Using [Perception] in the darkness that surrounds us, I find us inside a single half-sphere-like shaped room.
That's when a few of the enforcers join their skills together and create some sort of domain that doesn't allow me to perceive further nor any mana to pass inside.
Myrra also sends something towards the edge of the domain and continues to carefully examine something, “I feel no skill trying to pass through the silencing field, we should be fine for now.”
Multiple skills and items light up the area.
Everything inside the room is broken, with pillars made of crystal-like white stone, flooring made of polished white wood-like material, things that used to be tables and multiple pieces of furniture.
There isn’t even a hint of mana inside the room, and most of all, it reminds me of some kind of research laboratory, even though it's all covered in dust, rotting, and unusable.
“Locate the source,” Myrra orders, and with a bow, two enforcers start scanning the room, “Take these stones; they will point you towards where I and the return sphere are. The less time you have, the weaker glow they will emit,” Myrra hands a small mana stone to everyone in the group.
Unlike what I'm used to, she is serious, and there is a hint of dignity to her.
I wonder what her being a Champion candidate means, how she compares to Eris, the Lynthari Matriarch?
“Myrra, the ants took away a few of my guild members. Getting them back is my priority,” after creating a field around us, I tell her.
Intrigue shines in her eyes, and she nods slowly, “I smell her on you. Did you talk with the old woman?”
“I guess you mean the Matriarch?”
“Obviously, feral one,”
I nod, “She knows about it.”
“Then it's fine,” Myrra leaves my field and joins the enforcers.
Now it's nearly confirmed that even she doesn’t know about the Matriarch being two beings at the same time. Before she complained about the Matriarch's granddaughter. Or maybe she knows and pretends not to. Who knows.
With a soft hum, the white crystal pillars around the room start emitting a gentle light.
The ceiling also changes a bit, generating flickering light for a few seconds before it turns on. On the floor, mana circuits also appear, creating circles around some places that now contain only broken apparatuses.
One of the enforcers most likely located what Myrra called the source, and it seems to be a weird stone imbued in one of the pillars. He sends more mana inside and then does something that turns the walls of the entire room transparent, allowing us to see outside.
The web of tunnels big enough for three bus-sized ants to pass through are all around us, the walls covered in colorful mushroom-like stuff, some of them even glowing softly.
Then there are ants, crawling through the tunnels at dizzying speeds, often on the ceiling or on the walls.
There are many more variants than I ever met. Smaller ones with giant jaws. Bigger ones with shiny carapaces and thin legs, extremely quick and smaller ants. There are even much smaller ones that climb on the bodies of bigger ants and get carried around.
“Being covert doesn’t seem to be an option, seeing how many of them are here,” Obelia says.
“Doesn’t that make it better?” Isola giggles, “It’s been long since I fought them.”
“We should first locate the queen or whatever leads them,” I say and take a step towards a suspicious group of circuits on the floor.
I send my mana towards them, and nothing happens.
“Nice catch, feral one,” Myrra says as she passes by me. “But this is safeguarded, and only lynthari can use it,” she then sends her mana to it.
The ceiling starts flickering again, and thousands of dots appear on it, dots of three colors.
Red for ants.
Green for lynthari.
Blue for human.
There is a big group of blue dots, and then there is a smaller one. Three blue dots surrounded by hundreds of red dots, some of them even bigger than the ones before.
The map on the ceiling then changes, something akin to zooming out, revealing thousands more dots.
It zooms out again. Tens of thousands more dots.
Again. Hundreds of thousands more red dots.
At this point, no one is talking.
“Seems about right,” Isola mumbles, "fuck."
“They detected us,” Myrra says simply, and the map zooms in one more time.
Thousands of dots are already moving towards us.
“Feral one, you are on your own,” Myrra turns to me. “I wish you luck.”
“Thanks, take care of yourself too,” I answer her.
There are two places of interest on the map. The one with a few big red dots and three blue dots where I plan to go. One more with the biggest red dot where Myrra plans to go. Both of the places are far away from each other.
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We watch as the ants surround the sphere-like room we are in. Hundreds, thousands of bus-sized or other ants climbing all across the wall, attacking, yet unable to get inside.
“The moment we exit, we will be unable to get back inside of the room,” Myrra says the last thing and activates some sort of array.
That makes the walls around us flicker, and she and her group pass through it as if it’s not there, even though the ants are unable to enter.
Me, Tess, and Lily do the same and immediately find ourselves surrounded by monsters.
“Save your mana for now,” I say simply, and flames burst in front of me, setting the mushrooms and ants ablaze.
[You have defeated Worker Ant - lvl 56]
[You have defeated Worker Ant - lvl 50]
[You have defeated Worker Ant - lvl 75]
[You have defeated Worker Ant - lvl 101]
The ants around us are weaker than the ones I fought before, the stronger variants not here yet.
As the mushrooms start catching ablaze with more of my help, some of the ants even start running away while we continue to run towards where we saw three blue dots.
The entire time, I'm absorbing the heat from the fire I set, so even Tess and Lily are fairly comfortable.
Crawling with surprising speed, a dozen ants move across the ceiling, jumping down at us only for me to absorb their kinetic energy, their falling speed visibly slowing.
Before they even reach us, I use that absorbed energy to pierce holes through the heads of half of them and create a few more javelins to kill the remaining ones.
I use only as much mana as I need to kill the ants, never more. I observe their strength and adapt the output accordingly.
A few minutes in, another type of ant appears, the one with a bigger head and mandibles that open 180 degrees wide.
The ant is only as tall as me, yet feels much more threatening than some much bigger ones.
[Trapjaw Ant - lvl 203]
“Be careful,” I say, and that’s when the ant disappears, cracked ground left behind him.
He moves with a speed I'm almost unable to track and stops in front of me, his jaws shutting down, the sound of them piercing the air audible.
I started pushing myself back with a blast of kinetic energy even before he reached me, and now I watch as his jaws snap shut with thundering noise, the air vibrating.
Then the ant disappears again, standing back at the place where he appeared. Slowly his mandibles open to 180 degrees again. There is no mana radiating from the ant other than from his mandibles. What he just showed was done only with the sheer strength and speed of its body.
Before he can dash again, I shoot a dozen mana orbs at him that he swiftly dodges, and only then the ground under his legs cracks and he disappears.
[Redistribution] activates at full power as this time he passes by me and goes after Tess.
His movements are too quick and the strength behind them too immense, so the skill slows him down only a little, but Tess already expects him, lightning crackling around her. She jumps up in the air as the trapjaw ant's mandibles shut with a scary noise and immediately stabs with a spear she holds in her hand.
The ant avoids it, moving back to the place where he started. There he stops and his mouth starts opening again, preparing for another dash. That's when I activate an anchor I left there, and through the [Tether] I send a strong blast of kinetic energy there that explodes near the middle of his body, cutting him in half.
Yet the ant doesn't hesitate and dashes again, just half of the body with head and jaw, dashing using three legs only.
He is much slower than before, and before he reaches me, a javelin pierces his head, killing him, and his body slides to my feet with all the inertia it possesses.
[You have defeated Trapjaw ant - lvl 203]
My domain activates and as we continue and meet other Trapjaw ants, I immediately place an anchor near them, the ants unable to perceive it. Before they even charge, I send an attack through it, most of the time killing them before they even charge us.
Slowly, more of them start appearing, some of them even a bit bigger than us.
Lily and Tess already fight on their own, Lily somewhat awkwardly using a bow and shooting gray arrows made of a tiny bit of her mana. The arrows are deadly, piercing through anything they hit, and Lily mostly aims at bigger ants I slow down with my skills.
Tess quickly moves around, defending Lily when needed and killing smaller and quicker ants with her javelins that constantly float around her.
The closer we get to where the map leads, the more ants appear and the stronger the variations, and I have to spend more mana to counter their attacks.
Gravity ants try to slow us down, Flame Legion ants start fighting against the fire I set up, Sentinel ants with glowing symbols on their carapaces fight always in pairs.
Yet it's not a problem for me. I saw most of these variations and since then my skills and stats have improved a lot. I have an evolved Primary class now, I have two epic passives, and I'm determined to fulfill my promise.
At some point, I let my heart beat loudly and my mana flow through my body.
The compressed thermal energy turns into golden flames that fill the tunnels and melt everything they come in contact with. The mushrooms, the Flame legion ants, all without exception, fueled by my mana.
Through the flames, we walk, not affected by them at all as I absorb all the heat and store it in the orbs that continue to float around me and follow us.
Getting closer to our destination, I absorb the heat and flames around me, which both almost instantly disappear. Instead, waves of kinetic energy fill the tunnel, throwing the ants against the walls, piercing their bodies, and exploding the ants in their entirety. Up until another rare variation appears.
His mana fills the tunnel and pushes against mine while I feel some weird web made of mana around him. His domain negates mine, and he destroys my anchors. The javelins I throw at him he disrupts and shoots a similar one at me immediately that I also disrupt.
I push more mana into my skills and more javelins fly at him, all of them on the brink of turning into white shining bombs. Yet he pushes out even more mana, tearing them apart into small motes.
The ant in front of us is small, barely reaching my waist. Its antennae are glowing in pale blue color and the entirety of its carapace is covered in circuits and inscriptions. His eyes are the same as those of the other ants, emotionless, black, and eerily alien-looking.
Then his smaller mandibles, which seem soft, open and close a few times. His legs burrow deep into the ground.
Right after, the mana that radiates from him feels impossibly strong, palpable in the air, and his body, unable to contain it all, starts breaking apart and immediately healing. Yet with every heal, a few symbols from his carapace disappear.
The ant is getting the mana from the other ants, hundreds or thousands of ants sending it towards this one that is unable to endure it all and will die the moment all healing inscriptions are used up.
But for these few moments, the ant in front of us is terrifyingly strong.
[Mana Channeler Ant - lvl ??]