Chapter 37:

As soon as they could, they switched to an actual car. Titus found a sleek-looking Lexus with a full tank of gas, and they wove through the streets towards the city. They circled around, wanting to get to their destination but not wanting to go through the streets still packed with the abandoned remains of early morning traffic. This was apparently a couple of time zones over from where they had been previously, making it around five in the morning when everyone disappeared. It left enough empty cars for the streets to be difficult to navigate.

It was a good thing they did. The number of times they barely managed to avoid tangling with some sort of monster by flooring it on the shoulder of a highway instead of trying to pop up on a sidewalk to scrape by—well, Alice lost count as they started to blend together.

They made their way a quarter of the way around the city in no time, to the point where she could see the college. She wasn't exactly sure where the supercomputer center was on the campus. Luckily, the place apparently didn't allow cars on its pathways, so all it took was Titus taking an ax to the metal barrier stopping cars from going along the large open pavement to get in. They had free rein without having to worry about being blocked.

Alice stopped him not more than a minute into campus. "Do you feel that?" she asked.

Titus shook his head. "Feel what?"

"I feel something pulling at the mana. As if there's an eddy in the current."

"That makes sense." Titus shook his head. "But I don't sense anything different."

She looked at him, examining him with her skill, trying to see if anything was behaving weirdly around him. Still, his mana was mostly anchored into place. Hers, though? Well, she supposed if she fell asleep, some of it might drain away.

"How close are we?" Titus asked.

Alice frowned, not knowing how to answer his question. "Not sure. The website for the school isn't loading." She pulled out the laptop from her bag, powered it on, and sent out a quick ping. "But the supercomputer center is still online. I just can't access it remotely."

Titus grunted an affirmation and slowly continued in the direction they were going, towards the center of campus. A few times, he gunned it to run over a smaller monster. Luckily, these seemed to be mostly weaker monsters in the area. In fact, there was a suspicious lack of monsters altogether, and Alice couldn't help but hold her breath, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

When they got over a rise, they could see the rest of the campus stretched out beneath them. Alice and Titus both stared in wonder. The campus was not as she had seen in the pictures. There was a massive dirt hill at least six stories tall in the center, with little black things crawling on it. But it was at least a mile away, so it was hard for her to make them out.

Titus, though, swore. "I fucking hate ants," he said.

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Alice groaned. "That's a giant anthill?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah," Titus said. "Hey, you want to take bets on where the supercomputer center is?"

Alice let out a despairing groan. "Pull over there. There's a sign," she said, finding a map of the campus on a post for visitors with a helpful 'You are here' symbol. She scanned it and looked up at the view before resting her head against the map in frustration.

"Are you fucking serious?" she muttered under her breath. "Not to make the situation even worse, but the mana drain is coming from that direction too."

"Of course it is."

"Well, you want to go check it out?"

"I really don't like ants," Titus responded.

"Yeah, I'm not a fan either," Alice said. "But the supercomputer is still running, and I think I can see a glow coming out of some of the tunnels on the side of that anthill."

Titus remained quiet, leaning against the open driver's side door as they stared out. "This is why there are no strong monsters nearby, isn't it?" Titus asked, not exactly answering Alice's question.

"I would think so," she said.

"Well, shit. God damn it," Titus cursed. But he slipped back into the driver's seat. "Come on, get in. We have to go check it out."

***

A few blocks from where the ants had one of their trails running, they left the car running as they got out and cautiously made their way closer to the anthill. The ants were everywhere, but for the most part, they were following trails, carrying things, moving to and from. Alice and Titus kept their distance.

One thing that Alice wasn't prepared for was the size of the ants. Most of the time, monsters that were taken directly from history, like the dinosaurs, were just regular-sized. But she had been noticing the diversity of monsters increasing as the system got more and more creative. Obviously, normal ants wouldn't be very threatening, even in massive amounts. But these luckily weren't the nightmarish ants the size of cars either. No, they were the size of, well, a dog, maybe. She figured the average ant would've weighed about 70 pounds if it was a mammal. Of course, she had no idea if insects tended to be less dense or more dense. The ones carrying things were maybe the size of a 50-pound golden retriever.

There were larger ones mixed in as well, mostly standing guard as they got closer to the hill. As they got closer to the colony, Titus and Alice started to attract some attention. One ant came up to them and batted them with its antennas before turning around and running back into the colony. Alice frowned, but her attention was starting to be split. It was becoming more and more effort to keep the mana inside her body, and it was increasing at an exponential rate. The closer they got, the more it was. She could no longer absorb any mana, but it was starting to actively fight against her.

She still carried her laptop, and Titus moved cautiously, trying to keep his distance from any of the ant trails where their masses were. But there were sometimes solitary ants wandering around, not necessarily following the trails. It was a complicated set of traffic that made Alice shocked that it seemed to mostly ignore them. Were they not really monsters?

She scanned several to make sure they were at a relatively low level. Most of the workers were only level ten. Some of the larger ones were higher, but it varied.

They continued to get closer and saw that their fears were confirmed. The supercomputer center was at the dead center of the anthill, and they would need to go into the nest to reach it. Titus gripped his spear, and Alice drew her knife. Not that she thought she could do much with it, but she only had a limited number of casts, and she didn't want to alert any of the ants by trying to drain them. Not until conflict had erupted.

As if that thought was the trigger, one of the ants that had come up and investigated them came back, and it wasn't alone.