When the world built around me, I realized it was just me Dot and Lefty. I didn’t feel Mezu around me at all.

“I was really not looking forward to this one,” Dot said as the ding rang out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to the 28th floor, the Ant Hill!

Description:

You have fallen into the local ant hill. Fight your way out to claim your reward.

Completion Requirements: Defeat all enemies

Completion Progress:

Ants killed: 0/30,000

Ant Queen’s guards: 0/10

Ant Queen: 0/1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn’t know if I should consider the fact that Mezu wasn’t with me a good thing or a bad thing. Mezu hated bugs almost as much as he hated beings that treated animals badly. Aside from the humans in the village on the sixth floor, and some spiders in the labyrinth he hadn’t fought anything, (well aside from the snake, but that wasn’t to the death). It was obvious that he didn’t like them, before I could even get close to them, he ripped them to shreds. I tried to ask Alcoroth about it afterwards, but Mezu started growling at me, so I’ve just avoided the subject entirely.

I was glad I had fed him as much as I had before we left, he would need all the energy he could get, and I’d have to feed him more than an arm later to make sure that he was calm after the whole fight.

I sighed heavily.

“I know right, what a pain, the numbers are a bit ridiculous. I’d agree maybe if ugh what’s that word again!”

I wasn’t agreeing with him about the numbers, if I wasn’t concerned about Mezu I would’ve been excited about the fight.

“Well since we’re with Quartz we can speak dwarvish,” Dot had already switched.

It had been a bit since I’d spoken it but since it was my first… well, one of my first languages it was at least easier than common.

“I can’t even think of the word in Dwarvish right now though!”

Lefty swore a bunch in egalthi and muttered something along the lines of “damn it, I can’t even – in egalthi.”

Wait… did I just understand part of what he said? Lukon taught me curse words and basic insults in most languages. He said it was to make sure I knew if people were trying to pull one over on me. I didn’t spend time learning the language itself though.

“I know what you’re trying to say at least, if it was normal sized ants then thirty thousand wouldn’t be a problem but they’re big.”

Dot grumbled a bit more, but I didn’t pay attention to it. I didn’t have the opportunity to think to greatly about why I had understood egalthi either because of the low rumbling that just became audible.

“Oh great, they’re already on their way.”

Then it hit me, the floor was called an ant hill, and yet we were in a tunnel that could fit someone three times as tall as me. The ants must have been huge, no wonder they were complaining.

Dot lit a small fire at the end of her staff and illuminated the tunnel properly. My sight in the dark was decent, and I’m sure hers was too, but it was much better to see like this.

There was a dead end behind us and in front of us out of the darkness at the far edge of her light came some ants. I didn’t think about it too much and just went for their legs with my sword. I didn’t bother with aura at first just to see how well I could do.

I got through them pretty easily and put my sword through its head. Lefty went past me for the next one, and from then on for a bit we alternated killing the ants. The further along we got in the tunnel though, they started coming at us two at a time. I cut the legs of one after sliding under it and was going to go for the head, but Lefty was already on it. I got the legs of the next one too and Lefty got its head.

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When the smell hit, I gaged briefly but the scent wasn’t bad enough for me to cover my nose. I hope it wouldn’t get worse as we killed more.

“We’ve only done about twenty of them. Going one by one is taking a bit too long, step back guys I’m just going to throw some fire down the tunnel.”

We got behind her and she started concentrating. I saw her core completely now. It was a few sizes smaller than Alrick’s, but about the same size as Thran’s. I saw three different colors of mana swimming in her core, so aside from the size it was surprising (dwarves rarely had multiple attributes). Only fire was gathering towards her hands at the moment though.

The circle in front of her was almost complete now. There was a rumbling sound and out of the darkness I saw the glistening bodies of a decent number of ants.

She finished her chant and the tunnel in front of us lit up completely.

I now noticed a small counter above her head with plus one or plus two popping up every now and then. I’d have to check Lefty’s head the next time he killed one to see if it was counting how many one of us had killed.

The banner with quest info didn’t ever seem to show up when I wanted to, it would just show up at seemingly random times. So, I couldn’t confirm my assumption and see how much progress we made. Even if I did look at it I couldn’t account for the other’s kills.

The fire stopped and Lefty took off down the hallway at a sprint. I followed him too. The smell of burnt corpses hit my nose and I instinctively covered it with my hand. It was worse than earlier. If we came across some living ones, I wouldn’t be able to cover my nose. I wouldn’t get to fight with a hand on my nose till my arm grew back.

The hallway was coated with the remnants of the ants. I guess fire heated them up and made them explode. The guts and blood that coated the walls was a different and much darker color than what came out of them when me and Lefty were fighting them.

Luckily the further we got down the hallway the less guts we saw, and the stench seemed to lessen slightly. We made it to a fork in the road and Lefty stopped.

“Dot’ll take a lil’ bit to catch up. Why don’t you head down the left and I take the right. Run for a couple minutes and when you hit ants, or a dead end turn back. She’ll have enough time to catch up and start another spell. Kill some if they don’t follow you but otherwise just leave it to her.”

I nodded and we split up. It took me a bit to come across some ants, and they followed me for a short while but then stopped. I had to kill two to keep them following me before I made it back to the fork. Dot was there with Lefty, and she was already halfway through her spell.

Lefty was holding the ants off at the entrance to his tunnel.

“Good! Hold them there till she’s ready!”

I didn’t avoid killing though since it was more annoying to simply injure them. Their bodies were stacking up and blocking the pathway by the time she was ready.

“Get behind me!”

I leaped up and over her landing behind her. Lefty landed on top of me, and we fell backwards just as she let loose another spell.

“Sorry ‘bout that, not a lot of room here.”

He laughed getting off of me.

We watched until the fire diminished.

“So did they follow you or not?”

“They didn’t, I had to kill a few of them.”

“Good, let’s head that way then” Dot said starting to make her way down my tunnel.

Left followed at a light pace.

“Why’d you pick this way?”

“Just a tip we got from the guild. I ants would only follow after you if you ran away when it wasn’t a path to the queen. If we just had to keep guessing which way to go it’d take forever to get to the end. How do you think Fluffy is doing by the way?”

I laughed slightly, whoever he was with probably wasn’t getting a lot of chances to fight. I hoped it wasn’t Dodger ‘cause I didn’t want to hear her complaining later.

“Oh, he hates ants so he’s probably doing his best to destroy them.”

“Great” Lefty beamed, “then this total count should go down faster than I thought!”

“Yeah, well he’s going to be very hungry at the end of this, so we’ll probably only be doing this floor today, unless you guys want to carry me through the next one.”

Dot started laughing, “I just imagined Dodger carrying you strapped to her back for some extra training! But don’t worry, I’ll have to recharge my mana too. And as long as he isn’t with Dodger, she’ll be tired but awake just enough to eat before passing out.”

From this point on we took turns, while running down the newly chosen path, Lefty and I worked together to kill any ants we came across until we made it to a fork. At that point we’d draw the ants back and let Dot destroy them. We repeated this for what felt like ages. My arm had regrown four forks ago.

Even if the bandage helped heal it faster than before it probably still took a while to heal.

As we traveled further into the ant hill, the tunnels got wider and wider. The amount of ants increased as well. I had gotten used the stench of things by now thankfully, especially since the amount that we’d kill increased as we went. If I hadn’t it would’ve been overwhelming, I don’t think one hand would’ve felt like enough to cover my nose with.

Eventually when the tunnels were about three times the size they had been when we started the banner finally appeared again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Progress:

Ants killed: 30,000/30,000

Ant Queen’s Guards: 0/10

Ant Queen: 0/1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Wooo! We did it!”

Well, yeah it seemed we did but we still hadn’t come across any of these Ant Queen’s Guards. We must have still been quite a distance from the center.

“Yeah, but now we have to run till we find the center idiot!”

She bonked Lefty on the head with her staff.

“I’m already tired from running as much as we have.”

She had been using the breaks from running when we got to a fork to catch her breath. That strategy wouldn’t do her any good now that we probably weren’t going to run into any ants for a bit.

“And this will make things harder, without ants to tell which path we need to take we could get lost.”

“Hey, it’s my time to shine now don’t you think?”

Lefty had a wide grin on his face while rubbing the spot she had hit.