For the following while, combat became more common. Since he was riding on Fang without really trying to hide, Villin had to fight twice in I9, luckily, J10 was a safe zone though, giving them plenty of time to rest.
During this time, Villin actually found himself growing a bit closer to Fang. Ever since he helped Fang fight against the six humans that ambushed it, the wolf had begun looking at Villin differently. In the last fights, Villin had also shown his strength while Fang mostly stayed back. At this point, Fang was beginning to see Villin as the alpha.
Villin could feel this change and was rather happy with it. He had to admit that he was surprised by himself while fighting. He didn't think he would've improved a lot in the last year but he was somehow proving himself wrong.
His control over magic had grown by a lot. Villin guessed that the cause of this was the handcuffs that took away his magic power. He was forced to deal with barely having any magic power quite often. He would try to transfigure and enchant when he barely had enough magic power, it seemed that this helped him in his magic control.
His mind was also a lot calmer. He could think clearly in fights. Then, lastly, his body had gone through an entire transformation. His lungs and heart were more powerful, his endurance had gone up with leaps and bounds, his strength had risen, and his skin had toughened somewhat.
Even though this final point rarely came into play, it was nice that thorns wouldn't generally penetrate his skin, it was a defense against nature if anything.
At some point, without a map, something was bound to happen though. And it did when he arrived at K11.
Since he had just rested up at the previous tile, Villin wasn't too fearful, he even intended to fight a couple of creatures to train his battle sense.
It didn't take long before he figured out something was off though. They had gone a quarter into the tile and Villin still hadn't noticed a single non-insect.
Not seeing a magical beast would be fine, it wouldn't be a rarity. But they hadn't seen any prey either, thus far there had been no rabbits, deer, or anything of the like.
The only creatures he saw were insects and birds.
Still, Villin kept going, it could very well be that, in this tile, beasts had been hunted until they were near-extinct. That would mean there should be a guild's base here. It was also possible there was a teleportation array here, but that seemed unlikely since he just came from one.
Just a measly ten minutes after Villin thought of this, he finally found his first predator.
Just a dozen meters before him, walking along the forest, Villin spotted a giant ant. It was two meters long and a meter high. Its mandibles seemed huge but Villin wasn't too fearful of it, he was simply content that he finally found an animal.
Before the ant even spotted an enemy, it felt the ground beneath it grow soft as its feet seeped into the ground. It let out a high-pitched screech as it tried to get out, but before it even realized what was happening, a ball of fire hit it in its behind.
It screeched again but when two more icy pikes penetrated deeply into its body, it fell silent as it died.
Villin frowned slightly as he killed the beast, he hadn't eaten ant before but figured he could give it a shot. He used a couple of basic cutting spells to cut the meat loose from the carapace before cooking it.
He also decided to keep the carapace, he didn't have to carry it since he could stack it on fang where it would also work a bit as armor.
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The carapace was extremely tough and Villin realized that fighting one of these giant ants up close wouldn't be so easy.
Since there were so few animals around, Villin didn't waste much time and simply made a fire where they were. Once Villin deemed it cooked, he took a first bite of the ant, only to be completely stunned silent.
Even without any spices whatsoever, this ant meat was some of the best food he had ever eaten. The food was tender and sweet, it was extremely delicious.
There was no doubt that meat like this would be extremely valuable, that being said it was also hard to get, it would probably be hard to find another one of these giant ants.
As Villin thought this, he felt something off about the ground. Confused he had his magic power enter the ground and spread out slowly. There was this faint tremble that was hard to distinguish.
For a few minutes, he sat there, expanding his magic tunnels. Then, his face went pale.
There was a tunnel a dozen meters below him, and there hundreds of creatures moving in this tunnel, heading straight towards him.
"F*CK!"
Villin cursed as he jumped onto Fang's back, having the wolf sprint immediately. At this point, the shaking became more obvious and even Fang could feel it, causing him to get somewhat agitated.
They had gotten away from the fire just in time it seemed as just a few seconds later, the ground around that area was completely turned around as dozens of giant ants burrowed out of the ground.
A few of them noticed the bit of cooked ant meat Villin had left behind and screeched, causing all the other ants to become agitated.
Fang had taken off in a sprint and seemed like he was going to leave the ants behind but Villin wasn't at ease. He could feel hundreds of them moving underground earlier and there were likely ants all over the tile. He also knew that Fang wouldn't be able to sprint all the way until they got out of the tile, so the ants could probably catch up.
As for digging a hole underground to hide, that would simply be courting death when you were faced with creatures so used to digging.
While he was riding, Villin thought back to the various books on monsters he had read. Even though the giant ant wasn't described in any of them there were a couple of similar creatures out there.
As far as Villin knew, they transported magic into their antennae, this would spread the magic out allowing the creatures to see in a radius around them. And they should also be able to see using eyes, but as far as Villin knew, their vision should be rather poor.
Overall, it seemed pretty obvious that cutting off the antennae would be the easiest way to incapacitate these creatures. At least, this way they will have more difficulty observing their surroundings and fighting.
The biggest problem was the sheer number of creatures there were. Even now the ground was still shaking as new tunnels were being constantly made while some old ones collapsed.
Villin felt that Fang was beginning to breathe more heavily, he had to make a decision fast. He recalled the ants finding them, it seemed that the scream of the ant he killed was what attracted them. And then it was also possible for them to leave behind certain smells that can be tracked as Villin recalled from earth's ants.
Overall, as far as he knew, the ants shouldn't have an easy way to track him as long as they didn't properly use their numbers to spread out in a search net.
With this in mind, Villin made a sudden, possibly foolish decision. He made a ninety-degree turn, moving away from the closest exit, which was where they had come from.
If these creatures had any decent intelligence, they would most likely protect that side the best since it's the closest and they had seen him move in that direction.
Because of their size and numbers, Villin figured they should have at least some intelligent creatures amongst their ranks, now it was a game of luck more than anything else.
If they found him too soon, the entire nest would move towards him again and he would have to change plans. If the ants grouped up in certain places, it was possible that Villin would be able to circumvent them.
With this in mind, Villin dismounted from Fang. The wolf was already getting tired and it was best to only use him when it was absolutely needed from this point on. It would be easier to sneak when he had to carry less weight and they could both stay close to the ground.
Villin would also be able to transfigure easier on the ground and he would be able to tell when an ant is approaching from underground. When it came to large groups of ants, it would be obvious but if there were just a couple, a regular person wouldn't be able to notice the shaking within the ground, even Villin would have difficulty doing so without having his magic power constantly seep into the ground.
Still, they had a long road ahead of them.