In that instant, the dozen or so knight ants turned their gazes at me. Their compound eyes might lack pupils, but I was sure that they were giving me a death glare since they soon rushed at me with their agile legs.
“Oh no! Should get away now!”
I sprinted to the trap with the fastest speed I could muster up. Thanks to my already high AGI stat, I was as fast as a typical top athlete in speed, even if I was lacking in terms of technique. However, the knight ants were even faster, and they were gaining at me. If it wasn’t for the gap between me and them that was already quite far from the start, I would’ve been caught.
Fortunately, the queen ant and the other ants didn’t chase after me, or else it would have looked like a pickpocket being chased by a whole mass of people on the street.
For one, I caught a glimpse of Luna-1 emerging from another entrance and attracted their attention at the last second by going for the eggs. I hoped no accident would crop up and destroy the drone — Lunaria might be fine, but…
Soon enough, the trap was only about five meters away from me. When I was a step away from it, I jumped across it by circulating source energy and putting it all on my legs and lunged to the other side with ease.
The ants, which were chasing only a few steps behind, reached the same trap and triggered it to collapse when all of them had their feet on it. The trap would easily collapse when even only one of them furiously ran across it, but it was possible for me to control the earth to some extent through my source power, much like how I could project my source elements.
“Whew… to think that I would escape by a hair’s breadth…” I felt a little relieved, but this was still not over.
Staring below, the knight ants were frantically trying to climb up the pit, but the walls had nothing but flatness, and the greenish substance made it all the more slippery.
I lit the match that I’d prepared in advance and dropped it below. As a survivalist, I always prepared a pack or two of matches in my backpack. And as soon as the match touched the green substance, flames blazed wildly from there and burned the knight ants along with them — the heat even reaching where I was at, so I closed the pit while leaving a peephole to see.
Unable to do anything to escape, the knight ants were burned alive. Their red exoskeletons were charred black little by little. Naturally, being cooked wouldn’t be enough to kill them easily, but they would instead feel pain that was worse than death.
I waited until all of them were dead while also waiting for Luna-1’s return. It took about thirty minutes of constant writhing for all the ants to die as proven by the status screens. And yet, the fire wouldn’t stop burning until all the green substance was completely gone. Truly worthy of being called a fire that was impossible to extinguish with water.
“Ugh… I forgot that I have to fish them out from there to get their source crystals…” I could feel my face wrinkling upon the thought that I had to come down there to get them, but then an idea came to mind. “Oh yeah, I can just have Lunaria do that with the drone. Thanks to the upgrades that Tuilë gave, it should be possible to carry them up here one by one.”
Suddenly, a snarky comment appeared from my side: “Dumping the worst kind of job to me… you’re so blatant.”
“L-Lunaria! You’re back already?” I stared at the spherical drone — Luna-1 — floating near me.
“Uh-huh. You know, it took me a lot of effort and time to shake the ants off me. Luckily, this drone is small and can hide inside small gaps that the ants could hardly reach. Furthermore, it doesn’t emit odor and has good heat insulation.”
“I see… Good to see that it all went well.” Hm… doesn’t what she just described make her a perfect attention grabber? “Anyway, as I already said, can you help me to get those ants, of course when the flames are out? No matter what, we can’t leave their source crystals behind.”
She sighed deeply. “Fine. It’s the drone that will do the job, not me personally.”
“Er, can you even do it yourself?”
Again, she didn’t answer any questions pertaining to herself. Although I never intentionally went to ask that, it would still come out when I wasn’t careful.
Whatever the reason might be, I didn’t bother to linger on the matter and asked her about the queen ant. Curiously, Lunaria told me that the wound that I’d delivered was so severe that it was unable to lay eggs any time soon.
This was both good news and bad news.
On one hand, I couldn’t take another opportunity to shoot when it was laying eggs — when it was at the most vulnerable. On the other hand, the other ants would gather inside the queen’s chamber to protect it, so I could expect even more harvest in my next plan.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Heh. You can only blame yourself for residing inside a narrow cave like this.” I chuckled and felt elated at the idea of what was to come.
“On what basis are you assuming that it will go smoothly?” asked Lunaria as Luna-1 grabbed one of the dead knight ants out of the pit that now was opened.
The fire below had yet to completely recede, though the drone seemed to be somewhat resistant to heat.
“Well, we just have to prepare even more backup plans if things don’t work out.” I gave her a pensive shrug. “There’s nothing wrong to think about it optimistically when given the chance.”
I wasn’t in a hurry to commence the second part of the plan, so I took some breather like having lunch and then harvesting the half-melted knight ants of their source crystals. Just that the ants stank so bad… like really, really bad. It was worse than a dirty sock that wasn’t washed for a year!
That aside, in total, there were about thirteen Second-Order source crystals. A huge sum indeed.
To begin with the second part, I got to first blockade all the paths leading to the queen’s chamber, but there was just one issue: There were about four other passages other than the one I came from. If I left them be, my plan wouldn’t work…
One such solution would be to block it manually with the use of {Earth Lump}. Just that…
“This is a bit… Uh, I don’t know… Impractical?” I muttered under my breath. No, wait, I have with me two grenades, so I can use them to block two passages. The problems now will be the other two passages, and not to mention that I have to throw the grenades to the aforementioned locations — especially for their most vulnerable parts…
I played multiple simulations in my head on how to cope with this issue but came up with nothing. After all, there were only so many ingenious things I could produce in a short time.
“If it’s about explosives you’re trying to find, there are some in Tuilë’s workshop. Remember how she used it to blow a building?”
“Yeah, but… Hmm… This can actually work.”
At first, I ruled out the use of explosives such as powder kegs because they would emit a smell and were too large that it would easily be noticed by the other ants. Nevertheless, Tuilë had one more type of explosive: landmines.
“Surely mines won’t give off any odor, and there should be some left in the workshop. The only problem lies in the fact that I can’t activate it remotely…”
It would have been for the best if Tuilë was here to join me in this venture, but I didn’t want to put yet more pressure on the already absurd amount of stress that she carried.
All of a sudden, one of the dead knight ant carcasses was hovering right in front of me. Its hair-raising stench pervaded deep into my nose, causing my face to twitch and me to move backward as far as possible.
“Urgh! What was that for, Lunaria?” I glared at the perpetrator, which was of course none other than the spherical drone controlled by Lunaria, while creasing my eyebrows. Still, smell, huh….
I got the message that she was trying to convey, and it might work to mask all the mines as well as the gunpowder to detonate them… Alas, I’d to play dirty in order to do so — except if I had a paintbrush, but harvesting their blood was ultimately unavoidable.
“I guess the best thing to do would be to take a step back and prepare thoroughly while perfecting the solution,” I concluded, making a fist smashing against a palm gesture.
“Mm, I agree. You do know when to advance and to retreat.”
Before going back, however, I tidied up my trails as well as blockaded the entrance on my side at the first intersection so that the ants didn’t come here.
***
After several hours of preparation, all the necessary things were finally brought into the ant nest and piled near the trap that had claimed the life of thirteen knight ants.
“Mines, here. Detonator, check. And that’s another two barrels of Aquarine fire, along with a few sacks of ant insecticide. Yup, all are here. Now then…”
At first glance, the plan might look seamless, but it was in fact far from it.
I mean, they all had to be switched on concurrently, lest the ants were to realize something was wrong and go after me with their knights and soldiers. It had to be mentioned that the knight ants I killed before were only those that were staying near the queen, there would most likely be more out there on the other side.
First off, I had to stick out the wires to the place where the powder kegs would be placed — Lunaria should be able to do that quite easily with the drone. Next, I must put the Aquarine fire or the green substance on my side of the path on fire, meanwhile taking a safe position after blockading the only exit.
After all, my entire plan was based on smoking and frying the queen and its children by cutting their escape paths. I wasn’t expecting that the whole plan would go smooth sailing, but as long as most of them died and the queen incurred severe injuries, then I would call it a success. Heck, if the queen died from the fire and the poison, that would be even better.
Anyways. I already told Lunaria about my plan, and she consented to follow through, albeit reluctantly.
I announced, “Lunaria, let’s proceed with the plan.”
I handed her the powder kegs that had been smeared with ant blood while not forgetting the wires attached to them.
“This is gross, but oh well…” Subsequently, the drone’s small manipulator arm carried one powder keg at a time, flying as clandestinely as possible. Luna-1 was also coated with ant blood, giving it a foul stench.
On my end, I prepared the two barrels of Aquarine fire. Burning them from the barrels wouldn’t be enough to cause intense heat in a short period of time, so my strategy was to dump the contents of the barrels into the queen’s chamber, made sure that it didn’t leak here by making a small earth barrier, placed the few sacks of ant insecticide, and set the whole thing on fire.
When all was prepared and in place, I held the detonator with both hands, hiding behind the first intersection that had been safely blockaded. My heart kept thumping like crazy since this had all been going too well.
“Are you going to push the detonator or not?” asked Lunaria in her always emotionless tone. The drone no longer reeked of ant blood.
“I am!” It wasn’t that I was nervous or anything — I only feared the whole thing backfired on me.
“Don’t fool yourself. If you’re going to act nervous the moment before committing, after all these preparations, then I might as well be the one to do it.”
I knew that she only told me that out of concern, but it was all on me.
“There’s no need for that. I just have to relax a little. Huff…” I let out a long sigh. “Okay, here we go…”
With all the willpower I had in me, I pushed the detonator with all my might.