Daerkin watched their ‘rescuer’ mow through a half-dozen slaver ant workers and immediately resolved to keep Bernard from doing anything that would have the old man volunteering to ‘be breakfast’. The undead, which the owlen paladin Saren had called a ‘Slime Warrior’, was a savage. It fought like it had two separate minds, each of its arms focused on a different aspect of combat. One bearing a chitin-covered shield of bone wholly committed to its defense, and the other blurring nearly-invisible weaponry through the air as it stabbed, slashed, and tore the oversized insects into digestible pieces.

As if that wasn’t enough, the towering undead shrugged off every one of its opponents’ attacks like they weren’t even there. Even the nebulous acid of the slaver ants, which had eventually worn down even the lizardkin’s own armor, never seemed to touch the warrior. It wasn’t immune, he could tell that much, but the shield it bore was formed of the slaver ants’ own carapace! Acid splashed harmlessly off the formidable defense, and the few workers that got their spray attack off never got another chance.

Legs, mandibles, even entire bodies were thrown at the slime warrior enmasse – all to no avail. The undead wasn’t particularly strong, excepting that blackened hand it had, at least not by Daerkin’s standards. Nor was it particularly fast. Its movements were inelegant and its strikes, to his trained eye, showed only the barest understanding of real martial forms.

But where the undead made up for all that, was durability. The vulture-pecked bastard was tough, Daerkin would give it that. Especially for something without scales of its own.

Unwittingly, Daerkin shivered as he watched that particular ‘battle’ finish mere moments after it had begun. Not because the workers were terribly hard opponents – the soldiers and shooter variants were the real threats of any slaver ant colony. If he were at his full strength, Daerkin could have done much the same. No, what bothered him the most was that the lizardkin had heard about monsters like this from Patturn. And not just from the guildmaster either, every child of the Sohl Desert grew up hearing cautionary tales of the living horrors that wandered its dunes.

Tales of intelligent monsters who could speak like the enlightened races could. Who could think and reason. Who grew as people did, of their own will and towards their own desires. Seeking out goals known only to them rather than just serving their baser instincts. There were more than a few legendary monsters of such reputation out in the sands. Probably more still that even the city of Dervash didn’t know about. Monsters who controlled their own fiefdoms, and whose territory any hatchling with half a brain gave a wide berth.

Monsters with bounties on their heads that would entice even the most famous fighters. The fees for which were paid by entire cities rather than just merchants or guilds. Daerkin knew about them. Of course he did, everyone did. But he had never imagined he would see one.

Not that the slime warrior truly was such a threat yet, Saren had reassured them of that soon after they had gotten underway. Once their undead rescuer had been too distracted by combat to overhear. This ‘slime warrior’ was a rare one to be sure, but it was still only a second stage evolution for skeletons. A fact which had relieved most of their group considerably. If it changed its mind and decided to turn on them at some point in the future, there was still a good chance they could take it down. Despite the infection hampering their abilities, a second stage evolution was only the second stage, after all.

And yet, even so…

It’s only at the second stage. Daerkin marveled as the warrior blunted the charge of – and then gutted – another ant that had come to avenge its fellows, unsure whether he was more impressed at the sight, or horrified. Same as those workers.

The lizardkin guard had seen a few ‘rare’ evolutions of monsters in his time. Even taken down one or two with the help of his hatch-brothers in the guard. But each had been far more deadly than the common, or even uncommon, variants of their species. Each had been a tough fight in its own right. One they had planned for, and not just engaged for sport or safe passage.

An’ this one’s no exception. Daerkin thought to himself as the tide of foes spewing from the tunnels continued to ebb. If it can’t take on a soldier by itself now, I’ll eat my own horns.

The lizardkin watched the broad shouldered, towering undead with its unnaturally thick bones slam a midnight-black hand into the last slaver ant worker’s head and punch through its skull. It wrenched out a fistful of dripping grey matter as if it was fishing from a pond. The undead swallowed its meal hungrily even as its other hand fed the haunting, undulating mass of its stomach directly through its own rib cage. Fed the stomach that could speak as the enlightened could. The stomach which, according to Saren, was the ‘slime’ aspect of the creature, whatever that meant. All Daerkin knew about it was that each time this ‘Gel’ consumed another kill, the ‘slime aspect’ part of the creature increased ever so slightly in size.

A fact that was… concerning, to say the least. Though not so much as what came next.

Daerkin stared on in fascinated horror as the undead began to meticulously place more of its slain foes’ chitinous carapace all around the lower half its body, creating makeshift boots from choice pieces before expanding its leg armor upwards. The slime warrior clearly deliberated on the placement of each new section before it was added, but the lizardkin’s long experience with crafting let him see the final product even now. The skeletal undead was making its own armor out of other monsters. Using the slime of its body as readily as if it were an adhesive glue.

A bone-deep chill spread through the lizardkin’s body, despite the relative heat of their group in this enclosed space.

It was learning.

Daerkin slowly met his hatch-brother’s eyes as the slime warrior worked, and he knew from the way Baerlin’s grim expression mirrored his own that they were both thinking the same thing.

If we let this thing keep growing unchecked, just what kind of monster could it grow into? How long before it threatens Dervash? How long before it threatens us?

Baerlin swirled the quarryrat-sized stone lazily in his hands before stopping it with a firm grip, his fingers punching in and rendering the still attached clusters of dirt to powder. The dirt fell to the ground, and to Daerkin’s surprise his hatch-brother stacked the stone from his other hand ontop of it. He held them aloft before his center, the top teetering every so slightly as it balanced on the other. Baerlin looked pointedly at the bottom rock, then at the undead. He glanced at the top rock, and then back to Daerkin.

The lizardkin guard blinked as he stared first at his hatch-brother, and then at the towering undead who had started moving down the tunnels once more. Half of its body was covered in chitin armor, and the clouds of spores from the battle that had covered its bones only seconds before were nowhere to be seen. Where had they gone? Daerkin shook his head and gestured for the rest to follow, then jogged down the tunnels after it.

As they ran, he considered Baerlin’s unspoken words. There were some who encouraged the growth of certain monsters to be used as a deterrent against others. Those who advocated for the benefits of keeping a greater predator around in order to thin constantly roaming hordes. They would need the guild’s permission, but…

Should we? Skies preserve us… Can we? Daerkin didn’t know that answer yet. For now, mutual trust would have to do. If the undead holds to its word and helps us, then maybe...

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

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Sean fought like he was beating back the blind. The ants he was fighting now didn’t seem to even understand where he was, as if the mushroom stalks growing out the sides of their eyes had in fact taken their sight. He smashed unwary heads and unguarded legs freely with his shield. He tore off antennae as Gel slashed through thoraxes – severing the front half of the large insects from the rear in a single motion. He blocked sprays of acid, kicked dirt and rocks into unwitting, open mouths, and even body-slammed a surprised worker ant into the tunnel wall.

And as he fought, Sean learned about their opponents.

The ants could not place him in combat because without spores on his body, they didn’t even know he was there. Whenever Gel consumed the cloud of mushrooms that erupted over him after each kill, the insects had only their hearing to rely upon. A sense that felt almost pitifully undeveloped. Each one was marked as ‘Enslaved’, and Sean got the distinct impression as they went that whatever was controlling this hive was getting more and more frustrated with them.

Their opponents grew ever more numerous, but that fact did not save them. Each successive battle came in waves of increasingly larger patrols. Groups of five, then seven, then nine– workers all. Unfortunately for them, since Gel still cleaned them off after each battle, each of the fights began with what was – to them – effectively a head-on ambush. By the time each fight truly got underway, it was already halfway over.

When each wave was finished off, Gel would consume the bodies to restore their mana, and then they would spend the new mass the slime had gathered on shoring up their defenses. With so many bodies to consume, neither he nor Gel had to worry about conservation of mana. Which was a surprisingly pleasant change of pace. They slew so many that, by the time they reached the entrance to the supplies room, Sean was covered in chitin armor everywhere south of his chest.

Something he was rather grateful for, as the sole guard for the supplies room was not a worker.

Gel passed along Daerkin’s identification of this one as a ‘Soldier’ variant, and the difference between the two was stark. The massive dark-brown insect was easily twice the size of its lesser brethren, more truck-sized than horse, and it snapped two angry sets of mandibles together as it turned towards them. Twin horns of layered chitin sprouted from either side of its head, each with large purple stalks growing out from under them, and a ridge of blunted spines ran down its back.

Two more of the mushroom-heads that acted as sensors flanked it, but the creature riding atop the soldier and holding its stalks was the one that immediately grabbed the attention of the group behind him. Several of the emaciated humans screamed, and Sean felt a sudden desire to knock them over the head.

Perched atop the soldier ant as if it was growing out of its head was a squat, bulging humanoid. It had two arms, two legs, and a discernible ‘head’, but the comparison to any branch of humanity ended there. Every square inch of its skin was covered in dozens of bloated, quivering purple mushrooms that looked ready to explode. It reminded Sean of the worst “bee swarm survivor” pictures he had seen in the news back on Earth, only paired with one of those ludicrously fat zombie variants you always saw in horror movies trying to up the ante. The ones where the director scored his movie based solely on audience puke count.

“Oooh, he looks delicious.” Gel said, as the soldier and its two sensors charged straight towards them. “Dibs on the horns!”

“The… horns?” Sean couldn’t help but ask.

“And the spines!” Gel added, hefting his clear battle-axe for a broad horizontal swing.

Sean ignored his friend’s antics as he waited for the vehicle-sized insect to close the gap. His instincts had been largely against his strategy of running directly into his enemies’ open mandibles so far, and this time the slime warrior agreed with their philosophy. Though he did have an idea he wanted to try. Crouching in preparation, Sean gave his gelatinous friend a heads up right before he acted.

“Aim for its legs!” Sean shouted, diving underneath the soldier ant the instant it got within range.

He twisted in mid-air, pulling his legs towards his chest and narrowly avoiding the soldier ant’s crushing mandibles striking into the dirt. It missed his lower half by mere inches and Sean felt himself bounce off a large, flat rock protruding from the tunnel floor. Gel’s battle-axe flashed out at the perfect angle, but instead of slicing through several legs like Sean had hoped, the clear weapon only managed to sever the first one. It bounced off the second, its momentum stopped entirely by the soldier ant’s harder exterior plating. Plating that Sean grabbed onto when he reached for the nearest leg on the other side of the soldier ant’s body, holding himself firmly in place with his blackened hand.

The massive fungal insect ground to a halt with its other legs, just in time for Sean to push off the rock with his back and launch a double-kick upward into the point his instincts were now guiding him towards. At the very spot Gel had used to cut down the workers earlier. At the much-thinner connection between his opponent’s thorax and abdomen, its front and rear halves. Hurtling the soles of his feet directly at that fragile point, and anchored by the insect’s own leg, Sean activated Slash.

Black mana coalesced sprang up along the heels of his chitin plated ‘boots’, creating a nearly-invisible edge that ran all the way to the tip.

You have used the ability ‘Slash’ on Acidspitter Ant Soldier (Enslaved) for 15 damage (15 total, base 10 multiplied 200% due to a critical strike, and minus 5 due to target toughness!). You have cut your target in half.

The massive ant let out a nearly silent scream as its upper half pitched forward while its rear half fell, squirting viscous blood all over the tunnel floor. There was a dull thwump in the distance followed by a muted bang, and then another round of screams went up from their group of tagalongs. Sean didn’t have time to focus on them at the moment. The slime warrior continued his underside assault on the soldier ant, pummeling it as Gel carved into its belly until the death prompt appeared.

You have defeated an Acidspitter Ant Soldier (Enslaved)! You have gained 25 experience points.

Hell yes! Sean crowed, ecstatic to finally earn some real experience for once. He pulled his way out from under the soldier ant’s body, eager to find another of its kind. The two sensor-symbiotes that had been following the soldier fell upon him almost immediately, and were cut down nearly as quickly. Thanks for the experience fellas, you’re too kind.

“Would you look at all of that.” Gel whistled into his mind now that they could see into the supplies room. There was a literal small mound of equipment just haphazardly tossed together. Swords, axes, shields, even armor and who knew what else – all theirs for the taking. “If there’s anything edible in there, I call first dibs.”

“Why do ants even have all of that?” Sean wondered as his orbs roamed over the pile, quickly noting a few unopened boxes that looked particularly interesting. “Wait, I thought you called dibs on the soldier’s horns and spines. You can’t call dibs on everything!”

“Why not? You didn’t.”

“You can’t call dibs again if you already have something else dibs’d, Gel. That’s not how it works.” Sean explained. “You call dibs, get the thing, and then you can call it again.”

“I feel like you’re changing the rules here.” Gel said suspiciously. “Next you’re going to tell me that I can’t call dibs on more than one kind of food. Which is ridiculous because I already have dibs on all of the food.”

Shaking his head at his friend, Sean turned to check on how their tagalongs had been fairing. Screams while they had been fighting were nothing new, but that last ‘bang’ sound had been a little disturbing. Maybe the thing on its head had–

Sean stared at the scene behind them.

The squat, bulging pile of quivering shroom-flesh was gone, and so was half the tunnel they had come through. A perfectly spherical section of the ceiling, wall, and floor was just missing. Most of their group had been blown back by whatever blast had gone off, but while there was certainly a fair amount of blood, there was far more of those spores. Purple spores covered nearly every available surface, including all of their tagalongs and the soldier ant’s entire face.

It must have missed us because we were still under the big one. Sean realized, before his orbs picked out another detail.

The two lizardkin, Daerkin and Baerlin, were halfway embedded into the tunnel wall just ten feet from what had to have been the epicenter. The stones they had brought with them were gone. The gold spire paladin and the two fox-like creatures were pulling the pair out, and to Sean’s unexpected relief it looked like both were still alive. Though Baerlin was missing a leg.

“I call dibs on his leg, too.” Gel said brightly. “Assuming it’s still around, that is.”