Emily’s friends stand behind her, mouths open in shock as they gaze upon the destruction wrought by her spells.

“Don’t just stand around, let’s go!” Emily says, snapping them out of their stupor.

She bends her legs and flashes forwards at inhuman speed, disappearing into the remaining ants who quickly switch from spewing a flood of mud to wrapping themselves in rocky armour. Emily’s friends move too, Hester forming another barrier as everyone else flings out spells or bullets to cut down the numbers.

Damn, that used a lot of mana.

Emily glances at her mana reserves and sees them reduced by twenty per cent as she drives a machina-charged Claw through an ant’s neck, severing the nerves within.

I definitely can’t throw around third circle spells freely, though I can still use plenty and dip into my machina reserves if need be.

Her limbs whip out rhythmically, her body becoming a windmill of death as she cuts through the ants with ease. Runes wrap her body again as Emily starts casting arc-bolt, this time manually setting the targets.

Green blood soaks her robes, and jaws of stone repeatedly snap at her, trying to catch her to no avail. Her spell finishes forming, as she slips behind into the back row of enemies, and she releases it instantly. A thick bolt of plasma shoots out behind her, spreading across the bugs and killing almost everything behind her, other than the ants her teammates are actively fighting. The remaining thirty or so ants in front of her group up around their nest, using their bodies as a last line of defence.

Emily holsters the Spitter, losing the range combat buff to her stats as she summons two flying lightnings, one around each arm.

“It was a good fight,” she tells the ants with a smile before her arms blur into motion.

Flashing arcs of silver slice through the creatures, splitting a few rocky projectiles they fire at her along with the bodies behind them, freezing each opponent in place with a single slash. The ants quickly fall in a mass of limbs and flesh, and Emily pulls back in the deadly wires, still slick with blood, to wrap around her arms at rest.

She taps the ground, sending out an earthen detection scan that forces through the interference now that she’s closer. She finds no vibrations coming from the nest, the inside probably empty, and throws out an electrified dart to impale the head of the last ant to crawl out before turning to observe her friends with a satisfied smile.

They’re still wrapped in a large bubble of water, with six ants biting at it, and two more spewing jagged rocks at it. Deciding they need no help, Emily dismisses her combat spells and watches as Juliana knocks back the attacking ants with a burst of air and Enzo, Ivor, and Dante unload into them, crushing any resistance under fire and earth. Tom fires a few shots into the soft flesh revealed by the cracked and flaking chitin, ending the last squirming bugs’ lives.

Emily claps as her friends look away from their kills, checking for any remaining enemies and only finding Emily standing in a mountain of gore, bug parts and burn marks littered around her bloodstained form. She walks towards them, casting cleanse quickly and returning to pristine condition.

“That’s everything I can detect in here dead. All that’s left is the nest,” she says gesturing towards the large rock structure in the middle of the cavern with her head. “I’m pretty sure there are earth stones in there, so Ivor and Enzo come with me, the rest of you please collect the glands of as many of these ants as possible. That’s the most valuable part. The rest of them isn’t worth much. Oh, grab any meat you want for cooking too, they’re not poisonous.”

Her friends follow her instructions without complaint as Emily turns around and walks towards the nest eagerly. Ivor and Enzo quickly catch up, walking on either side of her.

They approach one of the nest’s entrances and gaze in. The hole is small, only a metre in diameter, and would require crawling to get inside. Instead, Emily pulls out a spider without a vibration pack and rolls the little guy into the nest.

“One sec,” she says to Enzo and Ivor, focusing on her connection with the scout as it wanders into the ants’ home.

The nest is a winding network of tunnels and chambers, filled with half-eaten herbs, minerals, and beast corpses, that lead down into the stone below the cavern. Emily guides her scout down, heading slowly towards the strong magical signature she can feel leaking from the structure and ignoring the discarded signs of habitation.

It doesn’t take long for her scout to step into a chamber, buried in the depths of the nest, with glistening brown crystals shining from the floor and several large eggs scattered around. Emily smiles as she locates their prize, but her eyes open wide in surprise when she notices the form curled up on top of it, wrapped in jagged, rocky armour.

“There’s a queen,” she mutters quietly, shocking Ivor.

“Really?” he signs with clear excitement. “What circle?”

“I can’t tell because of the mana crystals she’s sleeping on, but I don’t think she’s reached third yet. I’m pretty sure I’d be able to feel it if she was, even from here.”

“Wait, why are you surprised? Don’t ant colonies normally have queens?” Enzo asks in confusion.

“Not burrower ants,” Ivor explains. “They don’t always have a queen since they can multiply by burying parts of their bodies, or the bodies of their dead, and supplying them with mana over time. Queens are a rarity that usually only appear in massive colonies.”

“I see.” Enzo nods, noticing Ivor’s enthusiasm. “Is there something special about them that’s got you so excited?”

“The heart of a burrower ant queen is the main ingredient in earth drops,” Emily says with a grin.

Enzo’s eyes open wide in surprise.

“Earth drops? How many can you make from one heart?” he asks with clear excitement and a hint of greed.

“Ha,” Emily laughs, patting him on the shoulder. “One heart should be enough for three portions. Don’t worry, you two can have first dibs. Also, if this queen is only second circle the elixir won’t have any effect on me anyway, so I’ll let Tom have mine.”

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Both men are surprised by her statement, looking at her questioningly.

“Are you sure? Earth drops are worth a small fortune even if you can’t take them,” Enzo asks.

“Well, I never said I wouldn’t take it out of his cut,” Emily responds, flashing them a sly smirk. “Now, let’s actually get to the queen and crystals, otherwise this conversation is pointless. Enzo, I’ll show you the correct route, so can you please soften the rock around the tunnel? And Ivor, you learned shifting earth, right?”

Ivor nods in confirmation.

“Good. Can you focus on drawing the softened earth out, please? I’ll reinforce the structure to make sure it doesn’t fall on us.”

Both men turn towards the nest, Enzo placing his hands on the rock above the hole, and Ivor the floor below. Two glowing brown magic circles flicker to life around them, sending a steady stream of mana into the nest.

The ceiling of the tunnel in starts to melt, dripping down as a viscous fluid before being drawn towards Ivor. Emily channels a few spells, using a modified earthen detection to locate cracks forming in the tunnel as it starts to cave in, before reinforcing the structure around the failure points by hardening the remaining stone into dense rock. She also watches Enzo’s spell spreading down, poking the edge of it with her own raw mana to show him the correct direction to go.

It takes them a few minutes to dig the tunnel down ten metres before Ivor and Enzo start to struggle to push their spells further. Emily raises a brow at the limits of their range.

“Can’t you dig deeper?” she asks Enzo with slight confusion when she notices him halt his spell.

“I could push my spell a bit deeper, yes,” he says calmly. “But I wouldn’t be able to sense your interference accurately past ten metres. That’s as far as my perception goes.”

Ivor nods in agreement at his statement.

“I see,” Emily mutters thoughtfully, stepping into the widened tunnel the moment Ivor pulls out the last of the liquid earth. “Let’s continue from inside then.”

Strange, my magical perception at second circle was over thirty metres. Actually, now that I think about it, it expanded to almost thirty before I ascended to third circle. Is magical perception tied to my intelligence stat? In that case, their intelligence must be less than half mine at the same circle... I guess being a dual awakener has more perks than I realised.

She makes a note to review her stat improvements later, to try and understand her strengths more, and marches down the dark tunnel into the nest. They pass through the first small chamber and pause as the path narrows down again. Repeating the same process as before, they slowly dig down towards the centre of the nest, depositing piles of dirt in the chambers they pass.

As they get closer, Emily starts to feel the queen ant’s pulsing magic signature, releasing rhythmic waves of power and ever so slowly growing in strength. Emily watches her the entire time, but she doesn’t move, remaining curled up and unresponsive even as they start widening an entrance into her chambers.

“I think she’s asleep,” Emily muses. “I thought we’d have to fight. I could have just crawled in.”

“Ah well, we’re in now,” Enzo says, cancelling his spell and wiping sweat from his brow.

Ivor cancels his casting as well, leaning against the formed mound of stone next to him.

Whoops, I’ve exhausted them. So much for helping me excavate magic crystals.

“Good job,” Emily says, patting them both on the shoulders and walking ahead. “Wait here for a moment. I’ll deal with the queen.”

Neither of them argues as they give her a nod and sit down to rest. Emily walks the last few metres to join her spider, finally seeing the ant queen with her own eyes.

The queen is over two metres long, with a dark brown exoskeleton that blends perfectly into the jagged grey rocks jutting out from all over her body. The rocks seem to breathe, growing and shrinking slightly in time with the waves of mana rolling off the queen.

I see. She’s cultivating right now. She must have trusted her colony! She must be in a really deep trance to not notice us right now.

Emily appreciates the creature’s violent beauty while approaching her slowly, careful not to shock her out of her trance. She raises her hand above the centre of the queen’s abdomen, feeling the pulses of power being released as the beast draws in mana, and locating the point where they’re strongest.

Emily casts a spell, instantly wrapping her hand in glistening claws of metal. She waits for the queen to draw in mana, her rocky armour shrinking slightly, and plunges her hand down. Her metal claws cut through the hard exoskeleton with ease, digging into the soft flesh below. A few inches in, Emily opens her hand wide and grasps the queen’s beating heart.

The ant queen wakes from her slumber, letting out a shrill scream of pain and anger, along with a pulse of mana, shaking the nest and calling for her children. Her screams reach deaf ears, not a single child left to respond or hear her plea, and, as Emily rips her heart out, her cries shift from angry confusion to desolation.

Emily holds the hefty, still-beating ovoid of flesh in her blood-covered hand, gazing down at the dying creature with cold indifference. She summons a glass jar from her belt and places the queen’s heart into it before reaching down, ignoring the still squirming ant, and picking up a few loose earth crystals to drop into the jar as well.

She seals the jar and stores it, turning her attention to the queen ant again as she finally stops moving. Emily sends the corpse into her belt and crouches down on top of the glittering crystals filling the floor, placing a hand against them and shutting her eyes.

She slowly sends a stream of mana into the ground, feeling around the vein of crystals to discern its size and opening her eyes wide in shock after a few moments.

“Woah. That’s a lot of greater crystals,” she mutters in astonishment, sensing five greater earth crystals at the centre of the vein.

“Good haul?” Enzo asks, walking in with Ivor close behind.

“Take a look,” Emily responds with a grin, standing up and gesturing to the ground.

Enzo and Ivor copy Emily, placing their hands on the floor and closing their eyes for a few seconds.

“Damn,” Enzo says as they both open their eyes and look at Emily with excited grins. “There’s at least a hundred lesser crystals, and twenty or so normal too!”

“One hundred and thirty-six lesser and twenty-six normal to be exact,” Emily corrects with a matching grin. “Do you guys have enough mana to help?”

“No, sorry. Give me ten more minutes and I should be okay though,” Enzo says apologetically, stepping back.

“Same,” Ivor signs, shaking his head.

“Ha,” Emily scoffs, waving them off. “It won’t take ten minutes.”

She crouches down, placing both palms flat against the ground and shutting her eyes to focus on her magical perception. She sends mana down into the ground, wrapping around ten lesser crystals on the surface with a layer of earth-attributed mana each. She gently pulls them out, using her mana to break down the rock connected to them and releasing ten perfect crystals.

Emily opens her eyes, glancing at the crystals and sending them into her belt with a curious glint in her eye.

It’s common practice to excavate mana crystals of all types using the same attribute so you don’t damage them. But, if I’m then sending them straight to a dimensional storage, why don’t I just use spatial mana?

She shuts her eyes again, wrapping a single crystal in deep purple mana. She pulls it through space directly into her belt before summoning it back into her hand. Emily’s disappointed when she sees several hairline fractures ruining the delicate gem’s surface.

I guess I need to separate them from the surrounding rock first.

She tries again, wrapping a crystal with a mix of brown and purple. She disintegrates the connecting rock and instantly warps the crystal away. This time, when she summons it back to her hand, she grins with delight at the perfect, glistening gem.

She quickly puts her new technique to work, excavating the gems ten at a time. She completely empties the vein, using her mana to reinforce the floor to keep it from collapsing as she fills it with holes.

Within a few minutes of starting she stands up, turning away to face her exasperated friends.

“You never cease to amaze me,” Enzo mutters wryly.

“It’s always a pleasure to watch your mana manipulation,” Ivor signs in agreement.

“I try my best,” Emily responds with a smug grin, walking towards the exit.