Ackster had no idea how long he had walked. It was difficult to keep track of time underground, and even more so when he didn’t even have the light from the star-like stones in the ceiling of the queen’s room. His body also wasn’t the most reliable since he could continue moving for several days as long as he had food to eat, which he had, thanks to the ants lining the tunnels.

But keeping track of the days by counting when he fell asleep and when he woke up was a method that had long since flown out the window.

Ackster had tried maintaining a semblance of awareness of how far down the tunnel he had walked by counting his steps. But he quickly got distracted by his own thoughts—the only company he had aside from Mio—and lost count repeatedly. However, counting was a nice distraction from the paranoia, anxiety, and depression that threatened to drown him in the darkness of his mind and surroundings. So, he kept doing it, even after it became completely useless.

The thing that helped Ackster get some kind of understanding of the time that had passed was the ant corpses that had starved to death in the tunnels. Enough time for them to starve had passed, but not enough for them to begin to rot or decompose.

Since the ordinary worker ants, which were the main type he encountered, were pretty weak, approximately D-rank, Ackster guesstimated that only a couple of days had passed since the ant queen’s death, even if it felt like weeks had gone by in the impenetrable darkness.

Ackster felt every passing moment and step he took take its toll on his mind and mental stability. Iron Will and Clear Mind were working nonstop to keep Ackster’s sanity as intact as possible. But Ackster had begun wondering if maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go insane. He was already halfway there, considering everything he had put himself through just to reach this point.

That realization definitely didn’t help.

Ackster had suffered enough to make Pain Tolerance his highest-ranking skill. And what did he get for it? He was stuck deep underground in pitch darkness with nothing but Mio, his own depressing thoughts, and dead ants to accompany him.

The growth he had felt, his rising self-confidence at seeing his stats and skills climb, and his pride and belief that he might survive past ten years were all shattered.

One lousy ant colony had rendered him helpless.

Ackster couldn’t help but feel that it was disgraceful, embarrassing, and disappointing. He had almost reached the A-rank, after which there were only a couple left until he should have the numbers to back his fight against The Hero. And he had reached that level in record time.

Ackster hadn’t exactly kept track of the days, but he knew that at least a couple of weeks passed after he left Degrest before he arrived at Ilto. And then, after a couple of days at Ilto, he had set out for the Cloven Grasslands. There, it only took a day or two before the debacle with Karandiel went down.

Ackster successfully secured Karandiel but lost her after, at most, a day since the ants captured him and let her go. Ackster guessed that he had to have spent at least several weeks in the ant nest by now.

So, in total, at least a month, most likely more. That was the time it had taken Ackster to go from a lowly G-rank to a B-rank, hovering on the threshold to the A-rank. As he thought about it, Ackster had to acknowledge that it was an insane speed, even when compared to The Hero.

However, The Hero’s journey began as a child and was a little different since, even if The Hero underwent trials to prepare him for his final task, it wasn’t as extreme as what Ackster had done to himself, at least not to the same extent. The Hero did some pretty crazy things to himself and to others when necessary.

But Ackster only did crazy things, and so far, only to himself.

And The Hero’s progress wasn’t as simplistic or superficial as Ackster’s was.

Ackster had focused on acquiring the skills he could get by pushing himself to and past his limit. He had done his utmost using the superficial knowledge he got from being a transmigrator to grow as strong as possible as quickly as possible. He had also made sure to get the adventurer profession so he could raise his base stats quickly as well.

The Hero, on the other hand, had a well-rounded and solid training.

He had trained his mana and body ever since he was young. He had practiced advanced weapons techniques and actually learned how to fight. He had studied politics, economics, geography, survivalism, covert tactics, strategy, and anything else that could possibly help him defeat The Calamity and save the world by any means necessary.

The Hero wasn’t an expert at things unrelated to combat, but he was good enough not to get fucked by the world and the people living in it during his quest. He also had a lot more real-world experience than Ackster, who had simply read a bunch of words and letters on pages of the original story before being thrust into a life-threatening situation.

Ackster still wasn’t over the desperation or paranoia from his first three days on Millmeria. Those days were still firmly lodged in his mind, hanging over him and threatening him with the fact that if The Hero sees him, he’s dead.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Ackster couldn’t rest with such a weight on his shoulders.

But, as strange as it was, in the otherwise oppressive darkness of the ant nest, Ackster could somehow find some twisted sense of peace in the fact that The Hero would never find him where he was now.

If Ackster died, no one other than him and the ants next to him would know where he was. If The Hero were suspicious of what had transpired back at the Phileam Estate, he would have to carry those suspicions to his grave.

As he thought about that, Ackster found a weird feeling of gloat settling in his heart and doing its best to keep the loss of his arm and the growing fear of darkness at bay.

Ackster was startled out of his thoughts by something in front of him in the tunnel that wasn’t a dead ant.

“That’s…!”

Ackster had been too caught up in his thoughts and paranoia about The Hero, so when he saw something that wasn’t an ant, his heart almost stopped. But he quickly realized it was just a figure etched on the wall as the tunnel curved before opening up to a small chamber with ochre-colored tiles covering the walls.

Ackster was more than curious about what he had just encountered at the bottom of the ant nest if this now was the bottom. But he didn’t want to rush and miss any details that could clue him in about a way back to the surface. So, after taking a quick peek and observing the torch on the wall that was the source of the light entering the tunnel, Ackster focused on the carving in the wall first.

He grabbed the torch, amazed at how it was still burning. But he couldn’t feel any heat from it, and the light was as steady as a mountain, so it obviously wasn’t an ordinary torch that relied on oil-soaked cloth or whatever. It was a magic torch that had somehow remained lit or been relit after spending an unknown amount of time in the ground below the ants.

Ackster couldn’t say more about the torch than that it was magical and handy. So, he moved on and focused on the knight carved into the wall on what Ackster realized was a door. He then looked to the side.

‘Yep. Doorway.’

The ants definitely hadn’t made this. Their nest just overlapped with some kind of room buried deep underground. And the tunnel led right into a doorway that had lost its door. Somehow, the door that even the ants hadn’t been able to scratch had gotten removed from its doorway and ended up outside and slightly to the side, opening the way for the ants to plunder what was inside.

The knight’s armor covered its entire body. Ackster couldn’t discern any details about the person behind the depicted armor. But the armor itself was relatively simple without any excess decor. The shoulders and helmet were a little pointed, but it only added a slightly fearsome air to the knight as it stood shoulder-width with its legs and had its hands resting on the sword pointing straight down, tip piercing the ground.

There didn’t seem to be anything special about the knight carved onto the wall. Maybe it was just an elaborate symbol of guardianship or defense to protect whatever was inside the room.

Ackster stepped into the room. From his previous glance, he knew it wasn’t just an empty cube of yellow tiles. But it wasn’t until he took a closer look that he realized that the two things he had seen earlier were coffins. They were on raised pedestals, and the upper rim of the coffins was at the same height as Ackster’s waist.

Ackster went over to one of the two grey coffins.

“Empty.”

Ackster wasn’t surprised. Since the ants had already found the room, it was obvious they would have investigated it in detail. And whatever or whoever was inside the coffins had either been there long enough to become nothing. Or it had been turned into food.

Out of curiosity, Ackster tried picking up one of the slabs the ants had pushed to the ground. ‘Tried’ because they were way too heavy and cumbersome for him to lift with one hand. It was to the point where he wondered if maybe the ant general had been the one to do it with the cooperation of a bunch of lieutenant ants.

Or maybe Ackster was underestimating the power of infinite ants in comparison to his lone arm.

Ackster inspected the coffins some more, but they were even free of dust. There was nothing left inside that could tell him about what had been there originally.

But at least Ackster had got an answer to where the ant queen had gotten her Stone of Wisdom from. It was either from this room or another similar one that rested at the bottom of the ant nest. Ackster was practically convinced that this room wasn’t the only of its kind, and it was the reason why all the tunnels sloped downward.

The traces of ants milling about and trying to dig deeper into the ochre-colored tiles also solidified Ackster’s theory of the ant queen getting a taste for the contents of the construction at the depths of the Tenger Continent. The ant queen was trying to excavate the construction and get more treasures like the Stone of Wisdom and whatever had given birth to the ant general’s independence.

“Wait a moment….”

A construction deep underground filled with treasures sounded familiar. And when Ackster finally saw a star with fifteen points at the center of the wall opposite the door, his thoughts clicked together.

His mind had been muddled by the darkness and depression, which was why he hadn’t realized it at first. That, and the fact that he couldn’t believe he had stumbled upon the Alchemist’s Labyrinth by entering an ant nest. It wasn’t just any old ant nest, sure. But it still wasn’t where Ackster would have looked if he wanted to enter the Alchemaze, as it was also called, since some thought the Alchemist’s Labyrinth was too on the nose and simple.

Ackster preferred the simplicity and straightforwardness of the Alchemist’s Labyrinth as a name, especially since it was blatantly obvious that Alchemaze was just the words ‘Alchemist’ and ‘Maze’ mashed together. But Alchemaze wasn’t as much of a mouthful as the other one was.

And it was different names for the same thing, so it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that Ackster might have stumbled upon something that could help him regenerate his arm.

As long as this was an actual entrance and not just a fraction that had broken off from the main labyrinth, Ackster might really have a chance at becoming whole again. He might even find treasures and whatnot that could help him grow even stronger.

Ackster’s eyes lit up with hope, which he tried to suppress. The more he hoped, the greater the disappointment would be once it became obvious that it was nothing but already looted empty stone rooms.