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Chapter 11.5- Friends?

An intersection of seven overlapping and tied together branches, each one wide enough to easily accommodate several carriages moving side by side and putting most roads on the surface to shame, this place has become a twisting battlefield of four sides tearing each other apart.

All over the intersection and even fighting on the vertical sides of the branches, black, yellow, and red ants, each as large as a man, are fighting it out in a battle for domination as ants gang up on other ants of different colors and tear them limb from limb. The common strategy being to have several members surround one ant, and then grab them by their antenna and limbs, pulling them until the parts come free. The delimbed bodies, some still alive, are quickly pushed off the side of the branches to fall down below where waiting scavengers are no doubt waiting for their next meal to fall out of the sky. Others aren’t so lucky. Some of the ants, their limbs removed and still breathing, are being carried away by their enemy, dragged away to be taken back to the nest as food for their young.

Some ants aren’t killed in this manner, however. Some are simply crushed under foot or outright cut in half by the giant mandibles of the rampaging super major ants. There giant bodies make them a prominent force on the battlefield and their hard armor covered bodies make them into absolute tanks that can simply ignore the smaller ants that crawl over their bodies. On one particular super major, its back has turned into a battlefield of its own as ally ants fight to protect it from the enemies on its back, fighting to keep them away from the super majors few weak points.

It is utter chaos as three colors clash and mix, fighting in three dimensions in a battle suspended dozens of meters up in the air, a guaranteed drop promised with but one mistake.

To add further chaos to all of this, is the Undead.

Zombies of all sorts of creatures, having fallen or flown down from the upper branches, drawn in by the sounds of combat and the lure of Death’s presence, had joined the fight in numbers and are savaging all sides, dragging the already brutal fight into a near free-for-all melee as the Undead attack everything that dares to have the audacity to still draw breath.

Things are only drawn into even further chaos as the fallen ants begin to rise from the dead, turning on their own allies and surprising them as red attacks red, yellow attacks yellow, and black attacks black. Many are blindsided by the surprise, their pheromones telling them that an ally is currently attacking them. For many of the ants, they are simply too slow to react before the Undead manage to claim yet another victim, further increasing their numbers even as they are slain by the dozens.

As the battle continues to unfold into sheer chaos, being continuously fed by more reinforcement streaming in from several branches, the battlefield is thrown into further turmoil as a small figure slams into the side of a yellow super major, four bladed limbs tearing into where head connects to abdomen and slicing through with the crunch of breaking chitin, cutting through the massive creature like a guillotine on a Noble’s fat neck. Its head falls down below and crushes several other ants as they desperately fight one another, never even seeing their deaths coming before they are crushed. The giants body falls to the side, slipping off of the branch as those on its back continue to fight a now useless battle that will end the moment the corpse hit the ground, far down below.

The little figure, half the size of the ants and able to run between their legs with ease, moves through the battlefield like a little whirlwind of death. With every move of her bladed limbs, ants and the Undead both are reduced to chunks of flying meat and chitin. Heads and limbs go flying as she screams bloody murder, letting out her pent-up emotions on anything that dares to stand in her way, her body quickly getting covered in blood and ichor as she cuts through everything without a care, her only thought being on carving a path through the walls of bodies in her way.

Behind her, the four adventurers quickly follow behind her, moving fast to keep up with the spinning blades of death that is cleaving a bloody trail through the center of the battlefield like a hot spear through flesh.

The adventurers keep to a tight formation, keeping their weakest member safely tucked in between all of them as they push back and strike any enemy that tries to attack them, smashing them with axe or cutting them with sword and daggers.

When a zombie monkey comes flying out from the chaos, trying to latch onto one of the humans, it is met with a sword and cut in half from hip to shoulder. The top half continues to try and grab at the humans with its one remaining arm, but is grabbed by the neck and tossed away with a curse, only to get snatched out of the air by an ant and eaten.

“Fucking Undead! Tighten formation, don’t let them touch Hannah! Keep moving and don’t let Bug get too far ahead of us!” Max yells out as he pushes his back to Sam’s, ensuring that Hannah is kept safely in between everyone.

Up ahead, two super majors are locked in battle, their mandibles locked against each other as they wrestle for supremacy, trampling enemy and ally alike under foot as they move to keep their high ground, with one pushing the other down the side of the branch to a lower level of the intersection.

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Bug doesn’t stop moving even as she reaches these two wresting behemoths, simply tearing apart everything in her path as she moves for the back leg of the one holding the high ground. Leaping off the ground and clearing several meters in a single jump, Bug latches onto the giant leg that is thicker than her body with her bladed limbs, and climbs up it like a squirrel let loose into a tree. In a matter of seconds, she is already on its back, blades stabbed into its hard shell and gouging out jagged trenches in its back that pour with yellow ichor as she runs over its back and towards its head.

The beast lets out a chitter scream of pain as it rears its head back, the lower super major taking this chance to lock its mandibles around its opponent's head to try and crush it.

With the two locked together, Bug jumps forward, her bladed arms fanning out around her as she lets out a screaming war cry. Rotating in midair, she spins and dives, her blades moving around her like a blender before she slams into the head of the first super major, bring all of her momentum together and slicing down on its head.

Her blades break through, several levels worth of stats difference turning her body into a living weapon that can plow through the ants hardened defenses with a loud crunch.

Digging through the top of its head, she slices through layers of meat and something resembling a brain before breaking through to the other side, finding the open mouth of the second super major just as its mandibles snap shut on the now weakened head of the other, finishing it off for good.

Bug doesn’t stop moving, diving into the massive creature’s mouth and kicking off the bottom of its jaw to attack the roof of its mouth. With gore-soaked blades, she easily tears its mouth apart and rips its head open from the inside, digging up and through the brain before exploding out the top in an explosion of gore and shards of chitin.

The two super majors slowly collapse, their bodies still connected together by their destroyed heads and interlocked mandibles as they fall forward. Beneath their bodies, dozens of the Undead and the smaller ants are simply crushed by their massive weight, others run away and scatter, chittering loudly as they run for their lives.

“Holy shit!” Jakub screams as he witnesses to the two behemoths get slaughtered by a girl half his size in a matter of seconds. He had heard about these things from more experienced groups, and the common thought is that the super majors are never to be fought without at least two full parties of five members, one of which is just there to keep the smaller ants away from the actual fight. And yet, here is a little girl simply tearing them apart as she screams like a maniac, ripping apart hard chitin that many adventurers would have considered an amazing material for crafting armor with.

Max pulls on his shoulder and screams, “Keep moving, she made a bridge for us! Quickly!”

Taking advantage of the temporary opening in the fighting as ants quickly scatter in every direction, they all move for the collapsing corpses, jumping up on to the thorax of the first one and running down its back towards the second. Sam has to lean down and pick up Hannah with one arm, the panting and sweating girl being unable to keep up with or even make the jump up with her untrained body. Shouldering her like a sack of potatoes as she sprints, Sam and the others slide down the corpse as it collapses, jumping to the second and running across its back to the lower branch as the two massive bodies start to fall to the side, slipping off the branches of the intersection with their heads still connected together in a destroyed mess.

As the adventurers alight to the lower branch of the intersection, the two giant corpses slip over the side, dragging groups of hissing ants and gnashing Undead with them in a crashing cacophony of breaking wood and crushed chitin.

Running for their lives, Hannah letting out a scream on Sam’s back. The group continues to move as they follow behind the still rampaging Bug. Thankfully, the route they need to follow is not part of one of the ant armies’ supply lines. It does not take much longer until they are tearing their way out through the other side. One moment they are in the thick of layers of violence, and the next, they are out, nothing but open branch spread out ahead of them.

They don’t stop moving and keep sprinting, not stopping until they are far away from the battlefield. They had been chased by a number of ants on their way out, but also by the Undead. It thankfully didn’t take long until the Undead had switched targets from the fleeing humans, and to instead attack the ants they were running besides, giving the fleeing humans a chance to get away.

Leaving behind a mess of chaos, the group finally comes to a stop and collapses to their knees as they try to catch their breaths. When Hannah is set down by Sam, she quickly collapses, her legs shaking like a newborn faun’s as she lays on her back, covered in sweat.

Bug is resting a bit ahead of them, sitting on the ground in a puddle of gore dripping off her cloak and her soaked clothes as her four arms slowly revert back to normal, blades changing back into little hands and delicate fingers adorned with little claws.

Through tired breaths, Max yells out, “Bug, what the Hell!?”

She just laughs as she collapses to her back, breasts heaving as laughter escapes from her exhausted lungs. “Hahahahaha! Ah, I fucking needed that! Hahahahaha!!! Ahhh, I smell horrible! When we get to the safe room, I’m taking a fucking bath! Hahaha~!”

Max just turns to Sam, the only one still able to remain standing after all of that. “She’s crazy, we’re following a crazy person…”

Sam walks over and gives Hannah a gentle kick, nudging the collapsed girl that looks like she is contemplating passing out right where she is.

“Hannah, please tell us that we are almost there. Light will be gone soon.”

She just raises a hand and waves it around a bit in some vague motion of giving direction. “Not much further, we’re… we are almost there. These floors are seemingly laid out with the intention of letting people choose to move through floors quickly or to get to explore around a lot… look for treasure and stuff…” She says as she flops her arms to the ground.

While Bug is still giggling to herself like a mad woman, Max calls out, “Five-minute break, then we get moving…”

The crazy girl just talks to herself without a care. “Level-Up, yes! All the points into Endurance, my Stamina is too low! Hahahaa!”