Throughout the next week, Immanu worked together to pinpoint the exact location of the Boreus nest.

Sparrow had divided everyone into small groups of ten, and each group had been assigned to one quadrant of the glacier to observe where Boreus activity was the densest, so tonight, all of them were gathered inside the library to share their information with each other.

‘All’ of them was a bit of an exaggeration, of course. The children under ten were all sound asleep in their own houses, but the elders and the able-bodied fighters who’d take part in the nest siege were here: Ninmah and Utu and all the rest, naturally, but also Minki and the three bullet ant soldiers, who’d been so diligently devouring the rest of their Boreus flesh reserves in order to strengthen themselves. Sparrow had shared some of his portions with Peregrine and Crow in particular, since the five of them trained soldiers would be taking vanguard in the siege—it’d be no good if just the two of them were lagging behind him and Harpy and Minki.

Maybe someone could make the argument that, at this point, Sparrow should really be the only person gaining points as the only bullet ant soldier with a worm system, but… he felt it couldn’t just be him that grew strong. More than any Capital law, more than any moral principles, he felt he’d need the support of Minki and the three bullet ant soldiers during the siege. They’d inevitably prove themselves useful in ways he couldn’t imagine, so it was better if all five of them were about the same level at least in terms of their basic attributes.

“... So, it is just as Minki said back when she was a silver ant scout,” he started, jabbing his finger into the giant map of the glacier carved into the table. The other twenty-two children in the library were spread all around; some of them were peering down over the second floor railings, some were peering over the third floor railings, but the majority of them were crowded around the table, standing on chairs and each other’s shoulders. Maybe he should’ve had Ninmah bring a bigger table, but the map was already carved. They’d just have to deal with the crampness.

He looked up at everyone, his eyes cold and steely. “From all of your observation reports, Boreus activity is densest around the northern end of the glacier,” he said, flicking the northern end of the map with a finger. “If the Hagi’Shar Forward Army’s previous encounters with Swarm nests mean anything as well, we can also surmise the Boreus nest is at least five hundred metres below the surface, shaped like a giant cylindrical pit. Most nests in Empire territory are deeply vertical with lots of ‘platforms’ jutting out the walls for bugs to rest on. If we had mortars, it would be easy to shell and collapse the entire nest from afar, but… even if we had mortars, we would need to know the precise location of the nest’s entrance. That is typically the only place we can enter a nest from. Once we find it, we can drop straight to the very bottom where the Mutant usually resides.”

Utu raised a hand, and everyone turned to look. “But if we go through the entrance at the top—which I’m assuming is gonna be disguised as just a normal crack or crevice in the glacier—we’ll have to fight through tons of Boreus just to get to the Mutant at the bottom, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t we just… you know. Dig straight through the walls and then come out at the bottom right away?” Utu said, making a vertical chute with his left arm, then miming drilling horizontally into the bottom of the chute with his right hand. “Like this. We wouldn’t have to fight the Boreus from top to bottom then, right? We can just launch a sneak attack on the Mutant–”

“The walls of Swarm nests are typically hardened with a type of pinkish-purple slime the Attini Empire calls ‘crawl’, and it is nigh-unbreakable with the tools we currently have,” Minki explained next to Sparrow, shaking her head in dismay. “And even if we could drill or warp straight through to the bottom, we would not be able to ‘assassinate’ the Mutant. They are not easy to surprise. If we do not clear up the Boreus guarding it from top to bottom and simply rush straight for the Mutant, we will be collapsed on and die.”

Utu frowned. “So… we have to find the entrance and go through there.”

“Correct.”

“But there are hundreds and thousands of crevices in the northern end of the glacier,” Sparrow said, grimacing as she studied the map in detail. “Since the northern end of the glacier has already been completely infested, it will be almost impossible for us to locate the entrance without stepping foot on the crawl itself, and you can think of the crawl as an extension of the Swarm’s consciousness; it is a fleshy slime that sends information back to the Mutant, and once it takes over a region, nothing can easily sneak past without alerting the Swarm. Our first attempt at locating the entrance must be our last. Once we kill the Mutant, we will still have to deal with the rest of the Boreus… but they will no longer be able to reproduce. They will be as good as wiped out.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

The elders looked worriedly at each other, and Ninmah shared their concerns the best; she stared straight at Sparrow across the table, sapphire eyes shimmering with unease.

“... So, what’s the plan?” she asked. “We have a week left before your General’s deadline is up, but he’ll only know we fulfilled our end of the bargain if the bullet ant soldiers can get back to him, right? That’ll probably take… three days, at least. Which means we have to exterminate the nest within eight days.”

Sparrow nodded firmly. “Yes. I propose we launch our siege in five days. The formation is as we discussed before, and the moment we locate the entrance, we clean out the Boreus from top to bottom. We will spare no resources for the siege. Are all the quartz crystal bombs ready, Utu?”

Utu shot him a nervous grin. “The triplets and I made them as you asked, but I don’t see how they’ll help. The Boreus have thick skin. Will the shards really go through?”

“Killing Boreus is not the point of those bombs. Enli, are the children briefed on what they should do while we are away?”

Enli, youngest of the elders, nodded with hesitation. “Yup. Watch the borders, pull up the spikes if necessary, and hide in the underground snow bunkers. I… uh, they might forget and get scared, though–”

“That is fine. If the Boreus launch a counterattack, they just need to survive until we return. The siege should take no longer than two hours to complete,” he interrupted plainly, looking all of them over slowly. “If there is anything else you need to handle before then, best get it done quickly—we will strike at the crack of dawn right as the Boreus go to sleep.”

Truth be told, there wasn’t going to be much of any ‘tactic’ to exterminating the Boreus. They had formations and they had plans—striking in the morning because the Boreus were nocturnal insects was a small part of it—but when they’d eventually come face-to-face with the entrance of the nest, the only thing that’d carry them through to the very bottom was courage. Fearlessness and recklessness in equal parts. There was a reason why it was Forward Army protocol that, whenever a Mutant was seen roaming the battlefield, only the General and the Vice-general could move forward and intercept it. Mutants were not like a giant insect, and the abilities they possessed could very well rival the ‘magic’ the Worm Mages had. The less people confronted a Mutant, the better; they were intelligent bugs that excelled at tearing apart poorly assembled formations.

In all likelihood, the Worm Mages would panic the moment the Mutant Boreus did something out of the ordinary, so he wasn’t going to place them on the frontline. Preferably, they’d never even come in contact with the Mutant. Just the five of them trained soldiers would have to be enough.

…

So, Sparrow waited. Fists planted on the table, looking slowly between the elders. They were all on the opposite side of the table, whispering in each other’s ears, stealing glances at the five of them. Personally, he wasn’t sure what the elders were all so worried about. They were all sufficiently strong enough in terms of attribute levels. Even if they still weren’t all that accurate with their rifles, in the worst case scenario, they could just fall back on their trusty bows and spears. They were as ready as they could be, and they’d come a long way from when he first started training them to hunt Boreus.

He didn’t think the five of them soldiers showed a shred of fear on their faces, either, so if the Worm Mages’ resolve was already crumbling here, he wasn’t sure what he could do to assuage–

“There is still one thing we need to do, yes,” Ninmah said, representing the elders as they all turned to face the five of them. Sparrow and Minki furrowed their brows; the elders all had rather unusually cheery looks on their faces.

“... Yes?” he said, tilting his head. “Is it about the formation? I can go over it again, but I can just as well brief you the night before.”

Ninmah shook her head. “It’s not about the formation.”

“Then, the weaponry? You can use your bows and spears if you like. It is not as if the bullets we confiscated from the outpost are endless, anyways.”

“It’s not about the weapons.”

“Then, what–”

“Harpy, Peregrine, and Crow,” they said as one, “how do you guys feel for a walk to the top of the world?”