Her mandibles smashed and injected venom, and her maw sprayed acid. Her Articulated Arms felt like they were everywhere at once, shredding wings, puncturing compound eyes and tearing off limbs.
Her surprise attack and burst of effort only lead to the deaths of seven Myrmekes, and the injuries of several more, before she was forced to leap- she’d started charging her Springlegs the instant she landed- forty or so feet away.
Her now-weaponized Articulated Arms were very effective at killing weaker Myrmekes and fending off those to her sides much more than she’d expected. It was mostly only because of the element of surprise, though; their greater thickness and overall power still wouldn’t be enough to stop a second Stage Myrmeke from tearing them off if they got a hold of them.
She easily slipped into the style of murder she’d developed. Very, very slowly, she picked off a Myrmeke here and there; dodging attacks with relative ease, before bouncing away the moment things got hairy and spitting acid.
She deliberately spared the ones that had been trying to manage the group, recognizing them for a greater-than-average level of intelligence. Instead, she tried to aim for the weakest and dumbest-acting Myrmekes, as they would either never join her or wouldn’t be any more valuable to her than their Cores.
The minutes crawled by as she murdered her kin. Gradually, the group became smaller and smaller; eighty two became seventy, and then seventy became fifty. She hadn’t taken any notable damage at all yet, but the cons of the way she fought were shining through already.
She was getting tired, and her body was overheating. Her movements were becoming slightly sluggish even now, and she wasn’t even halfway done.
This had never been a problem for her, due to the fact her fights rarely lasted for longer than a minute. Her investment into her strength was the only thing that was keeping her going, as its reinforcement to her muscles increased their stamina, as well.
Two more Myrmekes died, brought down by her Articulated Arms. She saw a glob of acid coming her way, and all she could do was angle her face away so that it didn’t hit anything sensitive. Luckily, her exoskeleton was durable enough that, despite having been struck by a few hundreds of acidic globs, there wasn’t a sign of almost any of their effects. This one was no different.
It did force her to look away, though, so she sprang away before anything could take advantage of her momentary blindness to everything to her right.
She moved forward again the instant she touched the ground, suddenly very aware of the fact that every moment she made needed to be for the sole purpose of killing or preventing herself from being killed.
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This time, she killed three more, but she swayed to the left a bit later than she should’ve, and an Articulated Arm struck the edge of her left compound eye. She retained the majority of her vision in the eye, due to the nature of the compound eye, but losing her peripheral vision to the left was a large loss.
The injury pushed her to go further, as she disengaged and reengaged. She tried to force her body to move with the speed and precision that it had been moving at earlier, and it worked for a time.
No amount of willpower could defy exhaustion forever, though. As the group’s numbers decreased to twenty-seven, she made increasingly more mistakes. One of her Articulated Arms were torn off, and her lack of peripheral vision to the left resulted in her eventually losing the eye entirely. An antenna was torn away, and the abundance of acid throughout the fight had damaged her exoskeleton enough that a few cracks had now formed across it.
Within that very same cracked exoskeleton, her body had become so hot that it was no longer uncomfortable, but outright painful. Her muscles ached, and her legs felt heavy.
She was beginning to consider retreating, but cast the thought aside decisively. Turning back would let others catch up with her strength, and the bounty would result in a decisive death.
That part of her mind began to awaken- that same part that had ruined her mental state for hours, and the same part that had allowed her to beat One and Two. She almost let it, but then fiercely suppressed it. Entering that state of perfect, stunning clarity would make it easier to beat the group, but would doubtlessly get her killed afterwards.
Thus, nothing changed. She continued to dart in, killing a couple of Myrmekes and struggling not to lose anything important in the process. She felt unsteady now that she was missing an antenna and eye, resulting in a few deep gouges in her softened exoskeleton that could have been avoided.
She reluctantly prepared to go in again, and noticed one of the Myrmekes dropping out of the group. Another tried to kill it for deserting, but it was alone in its attempt, letting the deserter resist.
Its attempt was the nail in the coffin for many of the Myrmekes in the group that had been contemplating doing the same thing.
Three more deserted, and two tried to stop them. She took advantage of the group’s weakness, darting in and killing three before retreating, undamaged this time.
The group’s remaining Myrmekes were the ones she’d deemed relatively intelligent. They’d been trying and half-succeeding at leading and organizing the group; they were the entire reason that it hadn’t broken down after the first fifty casualties, frankly.
She repeated her message from earlier, and the group paused in their pursuit. The fifteen Myrmekes looked at one another and at her, deeply contemplating their actions.
Finally, one caved. It darted away from the group, towards her, with an unmistakably subservient demeanor and clearly friendly pheromones.
One of them tried to kill the deserter. She lunged forward to kill her newfound subordinate, but it backed down the moment that it noticed the other Myrmekes just standing around.
The Myrmekes all either surrendered or tried to flee, but she made a point of easily chasing down all those that tried to flee. Slowly but inevitably, she won.