Ben's consciousness was no longer in control of his body. Still, his willpower was resilient enough to establish a connection with the Great Dreamer that allowed him to watch what was happening inside the Queen's chamber.
Ajax is attacking the Icebug Queen and her Royal Guards with fifty serrated chains wrapped in Blue flames. They had emerged from under the shell where the wings were supposed to be on his back. Each of these chains moved independently at a speed that made them blurry.
The Icebug workers and Royal Guards shrilled in pain since their Ice armor carapace barely resisted the attacks. Sometimes the sharp-ended tips of the chains would skewer or bisect several bodies in one strike. The Icebug Queen was kept at bay but not by the chains. The massive Hercules Beetle horns had been rammed into her at the beginning of the battle. Hot streams of Green Blood poured out from the ugly gaping wounds when she pulled herself out of the impalement.
The Royal Guards tried their best to attack Ajax with their Ice skills, but the intensity of the blue flames spewing out of the cracks of the metal armor was around 1000°C (1832°F). This caused the ice to melt into water and turn into vapor before inflicting any damage.
The Royal Guards launched suicidal charges at Ajax, but their bodies froze from breathing in the thick fumes of phosphine gas that began shrouding the surroundings around the Hercules Beetle. Ben couldn't help but think of Ajax as the perfect Icebug Fumigator and thanked the heavens that his monster partner was able to overwhelm its mind to the point that it regarded the entire Bug race as its enemy.
"I killed you all once. I can do it a thousand more times!"
Ajax roared as he slaughtered everything within ten meters of his massive body, which was also the maximum range of his back's serrated metal heat chains. However, the gas lost its paralyzing effect on the Icebugs beyond five meters. The
Royal Egg was moved to a safe distance by the Icebug Queen when she realized that Ajax had lost his sanity.
She watched in horror as the agent of the Empress slaughtered her children right in front of her. Ben could guess what was going through her mind as she tried to understand what caused this sudden explosion of violence from Ajax.
The Icebug Queen, though heavily injured, had enough strength to let out a scream that echoed through the tunnels of the Hive and could have possibly been heard from those living on the surface as well. Ben could feel the Great Dreamer's mind lose its control over Ajax for several seconds as its mind was stunned by the sound wave.
During this brief loss of control, Ajax regained his normal vision, which allowed him to see the dismembered and burnt bodies of the Icebugs around him. He immediately retracted his chains and stopped spewing the Phosphine gas acting as a deterrent barrier around his body.
"What the fuck is going on? I thought you all were Zombies!"
"CHIMERA AJAX! YOU WILL PAY WITH YOUR LIFE FOR SLAUGHTERING MY CHILDREN!"
The Queen yelled in grief as she slowly backed away with the royal egg in her grasp. Cracks appeared on the floor and walls before they shattered. A flood of ground-based Icebugs began pouring through these openings, and they all launched a Banzai charge that caused even Ajax to take a few steps back.
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The Great Dreamer had recovered from the Queen's cry and was about to launch another round of mind affliction attacks on Ajax but then held back as it proved unnecessary. Ajax did not understand what had happened, but he knew that there was no way out other than to kill every Icebug that came his way.
Sensing his work was done, the Great Dreamer relinquished his control to Ben. Once back in the driver's seat, Ben thanked the Great Dreamer before taking advantage of the chaos to chase after the Queen who had fled the chamber.
It wasn't easy to wade through the swarm without bumping into them, but thankfully their minds were solely focused on killing Ajax to notice an invisible human hand or foot making contact on their carapace. By this time, Ajax had decided to go all out to survive and turned himself back into the walking furnace plus fumigator.
Hundreds of Icebugs were incinerated and poisoned by Ajax's attacks that did not pause for even a moment. Then, the Icebug corpses began piling up to the point their brethren had to climb over their fallen to launch themselves at Ajax, who swatted them away as he counter-charged to create a path of carnage in his wake.
"STOP! It was a mistake! Freaking, give me a moment to explain what happened!"
No matter how many times Ajax tried to yell out that it was all a misunderstanding, it fell on deaf ears... literally. The swarm's mental processing power had no room to interpret Ajax's attempts at pheromone communication as they sacrificed their lives to chip away at his armor.
The serrated Blue flaming chains bisected, burned, and impaled everything that the toxic gas failed to paralyze or kill. Most of the Royal Guard were dead by now, but they didn't fall in vain. Many had been strong enough to damage Ajax's armor and reduced his chains by half their number. This was enough to cause Ajax to attempt to flee the way he came in, but it didn't work because he was constantly being interrupted by attacks.
"Fine, I will kill you all until I can teleport out of here!"
It took several minutes before Ben finally caught up to the Queen who had escaped to the Larvae Chamber. She is covered with Larvae caretakers trying their best to mend her body and feed her human corpses to regain her vitality. Finally, the strain from summoning the swarm to kill Ajax had drained her strength enough to give up the egg to the caretakers so that she could rest.
Since those caretakers were busy tending to her body, Ben took the opportunity to distract the Icebugs guarding the egg with his mind affliction skills. While they were busy looking for the sources of strange voices in their heads, Ben slowly sneaked up to the defenseless basketball-sized egg and carried it away with him.
If a human was looking at the scene, they would have found it strange to see an egg floating in the air. Fortunately for Ben, these Icebugs were in a panicked state of mind to notice a tiny egg floating away in a room filled with thousands of eggs and Larvae the size of Humvees that needed their attention and a wounded Queen.
Once Ben tiptoed his way out of the Larvae chamber, he decided it was time to run for the stadium as the scheduled Evac was about to arrive. As Ben ran towards the predesignated exit he had found that led towards the surface of Dallas, he once again thanked the heavens that the tunnels were free of all sentries.
There were no Icebugs on the surface level, as Ben could see when he emerged from a construction site with a tunnel connected to the Hive. Instead, the streets were filled with corpses of Icebugs killed by Tamers from the stadium over the past week. Ben assumed they all heeded the Queen's cry and went down under to kill Ajax.
Several minutes later, Ben was surprised by the sight of hundreds of Icebugs corpses raising themselves from the dead and running towards the stadium with its front doors opened up.
For a minute, Ben paused his run to figure out what was going on. Then a shadow passed over where Ben stood, which caused him to look up. He spotted a Humanoid White Moth flying around in the sky above. It is pouring down tiny scales that fall onto the corpses on the streets, which begin to move on their own.
Ben's own skills required mana to manipulate others, so it was not hard for him to figure out that Tamer had a similar power but on a scale that Ben couldn't believe possible. He started running again and joined the Icebug corpses as they funneled into the front doors of the stadium.
Just when Ben was about to relax, the unholy cry from the Icebug Queen came out of the sewer inlets on the streets surrounding the stadium. Ben cursed in his mind as he assumed the Queen must have finally noticed her precious egg was missing by now.