Of course, I understood what he meant by following a set of precepts. For instance, there was no way he would agree if he were to be asked to do things that could endanger the stability of Aquarine, even though there were no written rules that said otherwise. The only reason why he accepted my request was that the ant poison was easily distinguishable, and no one in their right mind would consume it.

To illustrate this further, if someone with evil intentions set foot in Aquarine and requested a merchant to make him a bunch of explosives to destroy the place, would he agree to such a request? Of course not, unless the merchant was colluding with the perpetrator.

And thus, I affirmed, “I understand your difficulties, and let’s follow through with all the regulations attached.”

“Very well, Mr. Maxim, I will send the details once they have been written out, and we can negotiate the finer details then. Ah, as for the rest of the insecticide, you can expect tomorrow at the latest for it to be ready.”

“Mhm. Now then, I shall carry these with me…”

I stared at the two ant insecticide sacks and realized that carrying one quintal load was rather difficult even for the current me. After becoming a Tier-1 enhancer, if I gave it my all, these two sacks wouldn’t bother me too much, but if something ambush me in the cave…

“Uhm, may I borrow a cart or something to help me carry these sacks? I’ll sure to return it as soon as I’m done…”

“Sure. There is one over there.” Gekko, the merchant, pointed at a red card at the corner of his shop.

I took the cart and placed the two sacks on it, after which I said my thanks to him and headed for the mine.

With the help of a cart, I was able to transport the two sacks without much difficulty, although this was nostalgic for some reason. I remembered mixing cement with split rock and sand to make concrete in a college project of mine along with my friends while secretly asking “Am I a programmer or a construction worker?” Truly one weird experience as an IT student.

When I was some distance away from the shop, Luna-1 peeked from my backpack, accompanied by Lunaria’s voice.

“Making a deal that’s almost too good to be true without thinking it through, are you sure you aren’t being scammed?”

“Stop dragging this out, Lunaria. Tell me your thoughts.”

“Well, what if he only puts up a front with such a lucrative offer to get information out of your mouth and then casts you away once you’re no longer useful? Perhaps selling the ant carcasses to a few different places in Aquarine would be safer,” Lunaria told her concern while staying neutral in her tone.

“You do have a point, and I have thought about that. Rest assured, I don’t think he has the capability to do it even if he knows, and in the worst-case scenario, I can always fight back since I’m no longer alone and weak. Although, it’s true that I lack something to completely bind the agreement.”

How good would that be to have something binding in the agreement so that neither party could go against their words? Maybe something akin to contract magic… not that I knew such a thing existed in this world or not.

Besides, I had checked him by sensing the source energy and [Identification] and found that he wasn’t an enhancer. To tell the truth, it had been some time since I checked anyone else’s status screen.

“And are you okay with such risks in mind?”

“I could always pretend to get along with him and give him false information while working with someone else — his rival. He isn’t the only vendor in town, is he?”

People living in Aquarine were varied in species; they lived harmoniously with each other without discrimination, but for everyone to think the same would be an impossibility. There was bound to be one or two oddballs.

“You’re a devious villain.”

“Please call me ‘clever.’” I smiled with pride.

“A deviously clever villain.”

“Duh… it’s better though.”

“Seriously?”

While making our usual banter, it didn’t take long for the mine to be in sight. The place was busy as always and noisy with the sound of clanking pickaxes not different from a construction site.

As usual, Yorith greeted me there and even made some curious glances at the cart I was carrying, questioning, “Where do ya bringin’ all of that?”

“Oh, this? To exterminate some ants, I suppose,” I talked nonchalantly.

“Hm? Whaddaya mean by that?”

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Since I didn’t want more people to know about my plan, I then told him to mind his own business, in a casual way of course.

Luna-1 turned on its flashlight when I entered the winding tunnel, and I discovered that the blockade was untouched at the end of the way. Well, it made sense considering that there was no report of mutant ants going to the surface, so there was still time.

“Alright. Should I spread the ant insecticide far and wide, or…?” I pondered for a little bit and decided to make a few spots near the tunnel leading down to place the trap and along the way from my current location.

Along the way, thanks to the mist that was even thinner than usual, I sighted several worker ants scavenging for food; they had started to make this part of the cave their hunting place!

Although there wasn’t much to scavenge here except for vines creeping down the wall and occasionally some glowing mushrooms called “moonshroom” or whatever as said by Tuilë. They were the same kind of mushrooms that abounded inside the cavern and were fungi with a cap resembling the full moon. Once matured, the center of the cap would split open.

When all the ant insecticide baits were installed, I went back to the starting location and hid behind the blockade. There was one spot nearby that you could observe from here.

“And now I play the waiting game.”

For someone like me, who had been almost pretty much idling for three months straight atop an abandoned skyscraper, waiting it out was my second nature.

“You sound like an unemployed man with no real purpose in life,” Lunaria commented.

Annoyed, I retorted, “Call me whatever you want, Lunaria. Once you see the gain from this venture, you’ll be awed by my ingenuity.”

“Hmph. Thanks to who provided the formula to make the ant insecticide?”

“You, of course, O great Lunaria.” I thought that appeasing her here would be a better thing to do since she deserved the credit.

Really. What was terrifying about this poison wasn’t how potent it was at killing something in a matter of seconds, but how it only reacted much later. After all, according to the formula that Lunaria had given me, the poison had a powerful secondary killing effect. The baits that were brought back to the nest by the worker ants would then kill their remaining ants, soldiers, and queen in a domino effect, effectively destroying the whole colony.

To compensate for the small amount that we could provide, the poison used inside was one hundred times more potent than usual. This was a safe measure to combat a large biomass hidden under, that was the whole ant colony.

Naturally, they were no normal ants, so the ant insecticide would only be enough to kill up to the Second Order, but that was more than enough. If I were lucky, the queen of this ant colony wouldn’t be a Third Order, though I better not think too optimistically.

Before long, one of the worker ants approached the nearest bait and started inspecting it with interest, its antennae twitching. It didn’t take a lot of time at all for its mandibles to grip the poison.

To the best of my knowledge, ants had a keen sense of smell, and the smelly ant insecticide wouldn’t escape their grasp. I had divided it to around ten kilograms each, so the fifty-centimeter-tall ant wouldn’t have much difficulty carrying it back with it — as ants could carry ten to fifty times their load.

Regardless, I followed the worker ant toward its nest just to make sure, and after finding that it was brought back successfully, I heaved a sigh of relief. The same was true with the other baits.

“Don’t underestimate my formula,” Lunaria reassured, “they won’t notice it until it’s too late. However, once the secondary killing effect started kicking in, which is about twenty-four to forty-eight hours after consumption, then…”

“The baits wouldn’t work no more,” I continued Lunaria’s sentence.

“Mm-hmm. I suggest you get more of the ant insecticide from the merchant and laid more of the traps so we can maximize the effect.”

“But I can’t force the process, can I?”

Lunaria supported my thinking, stating, “Nothing we can do about that.”

Thus, to kill time, I munched on a dry compressed energy bar while chatting with Lunaria. It went without saying that I’d made sure to wash my hands clean at a nearby pond; I didn’t want to die from my own poison…

“Hmm… Those ants drink from that pond too, don’t they?”

“Are you thinking of turning the water pond into another trap? Well, it does, and in fact, that one is connected to the water channel below.”

“Yeah, and It would be more difficult to notice something liquid like water compared to something solid. Plus, it could act as a fallback plan if something went wrong with the baits. Still, won’t this endanger the people above?”

“Worry not. I’ve checked the place and found that it gets its water through the joints that are connected to the surface and not through a direct line from the lake — where the townsfolk get their water. As a result, it won’t affect the people’s livelihoods.”

“Ooh! Didn’t expect you to have done that.”

“A simple matter. Now, it’s about time to go back and get some more of the ant insecticide.”

“Yup! Can’t wait to see the huge harvest that we’ll reap tomorrow.” I stood on my feet and strode far from my hiding spot, back to the surface.

***

Several hours passed in no time at all, and the sun was approaching its slumber.

Meanwhile, I’d laid more baits with the ant insecticide at different locations, all the while scavenging ant carcasses from the ones at the bottom of the pit in between. It took me as much as their corpses up and down to get them out from there. Such was the hard work I had to shoulder.

Fortunately, the collapsed part hadn’t been cleared out, and the ants hadn’t been carried back to their nest to be eaten, or else. Nevertheless, Lunaria said that if I didn’t come any time sooner, the dead ants would have been carried back because it released a certain chemical to attract the other ants.

Anyway, the matter here was all but certain. There was about half of the insecticide, though, but I was planning to dump them at the water pond tomorrow, so there was that.

“Yawn…!” I looked at the pile of dead ants that I piled up at the side, thinking that I should bring these carcasses with me to Gekko, but then decided otherwise. “…Actually, I’mma bury them here… for now.”

I cast {Earth Burrow} on the ground; it was another kind of spell similar to {Earth Lump} but used to dig a hole instead.

“What are you, a mole?”

“I’m just trying to be cautious.” I gave a half-hearted shrug.

I didn’t intend to reveal the ant colony any time soon, not until I had secured enough source crystals for the airship. After all, there was nothing better than holding my cards close to my chest. Besides, the exoskeletons wouldn’t decompose easily and were the main selling point. That aside, bringing the ones currently in Tuilë’s workshop wouldn’t bring suspicion.

Tossing in the last ant carcasses and closing it with earth, I said, “Alright. Now that’s done, let’s head back. Can’t wait to see dead ants lying around tomorrow.”

With that in mind, I waited for the next day to come to reap the fruit of my labor.