Fire ants stood on all sides of me, and the only thing between them and me was an ever-thinning cloud of [poison breath].
[15/27 HP] [12/14 SP] [2 unspent skill points remaining]
A glance at my HP bar confirmed that the fire ants that had decided to wake me up by sinking their mandibles into me had already taken a fair chunk of my HP. I felt panic welling within me, and did my best to calm my nerves. My [poison breath] at least gave me time to assess the situation. I sat back on my haunches, assuming my dragon-form thinking pose: what I needed more than anything right now was to make the right decision, even in the face of overwhelming stress.
I could fight, or I could flee. Fleeing seemed like a bad idea. In the past, fleeing from predators had worked because I had a place to flee to, but the ants had found me where I slept, in the one place in this valley that I had thought was safe. If the plateau wasn't safe, there was likely no place I could flee that these ants couldn’t follow, with their climbing abilities matching my own. So, I had to fight.
What were my resources? I had 12 SP. I also had 2 unspent skill points. For a rueful moment, I considered the fact that it could have been unspent 4 skill points, if I hadn’t recklessly and needlessly dumped points into [mouth] yesterday, foolishly assuming that ants would be nothing more than an easy source of exp -- at the moment, they were looking considerably more menacing than "easy exp." But now was not the time to dwell on past mistakes. I needed solutions. What could I do with those 2 skill points? The area-of-effect breath attacks were not what I needed here. All they had to do was avoid my effective radius, wait out the effect, then attack once I had exhausted my supply of stamina. No to sweltering breath and frigid breath.
Claws seemed like a terrible idea. Defense, that was what I needed. Scales. For too long, I had left my scales at level 1, relying on my ability to avoid predators rather than confront them. For the past few days, it had worked. But now, I needed protective coating more than ever. It was a discredit to my abilities as a dragon that mere insect bites posed a threat to me. Granted, these were bigger than any ants I had seen back on earth, but they were still puny compared to my dragon body, small enough that I might gobble up in two quick bites, or one massive bite if I could unhinge my jaw.
My over-leveled mouth would do me no good if I didn't survive to use it. I deposited a skill point into scales.
[Scale level increased: Level 2! New scale abilities available]
I noticed that my [poison breath] cloud had almost completely dissipated, and the red fire ants were again advancing toward me. I needed to buy myself another minute to figure out my plan, so I dished out a serving of [noxious breath] — it was the cheaper option, it might work, and if it didn’t, I could always follow up with a [poison breath].
[11/14 SP]
The ants recoiled, skittering backwards away from the billowing gas, and I turned my attention back to the scale skills that I might spend my one remaining SP on.
Abrasion (unlearned) Camouflage (unlearned) Harden scales (unlearned)
“Abrasion” seemed unlikely to help me here; I was trying to block attackers, not give them a friction burn. The time for camouflage was past; I doubted that these ants would give up the fight if I changed my scales to a slightly more rock-like texture. Harden was obviously the closest thing to what I wanted, and I spent my last remaining ability point accordingly.
[Skill acquired: Harden scales. Stiffens scales, increasing their resistance to penetration. Cost: 1 SP]
I let out a squawk of lament. “Harden scales,” like my breath ability, and my meager sprinting ability had an SP cost attached. That implied that it wasn’t a passive ability that was “always on;” it probably had a fixed duration.
There was no time to feel buyer’s remorse. Even if the defense boost from [harden] was temporary, it might be enough.
There were perhaps thirty ants all around me. Could I defeat all of them in a fight to the death? There was no point in dwelling on it, since whatever answer I came up with wouldn't change the fact that fighting was my only way out of this. I leapt forward, throwing myself into a mass of ants that were near the edge of the plateau. Three of them went flying off the edge. I had no idea if they would be rejoining the fight later, but at least they were three less ants for me to fight right now. As I skidded across the plateau surface, I opened my mouth and bit down on one of the ants, my teeth cleaving it in half as I closed my jaw around its thorax.
[Fire ant defeated! Earned 3% experience toward next level.]
It was amazingly how easily ants were to crush with my teeth when they didn't have armor. I swallowed — no time for chewing — and spun around, leaving the remainder of its body limp and lifeless on the ground.
I had scarcely finished swallowing when I felt the crawling sensation of ants on my body in over half a dozen places; the ants had resumed their assault on me as soon as I had stopped to chomp, so I spun around, sending several of them flying loose, then using [harden] to brace myself against the bites from the ones that still clung to my body.
[SP: 10/14] [HP: 13/27]
At first, I didn't feel anything, and then I felt something like a small surge of power welling within me. I could still feel the pinch of mandibles on my tail, but it was less intense than it had been. I slammed my tail against the ground, knocking one of the ants loose, then I lunged forward again, this time leaping into the air and crushing several ants under me.
[Fire ant defeated! Earned 3% experience toward next level.] [Fire ant defeated! Earned 3% experience toward next level.]
Evidently the mere weight of my body was enough to crush these unarmored ants. Unfortunately, in the few seconds that it took for me to pick myself up off the ground after my massive body slam, a dozen more ants had taken the time to crawl onto my back, and I felt more stinging bites as they managed to find sensitive parts of my body to sting: I felt a pinch on my ears, and one near my hindquarters. I rolled on the ground, trying to fling them off of me, but I felt more stings, and even with my [harden] in effect, it only reduced the pain, unable to block the assault entirely.
[HP: 12/27]
I was losing hit points far faster than I was thinning the ranks of the ants. Even with [harden scales], trying to brawl with them was not proving to be a winning strategy, not when they outnumbered me to this degree. In desperation, I opened my mouth again and unleashed a round of [noxious breath]. The ants ceased biting me and skittered away to escape the gas cloud.
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[SP: 9/14]
The two dozen-ish red ants stood at the edge of my [noxious breath]'s area of effect, as if anticipating its cessation. They were willing to wait it out, but there was no reason that I had to. I leapt toward the nearest group of ants, sinking my claws into two of them, then backed up into my own gas cloud, dragging them with me.
[Fire ant defeated! Earned 3% experience toward next level.] [Fire ant defeated! Earned 3% experience toward next level.]
That was five down, and still more than twenty left to go. I looked toward the next group of ants nearest my gas cloud, then lunged out. I only managed to sink my claw into one of them. Rather than retreat, I pinned it in place with my left claw, then jabbed its thorax with my right claw before tearing it apart with both claws, splaying it open.
[Fire ant defeated! Earned 3% experience toward next level.]
In the moment I had taken to eviscerate that ant, several ambitious fire ants had crawled onto me, but I retreated back into the gas cloud, and they let go of me to escape the fumes.
I did some mental arithmetic on the twenty-something ants that remained. Yes, I could win this fight, if I could keep up this pace. My [noxious breath] provided me with a sphere of safety, and if I could maintain this "hit and run" strategy, killing an ant or two before retreating into the protective dome of my rancid gas cloud, I could whittle their numbers down faster than I would drain my SP, as long as I didn't waste time and was able to make every strike count. That was a big "if" -- but it meant that my attention was best spent focusing on winning the fight, rather than preparing for an exit.
Again, I leapt out from my gas cloud toward a cluster of five ants. They ran in all directions, but I managed to wrap my jaws around one of them and bit it clean in two. As I did so, none of the insects moved to make a retaliatory strike, so I moved in pursuit of the next ant, only to discover that the other four ants had fled beyond the edge of the plateau. What I had intended as a continuous assault of repeated strikes from the safety of my gas cloud had been suddenly cut short by the ant's retreat.
I turned around. The red bulbous shapes of the fire ants no longer dotted the surface of the plateau around me. I wasn't sure if that meant that I had won, but the fact that the ants had decided to retreat seemed like a positive development.
Moments later, my noxious breath dissipated. I moved to peek over the north edge of the plateau, and as I did so, I saw, to my left and right, the red fire ants re-emerging from the west and east ends of the plateau. That seemed like a less positive development.
Once again, I waited for the ants to draw close, then pounced on the nearest group of ants, crushing two of them. Nearly a dozen ants surrounded me and advanced as if to strike, but I unleashed [noxious breath] to envelop myself in a protective cloud.
[SP: 8/14] [Fire ant defeated! Earned 3% experience toward next level.] [Fire ant defeated! Earned 3% experience toward next level.]
But before I could strike any more ants down, they all retreated beyond the edge of the plateau, ready to wait out the duration of my breath attack. Of course. I wasn't the only one who could employ a "hit and run" strategy. I'd had the bright idea to make tentative strikes against the ants, retreating to the safety of my gas cloud between attacks to eliminate their ability to retaliate effectively, but they could do the same thing to me: attack me on the surface of the plateau, then retreat beyond its lip when conditions were less-than-favorable for them, waiting out the duration of my breath attack, as I wasn't equipped to battle ants while clinging to a nearly vertical cliff-face.
It was a battle of attrition. I paid for the upkeep of my gas cloud in SP. They paid for each of their waves of attack in ant lives. Each individual ant seemed completely unconcerned for its own safety, willing to sacrifice itself to whittle me down. And at the rate things were going, it wasn't clear to me that I would whittle down their numbers faster than they would whittle down my SP. I had 8 SP left. Pessimistically, that meant that I could take out another 16 ants using the same strategy I had just employed. That alone wouldn't be enough to win the battle. However, if this war of attrition ended with a final showdown after my SP had fully drained, squaring off against three to five ants with nothing but my own claws and scales for defense, that was a battle I could probably win.
So, I continued the battle of attrition. My gas cloud dissipated, the ants moved in to capitalize on my weakness, and I unleashed another defensive gas cloud, managing to kill another two to three ants before they could make a full retreat. Several gas attacks later, I had decided that my strategic strike each wave best consisted of two surgically-precise claw attacks, which could reliably kill two ants, along with a flailing and less-certain chance of snatching up a third ant in my claws. It ended up being more reliable than an attempt to crush them with my body weight.
By the time my SP hit [2/14], I had gotten the hang of it to where I felt confident enough to reliably kill two ants with every wave. By that point, I had also whittled their numbers down enough for me to get an accurate headcount as I watched their fleeing shapes as they disappeared over the edge of the plateau: I counted eight remaining ants. It was a small relief: if we kept this dance of attrition up, with me managing to score another two ant kills with each wave, this would end with only around four remaining by the time my SP was fully tapped out — and I was sure that I could defeat four ants in a fair fight, even without the use of my breath (or scale-hardening) abilities. I was going to win this battle.
With that thought in mind, I waited atop the plateau, anticipating the next wave of ant assault as my breath attack dissipated. My anticipation turned to confusion for a brief moment as the ants failed to make their strike at the time I had anticipated it. Over the course of around half a dozen ant waves, I had grown accustomed to the rhythm of their attacks, the way they seemed to emerge only several seconds after the last remnants of my gas cloud seemed to fully vanish. As I waited and the seconds passed, my curiosity got the better of me, and I ventured out to the edge of the plateau to look over the edge, shocked to see a line of ants making a retreat, the eight traveling in a single-file line down the side of the plateau. I had just calculated my chances of victory as close to certain, and apparently they must have come to the same conclusion.
For a brief moment, I considered trying to follow them to make one last strike as the ants made their retreat, but trying to battle ants while clinging to the side of the plateau seemed like a way of possibly throwing the victory I had just won: a moment of imagining myself clinging to the side of the plateau as half a dozen ants sank their mandibles into my helpless flailing body was more than enough to discourage me from following them.
Just to be sure it wasn't some kind of trick, I continued watching the ants' retreat from my perch at the hedge of the plateau, watching until the tiny red shapes were too distant for my eyes to follow.
With that threat gone, I turned back and surveyed the aftermath of the battle. Fresh kills. Fresh ant remains. Fresh food. The ants had rudely awoken me this morning, and now it was finally time for breakfast.
Class: Baby Dragon Level: 6 Progress toward next level: 90% HP: 12/27 SP: 2/14 Satiety: 16% Claws: level 1 Scales: level 2 Mouth: level 7 Wings: level 0 (wingless), max reached for current class Traits: Carnivore, Kin sensitive, Carrion feeder Abilities: Sprinting, Noxious Breath, Poison Breath, Harden scales