It had been three days since the start of the war if-if you could even call it that. The biological ants had proven to be the superior combatants. The armor of even their copper worker units seemed to be relatively decent enough to block glancing blows and their pincers were sharp enough to function as makeshift blades. They also had the bonus of numbers on their side. The only reason they struggled against Austin was he had superior fififi-repower that rendered their natural advantages mute. Add in some decent intelligence and the enemies fell in droves. Only to drag as many of their dead back as possible and return again and again and again, they-hey even succeeded at dragging back a few of the Ant corpses. As the number of dead rose on each side it was clear that whatever they were fighting against had some way to rapidly replace lost troops. It didn't make sense that it was able to do this and not be able to overwhelm the ants with numbers. Austin had stepped in with a new larger dragonfly like drone equipped with a harpoon that he used to drag back corpses for the ants. While the ants consume the corpses slowly and probably fed a good chunk of it to-to their queen to make more ants or whatever they did? He'd still hadn't found them or where they were coming from to confirm that. But the refresh rate wasn't nearly as high as whatever was controlling these blasted creatures.

It wasn’t long before larger ant variants took to the field only to be met with of all thing’s spiky versions of the copper ants. And while at first, they did join in battles instead they had taken to tearing down the trees and eating them. Whatever this was it had an apparent need to harvest more biomass. And Austin had accidentally just given them something that could finally handle the larger flora by siccing the ants on them.

It-it was not unnoticed by Austin that the war was not going well for the ants. So, Austin started stepping in where he could his Flyers would take on the enemy's collection units using their harpoons to drag corpses back into the ant's territory. He was just fire support at this point but the enemy of my enemy and all. B-but it didn't help the ants through another invasion attempt at him and he had to gun them down. In the end, it was just fewer bodies to throw at the enemy and all. He chucked their corpses down to the cavern below hoping they'd make use of them. It's not like he needed them at the moment for more metal.

While he was still working on increasing his own industrial complex. He had devoted every spare scrap of resource he could to building new beetles, more of his own mechanical ants with multiple new combat variants including a mobile shield platform. And more combat oriented dragonfly drones mos-mostly focusing on the dragonfly drones. While The Beatles were most likely the most effective combat unit in his current arsenal. He needed to continue to provide air support if he didn’t want the biological ants to be overrun. It didn't help that the enemy's combat Flyers had figured him out and were starting to pick on his drones. It had been close to a full week now and Austin was having to send out escort drones to fight off air to air incursions on his resource runs. Not that the ants were really making use of the stuff he brought back. At this point, it was more about denying his enemies the resources than helping his reluctant allies. As the sheer number of corpses, he piled up for the ant started to rot and while they were steadily working on the pile they just couldn't keep up.

The larger iron Ant guards hadn’t had any casualties yet. Though they had a few close calls. More than one of which Austin had to provide fire support to try and keep whatever this was from getting its hands on their corpses. He wasn't quite sure how or what this thing was, but it had figured out how to make its own version of the copper ants after getting its hands on just a few of their bodies. And Austin didn't even want to think about what would happen if they managed to get ahold of any of the more powerful variants. Like the iron and zzzzinc ones he had seen so far. He honestly wouldn't be surprised if the ants still had a few cards hidden but those two were bad enough as it was.

The weird zinc ants had only been seen in action twice. They didn't really make sense they were smaller than the coppers but every limb on that creature seemed to be a blade. Watching it literally claw its way through one of the wolf like creatures. Was both fascinating and disturbing, it was likely the only reason it hadn't been used against his mechanical units. Was because whatever intelligence was behind the ants was smart enough to realize that his units armor would be too thick for it to penetrate easily. The iron ants would have likely caused him a bit of issue but not that much. While iron had a higher melting point than copper it still melted easily enough. And even if they could handle ballistic shots better than the copper ant’. That again just boiled down to more volume of fire or armor penetration. As such the Ant seemed like the lesser threat when compared to this new enemy.

Meanwhile, Sofia wasn't having a good day some weird flying bug thingies had been dropping off stuff in town for a while now. Including a weird crab like creature, she’d call it a spider based off the shape of its body, but spiders didn't have big clampy claws. The weird spider crab thing had begun scuttling around her town a few days ago with more metal than she'd seen in her entire life. The townspeople hadn't been happy when they showed up but the guards sure were happy now with it fortifying the walls. Something had kicked one of the metallic Ant nests and managed to get them angry at the dungeon monsters and she wasn't really sure how to feel about that. She was momentarily pulled from her musing by the sounds of her beetle companion's stinger firing as it cut through three bat like creatures that tried to fly overhead. It managed to hit two of the three the third just barely slipping through. It would have gotten to one of their livestock if one of the weird triangular stinger thingies the crab like creature had been putting around the town hadn't stung it out of the air. There were a lot of bats trying to get into the town at the moment but there were always a few of those flying dragonfly like creatures running them off.

Dungeons, according to the guards at least, weren't supposed to be this active above ground. They usually just built up underground digging deeper while gathering resources from the surface. And while they would occasionally launch an attack at perceived threats but never anything as sustained as this. Which is why the guards had sent a messenger to a nearby city to ask for aid with fortifying the village. Whenever a new dungeon was found the adventurers Guild and the local Lords army would usually show up eventually to pacify it.

Dungeons themself weren't too particularly valuable as unlike myths and legends they almost never held magical artifacts, weapons of power, or anything like that. Instead, they were basically just mimicking a crude form of life. Dungeons would make monsters. Monsters would gather materials and life from outside and drag it back to feed the dungeon anything of value. And anything of use that was dragged back was copied and then sent out again when the dungeon had consumed enough of it. Sometimes, rarely if the dungeon had managed to get enough material it might make something more intelligent as a guardian that's where a lot of the darker races came from. Orcs goblins Kappas the list went on. They weren't as smart as humans or the other intelligent races, but they were smart enough to make tools and use tools. And well the dungeon couldn't Make items of legend but if you fed it a few broken swords and some rusted scrap iron it would make a tool for its protector. So, this created a unique balancing act where in exchange for feeding it livestock plant matter even garbage and other waste it would produce creatures and monsters. Most of which had at least some value that were then killed by adventures guard’s knights or whatever for money and combat experience. A lot of guilds or even Lords would essentially buy dungeons set up shop there and occasionally offer rights to rent or use it to others. They were usually just used as a way to get meat, fur, and other valuable items as such without any excessive hunting or building expensive above ground farming. As well as an easy and convenient way to get rid of unwanted waste materials.

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This one was apparently different according to the guards. Either it had been a lot more cautious until recently and dug deep. Or had a hunting ground they hadn't found yet. Neither one would really surprise them the valley was large, and it could have originally emerged outside the valley and only accidentally found its way in as it dug downwards. But whatever it was, it was hungry the guard had spotted grazer parties of mutated dear roaming the forest more than once. Which wasn't good for the harvesting of healing herbs, so they had been wiped out. Which is probably why the dungeon had started to attack the village in the first place. Now the ants where actively attacking anything on the surface be it they're harvesters or their hunters. And since the ants could eat just about anything it probably only made things worse. The worst part was it already had access to scrap shelled beetles. Meaning it could eat the metal soil around here to grow more. So, the dungeon was eating rocks plants even creatures it could even get through the metallic armor of the ants and eat them. Thanks to the scrap shell beetles the ant’s greatest strength against most common predators was now just an inconvenience.

If that wasn't bad enough, they were tearing apart the forest, the ants weren't doing a lot of damage, but the fights were causing collateral. And her new metallic friends from whatever weird insect group the beetle she had found underground fell into. They had no problem with starting small fires or using explosions to clear out groups of monsters. She had seen more than a few casually flying past with the body of some creature it probably had killed. A few had been deposited into the village, much to the delight of the locals at least they wouldn't have to worry about food while under siege, but most had been carried over to the ant’s side of things.

Much to the confusion of a lot of the locals who of course came to her and asked her a lot of questions. So, she had in turn gone to the Beatle and tried to ask it questions and she had got absolutely nothing in response. The beetle was weird, she couldn't communicate with it like she could with a lot of creatures, even though she was starting to get pretty good at talking to animals. Though it wasn't exactly talking more just trading intents. The best way she could describe attempting to talk to the beetle was like trying to talk to an eye. It could see her moving, it knew she was doing something, but it was the wrong thing to be talking to. Her only other idea was to try it with that large glowing orb she had found underground that one time. It might be the key to all this. Shed likely have gone back if she thought she could leave the village, but everything was trying to kill everything at the moment. And the only thing that seemed relatively friendly at the moment was her beetle the rollie bug thingies the dragonfly thingies and the weird crab thing. Which was currently reinforcing one of the walls. A lot of the rollie thingies had found a spot near the center of town and started digging into the ground. At first, she thought it was a nest until she had been guided inside by the beetle.

The beetle had when it wasn't fighting or leaving to do whatever it did whenever it left the village had been trying to guide people into the underground. Even moving objects into it along with the weird rollie thingies. At first, no one really knew why but whenever the crab thing wasn't busy fixing or making something new it would work on the hole in the ground. It wasn't until the rollie thingies had stolen a bunch of tables and chairs from the Tavern and placed them down there. That’s when people finally figured out it was trying to make someplace safe for them or at least that's what they were assuming. Anytime a home was damaged a new place was carved out for the people to live there. The rollie thingies would even help them move their belongings inside. And at this point, almost a third of the town was living underground.

As more and more of the Roly thingy showed up the tunnels kept getting bigger and deeper. And while people weren’t exactly happy with that. Especially since everyone was on edge due to the fighting getting worse. On top of that the damage to the village was starting to get bad.

Sofia hadn't gotten a lesson from the town mage in the past few days because Catherine had been too busy readying weapons enchanting them and checking on the town's defenses.

Austin didn't like this. As they came closer to the second week of fighting the ants were getting pushed back. What was worse, the front lines that had started off beyond the village had-had slowly been pushed back enough that the village was once more in the line of fire. The valley which they were in was in fact an impact crater. His impact crater to be precise and ended abruptly on one end where he had been buried. The crater wall above him had a waterfall that dumped into a small lake that drained into the caverns below and likely was the source of the underground aquifer he had found.

The valley was full of lush forest and only had one way in or out. Which will not bottlenecked by, was very close to where Sophia's village was. Oh yeah, he had finally figured out what the little girl's name was that was a pleasant surprise.

But whatever was controlling these creatures held the majority of the right side of the valley. The ants in their superior numbers had managed to push them back dramatically but now they were slowly losing territory and being pushed back to the left side of the valley. The ants had had to collapse several of their tunnels to keep from being followed into the underground, but they still poured through the remaining ones. Morerere than once, Austin had found himself desperately moving his offering piles as the frontline shifted closer and closer. He didn't want whatever this was to get ahold of the biomass he'd been snatching up for the ants that probably wouldn't end well. As the front lines had started to move closer towards the village Austin had dispatched one of his construction bots to fortify the village. Originally, he had been going for a spider-like based design but with its manipulator claws and multi tool unit gave it more of a crab like appearance. Whatever it was close enough function over form at this point he didn't have time to care. He’d been doing his best to prepare and the second one would be delivered in the next few days once it was finished constructing the larger scale assembly bay.

He had set up several solar panels linked to a capacitor bank and as many turrets as he could spare to help reinforce the walls. But wood and stone could only handle so much. However, he’d need a larger construction unit to even think about starting to construct a concrete and steel bulwark around the makeshift town. Even despite his best defense effort several small groups of the Flyers had managed to make it through. Thu-though most of the damage on the village so far had been from their bodies dropping out of the air. More than a few roofs had been smashed in. It also didn't help that most of the houses were made of wood and thatch. And while good against the elements. It was not so good against the incoming siege. So, he had started designing an underground bunker. But due to the lack of communication trying to get them to move into the bunker was an uphill battle but he’d finally got them to understand.

He’d frown if he could as he looked at his next delivery to the town. Weapons, steel swords Spears Shields armor the best he could make on short notice. Compound bows crossbows arrows bolts even a ballista and trebuchet which would have to be assembled on site. He'd like to give them more modern weapons but he wasn't willing to put a gun in the hands of untrained civilians. Let alone civilians, that hadn't seen anything more modern than a sword of all blasted things. He didn't want the humans to fight but even with his growing industrial complex and his attempts to move towards connecting his underground tunnels to the village via the bunker he was currently digging. He had no good way to deploy above ground other than the air drops he was currently doing and while his air support was helping it was slow progress if it was even progress. By the sheer number of these creatures that were being thrown at the ants.

Judging by the area of the valley that was being stripped he could easily guess where they were coming from. The problem was the air to air there was just too thick for him to send air support and any long range artillery support would have to be established from the village. It was the only protected clearing he currently had access to. That's what the trebuchet was for. It wasn't the best sure he could fill it with explosives, but he'd rather have a proper mortar or a missile battery. Unfortunately, desperate times and desperate measures and all that. He didn't have the infrastructure to make the complex electronics to control a missile system or missiles. He didn't have any prefabricated mortar shells and yes while he was starting production on ballistic ammo. He could only make those that could be fired from a magnetic rail at this point. Because he had no access to sulfur or any other substances that could be manufactured into modern combustibles. So, he was trying to be careful with what little ammo he had left sure he had a few million rounds just lying around. But until he could get some form of resupply those few million rounds had to last him. The last thing he needed was to have to reconfigure all his ballistic weaponry to be far slower railguns. Well maybe building a railgun turret wouldn't be a bad idea he added it to the list for later shipment. Right now, he needed to focus on improving what he could while he could. He had no shortage of metal, and it took very little time and effort to print off basic weapons for the humans. Whether they were able to defend themselves so they didn't have to solely rely on him.