“You just want to say that one line, didn’t you? To be completely honest, you’re over-exaggerating, but I must give you credit at least for achieving this.”

“Of course you should!” I exclaimed. “Now then… with the additional of Third-Order source crystals, there should be 306 source crystals remaining. Hmm, there ought to be adequate if I scavenge all the ants in the queen’s chamber, with possibly more or less.”

“Yup. I have made a quick scanning before, and there are indeed more than 350 soldier ants at First Order and three knight ants.”

“Nice.”

That said, I had to spend the entire day until the sun went down to scavenge for the rest of the ants who owned source crystals within them. Time spent really, really well…

***

Relaxing on the bed, I couldn’t hold the smile of glee on my face — embracing the queen’s source crystal in my hand as if holding an enchanting beauty.

Sometimes, I felt like letting loose and laughing to my heart’s content, but whenever I glanced at the spherical drone sitting on the table, I would hold myself back. To that end, I distracted myself by checking the mission that I’d neglected.

Mission: One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure

Your airship has become a hunk of junk. You better find someone capable to repair it soon, or else… No one can say what other inhabitants around this area will do once they find this.

Difficulty: C-

Time Limit: 30 days

Remaining Time: 18 days 11 hours 25 minutes

Reward: Repaired airship, a new companion

Failure: Losing the airship, possibly an information leak that will lead to death

There was still more than half the time. Even so, I had gathered all the necessary budget to finish the airship, and all that was left was to help Tuilë to remake the airship.

By the way, she hadn’t gone back to her workshop all this time, although it was highly likely that she had gone to the market and passed us unknowingly.

Like it or not, I better go check on her soon once I found and explored the ruins that Lunaria allegedly said to exist.

***

Once again, I was back in the queen’s chamber that was looking the same as it was yesterday like it should be.

This might be a bit late, but I figured that dividing the cave under the mine into upper and lower layers should be easier to understand. I mean, I was quite confused as to what to say regarding the one where the ant nest was located except for the lower layer.

Back to the point. This time, I should be aiming for the ruins as that was my original intention of exploring this place: to seek treasure.

Now, there were four paths connected to the queen’s chamber that had been blocked after the explosions, and digging each one of them to check would be a hassle…

“Maxim, the path leading to the ruins should be this one.” Luna-1 floated at one of the collapsed paths.

“You sure? You can take your time since there are like four choices here.” I pointed at the other three collapsed paths.

“No need to doubt my words. Listen here, I was the one who placed the mines, so of course I know where this path will most likely lead to.”

I held my chin. What she said made a lot of sense. Doing nothing at all would also impede our progress.

“Okay. I’ll take your word. {Earth Burrow}!” I chanted. A hole about a meter wide appeared on the collapsed entrance.

Even if her guess was wrong, this would decrease the total amount of places to search. However, there were bound to be mutant ants on the other side, so I must be careful.

Come to think of it, the ants didn’t bother to dig into the queen’s chamber. Are they just not suitable for digging?

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

No, that was very unlikely.

The point was, the heat might cause approaching ants to hide, but it had long since subsided. I guessed the question would answer itself when I got to the other side.

Perhaps there were more…

“Right… Why didn’t I think about it…?” I felt the sensation of dropping and dizziness attacking me.

Who said that there was only one queen?

There could be a super colony here where there were multiple queen ants spread throughout several ant nests, and looking back, their patterns were always like that — sealing off any entrance that posed danger to them.

At any rate, understanding how the ants think wasn’t my job. I didn’t want to be burdened with unrelated things. It didn’t matter how they operated so long as I could exterminate them.

I continued with the digging by constantly casting {Earth Burrow}. Because of Lunaria’s advice, there was no fear of the cave collapsing. Normally, {Earth Burrow} was a spell that had a meter range in the form of a cube, but I had to adjust the range to make it possible for me to pass through easily.

Right about five minutes later and more than a dozen spells, the path was cleared completely. It took me a lot of effort.

“Phew… I can’t imagine what I’d have to do if I couldn’t use magic.”

“Well, it’s good that you’re one, isn’t it? I would have helped if I…”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Let’s just press onward, shall we?”

Obviously, the cave was still part of the ant nest and fraught with dangerous mutant ants. The ants here weren’t affected by the ant insecticide, and even if they were, it would have gone by now — it had been a few days.

Taking care of them was a cinch, though. So long as there were no knight ants, or their numbers weren’t too great, I had gained a knack for exterminating them. One cut to the joint between their head and thorax or one shot from {Air Pistol} would kill them 100 percent — although their bodies like to twitch even after death.

Lunaria’s words didn’t disappoint me.

After half an hour of constantly circling around the maze-like ant nest and confronting numerous mutant ants, I finally chanced upon the signs of ruins she spoke of. Debris in the form of broken piles of unidentified metal was rampant in the area. Some of them had a thin, sharp shape that looked to be used as weapons of some sort; the rest were in the shape of round objects with two holes at the left and right. Truly weird.

I mean, it was as though there was an ancient battle that broke these constructs into the shape they were now.

Finding that there was no way of making sense of these things, I couldn’t help but ask, “Are these…?”

“This isn’t some ruin from the modern era… it’s something way, way more ancient…” Lunaria answered, interrupting my question.

Going further in a bit more, there was an entrance blocked by a round stone door. At the side of the door were another two larger piles of broken metal.

There was nothing that resembled a switch or lever to open the entrance even after an intense search of the area. In the end, I was left with no choice but to ask the million-dollar question: “So? How do we get in?”

“There should be a key in the shape of a small watchtower.” Luna-1 flew all around the place and finally stopped at a certain corner. “Oh, it’s there.”

I peeked at the location that the drone was facing and discovered a strange tower with an almost full circular top and a round black orb with lots of small blades flying around it.

“Maxim, be careful, it’s still operational, and it can attack you.”

“What?!”

I was flabbergasted by the sudden warning, and it did happen — the floating black orb shot a black beam toward me. Luckily, I was far away and somewhat prepared, so I dodged it by the skin of my teeth.

The black beam that looked similar to a condensed black flame hit and melted the wall behind my previous spot. No matter how I saw it, it was as hot or even hotter than lava!

“You seriously should have told me from the get-go, Lunaria!” My heart was galloping a mile a minute. A single shot and I would be the one that was melting.

“Apologies. I only know this kind of ruin from records written in the past.”

From records, huh? So this is not from a bygone civilization that built those skyscrapers, but from some other long gone ancient civilization before that… This world sure is full of mystery, I thought.

Anyway, blaming her would get us nowhere. What was most important was to take the watchtower down and act correspondingly.

The blades circling the black orb should block slow-moving attacks such as {Fireball}. In that case, the most rational choice of weapon would be either {Air Pistol} or my gun. But I kind of wanted to test a few things first.

And these few things were…

“{Flame Arrow}!” I chanted. An arrow of flame shot through the air and hit the watchtower right on the orb, causing a thin fume to mask the object.

Nevertheless, that didn’t put as much of a dent in the enigmatic orb — the flying blades must have blocked my magic. Instead, it counterattacked by sending its own condensed black flame toward me, which I barely evaded again by throwing myself away.

“Shoot! It isn’t as easy as I thought.” I pinched my glabella while hiding.

No more playing around.

I switched to casting {Air Pistol} — a surer hit spell with high destructive power — but even then, no noticeable damage was seen on the black orb.

Of course, the blades protecting the orb would be dented and ejected far away whenever they blocked the very fast-moving pebble… yet they would return the second that happened. Accordingly, I changed my target by shooting at the pole, though the blades would come to protect when it close or used its beam to meet my magic, and even if it hit, it was barely enough to dent it. Such a tough metal…

“Guh, should I use my grenade?” I began weighing things.

Whenever I was in a pinch, grenades always became the key to resolving the issue. However, such a slow object would easily be countered, and if it was in close proximity to me, that would be dangerous.

“No need. Don’t you see that your spells damage the black orb bit by bit? The blades can’t disperse the entire force and sometimes pushed them deep enough to hit the orb.”

Indeed.

So long as I kept pressing on with my attack, the black orb would be destroyed sooner or later. Though It would be great if I was able to cast two spells at the same time, I shouldn’t rely on something that was yet possible.

As such, my solid choice of attack was to increase the power of my spells. Besides speed, there was something else that could be used as a substitute: number. After all, as a Tier-1 evoker, I was able to cast a single Bet-tier spell if I gave my all.

I conjured another wind barrel, but as opposed to a single pebble, I put in all that I had left. The intensely swirling barrel of wind expanded and looked like a pipe holding too much gas often seen in cartoons.

“Eat this! {Air Shotgun}!”

All the pebbles were launched toward the watchtower at once, hailing down the black orb as though a blitz.