The last draugr fell weakly to the ground as I cast {Air Pistol} at it; its head had burst into countless pieces like a watermelon. Now the spell’s speed had easily exceeded two hundred meters per second, twice that of before.
“Guess that’s the last one of them.”
Through the help of the new spell, I was able to exterminate the rest of the crimson draugrs with total ease. And after killing like a hundred or so of crimson draugrs — among which twenty-two of them were at First Order — the cave was void of the bone-chilling growls and snarls; I believed that the crimson draugrs had been driven into extinction.
“Um… Even though I killed all the crimson draugrs, I have yet to explore every crook and cranny of this place,” I said to myself.
The cave was larger than expected. It wasn’t that wide, though it was long and had multiple paths leading somewhere.
“Look, Maxim, that’s the draugr commander’s corpse.”
Luna-1 highlighted the ground ten meters ahead of me, the half-eaten draugr commander was still present. Well, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the other draugrs to eat humans, considering their nature, but would they eat their own kins?
“Hm… They didn’t take its armor and sword, huh. Without their commander, they were more stupid than ever,” I commented.
Because the sword was rather heavy and too big, I opted to take it with me on my way back. At the moment, I was thinking of exploring more to find a path leading to the ant colony.
“You might don’t realize this, but the reason its corpse is missing pieces here and there is not caused by the other crimson draugrs.”
“Huh? Oh yeah…”
At first glance, the missing pieces were torn apart, leaving rotten muscles stretching from there, so I didn’t think too much about it. But there weren’t any obvious bite marks similar to how creatures with teeth would leave. I mean, although the crimson draugrs had many shapes, they shared similar features to each other like having plantigrade legs and all.
“Then, why don’t they bring the whole thing with them?” I felt like asking a rhetorical question; after tasting a bit of its rotten flesh, anyone would be disgusted.
Wait a sec, isn’t this bad…? I creased my eyebrows. They’re coming out of their habitat into this area of the cave. Who knows when they will reach the surface?
“Listen, the crimson draugrs roaming here act as a deterrence for the ants to rise to the surface. By removing that exact variable, we are basically opening the Pandora Box.”
Indeed. Now that they were gone, there would be scouts going to the surface to scavenge for food. Once they find a town full of delicious meat, there would be a disaster!
Worst of all, the cause of this disaster was… me.
“Uh-oh! How long till that happens?” I tightly held my head.
To my question. Lunaria answered, “They won't come to the surface right away; my best estimation puts it somewhere between a few days to a week at most, though my opinion leans more towards the worst.”
“And? How long is that?”
Sometimes I wondered why she would cut her words mid-sentence. Was she trying to create suspense so that I made a fool of myself by overreacting?
“Tomorrow.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” I pinched my glabella.
This wasn’t good.
I should’ve realized this beforehand… No, the moment I killed that draugr commander, it was already at the point of no return.
But at the same time, this could be my opportunity to spread the ant poison then. An unsuspecting worker ant stumbled across delicious food in the middle of nowhere; that would be the main attraction tomorrow.
“Here’s hoping that it doesn’t come for the worst. If the ants surface sooner than expected, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
A bunch of worker ants would be nothing for me now. What scared me would be the ant commander that had been issuing orders at the back. Mutated monsters sure had a strange evolution tree — there was no excessive caution when facing them.
“Uh-huh. Let’s hope that is the case. Luckily, they left behind a trail in the form of pheromone — the drone is equipped with all sorts of sensors, so it’s easy to deduct their origin.”
By following the trail, I was able to trace the path where they came from. It wasn’t that far from where I killed the draugr commander and was a path spiraling down to somewhere. I bet that it led to the same ant colony, and to boost this idea one step further, the missing parts could be found on the ground leading there. At the end of the day, they were just ants. No matter how smart and cautious they were, they wouldn’t anticipate anyone following them.
“Time to turn back. Let’s explore this place for later…”
I turned on my heels and strode back to the entrance. However, I made a blockade from nearby rocks that I moved with Anemo spell and pasted them with dirt just in case. There was this spell called {Earth Lump} I discovered that could create a small lump of earth from the ground, on which to base the foundation — just like concrete.
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Nevertheless, doing all of that exhausted my source heart that I couldn’t cast another spell even if I wanted to. The silver lining was that I got to know the limitation of how many spells I could conjure in a day on end: thirteen times. The only reason I was able to conjure more was that I took a rest here and there when hunting for the crimson draugrs.
I did all this because I didn’t want to spend the whole night staying in this creepy cave while waiting for something that might not even come out.
***
The D-day finally came.
As soon as the sun rose (despite living under a rock), I was woken up by the blaring sound of the spherical drone, Luna-1. It was equipped with an alarm system. Usually, it was left on autonomous mode where Lunaria would fall into slumber and wake up at the same time I did.
In haste, I scrambled to get ready and did my daily routine: taking a bath, eating breakfast, and so forth. Then, I went to the market to fetch the ant insecticide; there was literally no time to waste.
Once there, I went ahead and asked about the thing without hesitation as the shop was empty of visitors.
“Ant insecticide?”
Crap… I got a bit carried away that I forgot he didn’t know the thing’s purpose, not that it matters, I thought, shrugging my shoulders.
“Ohh, it should be the thing you asked yesterday. My apologies, Mr. Maxim, we’re having trouble procuring some materials, so we can’t fulfill the whole request today,” Gekko, the merchant, informed with an apologetic tone while scratching his head.
“What?! How much do you have in stock?” He said he couldn’t fulfill the whole request, which meant that some should have been produced.
“For the moment… only one quintal has been produced.” He raised one finger.
“That’s fine! Where is it?” At the outset, there was no way for me to bring a whole ton with me into the mine in a single go.
“Come, it’s here.”
The merchant led me to one side of his shop and showed me the goods. It was placed neatly into two fifty-kilogram sacks that looked like your typical cement sacks but had their brown color visible from the outside. Furthermore, it reeked of rotten eggs… Ugh! It makes me sick!
“The smell… it’s quite unbearable.” I frowned and fanned the air around my nose.
Unless someone was a total idiot, they wouldn’t consume such a thing. There was no doubt that the taste would be terrible, not to mention the stomach-churning stench… Though, generally speaking, this was an entirely different matter for ants that had “different” tastes.
“As you may know, some substances used to make this has a peculiar smell, but it should work perfectly to lure these ‘ants’ you’re talking about.”
“I-I see…”
For some reason, it felt like he had a bit of misconception about the “ants” that I unintentionally slipped away… Plus, now that it came to mind, buying things like this was legal here…
“Please beware that one spoonful of this substance is enough to kill a Tier-1 enhancer. What’s more, you can even kill Second-Order mutated monsters with a sufficient amount. If I may know, what’s your purpose for using this?”
“Ahem. As I said, ‘It is to kill ants.’” Well, just that they are mutant ants.
There was a glint streaked past his eyes amidst his thin eye lines, but he didn’t go over the line and ask about where the ants were or what kind of ants they were — what a well-thought merchant.
“All right, Mr. Maxim. Do bring their carcasses to me; I’ll definitely pay fairly for them,” he implored.
Speaking of carcasses, didn’t I bring back those mutant ant exoskeletons with me? In fact, I’d always kept the head part of one exoskeleton like some kind of trophy.
I showed them to Tuilë before; although she was interested, she told me that they weren’t durable enough to be the airship’s main material despite being strong and tough. Possibly, that was what made them rather brittle, and it wasn’t like they could be produced in large quantities, thus showing him some should be no problem.
“I do have one with me here.” I rummaged through my backpack and handed him the head part of a mutant ant exoskeleton.
It should be noted that the few exoskeletons I scavenged only came from the First-Order soldier ants, so they were all among the best.
“This is… a good material for armor and equipment… Not to mention the valuable innards it may have…”
In spite of his eyes that were hardly seen, I knew that he was rather excited upon seeing the mutant ant’s exoskeleton.
“How about this, you don’t have to pay for the ant insecticide as long as you give me twenty— No, fifteen full carcasses of similarly mutant ants. Of course, I accept those that are higher and lower in value as well, but there will differences in price depending on their quality, for sure.”
“Hmm? Are they worth that much?” I was rather skeptical about the high price of the thing, but it did come from strong ants, after all.
“Absolutely! Natural hard materials like this are hard to come by even in Aquarine,” he said while inspecting the exoskeleton piece, and then added, “You can check other vendors, but they won’t offer a price better than me.”
If he was that enthusiastic about this transaction, it was little wonder that he would be making a fortune with this transaction. I estimated that the “real” price was closer to a one-to-one ratio to a First-Order source crystal, meaning that he was making 50 percent profit if I followed through.
Nevertheless, there were three sound reasons why I would agree with such a proposition:
1. I’d no use of such things — why bother keeping useless stuff that would just keep collecting dust in the corner of Tuilë’s workshop?
2. There would be plenty of them available down in the mine. So long as I kept hunting them, there would be more for the taking; it was as though a never-ending gold mine or a golden goose that never stopped laying golden eggs.
3. He was sincere considering that there were some hard-to-procure materials for the ant poison, so the price should exceed ten source crystals.
However, I hadn’t voiced my agreement yet, as I wanted to make this a long-term transaction rather than a short one.
“Your proposal does entice me,” I nodded and stated, “but I want to make sure a few things first.”
“Please, do mind telling me.” He held out his palm, likely to be signaling me to speak my demands.
“Uh, well, are there limits to how many you will accept?” This was the first thing that I had to check.
“Naturally, I can’t have too many at once. But as long as they come in batches, it doesn’t matter how many you bring them to me.”
“Mm, that works for me. Next is the problem of moving all the carcasses. Each one is rather heavy, and I don’t have the time and the capability to move them all here at once.”
Needless to say, I had to focus on the bigger picture of collecting raw source crystals than the mutant ants’ carcasses. Not only were they easier to carry, but they could be exchanged for goods without the need for further trouble of handling them, too.
“No problem. I have a team under that can help in logistics and processing of such; there’s no need to worry about that.”
“Good, good, good. Then, I have nothing to refuse your proposition if you can meet my one and only condition since this one is the most important: Can you keep this transaction a secret?”
I didn’t hesitate to put up my condition — if other people were to know what I was conspiring here, they would be coming after me or even forcibly seize my idea for granted. There was no telling what would happen when such an attractive opportunity was out in the open. As such, this was a dealbreaker.
“Mr. Maxim, I, as a merchant that holds trust as the most important thing in conducting business, won’t divulge any information regarding this transaction to anyone. However, a merchant in Aquarine has a set of precepts that they must follow through, so you must understand.”