"Kill their queen? That’s impossible; you can’t even enter an ant colony. You would need hundreds of soldiers to stand a chance and still be uncertain!" Puy was unconvinced, but Silas' face was full of confidence.

"We can kill the ant queen and destroy the colony. This is not a lie or an attempt to deceive you, Puy. I want to take ownership of the Rock; for that, we need to purge all these ants and establish villages all over; we also have to deal with the members of the Crimson Caravan."

"We haven't seen anyone else besides the ants and your group. How can you be sure these enslavers are still around?"

"Silvano was the one who connected the tribes thanks to his power. We have no idea how big this place is, and neither do you. It is possible that they're capturing other tribes that you didn’t know existed inside the Rock."

He had more reasons, but he couldn’t tell him about the tolgar that followed Silvano into the forest world. He had to assume that they could be attacked by the caravan at any moment.

At least the ants are hostile toward them too; if we’re lucky, they were all killed by the ants outside.

"It still doesn't sound plausible. Let’s say you killed some of the soldiers and repelled one attack. Attacking the nest of a colony is suicide; the sheer number of ants is going to overwhelm you. Even if you have powers like Silvano, I can’t see a way for you to win."

"I don’t need you to believe us, but we need some of those explosives you used to seal the entrances to the village. We also require a map and the closest position to the colony."

Silas already had a plan to proceed with the ant extermination. "We’re going to blow off the tunnels and bury them with rocks."

"But what if the queen survives the explosion?"

"The explosion is just the final step to secure the win. We’re going to send a group to kill the queen directly and make sure they can replenish their numbers. Once the queen is dead and most of the ants have been crushed, the remaining ants will be easier to kill in small groups, or perhaps other colonies will finish them off."

"Let me guess, this small group going to kill the queen is going to be you humans?"

"See, it's not that crazy; you don’t need to sacrifice any of your people, and if we do it, then you can become part of our alliance and gain a lot of resources and land. You're in the position to be the next leader of not just one tribe but all the villages we’re going to build inside the Rock."

Puy looked at Silvano, but he had the same surprised expression on his face. He watched the other humans on the side, and they had the same shocked expression.

"You can ask first instead of deciding on your own." Franco complained.

"Oh, come on, is anyone really going to say we just need to cut our losses and go back to the other world with empty hands?"

"No, but I didn’t know you were planning to kill the ants right now. You saw what one of those special soldiers can do."

"Don’t worry; I already have intel on their abilities. The first time was in their favor; now we can attack with everything."

Puy was still doubtful of the claim, but Silvano had helped the tribe a lot in the past few months; he repaid the favor by giving them the explosives they requested. It wasn’t an important loss; he could make more later, but he felt like he was sending them to their deaths.

Silvano spent two days with his portals, mapping the tunnels around the tribe, attempting to pinpoint the exact location of the nest. Silas and Nathan escorted him and killed some ants along the way to reduce their numbers.

Nathan crushed the face of an ant, and Silas slashed the legs of another one.

"The numbers keep increasing; this must be close to the nest. Can you see any marks or something that can tell us where the entrance is, Nathan?"

"Sorry, I’m not an ant expert. How about you, Silvano?"

"I did learn some of these marks by practice and failure, but this species is so aggressive that I don’t know where they come from. I've mapped the locations of several other colonies, but this one has to be from the other side of the Rock."

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"Mmm, I wonder if that's really what happened." Silas was skeptical.

"What do you mean?"

"Have you heard about natural selection or things like that?"

"Do you mean when a species evolves in the best way possible for their environment in order to gain an advantage and replace other competitors? Yeah, I heard in school, I think."

"Videogames can take that idea that normally happens over hundreds or thousands of years and do it in a span of days. Imagine a developer who made the NPCs lives very fast and short. During that short life, they could evolve and try to adapt better to their world."

"Videogame?"

"Just let him be; he talks about games when he wants to make a point. In the end, he returns to talk about the present." Nathan was accustomed to Silas changing subjects about videogames, guilds, guides, or hacks. "Is kind of annoying, so just try to be patient; I zone out every time he starts talking like this."

As Nathan said, Silas was so engrossed in his own talk that he ignored the conversation his companions were having.

"Then it's not such a strange idea to think that the System, as the dev of this world, made creatures like ants evolve at such a rapid pace. Through pure statistical probability and repetition, the ant colonies change forms and develop different ways to live. It could be from their color or diet to their attack pattern or their ability to explode when sensing danger to defend the queen."

"Eventually, one species would evolve into the apex predator, the top of the food chain, the strongest variant capable of defeating all opponents and claiming the Rock for themselves. In conclusion, this evolved colony is now sitting at the top of the food chain. In only a few weeks, all other colonies are going to die because of this new variant, and they’ll control everything. This could result in another evolutionary leap, allowing them to gain levels and more skills or powers!"

"Do you understand?"

"Yes," Nathan said after completely ignoring Silas' ramblings.

"Y-yeah I understand too."

"If we don’t kill them now, they can take over the Rock and become stronger; this is the right movement to finish them off. Before they can give birth to more queens with the excess of food. I heard about super ant colonies, where the same species of ant join forces. If they do that, then the only way to exterminate them is to destroy the Rock."

"See, he makes it back to the point in the end. He used to get angry when no one understood his weird ramblings, but he’s gotten better, hehe." Nathan whispered to Silvano with a soft laugh.

The three of them kept moving between the tunnels and finding the entrances to the nest. After two whole days of exploring, they had a map of the tunnels surrounding the whole nest.

Silas put the map on the table and explained the plan.

"Operation: Ant extermination consists of two parts. One has the task of infiltrating the nest and killing the queen and any other queens, if they exist. Two, bomb the tunnels to bury the nest into the ground and kill as many ants as possible. If we do both things, we have a real chance of winning the war against the ants."

"Rebecca, Franco, and I did as you asked and looked at the other colonies nearby. You were correct most of them have been killed by the red and yellow striped ants. Some of them are still alive, but they are much weaker."

"So, if we kill this queen, we’ll have an easier time dealing with the others?"

"Exactly."

They confirmed that the other ants were injured and weak. This was the perfect moment to take over the Rock. Silas continued with the plan.

"Setting the explosives in the entrance shouldn’t be too hard. We can hide them inside the ground, and with some of their smell, they won’t notice anything wrong when they come and go. For the group that is going inside, we need a small but powerful team."

"The ones going inside are going to be Silvano, Franco, and me."

"What? I’m the Tank and you're leaving me behind with the explosives?

"Yes, you need to defend the entrance to call their attention while we infiltrate the nest. Nora and Rebecca are going to help you defend the attacks. The objective is to buy time for us, and when we give you the signal, you retreat and detonate everything. We’ll escape with Silvano’s portals."

"I get it. You are going for the infiltration, but if that doesn’t work, I just have to punch our way inside as fast as possible until we reach the queen."

"Yeah, I don’t want to, but if the distraction fails or they are overwhelmed and have to retreat, you're our last hope inside that nest, Franco."

"How are we supposed to retreat from the horde of ants?" Rebecca asked.

"Silvano will leave a portal for backing away. You can keep that portal open for the duration of the operation, right, Silvano?"

"Yes, with Nora’s help, I shouldn’t have a problem."

"We need to go and put the explosives when they are sleeping."

They waited for a few hours and then started to put the explosives all around the entrances. It was a strange concoction made with a variety of ingredients; he didn’t ask about the recipe to not push his luck in getting Puy on board with the plan, but later Nadine is probably going to ask directly how they are made.

Franco punched a hole in the wall to hide the explosives, while Silas sent more signals that everything was fine. They did that at the seven entrances. They had to make sure there was no place where they could escape or avoid the rubble.

If they had a way out, fighting hundreds of ants is going to be impossible, and we don’t have time for them to die naturally. Emily told him about the words of Se'ky: he was waiting for his companions to come, and whether he was alive or dead was secondary. They were planning to take over the Rock.

I’m not going to let them steal our new base after we clear out the ants.

Time passed, and after taking some hours of the night to rest and recover their powers, as soon as the sun rose from the horizon of the endless desert, the operation "Ant extermination" began.