I jumped through the entrance to the dungeon, and my comrades followed behind me. It was time to start the most dangerous speedrun we’d ever done!
❈❈❈
“More coming from the front! Three Armor Ants and one Knight Ant!”
I clicked my tongue in frustration as another swarm of ants headed toward us. The enemies near the entrance had mostly consisted of Soldier Ants, which were only a little stronger than the Killer Ants, but as we’d proceeded deeper into the nest we’d started running into more dangerous varieties like the Armor and Hunter Ants. Battling them wasted precious time, and more importantly drained our mana. The Knight Ants that showed up in the center of the nest were the most dangerous by far, and we’d had to pull out all of our strongest moves to take them down quickly. We had no other choice—if we were stingy and tried to conserve our mana, we wouldn’t be able to defeat them fast enough to reach the Ant Queen first.
“We’ll run right through them! Scatter when I throw the smoke bomb!”
“Got it!”
“Roger!”
If we were advancing together with everyone else I wouldn’t have dared to run past enemies like this, but the three of us had spent enough time together that I didn’t need to explain the plan in detail for the two of them to understand what I was getting at. It was a dangerous strategy—it was possible that it would lead to us getting pincered if we ended up spending too much time on the next group we ran into. Not to mention that avoiding enemies like this meant the people coming behind us would have to deal with them. However, since we’d snuck away, we had no one immediately behind us to worry about, and the three of us could cut down enemies fast enough we didn’t have to worry about them catching up too much. We could fully lean into our goal, the only thing that mattered—we must reach the queen as fast as possible.
“Three, two, one... Now!”
I’d waited until right before the ants started attacking us to throw a smoke bomb at them. As soon as it hit, the three of us scattered in different directions, weaving our way between the confused ants. Unfortunately, one of the Armor Ants was outside the range of the smoke bomb, and it started chasing after us as we ran.
I clicked my tongue, then snarled, “Fine, how about this?!” before throwing a bag at the ant following us. It stopped in its tracks.
Thanks, Chisha, you’re a lifesaver.
Right before we’d left, Chisha had given us a bunch of bags of Smelling Salts.
“I nabbed some of the leftover ones,” she’d said nonchalantly as she’d handed the bags to us. “You never know when it’ll come in handy.”
Despite her casual words, Chisha had been slightly out of breath, and it had been clear from looking at her that she’d run all over the city scouring barrels for extra bags for us. Considering the effort she’d gone through, it would have been rude to refuse her gift, so I’d taken the bags with a stiff smile that I was sure hadn’t fooled her at all. Still, it had turned out those bags were effective even here, deep in the Ants’ Nest, and I was now glad that Chisha had gone to all the trouble of collecting them for us.
Just how skilled an alchemist is Rex if his Smelling Salts even work on the ants here? I wondered.
While it was reassuring to have him as an ally, right now we were trying to one-up him, so I was slightly worried that if he was this good, he might be able to reach the queen before us anyway. That being said, we’d left before the appointed time and used a hidden shortcut. On top of that, we’d snuck or run past most enemies, so the only way he’d be able to outpace us was if he was a god of some kind.
“All right, I think we lost them,” I said, coming to a stop once I was certain there were no more ants following us or lurking nearby. “Let’s take a quick break.”
I leaned against the wall. We were still in the middle of enemy territory, and our strict time limit meant we couldn’t take a proper rest, but we could still at least stop and catch our breath for a bit. It was important to stay in top condition, especially considering how much harder things would get from here.
I stared at the unchanging bland scenery of the Ants’ Nest as I steadied my breathing. Man, this place is so depressing.
Every now and then you could see holes dotting the otherwise plain and nondescript walls. Those holes were side passages for ants to transport food through. If they managed to defeat us, they’d take us through one of those too. They wouldn’t kill us right away either. They’d use a special poison to paralyze us, then eventually feed us to their young. At least, that’s what I’d heard from an old adventurer years ago.
That sounds like an awful way to go, I thought with a shiver.
The grim reminder of what fate awaited us if we lost kept me from letting my guard down, and as soon as we’d recovered enough I started running down the passage again. We ran past as many ants as we could, stuck some of them in traps so they couldn’t chase us, and defeated the ones we couldn’t shake. By the time we reached our destination we’d run out of smoke bombs and Smelling Salts bags, and our mana was starting to run low as well.
“We made it...” I muttered as we stopped before the entrance to the Ant Queen’s lair.
❈❈❈
“Holy shit, she’s huge.”
The Ant Queen was over ten meters long, with a massive, swollen abdomen. Still, we’d fought big enemies before, so we knew how to deal with them. I knew from experience regardless of how big or strong an enemy was, when it was three against one we had the advantage. As long as we could analyze and react to the monster’s attack patterns, we’d win. Honestly, this would probably be easier than dealing with the hordes of ants we’d had to fight our way past.
“Everyone ready? Let’s show those bastards from Nivar and the capital where the best adventurers really come from!”
Grinning, I stepped into the room where the Ant Queen was waiting. “Baltore, let’s hit her with a preemptive attack! Match my— Huh?”
Before we could start our assault the Ant Queen had pointed her ass toward us, looking as though she was about to shoot acid in our direction.
“Tch! Evasive action!”
Though we’d had the initiative stolen from us, it was nothing we couldn’t handle. But it was only as we’d started to scatter that I realized something was off. The objects coming out of her behind were covered in slime, but they were most definitely solid. It was only after they started wriggling that I realized she was giving birth to more ants.
“She’s not shooting acid? Oh. Oh no... You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Naturally, a monster’s children were all monsters as well, and the ten ants the Ant Queen had given birth to quickly moved to surround us.
“Keep it together, Dax! You’re supposed to be the leader of the Hounds!” Geeko shouted, snapping me out of my panic.
“All right, ignore the queen for now!” I yelled back. “We need to thin these guys’ numbers!”
From the looks of it, the ants were all different varieties. There were a few dangerous Knight and Armor Ants, but most of them were the much weaker Soldier Ants. We’d be able to chew our way through them quickly enough.
Or so I’d thought.
“Gah! These guys are tough!”