sending orders to them grew in a matter of seconds.

In any case, I couldn’t explore deeper without figuring out a way to bypass those mutant ants. Proceeding ahead without the slightest bit of idea would be tantamount to suicide, and I didn’t want to die a second time. Not again.

The final nail in the coffin, Luna-1 was out of battery; I was virtually left with no support. Although it had only been a few hours here, it’d be wise to pull back when the situation escalated to this degree. Knowing when to advance and retreat would be the key to my plan of surviving in this post-apocalyptic world.

I picked up the backpack that I’d thrown away earlier, and there was no damage to it except for it being a bit crumpled. Lucky for me, Lunaria wasn’t awake to complain to me for throwing the drone along with my backpack. She would bicker at me for that, definitely.

The second I was about to climb and get away from this place, something struck my mind. “Oh yeah, I forgot that I’ve to take the source crystals from these dead ants…”

There were more than fifty of them littered from the place I was at to the pile of rocks that blockaded the tunnel — I killed more, but the rest were on the other side. Among them, nine were soldier ants at First Order; they were the targets that I had to scavenge.

“Tch, their exoskeletons are almost as hard as steel…” I cut a soldier ant’s head to reach for the source crystal located within while whining. On the flip side, their exoskeletons seemed to be worth a lot, so I brought a few back with me.

Adding to yesterday’s total, there were now twenty-three source crystals. What a haul in such a short period of time — still a far cry from what we needed, though.

I scaled the climbing rope and made my way back to the surface… or into the huge underground cavern with a giant mushroom thereafter.