The second ant went down much faster than the first. The crow led it into an ambush, before it could react, the ant was pinned down by Pareth and Crowie as a horse-sized dragon. A pre-charged hundred million mana piercing bolt drilled a hole in its back, and an exploding arrow landing into that hole the next second turned the ant’s insides into a scrambled mush.
Sohow it still lived through that, but then all Pestle had to do was enter the wrecked ant to enjoy so free at paste before it could heal enough to fight back, and the monster would die as soon as Pestle grabbed all the cores and pulled them out.
Sonia kicked the dead ant, “Goes much better when we don’t give them any ti to cast.”
“Sure does. How many of those exploding arrows do you have?”
“Got twenty-three of those left, but I have enough materials to make about a hundred more. Just no point in pre-crafting that many.”
“Got it. I say we lure all the patrolling ants and deal with them one by one like that. Ten ant skeletons would be huge.”
Sonia nodded, “We just need to be ready to act if they try to run when they spot the dead ones.”
“Obviously. Give a second to charge up another bolt and we go. Bookie, you manage the crows.”
As it turned out, the ants did not have the best survival instincts. When they spotted their dead kin, they would rush to check it out, and get caught by the group every ti. Bookie skillfully managed the crows to lure the ants down one by one, until only three remained.
Sofia was charging her piercing bolt again, preparing for the next ant. “I’m about done, Bookie, get the next one.”
“Hmmhmm… Coming!” Bookie announced after a few seconds. At first he sounded confident, but then he started making strange noises. “Ah… N- Oooooh- Ahhhhh! S- Sofia!” he called out in a panic.
Sofia already guessed, “Another crow got spotted?”
“N- no! The other two ants are following the first one! I think they don’t care about the crows!”
Everyone looked up. Sure enough, a full murder of crow ca flying down, three annoyed giant ants flying behind them.
Ah shit. “Crowie will handle one, we kill it! Pareth take the others!”
The plan sounded dubious, but Sonia readied her bow nonetheless. ntally Sofia gave more orders. Bookie, get our ant out and support Pareth, I’ll send the destroyer choir with you!
With a nod, Bookie fused himself with the high priest skeleton and started summoning the ant.
The crows almost made it to the group, all standing in hiding behind larger roots.
Good, straight down…
Crowie, now!
The tiny bone dragon threw itself at the first of the three incoming ants, trendously growing in size as he did. With an added gravity spell, the ant was pinned against a root under two large dragon paws. It died in the sa way the group had practiced seven tis before.
Pareth and the skeleton ant had jumped in right after, stopping the remaining two ants from reaching the kill-zone, but while they were stopped, they were free to cast. The spells were different, this ti, one ant summoned hundreds of lightning orbs that flew toward everyone, while the other envelopped itself in a searing coat of flowing magma.
Most of the group could ignore the lightning except Bookie and Sonia who were forced into flying for dear life, but that ant was otherwise handled by its skeleton counterpart.
On the other hand, Pareth was struggling with the magma ant, whose fire-imbued mandibles had easily shredded through his right arm and were now threatening to cut more limbs.
Sofia ignored the lightning orbs slamming into her as they were all getting negated by [SIngularity Edict] after the first one, and manually controlled the skull choir. The destroyer skulls were too weak to pierce the ants’ bark, but they were strong enough to pin them down as a collective. The five skulls burned as they grabbed Pareth’s ant, but that gave him the ti he needed to jump over to the other ant, wrestling it and giving the skeleton ant a clear window to grab the magma ant instead.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not ant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
With the switch, both ants were now preliminarily contained, but remained the matter of killing them. Charging a piercing bolt would be a bit long, so Sofia tried a new approach. Her demon form’s [Hollow heart] skill usually would not work a target’s mana heart; but against an enemy with many weaker ones? It was worth trying.
The skeleton ant was not going to be able to hold the magma ant for long, but Sofia decided to target the electric ant first, as it kept continuously casting and putting Sonia in danger. She landed on the electric ant’s back, placed her hand on its back even as the monster shook to free itself from Pareth’s hand and chains, and activated the skill. One ti, then again, and again, and again. A skill that cost ten thousand mana and with no cooldown. All up to her casting speed. A stat she had a lot of.
Every activation was resolved correctly. Whether it erased an actual heart or a tiny mana heart was a mystery, but after eighteen whole activations, the ant slumped, and stopped moving.
Sofia grabbed Pareth’s shoulder to make sure he got the healing of her close aura, and after that taking care of the last ant was a formality.
We’re doing quite good when the monsters aren’t a hundred and fifty levels higher than us, huh.
Sofia looked down at the carnage they had created, ten dead giant ants, and hundreds of roots burned, damaged, and covered in corrosive purple ant venom.
Sorry in advance, Bookie.
“If you’re sorry don’t make eat that!” Bookie complained, as he landed next to Sofia.
Sofia turned her head to look at him, not saying a word.
Bookie decided to pull a Pestle, and let his bones fall into a ssy pile on the root.
“H-Hey, they’re gonna fall!” Sofia cried out, watching Bookie’s bones roll off of root’s round shape. She moved to catch him but Bookie pulled himself back together in the blink of an eye.
“I’ll do it… But I want a cat! A big cat!” he gave his condition, pouting with crossed arms.
“Sure, when we’re out of here we’ll free up one of your pages and get a big cat…”
“It has to be bigger than the chira!” Bookie added.
“Hoy that’s not a cat anymore!”
“But I want it!!!”
“...”
“I might know a monster like that…” Sonia chid in.
“You do?!!!” Bookie reacted right away.
“I’ll add the information to your paynt for the mission,” Sonia said with a faint smile.
“I’ll work hard!” Bookie answered, grabbing his book form from Sofia’s waist and jumping down to the pile of dead ants.
Sofia stared at Sonia in disbelief.
“What? I didn’t lie. I do know a monster like that. Might be a bit of a hard catch though, but that’s your problem.”
Sofia sighed, and watched in amazent as Bookie ate the ten disgusting (in his words) ants without complaining.
It’s like I’ve never left the orphanage.
Bookie would have fit right in…
A bit of a ssed up childhood I’m giving him, is it not…
Next to Sofia, Pareth shrugged, clearly listening in on her thoughts.
Right, you too. I don’t even want to think back to the tis I made you beco a chicken… Or a rat…
It was silent, but Pareth seed to laugh.
After eliminating the patrolling ants, the small group climbed up the roots, and without encountering any more ants, the base of the leyline’s trunk ca into sight. Now that they were this high up, the darkness around them had cleared up a lot, allowing them to see more than a kiloter up and around. Despite that the actual trunk of the leyline was still out of view.
Unlike the relatively clean base of a tree, the connection of the roots to the leyline’s trunk was utter chaos, a gigantic tangle of roots forming a huge block full of holes. Already Sofia could spot a few dozen patrolling ants walking around.
Now this might be a bit too much to try with the sa strategy… If we get surrounded by that many, it’s over.
Sonia grabbed an enchanted glass bead from her backpack and looked up through it.
“Looking good… Ants are not on high alert. I don’t see any big ones yet, which is good. This is where the real challenge starts.”
“How do we do this?” Sofia asked, “It looks quite bad. Couldn’t we fly over this section and land directly on the trunk above?”
“No, the trunk is even worse. That’s where the big ones lay in wait, ideally we find a way into the leyline, and run through the ants’ tunnels hoping not to get caught.”
“... That sounds a thousand tis riskier, doesn’t it. We’ll get surrounded in no ti the mont they sll a whiff of us.”
“Let rephrase,” Sonia said with a smirk, “Tiny tunnel with worker ants, or big trunk with behemoth twelve-legged ants?”
“When you put it like that…”
“And for the sll, well mate I hope you like sap.”
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