Once the lever of the detonator was completely pushed in, four simultaneous explosive sounds appeared in the distance along with the trembling of the ground. Because they were being impeded by the cave walls, they weren’t at the rate that could deaf me.

Finding that it was time to move on to the next step, I muttered, “The ants should be startled by the sudden explosions, but they’ll soon notice that there’s a path that’s free from rubble. After all, there are like a thousand or so ants inside the queen’s chamber.”

In this case, it would be like a legion of ants ready to swarm my location if I were a step too late. There was no time to dawdle.

Matchbox in hand, I lit five matches at once and threw them into the puddle of green substance. While I could simply cast a Pyro spell, that might attract the attention of the ants. By now, they should be in a state of total unease, and even the slightest disturbance of source energy in the air would attract them.

The lit matches ignited the green substance and made it blaze wildly which spread at an alarming speed, even more so than the one I dumped into the pit previously.

Along with the flames, the ant pesticide caught fire as well, turning into black smoke. Even though there was an earthen wall that I made out of {Earth Lump} separating my side from the other, I cast an Anemo spell — {Wind Gush} — just to make sure that the smoke didn’t go to my place and spread it to the queen’s chamber even faster.

Odds were, if it could kill oversized ants stronger than me, then it was likewise able to kill me with even more ease. It would be pointless if I were to get myself killed at this juncture.

I was waiting for any aggression of the ants that might come by keeping myself on standby with my rifle near me and the catalyst daggers in both hands. Who could tell if the ants would suddenly bypass the wall of fire and come to my place? That would be a total disaster.

One minute, two minutes…

With each passing minute, I would peek inside through a small peephole that I left open, but there wasn’t anything but black smoke and the red blaze of the fire before my eyes.

“I’m sure that by this time, they should have discovered that there are no places to escape, and the smoke should have covered the entirety of the queen’s chamber,” I stated.

I was prepared to camp here to wait for the smoke of the ant insecticide to wipe out the ants… Incidentally, this worked just like an insect spray; it was funny to think that I was working like a pest controller.

Regardless, pulling back now might raise some unknown variables that could be dangerous like the queen escaping to my place and, in return, surfaced into the cavern where the town was at.

…

I stared at the ceiling while my posture was weakening by the second. Being tense for a long time made me tired…

Furthermore, the longer I waited, the more unease I felt — I was expecting them to attack by at least once, but no such thing happened for half an hour or so…

“Was it just my hunch?” I scratched my head.

It could be that they were scared by the fire and backed away into the corner as the smoke and heat were killing them little by little.

As though to assure me, Lunaria said, “Why are you worrying too much? While the poison is slow acting, burning them into smoke should hasten the process of poisoning them manifold. Besides, the heat will scare any insects from approaching. Have you not seen what has become of the knight ants before? And don’t you feel that the temperature is slowly but surely rising?”

“That’s true…”

My forehead had become sticky from the sweat trickling down, though I wouldn’t have realized this so soon without Lunaria telling me. Even if the smoke could be blown away by magic, the heat would be distributed evenly, despite the distance between the first intersection where I was at to the queen’s chamber.

Fortunately, I was quite proficient in Cryo as well. Thus, I cast {Ice Bolt} on the earthen wall to create insulation and act as a second barrier. The cooling air coming from the ice wall felt like I was on full blast with AC.

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“Hah… It’s so cool here. So relaxing. Wait! I can’t lax just yet.”

“Look, I can keep watch in your stead. For your information, there had been dozens of ants trying to break through to this place so far, but none had lasted more than a few seconds against the wall of fire, not to mention the smoke that weaken them with each passing moment.”

Indeed. She was the best lookout I could ask for, or should I say Luna-1 to be exact. If something passed the drone’s sensors, then I shouldn’t be anything better at detecting that “something.”

Time soon passed, and now it was past midnight.

It had been a long, long day… Never once had I spent a whole day and night deep below here. To think that I would once again burn the midnight oil… I hope this won’t send me to another world.

***

Three more hours passed in the blink of an eye as the fire began receding and soon vanished from existence as if it never existed.

Throughout the time, I hit the sack to curb my tiredness considering that the ants failed to approach the place I was at. Now that I was awake, it would be wise to check the conditions inside through my own eyes, so I brought up the topic.

“I think it’s about time we check our harvest, right, Lunaria?”

“Yup, I’ve been keeping tabs on the situation as you doze off and sleep like a baby. You know, I was only trying to put you at ease with my words earlier.”

“Sheesh, so you were never sincere, huh? Anyways, we should check the ants inside whether we want it or not.” I put strength on my wrist to push my body and stand up.

One had to know that the queen’s chamber was as big as a typical school hall, and that was why it could house more than a thousand ants at once. While the smoke didn’t get to my place because I constantly cast {Wind Gush}, it wouldn’t easily disperse when there was no ventilation to speak of.

Hang on, my source power can be used to block the red fog, so it should be able to block the smoke as well easy peasy, I concluded.

Since there was nothing holding me back from going there, I might as well advance. Of course, I didn’t forget to condense a layer of source energy around my body.

The fire might have been extinguished, but the air that blew into my face, the moment I opened the blockade, was akin to that of hot air from an extremely hot sauna— No, a desert! If it wasn’t for the source energy layer, I would have been smoked alive.

Lunaria then informed me as I advanced, “The temperature here at its peak reached an astonishing level comparable to that of an oven running at full power. Even now, it’s well above 50 degrees Celsius.”

“I see. No wonder that it’s so hot…”

As I strode deeper, the charred carcasses of the mutant ants were seen strewn about in the chamber. Soldier and worker ants alike, even two to three knight ants, suffered the same fate of dying slowly from heatstroke and poisoning.

It was like a place straight out of an apocalyptic world.

However, no matter how many times I looked around, there was no sign of the queen ant. I wasn’t expecting a simple trap with fire and poison would kill the queen ant, but how come to its traces couldn’t be seen?

To support this idea, the four other paths blocked by rubble were pretty much untouched. It would be understandable if they tried to dig one open and escape, but no such thing happened.

“Hm? Is that?”

Near the furthermost part of the chamber from where I was, there was a large pile of dead ants. Also, the concentration around this area was higher than in the other parts; it was understandable if they tried to escape from the fire as much as possible, but it was weird that they converged here…

This… won’t they make more heat by gathering in one place?

Whatever the case might be, I trekked there through the charred ground until I could see the back of the pile.

“An empty ground? No…” I squatted and knocked to the ground… It was hollow. A hidden path, seriously? I guess it’s normal for a monarch to prepare an escape route…

In this case, the dead ants sacrificed themselves to buy the queen ant some time to escape. Moreover, this answered why not many ants tried to break through from my location and why they didn’t try to escape from the collapsed paths — the queen was their top priority, more than themselves.

To be sure, I looked back at Luna-1 who was quietly hovering behind me, and asked, “Lunaria, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“There’s indeed a cavity below that thin layer of strangely hard dirt. I was going to tell you that but decided to close my mouth shut to see if you realized it or not, and you rarely let me down on that matter, I see.”

“Hey, you don’t have to do that. Even so…” I locked my gaze at the thin layer of dirt, more exactly to the queen ant hiding somewhere deep inside, and claimed, “Ants will just be ants. You may be able to fool other creatures, but you would be naïve if you thought you could fool me with this.”

A paltry trick.

All I had to do to break open the layer was simply with the good ol’ {Earth Lump}. With a simple cast of the spell, it was now a narrow shaft with a large enough gap for several of me to pass through.

“Say what you want, but overconfident will bite back at you,” she reminded.

“Hmph. We’ll see”

Of course, I didn’t get carried away. I was facing a Third Order, after all, so no amount of caution would be too great. No one knew better about the queen ant’s condition (whether it was severely injured or not).

As I hopped inside, I gazed at the long, narrow tunnel that led somewhere. “I wonder where it escaped to…”

Nevertheless, the path deeper inside looked like it was newly dug as dirt was piled up here and there. I must have overestimated their intelligence a tad bit…

I was certain that the queen ant wouldn’t escape too far, and that assumption was soon proven to be true. There was an ant silhouette from the shadow on the wall in the distance.

I shot stealthily behind the edge of the wall, trying to minimize any noise while peeking inside…

“Bingo.”

There it was the queen, lying weakly amidst a small open area at the end of the path with perhaps a bit more than a dozen surviving ants.

It sure had suffered a lot in my hand.