Tamer Benjamin Noecren (POV)

Day 11 AFP 7.45 AM

After eating a hearty breakfast meal and waiting for the skill cooldown to complete, Benjamin crossed through the gate in the swimming pool to the underground reservoir under Dallas, Texas.

Ben activated his Psychedelic Camouflage skill, which hid his visual presence. Then, he swam towards the concrete steps of the reservoir and slowly pulled himself out of the water. The temperature in the room is seven degrees celsius, the floor and walls are covered in frost.

Ben felt the cold bite in the air. It pricked his exposed skin and numbed his senses, but his willpower of mind over body helped him focus on the task at hand. He looked around to study the underground structure and spotted over two dozen Icebugs sucking and gulping down water through their creepy bug mouths around five meters away from him.

The first time Ben came through the reservoir, he nearly caused the Icebugs to panic when he accidentally came out of the water right next to where they were drinking. Luckily he was able to retreat back into the reservoir's depths until they all gave up, waiting for him to resurface. After that near encounter, Ben always took the precaution of analyzing his environment before taking action.

There were several man-made entrances to the reservoir, but none interested Ben. He kept looking around until he spotted a crudely built non-human-made tunnel with frost covering its walls, ceiling, and floor. He slowly walked towards it as he knew it led to the Icebug's Hive under Dallas. The distance between the reservoir and the Hive is four hundred meters, convenient for Ben but bad news for humanity. Tamer Battalion members whose monster partners specialized in the Earth found underground tunnels linking the Icebug's Hive network near strategic water bodies within North America, both natural and man-made.

The Icebugs have an internal organ where water is stored and used to fuel their Ice manipulation skills, repair damaged Ice armor, and fuel the Ice Fortress construction. Though the Bug monsters have the power over Ice, their elemental control could not create it without water or prevent it from being melted.

Turning moisture in the air into Ice would yield a poor volume for their needs. Unless an Icebug was submerged underwater like the Carbs and Lobsters, the water stored within the flyers and ground dwellers would dry up quickly until they could refill. This meant they could only rely on their claws, mandibles, and carapace to fight when they ran out of water. Though they too needed water for repairs when damaged. Thus, building Hives close to large water bodies aided construction, armor repair, and fuel stations.

Unfortunately, American and Canadian displaced communities did not know about this, so many built their refuge near large water bodies.

As a result, encounters between humans and monsters were far more frequent in North America than those of the other territories of the UGP.

Something had to be done to push back the bugs from expanding further before there wasn't anywhere safe for humans to live in North America.

A massive underground fumigation operation from within the Hives was proposed, but the amount required was impossible for Ben to carry and remain undetected. That proposal was also abandoned after discovering the Icebugs were resistant to poison.

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Ben tried to let go of the uneasy feeling in his gut as he sneaked through the tunnel leading to the Queen's chamber. Along the way, he noticed that there were more Icebugs today than there was yesterday. Ben saw fresh human corpses, animal livestock, wild game, and seafood being carried by Icebug workers to a chamber where countless larvae were groomed and fed.

The larvae caretakers meticulously tended to them no matter what species they belonged to. Ben found it odd how an Icebug Queen could produce over a dozen insect species when she clearly belonged to the Ant species. That was until Soma shared the report about Darius the Bastard being born into a brood of chicks of several different species. It amazed Ben that none of the monsters that came through the Pink Pillars cared about the dividing line between species.

Ben spotted a few giant chimera bugs that made him almost puke on sight. He wondered what the Icebugs saw when he used Eldritch Abomination Vision. But, of course, Ben didn't really control what his victims experienced while under the influence of his paranoia-inducing skills. The Dumbo Octopus, who named itself 'The Great Dreamer,' took care of those details. Still, there was a sense Ben's own willpower meeting the bare minimum of the skill's true potential to cause havoc.

When Ben finally reached the Icebug Queen's Chamber, he found several large mounds of human corpses near the entrance. Most of the bodies were dressed in military uniforms belonging to the Mexican army. There was no way the Mexican military launched an expedition to assist the war against the monsters. Then the only way those corpses could be here is that the Icebugs have crossed the U.S-Mexico border.

There were enough military uniforms on the dead to signify that a few battalions had been wiped out. Even a few Brazilian-made pulse rifles and incendiary grenade pouches are lying around the bodies.

Ben looked around and found a worker Icebug tirelessly separating the organic matter from the inorganic. Another carried the naked body over to the Queen, who ravenously ripped it into pieces before consuming it. He had seen this before, so his stomach could hold back the urge to puke.

Ben had to carefully navigate through mounds of corpses as the pools of blood near them could give away his presence if he stepped on it and left behind bloody footprints. He had grown used to this sight during his last visit to the chamber. The smell of iron, blood, shit, and urine filled the air, which forced him to breathe through the mouth instead of the nose.

When he found the perfect hiding spot and vantage point, Ben saw an Icebug Ant worker bringing in a live human male who wore the Mexican military uniform and bore the rank of General. From what little Spanish Ben knew from watching the Narcos series on Universal Netflix, the man was yelling for Jesus to save him from being eaten alive.

The General's right arm and right leg were stuck in a vice grip, his body hanging from the mandibles. It looked excruciating, but the Icebug worker was careful to not rip the limbs away from the body and gently placed him down on the floor in front of Royal guards for inspection.

The Royal Guards numbered at least two hundred. Each one looked like paragons of their Insect species, but they all bore an insignia in their Ice armor that must be a way to identify which Queen they belonged to. Their intimidating height of three meters, thick armor, and sickle-like weapons made them resemble heavy armored Knights.

The General tried to crawl away out of the chamber as soon as placed on the floor. However, a Scorpion Royal guard struck him with the stinger at the end of its tail to paralyze his body. Once the inspection was complete, the General was relieved of his uniform and then dragged towards the Icebug Queen, whose antennae were whipping the air in excitement.

She used one of her claws to skewer the poor man without killing him and lifted his body up to her eyes for a closer inspection. The General did not stop screaming as he stared into her nightmarish face before she opened her jaws to swallow him whole in one go.

Ben had never seen her eat someone alive before, but his surprise grew further when he heard the Queen speak in Spanish with the General's voice.

"Soldado Picante!"

'Did she just say Spicy soldier?' Ben asked himself in his mind.