Crunch, crunch, crunch.
The ants intensified their assault. I looked to the forest to see that they were climbing over the corpses of their scorched brethren in their rush to attack us. The mercenaries, disconcerted by the titan’s arrival, came back to their senses at Salima’s command and scrambled to escape. Though the armored ants walked slowly, the swarm was closing in on us.
My wives, still inside the carriage, were surprisingly quiet. They clasped their hands in prayer, entrusting me with their lives. I expected the princess to panic, but she was surprisingly brave, praying alongside Olivia and Diane despite her fearful trembling.
Now, it’s a man’s duty to meet his wives’ expectations. This was my moment, my chance to show them that the safest place in the world was by my side.
The darkness emanating from my hands wafted toward the queen ant.
Insect monsters tended not to respond to pain, but that didn’t necessarily mean they lacked the ability to feel it. Some people claim they just suppress pain to a certain extent, but at this point, we’re just splitting hairs.
Anyway, that meant that these monsters had never experienced pain beyond a certain threshold. Though the small ones might die of shock from the usual pain-inducing magic, the titan would be a different story.
Fortunately, the pain magic wasn’t the full extent of my plan—I would use the darkness emanating from me to link the senses of the colony of armored ants. As you no doubt know, ants act in colonies and possess a very
weak sense of self. Because of this, they readily accepted the linking of their senses.
The queen, as the nerve center for the colony, had a sort of ecological mental link with the workers she bore. My magic strengthened that connection even further.
“Sorry to do this to you. I’ll make sure you get a proper funeral.”
The darkness floating through the air connected the monsters even to the half-eaten, dying horses as I struck them with lightning, putting them out of their misery. Dozens of horses faced enough pain to kill them, sending a dozens-multiplied wave of pain stimuli racing through the colony. Every armored ant affected by it convulsed and died.
Those dying ants then spread their own pain throughout the linked colony, multiplying the result by about ten thousand. The queen ant, subjected to every last bit of this excruciating pain, shuddered and stopped moving. With her reproductive power, there was no way she had just ten thousand worker ants; the rest were probably out doing ant things, like gathering food.
While the mercenaries were still not looking at me, I hurriedly collected all of the grudges floating around the area. Insects may not feel emotion, but grudges still gathered due to the horrible way they’d died. And, unsurprisingly, the titan’s grudge was far too tremendous for even me to hold onto long. I quickly converted the curse into a charm, constructing a monster-repelling barrier around the entire caravan, which, though I could only make it last a short duration, made up for that in sheer size.
★ Salima ★
When the titan fell to the ground and shook the earth, my mind went blank. Can ya blame me? A few seconds earlier, I’d been about to throw my life away for the sake of letting my bozos escape.
“Is anyone injured? Anyone who’s unhurt or only slightly wounded, go find the horses. Hey! Dumbasses! How long you just gonna stand there like a buncha dunderheads?!”
Whew, that was close. My subordinates were all morons, so it was up to me to keep ’em on task. Fortunately for us, the armored ants were ignoring humans and hunting our horses, instead. Thanks to that, even if some of my men were wounded, nobody died.
Damn, can’t believe we met a titan. The only armored ant titan I could think of was the Steel Ant Sultana, Parapones, a monster that had controlled a small corner of the Ritenb Empire for the last three hundred years. Why would it come this far? Often, monsters would move their territories because they ran out of food or they were chased out by stronger ones. Considering
they’d been there for three hundred years, and were headed by a titan, the first one was probably more likely.
Thinking back, the empire had gone through plenty of heroes in that time. They’d sent armies led by heroes to fight the titan, but Parapones had proved unconquerable. This guy I slept with, who came from the empire, told me about it once when we were pillow talking. At any rate, I wasn’t exactly the smartest woman alive, so I decided my time was better spent focusing on the job at hand than on thinking about a dead monster.
“We’ll pick up the ant materials on the way home. There’s no risk of them being eaten, since they’re so hard, and it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to make off with so many corpses, anyway. For now, let’s just move them to the side to open up the road.”
A few people tried to start dismantling the ants, but my command had them rushing to carry the ants away. But then the man who’d just saved all our hides piped up to ask a curiously oblivious question.
“What do you use ants for anyway? Can you eat them?”
I sure as heck wouldn’t want to eat these things.
“Combining the ant’s carapace with steel will make it a lot stronger without making it heavier. It turns into a metal called magic steel—not just sturdy, but with a high resistance to magic. It’s the perfect material for making armor and shields.”
Mature ants had greater resistance to magic, so we essentially had a mountain of treasure on our hands. Heck, with the titan’s materials at our disposal, a good steelsmith might make us some armor completely immune to magic. We should probably start with the titan’s loot.
Man, with that gargantuan ant, I had enough to probably make armor for hundreds—no, thousands of men. If I gave a suit of armor to all my boys, they’d have a better shot at surviving in battle. Oh, but I shouldn’t be thinking of that now. Besides, Sir Chris was the one who did all the work, after all.
“Once we’ve taken stock of the damage, we’ll prepare to set up camp. Sir Chris, would you like to do the honors of retrieving the titan’s core?”
“I’ll throw it in my inventory and give it to someone else, or something. I can’t stand touching bugs. The idea of touching a queen ant gives me the willies.”
I didn’t particularly want to touch her flabby belly, either. That said, I was hesitant to order around the hero who just slew a titan, so maybe I ought
to just let him rest with his wives? Oh, not to mention…
“All right. Go on and console those poor, scared women in your carriage.”
I saw Princess Lefay peeking shyly from the window of the carriage.
She’d been moon-eyed for the man even before the ambush, and now she had the gaze of a maiden head over heels in love. Oh, how I… never experienced that phase. When I was a kid, I was a petty thief trying to make ends meet, so I didn’t have memories of much besides fighting.
“We’ll camp just up the road. Anyone whose hands are free, start preparing for camp. We’re celebrating the once-in-a-lifetime chance of seeing a titan taken down, so let’s make it a real party, eh?”
Seemingly recovered from the shock by their vigorous work, my men responded heartily. But then I saw some of them already pouring wine, so I gave them a nice punch in the head. You’re bodyguards, dumbasses. Don’t drink on the job!