by Simon Archer
That left me Seven, Eight, and Eleven through Sixteen to deal with the Soldiers, so I just divided the groups in half according to level and instructed them to attack the Soldiers while I hit them with rocks.
It wasn’t the best plan, and part of me wanted to make One and Two tank the Soldiers to conserve Aura, but it would be better to finish off the Sentries quicker and then put all my damage dealers on the soldiers. My Aura would just have to hold until then.
Besides, I had my sling, and I was getting pretty good with it. I picked up my biggest rock and readied it.
“As soon as I attack, charge,” I told my ants who responded by twitching their antennae just how they had before. Satisfied, I turned my attention back to the Soldiers.
Which was when I realized that it would be hard to hit one in the head or eye from where I was standing, but if I hit the lead Sentry Ant, I’d clear a path that would let me get the left or right one. That was the Sentry I’d assigned to One, so I turned toward him and smiled brightly.
“Change of plans. After I take down the lead Sentry, get the right Soldier. I’ll hit the left.” His antennae twitched in response, so I just nodded and turned to my task.
I summoned up my aura into the rock until it was practically blazing with all its level three glory. Then I let the little blue meteor fly.
It smashed into the Sentry and with enough force to punch through its eye and crack the other side of its skull which, unsurprisingly, dropped the creature like a bad fucking habit.
My ants charged our adversaries as it collapsed to the dirt which gave our enemies something to focus on. Namely us.
I didn’t waste any time though. I sent another charged rock at the left Soldier.
Unfortunately, even though I hit him square in the center of the heads, it didn’t seem to matter. The creature just turned its head toward me, gnashed its mandibles, and charged at me in a burst of speed that threw a dust cloud into the air.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I launched a second rock that just bounced harmlessly off the creature.
Then it was on me, and I had no more time to think. I let my mandibles materialize in my hands and then lashed out at the charging Soldier. It tried to both slam into me and bite me at the same time, but I’d done this dance a couple of times with the Sentries, so I stepped to the side and whirled like a bullfighter as it came in.
The Soldier’s mandibles snapped shit around empty as I drove the mandible in my left hand into its eye. There was a flurry of sparks as my mandible snapped in half like a piece of kindling.
Still, my attack seemed to have enraged the beast because it whipped its head sideways like it was trying to get away from my attack and bite me at the same time. So, I decided to help it by smacking it on the top of the head with my now empty, Aura-infused fist. The blow drove the ant into the ground, and as its mandibles pierced the earth, I leapt on top of it.
Unfortunately, the creature seemed more than able to support my weight because it barely moved as I landed on its neck. Then it started to buck like a bronco, so I cinched my legs around its neck and grabbed onto its antenna with my left hand.
Pain shot through me as the razor-sharp edge of its antenna cut into my hand, but I pushed it down and focused on driving the mandible in my right hand into its injured eye.
It took four attempts (and three more mandibles from storage) to get the damn thing to go into the eye, and when it did, the ant screamed in pain. I barely heard it though because I was too busy using all my Aura-boosted strength to hammer it into the creature’s eye socket.
That was when it finally managed to buck me off. I hit the ground hard on my shoulder, but as I tried to roll to my feet, the ant barreled into me and knocked me flat on my back as I tried to twist away from it. I came down hard on my shoulder blades, and as breath whooshed out of me, the ant darted in, mandibles thrashing the air.
“Fuck,” I muttered, and as I tried to use my Aura to help me move out of the way faster, I realized I had no more left. That. Wasn’t. Good.
And this fucking ant wasn’t helping things.
So, I did the only thing I could do, I kicked the creature square in the face. The force of the impact rang down my leg as the heel of my foot smashed into its open jaws. It must not have been expecting that because the blow seemed to stun the ant long enough for me to get out of the way. I threw myself to the side right as it tried to take a bite out of me, and as it tore into the earth where I’d been only a moment before, I kicked it again. Only this time, my heel smashed into the mandible I’d driven into its eyes.
Then because it felt so good, I did it until a message flashed across my vision.
You have killed creature: Giant Soldier Ant.
Not bothering to check the messages that I’d ignored while I’d tangoed with the GSA, I leapt to my feet and spun to check on my ant buddies.
What I saw wasn’t good. Almost all my ants were gone save Two, Three, and One. And the sight of Three clenched in the jaws of the bleeding Giant Soldier Ant down there sent me into a rage. Even if they would regenerate, seeing them get hurt pissed me off.
With a roar, I spun on my heel and used Auric Extraction on the fallen Soldier, and as my Aura refilled, a familiar message greeted me.
Pattern: Giant Soldier Ant has been learned. Would you like to create a Giant Soldier Ant?
“Yes,” I growled. Almost immediately, a green Giant Soldier Ant appeared in front of me, and I wasted no time sending it into battle.
“Kill it!” I cried as my remaining Aura began to drop like an anvil as it tried to heal the damage being done to Three.
My Soldier tore forward in a flash and smashed into the enemy with all the force of a Greyhound bus smashing into a cement truck. And with that, I had no more Aura.
Which wasn’t too bad because my new Soldier immediately got the attention of the enemy Soldier. It flung Three to the side and leapt at my guy, who I decided I was going to name Kurt after Kurt Russell from that Soldier movie I’d seen when I was six.
Unfortunately, even though Kurt was a first, he was still weaker than the original which meant I didn’t have a lot of time before he went down, even with One, Two, and Three fighting the GSA.
I beat feet down the hill and used Auric Extraction on the dead Sentries, but because of all the damage my summons were taking, I barely got enough Aura to summon another Giant Soldier Ant. I named Todd because that was the character Kurt Russell played in the aforementioned movie and sent him after the stupid GSA still trying to eat my friends.
Todd wasted no time in sinking his mandibles into the Soldier’s flank, and as it tried to turn to drive him off, Kurt bit into the enemy’s front leg and tore it clean off. As it crashed to the dirt hard, my ants swarmed over him, and a moment later, I got the message I’d been waiting for which was quickly followed by another welcome message.
Your summoned creatures have killed creature: Giant Soldier Ant.
You have leveled up. You gain three stat points and one skill point to distribute.
“Yes!” I cried as I made a fist.
I quickly distributed my stat points, putting another two into Intelligence, and then put the last one into Agility because apparently running out of Aura could definitely be a thing. Then I used my skill point to raise Aura Infusion to level four.
Satisfied, I turned toward the corpse of the Giant Soldier Ant and felt my heart sink a bit. This one pack had wiped out almost all my ants on its own because the Soldiers were quite a bit stronger than the Sentries had been. Hell, even my level three Sentries were almost no match for one normal Soldier.
So, it was with a heavy heart that after I used Auric Extraction on the corpse of the Soldier and set my ants to begin harvesting the corpses, I decided to retire all but One and Two because a quick glance at the stat sheet of Todd confirmed what I’d thought. He was stronger than the others. Sure, the Sentries seemed to have better all-around abilities than the Soldier did, but the Soldiers’ attack and defense were almost
double that of the Sentries, and even though the Sentries were way better at harvesting, the Soldiers’ power was more or less what I needed now.
“Sorry, guys,” I said as I picked up the mandibles I’d had my ants pull off of the Soldier. “But it’s time for an upgrade.”
13
It actually took a lot longer than I’d have liked to sit there and regenerate enough Aura to summon a bunch more Soldier Ants, especially since each one took almost half my Aura to bring forth from the Abyss or wherever they came from, but it was what it was.
Admittedly, there were several times where I wanted to go with less than eighteen ants, but I knew that impatience might be my downfall. In the end, though, I did decide to keep Three instead of putting him back into spectral holding. There were three reasons for this. One, I learned it cost Aura to put summons away, two, the little guy had survived the attack, so I felt I owed it to him to let him stay, and three, the Sentries still were better for harvesting, and I didn’t want to wait around forever after every battle while the Soldiers ham-fisted their way through it.
Once I’d filled out my army to my three Sentries and fifteen Soldiers, I pressed forward and eliminated the other two lines with a lot less work than I’d expected. Even though both of those groups were slightly bigger, each containing three Giant Soldier Ants and six Sentries, my army tore right through them. After all, it was basically three on one or worse.
The process had netted me another level, and both Kurt and Todd were now level three, One and Two were level six, and Three was level five. All the other soldiers, excluding the two I’d summoned when I had leveled up on the last group, were level two.
Better still, the Soldier mandibles I’d been using like daggers seemed a lot stronger than the Sentry ones I’d been using previously because not only did they not break on contact with the Soldier’s hard shell, they cut through it with relative ease. It made sense since the Soldiers did seem to be able to rip through other ants like they were made of tissue paper.
So, needless to say, as I approached the center of the overlay with twenty ants (three Sentries, and seventeen Soldiers), I was feeling pretty confident.
Unfortunately, what I saw made my heart sink.
“I’m not sure why I didn’t expect this,” I mumbled as I found myself staring at what looked like a giant hole in the ground.
Actually, hole wasn’t the right word. Cavern might have been better. It was immensely huge, and even though there were a good two dozen ants standing guard around it, I knew that most of the ants had to be inside, just like a real ant colony back on Earth.
“Guess that just means this dungeon is going to be a touch longer than I expected,” I muttered because judging by my overlay there were probably twenty or thirty more ants within the colony, one of whom had to be the boss. Honestly, I was worried that the moment I attacked, more ants would come spilling out.
That wouldn’t be that bad, really. If more came out, I’d just kill what I could with my summons and then retreat until the enemy ants lost interest. Then I would re-summon my ants and try again. Assuming I didn’t go down, I could handle a battle of attrition.
Either way, I was ready to get myself some more experience.
I let a smile slip across my face as I turned my attention back to the task at hand, gaining entrance to the colony itself. This time, as I focused on each of the enemy ants, I realized there was an ant type I hadn’t encountered before, a Giant Sentinel Ant. He was in addition to the ten Soldiers and thirteen Sentries, and I had no idea what he could do.
While not as bulky as the Soldiers, its face and body were covered in spiky protrusions that reminded me of a triceratops with a stegosaurus body. Worse, I could tell that, even from here, it had an immense amount of Aura flowing through it, and if I’d had to hazard a guess, I’d have said it was at least triple what the Soldiers had.
“Okay…” I mumbled as I took a deep breath. My level two Soldiers could probably take an enemy Soldier on their own, and even if they couldn’t, they could hold their own long enough for my plan to work because the Sentries wouldn’t really be able to do much damage to my summons during that time.
Deciding to ignore the Sentries for now, I took ten of my level two Soldiers and assigned them each a Giant Soldier Ant target. Then, once their target was dead, their orders were to assist the closest ally in dispatching its Soldier.
I told everyone else to attack the Sentinel. Todd and Kurt would lead the charge with five other Soldiers and One, Two, and Three behind them.
Even though I’d leveled my Projectile skill up considerably, I was pretty sure that my attacks would have no effect given the amount of armored plating on the Sentinel. After all, I was just using normal, albeit Aura-infused, rocks. That left me another option, though. I could hang back anyway and take out the Sentries before moving on to the Soldiers, thereby freeing up more of my ants to deal with the Sentinel.
That would also give me the ability to run away a lot easier if things got out of hand.
Satisfied, I turned to my army and gave them a grin. “Do you want to live forever?” I asked, and when they did their usual twitch of the antennae response, I continued. “That’s what I thought.” I pointed toward the assembled horde guarding the entrance to the colony. “Attack!”
My ants charged our enemies, and for the first few moments, everything seemed to be okay. While Todd’s and Kurt’s crew attacked the Sentinel and drew his attention, the other ten Soldiers tore into the enemy’s ranks.
That’s when everything went sideways. The Sentinel let out a howl and slammed its tree-trunk-like legs into the earth, and in that instant, I felt my vision get pulled to it. Then, as I stared stupefied at the creature, all the ants I had assigned to deal with the enemy soldiers turned and leapt toward the Sentinel which had the unfortunate side effect of leaving their backs exposed to the enemy.
It seemed bad, but judging from the way my ants were beating on the Sentinel, I knew there was no way it could withstand the full brunt of my forces for long. I’d probably lose a bunch of soldiers, but they’d eventually drop him and then it wouldn’t be too hard to burn down the remaining enemies.
I raised my sling, ready to do what I could to thin out the Sentries harrying my forces when there was a shimmer to the left of the group. Then a white glow surrounded the Sentinel, and my heart sank as I watched the wounds gouged in its tough outer shell heal back to pristine condition.
My eyes widened in shock. There was a healer hidden somewhere, and if I wanted to win, I had to find and kill it.
“Oh fuck,” I mumbled as my Aura began to drain at a furious rate.
Scrambling forward, I not only focused my Auric Sense ability on the surroundings, but I poured additional Aura into it to activate the Overdrive effect. At once, the scene became a too-bright swirl of colors as I saw the Aura in the fucking air. And, in that swirling mass of light, sound, and energy, I saw the vaguest outline of an ant standing just a few meters to the left of the fight.
It wasn’t enough for me to tell what it looked like, much less identify it by name, but I didn’t care. Either this was the healer, or it was some other kind of stealth unit, and neither of those would be good for my team. Worse, I could see Aura building around it. Was it about to cast another spell?
A quick glance at the Sentinel confirmed my suspicion. The creature was definitely hurt, and no doubt this hidden ant meant to heal its tank. I couldn’t let that happen.
I took off toward it while I swung the rock in my sling a couple of times for good measure as I let Aura fill the attack. Then I hurled the Aura-powered stone at the barely visible creature. There was a loud crack as the rock crashed into my target. As it stumbled sideways, clearly thrown off by my attack, not only did the Aura it had been gathered dissipate, but the creature became clear as day with my Auric Sense.
It was a Giant Minder Ant.
I took a split second to shut down Overdrive and found I could more or less see the creature. It sti
ll had some kind of active camouflage like the Predator had used in those movies that masked most of it from view, but now there was a giant wound that spilled bright green blood down its side.
And that was enough for me. I was nearly to the creature now, and as it turned toward me, I manifested my mandibles from storage and dove at it. My twin weapons sank into its flank with significantly less resistance than I’d experienced even from the Sentries I'd faced.
Unfortunately, the creature let out a furious scream as I tore my mandibles out sideways, spilling ichor across the dirt, and as it did, my spider sense began to tingle. Then I heard the rush of steps as a contingent of ants containing one Soldier and two Sentries broke off toward me. Worse, because of the Sentinel's power, my other ants couldn’t help me. That was fine, though. It wouldn’t take much to finish off the Minder, and then I could deal with the new threat.
“I’ve gotta take this thing down before they get here, or it’ll just heal.” Only as I turned back to the healer who was once more beginning to gather Aura, no doubt to heal itself, I felt the Sentinel's power wash over me again. Everything in me told me to turn and attack it, that it was the most valuable target on the field, and even though I knew that wasn’t true, knew it was just a creature using a spell to keep me from killing its healer, it still cost me several valuable moments.
“No!” I cried out and gritted my teeth as I pumped Aura into resisting the taunt. In my head, I saw myself getting pulled toward the creature by metaphysical ropes, so I did the only thing I could. I summoned up scissors in my mind and focused on cutting the strands one by one.
Though each strand of force pulling me toward the Sentinel took a considerable amount of Aura to slice away, the spell finally broke just as the Aura building in the Minder reached a raging crescendo. So, I did what any self-respecting adventurer would do: I stabbed it in the face.
As I poured what little Aura I had remaining into the attack, my mandibles sank into its head with a sharp crack of splitting chitin. Then I was flying backward as a backlash of energy from the ant’s interrupted spell exploded out of it. I hit the ground hard on my back with little flying ants spinning around my head like I was in a cartoon.
