Moon charged directly toward the Black Ant Captain with a fierce grin covering his face, ignoring the smaller worker ants scrambling around the periphery of the battle.
The Captain's eyes t Moon's for a split second, a glint flashing between them as both combatants assessed their opponent.
SHRIEK!
The Captain released a piercing battle cry that echoed across the entire nest complex before charging towards the approaching human.
Within a heartbeat, Moon had closed the distance and arrived directly before the massive insect. He imdiately launched a combination of physical attacks, using his body as a living weapon.
Surprisingly, the Ant Captain was absorbing his strikes rather than crumpling imdiately—its exoskeleton proving significantly more durable than the worker ants he'd been dispatching with single blows.
Still that didn't an it wasn't hurt, spider web cracks began to spread across its tough exoskeleton.
The creature was an A-rank, but Moon could sense this was a peak A-rank Black Ant—one that would likely evolve to S-rank given sufficient ti and resources to continue developing.
This made Moon even more excited about the confrontation. Fighting such a powerful beast using his physical body would certainly provide good proficiency gains for his two developing skills.
The battle intensified as both combatants pushed their bodies to the limit. The Captain's claws carved deep gouges in the stone around them as it missed its target, while Moon's attacks began visibly cracking its armored carapace.
As the fight continued, Moon could feel himself becoming progressively stronger. Each successful use of [Stone Clasp] and [Heaviness] increased his proficiency, making subsequent attacks more damaging.
His movents and use of his bodyweight beca more fluid, his timing more perfect, his understanding of how to maximize his new abilities growing with every exchange.
After two minutes of intense combat, the Black Ant Captain finally succumbed to its many injuries. It collapsed heavily, black fluid pooling beneath its cracked exoskeleton.
The remaining worker ants that had been observing from the sidelines began trembling visibly in fear. Several of the smaller ones imdiately fled toward the tunnel entrances, their courage shattered by witnessing their leader's defeat.
However, the more courageous ones continued fighting to the last brink of life.
Another three minutes of one-sided slaughter passed before all the external defenders lay dead around the nest's periter. Moon's notification alerts continued flashing constantly, showcasing his steady accumulation of kills and life gains.
At the end of it, close to sixty A-rank Black Ants had been eliminated, with two-thirds of their corpses now stored in Moon's spatial ring for later sale.
Examining his skill developnt, Moon felt deep satisfaction with his progress. Both [Stone Clasp] and [Heaviness] were approaching mastery level, sitting at approximately 70% proficiency completion.
Moon's attention turned to the dark tunnel entrance leading into the nest's interior. He was certain plenty more Black Ants waited inside, along with whatever victims or treasures the colony had accumulated over ti.
The nest had suddenly transford into a goldmine for Moon—an excellent source of valuable materials. And he wasn't about to waste such an opportunity by stopping at the surface level.
Moon ventured deeper into the tunnel system, prepared to continue his hunting.
Ten minutes of one-sided slaughter later, Moon had killed another fifty A-rank Black Ants, their corpses joining the growing collection in his storage ring. The tunnel floors were slick with black fluid from the dead ants.
His skill proficiency had risen to 85%, approaching the final mastery stage.
"Oh? That's quite an impressive defensive wall, I must admit," Moon muttered, coming to an abrupt halt as he examined the obstacle before him that he had just discovered after so inspection.
The tunnel ahead was blocked by a wall reinforced with powerful iron and other hard minerals. Judging from the fresh construction marks and the way it had been integrated into the existing tunnel structure, this was a recent fortification the ants had created while he fought outside.
"They really are intelligent. If I hadn't used Appraisal to double check, I would have fallen completely for their deception."
The tallic barrier was approximately one ter in diater—just large enough for the ants to pass through, but deliberately sized to restrict larger intruders. What made their strategy particularly clever was how well they'd camouflaged the barrier from the outside, burying it behind carefully arranged boulders and vegetation to make it appear like a natural dead end.
Moon tried to chip at the tal using his dagger, then staff, but it held strong. This wasn't a thin barrier, but a thick one.
Since they were in a confined cave system, Moon couldn't simply use his powerful [Ignite] skill at full strength without risking a tunnel collapse that would trap him inside, and potentially kill him.
He needed a safer, better approach and his various skills created just the perfect one.
Moon retrieved so of the rune inscription materials from his storage ring and began creating specialized containnt inscriptions that would help him focus his skill's destructive force without bringing down the entire cave down with it.
After crafting two primary containnt runes designed to channel and absorb [Ignite's] explosive energy, Moon added earth elental reinforcents—creating additional stone pillars and platforms to distribute the attack stress and prevent cave-ins.
Once his preparations were complete, Moon and Mirage retreated to a safe distance from the target wall. He constructed an additional protective barrier using earth manipulation, creating a sturdy shield to protect them from the intense heat and pressure about to be unleashed.
Moon channeled significant mana into [Ignite], building the spell's power to levels capable of injuring S-rank creatures, then released it down the narrow two-ter corridor.
The massive fireball blasted through the confined space. When it struck the iron-reinforced wall, the impact was trendous—the entire cave system shook violently, loose stones raining from the ceiling as the structure threatened to collapse under the trendous pressure.
In the confined space, the fireball's energy had nowhere to dissipate. The burning flas exploded outward in every direction, creating a furnace-like environnt that turned the air itself into a weapon.
Temperatures spiked to levels that would instantly incinerate even A-Rank beasts caught in the blast radius.
The intense heat and pressure waves rolled back through the corridor like a tsunami, striking Moon's protective earth barrier with trendous force. His defensive wall absorbed the secondary effects—the lingering flas and superheated air that followed the main explosion—though the stone glowed red-hot from the temperature.
When the imdiate conflagration finally subsided and the air cleared enough to see, Moon discovered his attack had been devastatingly effective.
The first part of the walls despite being reinforced had began lting, so becoming magma. The deeper parts of the walls cracked, and burst.
Most importantly, the iron and mineral reinforcents had been completely lted away, reduced to puddles of liquid that pooled on the tunnel floor. The constructed barrier had been obliterated entirely, revealing that the one-ter opening was actually the entrance to a much longer corridor that stretched away into darkness.
A grin ford on Moon's face as he spotted shocked Black Ants in the corridor, clearly trying to continue filling the corridor.
Seeing that they failed, the two captain ants fled deeper into the passage, not daring to fight Moon.
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