Author's note:-

Sir Neruz, please accept my gratitude for your comment. It opened the door and i was able to have another break through relating to the plot. I really had no idea how to make two different points connect, but after reading your comment and thinking deeply on it, it happened. An ideas came to me and i worked on it. Thank you once again.

Cause of it, the ending to this arc has changed somewhat. I think that almost everyone will curse me for doing it, but believe me, it thickens the water and makes it a soup worth drinking.

About the chapter:-

You can skip everything, but don't skip D'sue pov, ITS IMPORTANT.

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Enjoy

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Third person P.O.V:-

Huh?

It was not one of them who had his eyes wide opened, but everyone looked like he just told them about a coming apocalypse.

It would have been a different story if the archer wasn't dead, but the only thing that they hadn’t even thought of when they accepted this seemingly easy mission actually happened and someone had died. Now, even if they completed the job, this mission would still be considered, a failure.

One of their team members had died and all hell went loose on their leader. Once this news traveled to the guild then it would not only question their power but it would also decrease their and their guilds reputation. Once they went back and announced that one of them was killed fighting ants, it would not only make other people laugh at them but also lead to commoners belittling B ranker's. Adventurers thrive on reputation. It is this reputation and fame for which most of them put their life on the line.  This job was thus a bust.

James their leader was still looking at the ceiling. His face was expressionless and his eyes red with blood. The other members were also sitting beside him, silently waiting like the fallen snow. They waited for their leader to get his thoughts collected. Just like falling slow, they also didn’t utter even a single word and stayed sitting silently beside him.

But the silence broke when Dust leaked a sigh and stood up. She looked toward James once and spoke after gritting her teeth, "we need you. We know it must be hard, letting someone die when you promised to protect them, but please get up we need you right now."

Seeing what Dust was doing, Martha also stood up, "Yes although I don't want to admit it, but she is right. This place is dangerous and your fight must have already proved to you how dangerous this place really is. We have a mission to accomplish and if the queen could send 30 some ants just to take care of you and...him, then she must have a large amount of ants near her waiting for us.”

 She said calmly, but her voice gave her away. Her voice was quaking and Martha's eyes were a bit wet, but she didn't let the shock of losing a member, get to her head.

Their actions were clearly telling James that they were ready, ready to face the final obstacle and were just waiting for him to get hold of himself.

“Yes, we don’t know how many of them there really are. We don’t know if there are actually more powerful ones inside the room or not. We don’t know how deep this hive really is. We actually don’t know anything, so it is a bit scary, but we still have to complete our mission. We can’t back out now. No matter how many of these ants there are, we are going kill them all.”

Martha was trembling, and her legs were shaking out of her control while saying that.

Others might think that the shock of hearing some die on you must have gotten to her too, but no, it was not the case. She was angry, really angry. She was shaking from anger and blood lust.

 She had decided, no matter how many or what came in her way, she would burn them all. She had her hands clenched so tight that they were now devoid of blood and had gone pale white.

While both the girls were trying to increase the morale of their leader, D’sue had his mind occupied by something else. His eyes were squinted and he was concentrating hard on James face. He had his doubts and they were not simple ones either.

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D’sue’ P.O.V:-

‘Attacked by a ton of ants? Who is he trying to make fool of? Like hell I would believe him and his rubbish talk.’ He was really trying hard to find faults in his acting and behavior, to find out whether he was really telling the truth or not. But in reality, his method provided no help to him.

‘Why was he ambushed like that, when mine and Enco’s team only had to fight with two ants?’ Questionable thoughts and doubts without any answer kept filling his head.

But no matter how many of such ideas were giving him a headache, his facial expressions never changed, it remained same the entire time. He kept looking at the leader to find faults, but James also kept on staring at the roof without any kind of movement.

His mind was going out of order and he was going to accuse him of being a traitor, but out of nowhere the usually quiet and a bit arrogant Dust started attacking him with words.

“We haven’t forgotten your kindness. We haven’t forgotten your ability and we haven’t forgotten your burden. We know how heavy your shoulders were at the start of this expedition, but we are not the same now, we have matured. After going through all of this in these two days, I already feel a connection forming with all of you. I believe in you, so you also need to believe in us too. If you were alone handling all the weight before then let us help you in crossing this cave of misery. We’ll all work together, together to move forward. So don’t lose hope because we are here for you.”

Unlike the other girl who starts blushing when someone holds her hands, she was calm. She didn’t shout but her voice was loud. She wasn’t crying but D’sue and other could still feel the emotions that she spoke with. 

Hearing Dust who has been acting like a pacifist from the start of the mission giving a speech about hope and sharing burdens, D’sue snorted. He knew that there was something wrong with the situation, but he couldn’t point his finger at it. It was something that they couldn’t see, but his guts were telling him that there was definitely something mischievous happening in the background.

He knew their leader was a hypocrite. He always said something but did its opposite. While the girls were trying to wake their leader from his slumber, D’sue was going through a series of questionable thoughts.

‘I still clearly remember when it was the time to face that old monster, who was the one that came forward. It wasn’t Martha or Dust or Enco or even their current dictator; it was him. James didn’t come forward to accept the leader position like he was trying to lay low. But that coward then reprehended me, called me useless, incompetent to be their leader and took away my place.’

‘Well, it was one thing to become the leader but he never did anything. And all the work and fights were done by others.’

‘Then to make us obey his commands and to show his power, he specifically targeted the weakest of their team and attacked him. He attacked the archer to show his prowess and to put a feeling of dread in everyone’s mind.’

‘Moreover, if I think clearly then, the ideas, decisions and skills, which those girls have been crying about, were all provided by Enco and this demon just nodded his head in approval to all of them. This really is the severe case of someone profiting from others work.’

‘And the last one, but the most major one of them all; It was him, who divided the party members into different teams giving reasons like, the ants will attack, the queen is laying eggs not enough time and their numbers will increase.’

I don’t know about other queens but I don’t think that this one really has the capacity to give birth to the number that he claims her have. The ants here are really dangerous and even their weapons are even more dangerous. If the ant could really give birth to more than a hundred ants per hour, then why is she not sending any to take care of us? I am sure no matter how powerful or egoistic we are, there is now way that we could ever be the match of a marching army.  Even if we killed hundreds of them but the time taken to do so the queen would have already laid enough eggs to make this lair our grave, but nothing of that sort is really happening here.’

‘Forgetting about that, he atleast could have arranged the teams differently to improve everyone’s coordination taking note of their compatibility, but instead of doing so he created mismatched teams.’

‘And instead of sending the archer and assassin together, because he was the only one who could understand his language he divided them. Why did he do that? I don’t know.’

‘With the unskilled Martha and him together things might have turned differently. With Enco and Roby together their combination would have proved to be quite amazing. An assassin doing close combat and the archer supporting him from the behind sure would have created the golden party, not forgetting that he was the only one who could understand the assassin.’

‘So from all of this, it surely stinks. Not only him everyone else also stinks. Why is no one talking about him being guilty for killing the archer? It looks like they believe him so much that such thoughts didn’t even enter their minds. And no one is saying anything about going back to take a look at his dead body. I want to do that, but I’m sure even if I did suggest that, he would probably say something like, his body was eaten by the ants or one of them took him away.’

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

His running thoughts and frowning face was still continuing when he saw James standing up.

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Third person P.O.V:-

James wasn’t looking at the ceiling anymore. His eyes were back to normal and were not bloodshot anymore; he was looking straight behind the mage standing in front of him, behind the darkness and into the unknown. He seemed to be looking at something, something that was waiting for them behind the curtains of darkness and the creepy air, which was currently surrounding them.

He lifted his arms and tore away his already nonexistent armor. Then used the torn parts to clear all of the blood form is body. His ripped muscles and shredded skin suspended a feeling of slight discomfort around them.

They saw that most of his wounds had recovered and those wounds left no marks to taint his perfect body and those which had not recovered completely yet, had also stopped bleeding.

 He used the same cloth armor drenched in his? Blood to tightly wrap and cover his recovering injuries. Everyone looked at D’sue once and thanked him for spending his  precious medicine to save their leaders life. But to their thanks D’sue remained motionless. He looked to be in deep thought about something so everyone stopped paying attention to him.

After taking care of his injuries, he looked at everyone and bowed.

“Everyone I’m sorry. Because of me you all weren’t able to continue the mission and had to waste your precious time to take care of someone incompetent like me. I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect all of you. I’m sorry for degrading your motivation and I’m sorry for… letting your friend die.”

He bowed and sincerely apologized to them. We wasn’t asking for their forgiveness, but asking them to cooperate with him until they complete this job and be on their way.

But unlike what he expected both Martha and dust walked some steps forward and yelled at him, “what are you sorry for? Did you not give it your all? Did you not let us enjoy our time in this cave and help us in all the means possible?”

To her questions he didn’t move or said anything to retort her, but stood there, calmly watching them.

“If you did all of that then what are you still being sorry for? You being sorry won’t change anything, so stop indulging yourself in this self pity and move your ass. We don’t have time for this shit. Now, isn’t this one of your favorite lines?”

She ended up smiling after saying that, but in her heart she was really worried, not for him, but she knew that to defeat the final boss they would need everyone’s help. So, how could she leave someone powerful like him behind, when their enemy was just a tunnel away?

When he heard the last line, his already bowing head almost dropped to the ground in shame, but a smile surfaced on his not so elegant but dependable face. If others had seen it then they probably would have felt it to be somewhat odd, but thankfully, because of his bowed head no one saw it

He moved his hand over his face and wiped all of the sweat and tears from it. Then after shaking his head once he slapped his cheeks vigorously and shouted on the top of his voice.

The girls jumped in fright when they saw him behaving like that. Martha thought that maybe he had finally lost his mind. But to her and Dust’s doubts his eyes shined once more with blinding light and they knew then, their leader was back.

James looked at them, his eyes now containing the same fierceness that it had before.

“I’m sorry… for keeping you all waiting. You are right even though I’m your leader, but I still drowned myself in the sadness for him and forgot about all of you. So, I’m sorry for neglecting my duties. Well, it’s funny how hard I was trying not to waste any time, but ended up wasting it the most.”

They saw that he was earnestly apologizing for his mistakes and was really back. Their smiles returned, though a member of their party was dead, but they were still alive and in the world that they lived, living was already very difficult. While it was alright feel sad for the dead, but to not let go, only leads to an early retirement.

“We are late. You know, I know, we all know, so let’s go and end this madness. It’s time to see what that queen can do.” And he moved his legs in the direction of the huge tunnel.

Hearing him say that all the energy that had left their bodies returned they yelled once to get the blood pumping and started walking towards their final battle.

Martha created another light ball to help them see in the darkness, but because the cave was too wide and the roof was too high, it couldn’t light the ceiling. And from experience, they all knew how the ants love to travel using the tunnels and do surprise attacks from the roof.

So, because of her vigilant nature and dark phobia, she created one more light ball, then another and then one more. Like this she created ten of them and after pouring some of her mana inside each and every one, she evenly spread them across the tunnel.

She created three high radiance balls, which she made to float near the ceiling, keeping them fifteen meters apart from each other. And after keeping one ball at the center she created a hexagonal perimeter of light around them using the left ones and the radiance from them created 90 meter zone full of light. When they moved the balls also moved with them, from away it looked like a fierce dome of light taking a walk.

With this their sight increased from a depth of 5 meters to 45 meters in front of them. D’sue and dust were left flabbergasted when they saw her creating a spectacular show of light orange light inside the dark tunnel.

But when they looked at her, sweat was flowing down her face like a river. Her face had also started to become pale and paler by the minute. They understood that she must be having a hard time controlling the light balls and her mana also must be decreasing by the second.

The assassin gave no attention and kept on looking straight and walking behind them, James looked at the sources of light, his eyes became round, but when he looked at the tired but trying Martha, he only spoke one word’ Endure’ and kept on moving forward.

They knew even if he wanted to stop her from wasting her mana like that they wouldn’t be able to stop her. And in the tunnel where who knows from where the monsters would attack this light was really needed timely help. So instead of stopping her he told her to ‘endure’.

While everyone was walking toward the next chapter to their ongoing play, D’sue noticed that he was being watched. He felt a little worried; a sensation of being watched inside darkness ruled tunnel is not a great one. So, to check for the source of his uneasiness, without losing his composure he looked around, but even after double and triple checking he found nothing.

He felt a bit bewildered, but because he didn’t want to be left behind he started moving again walking and increased his pace a little. He had only walked two three steps when the uneasiness returned and he got Goosebumps all over his body. He looked to his left and right but saw nothing, then to remove his suspicion he looked behind once, but just as he did something moved near his feet. He hurriedly turned his head around to look at what it was, but again he saw nothing.

He wanted to yell out loud out of frustration, but because he didn’t want others to label him as a freak for yelling at the walls, he continued to move forward..

 His face was devoid of any expressions, if other looked at him at the moment, then they would think of him as someone calm and collected, but he knew it was not right. The only time his face becomes like that is when he is thinking, thinking harder than in normal situations.

Why was this not a normal situation, well, not because of being toyed by something that he didn’t knew about, but because when he had looked at his feet to find the culprit, instead of finding something creeping around, laying low to the floor, he found something written on it.

The word could mean anything considering different situations, but he knew exactly where it fitted in this play. The word that was written on the floor near his feet was ‘Illusion’.

He felt surprised when he saw that. ‘What could have written it in time when I wasn’t looking?’ But his questions were left unanswered because in this darkness there was no way that he would find anything.

He had stopped walking to ponder about its meaning, so, the distance between him had grown somewhat. Martha noticed that D’sue wasn’t walking with them. She looked back and saw that he wasn’t moving, so she called him out.

When her voice reached him, he awoke back from his trance and looked at her. He smiled at her and nodded his head. After doing that, he once again looked at the floor, to see if there was anything else written there or not, but when he didn’t find anything other than ‘illusion’ written there he exhaled once before rubbing his foot on the word, erasing it. After doing that he looked back at his teammates and then started walking near them.

When the light dome had moved some distance away, two small lights shined near the walls where D’sue had found that note. It looked at the floor and then at the moving people once, before disappearing into the darkness.