Ice lined the walls of the stone cavern system and temporarily froze the Gold-Plated Ants in place. Stephan's massive form barrelled through the five-meter tunnel ahead of them, smashing embrittled ants with deadly claw swipes and reducing them to piles of frozen flesh.

Wish fire emerged from Stephan and consumed the corpses and the cores alike. "What are you all waiting for?" he shouted in a bestial voice. "If you don't all start pulling your weight, I won't be sharing."

"Don't push in so aggressively," warned Gareth. "There's a whole swarm out past these branching tunnels. We need to be systematic about this."

Stephan turned his bestial head back and growled at Gareth. "Who needs to be systematic when we've got raw power on our side?" He smashed another ant apart and lunged ahead, paying no heed to the adjacent tunnels and the ants pouring out of them.

"Lawrence, let's link up and get a better idea of what we're facing here," said Gareth, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

"You've got it," said Lawrence, appearing beside Gareth. They activated their heroic abilities simultaneously to shoot a pulse of perception that pierced through tunnel walls, identifying earthen traps and demonic enemies and fully mapping the area in three dimensions.

"These things are extremely weak," said Daphne, summoning six fireballs into the ranks of the ant army that had bypassed Stephan. The fireballs were perfectly timed to consume a pair of ants apiece, burning through all but their thick chitin and the cores located in their abdomens. "Their only redeeming feature is that killing them takes energy. Even their cores are barely strong enough to resist my flames."

"I'll handle this tunnel, I suppose," said Astley, bringing out her grimoire. A shadow stretched out from the book and pierced into the nearest enemy ants, freezing them in place. Instead of dropping down as one might expect, the ants turned and faced their brethren. They fought with their claws and their mandibles, tearing into flesh and infecting a portion of the ants. What started off as a few turncoats quickly transformed into an all-out rebellion.

"Everyone's gotten a lot stronger," Sorin said to Gareth. "But there seems to be a bit of friction now that the group is back together."

"That's only natural given how much time we've spent apart," said Gareth, though by the looks of it, even he didn't believe his own words. "Stephan's still charging ahead, Sorin. There are three more exposed branch tunnels we need to deal with so we're not surrounded. Lawrence, can you take the first one?"

"On it," said Lawrence, slipping into the shadows. He slipped out fifty feet ahead and stabbed a dagger between a Gold Plated Ant's exoskeleton plates to destroy its brain. Three more attacked him with their deadly pincers, but Lawrence threw out three daggers at their critical points between their abdomens and their heads. Three more ants stepped up, but Lawrence's daggers were already back in his hands and ready to throw once again.

"I'll take this one," said Gareth as they arrived at another branch. He fired an arrow down the tunnel that blasted the limbs off five ants at once. He followed up with a second shot that split into five separate arrows that finished off the crippled ants and blasted back their reinforcements. "Be careful with that last tunnel. It seems to lead to some sort of hatchery."

"Don't worry about me," said Sorin, using Adder Rush to close in on the tunnel. "I was born to kill weak enemies like this."

Sorin reached the tunnel just as a soldier ant charged out. Lorimer poked his head out of Sorin's pocket and prepared to pounce, but Sorin pushed him down. "This isn't worth your time," said Sorin. "Those cores won't even put a dent in your appetite."

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The soldier ant slowed visibility as it reached Sorin and collapsed into a melting heap before they could even reach him. A tiny trickle of vitality entered Sorin's body thanks to his armor's life-siphoning properties, slightly increasing his strength, speed, and endurance and replenishing what little mana he'd used up.

Sorin didn't even need to lift a hand as he walked down the tunnel; any ants that got too close melted down into tough chitin and cores. The demon cores, despite being weak, were nominally valuable. Sorin 'collected' them by flicking a lighter that consumed the core and whatever flesh remained to produce concentrated wish fire.

"Reee," complained Lorimer as he watched all the flesh burn away.

"Don't worry, Lorimer," said Sorin. "The enemies in the lower levels are bound to be much stronger. Also, I think there's a few tougher ones up ahead that might prove tasty."

Sorin used Adder Rush to swiftly work his way into the branch tunnel. Most of the ants collapsed before they could land a single blow, but a few of the more powerful ones managed to trade a few blows with Sorin before following in their brethren's footsteps.

"Screee!" Five worthy enemies appeared before Sorin when he entered the hatchery Gareth spoke of.

"You go on ahead and take care of these elites," said Sorin to Lorimer. The rat shot out like a spear and pierced through the larger Gold Plated Ant's exoskeleton. The enemy shriveled up as the rat devoured it from the inside out.

The four remaining elites, confused by the development and uncertain how they could attack the rat, turned their attention to Sorin. Before they could approach him, however, a large poisonous python appeared to block their way. Sorin ignored their painful screams and bent over to touch an egg that was beginning to hatch.

Sorin injected various poisons into the egg. It's possible to hatch these eggs if I so chose, observed Sorin as he infused the unborn creature with violence via Grove Manipulator's Touch. But the limit is one type of corruption, If I add in any of the others, the creature in the egg will perish. To verify, he injected a hint of Madness into the egg. The hatching process immediately halted as Madness and Violence clashed inside its unborn body and destroyed it from the inside.

Undeterred by the failure, Sorin turned his attention to the rest of the eggs in the hatchery. It wasn't often that one could find so many three-star specimens of the same species to experiment on, so Sorin took full advantage of the situation.

"Hatch," said Sorin, using his aura to infuse a third of the hatchery with Violence. Hundreds of tiny critters erupted from their eggs and ran towards Sorin but melted away as he morphed the poison in their bodies into various concentrations of the poisons he'd collected.

"Madness next." This time, it wasn't ants that emerged but mutated monstrosities that had multiple eyes, additional limbs, and shadowy tentacles. They were weaker than those infused with Violence but had many additional abilities and differing physiologies. The data obtained from them was more difficult to use but greatly expanded Sorin's knowledge in various aspects.

"Finally, Strife," said Sorin, infusing the final third. Corruption bubbled into each of them, but to Sorin's surprise, they didn't immediately hatch. Instead, these eggs began to resonate with each other strangely, with some growing weaker and some growing stronger.

In the end, only ten eggs hatched to produce more powerful elite variants like Lorimer were currently demolishing. There was also one more variant Sorin hadn't seen before with an entirely different anatomy. When it chittered, the other ants in the room were infused with strength and began to cooperate.

So it's a queen, Sorin realized. Does this happen to all demons when Strife is infused, or only specific ones? I'll need to try this out in the future if I have another opportunity.

"Don't kill it," Sorin said to Lorimer as the drooling rat lunged at the queen. "If you kill it, how am I going to produce more elite ants for you to eat?" These words proved more effective; the rat immediately changed his target to the newborn elites.

Sorin wasn't in the habit of rearing creatures, but he knew that certain demons were better captured alive and had, therefore, brought something called a 'beast bag.' Such bags couldn't be used for higher-tier creatures like myths but would work for something like an ant queen.

"Submit," said Sorin to the queen, injecting a combination of Strife and Madness into the creature. Surprisingly, the creature was able to resist him for a few seconds before ultimately succumbing. A thread of pact appeared between Sorin and the ant, and the creature, now fully under his control, obediently entered the beast bag without any need for restraint.

"Are you done yet, Sorin?" came Gareth's voice. "We can't keep up with Stephan, and we're afraid of what will happen if he goes too far down alone."

"I'm coming," said Sorin. "Is he still not replying to your directions?"

"I believe his exact words were: 'Why should I listen to you when you're weaker than me?'" answered Gareth.

Sorin grinned. "Then it's settled. Direct me to Stephan, and I'll have a special 'word' with him." If his friend wanted to be treated like a beast so badly, Sorin would happily oblige.