[Yes! That’s the sword! Good job, Tiny!]
His bat face splits in a wide grin and brings the sword to me, placing it carefully at my feet as if he were a dog playing fetch. Now that knows what he’s doing, he manages to go to each soldier and take their sword, bringing them back to me one by one before he tries to work out what the shield is. When he eventually figures it out, he collects them one by one, bringing them to me and completing his small pile of equipment in front of me.
It takes almost ten minutes for him to get it all done.
[Good job, Tiny,] I say exhaustedly.
He seems immensely pleased with himself. Just how low is your Cunning stat, seriously?
With all of the soldiers disarmed, I feel a lot safer. Against their incredible sword skills, just how many of my fellow workers have been destroyed? I refuse to let them off.
Moving slow, I start to take the queen toward the nest, allowing her to walk steadily as she matches my movement. The soldiers look on with worried eyes as I take their queen away from their line of sight. When one of them tries to turn his head to watch me move, I furiously point at him with an antennae until he turns back around.
As I draw closer, the true extent of the damage that has been done in this battle is exposed. As many as one hundred workers have been killed, their bodies sliced apart by the devastating sword light of their opponents.
These individual ants are simply too weak to fight against high-Level enemies like these. They aren’t intelligent enough to use tactics and they aren’t strong enough to push through the front. If there had been more numbers, say one thousand ants, perhaps they would have been able to swarm over the barrier and break it down. Then again, perhaps the mages would have been able to hold on long enough for these few humans to destroy thousands of my kind.
It isn’t good enough!
This shocking occurrence has clearly shown that against high-Level opponents the colony will only be able to achieve victory at the cost of many lives. For a normal monster ant colony that may be fine. Victory whilst throwing away the individual workers or treating them as disposable, and all that. If I have accepted that the workers of this colony are my family members, my siblings, then I refuse to let them die so simply.
This will be the last time.
[Tiny, I want you to bring that guy you were fighting over to the nest. Then I want you to come back out here and destroy the others.]
The big ape nods, smiling happily.
30. Within the Mind
Only now do I remember my two passengers that I’d thrown off in a rush. Poor Crinis! The little thing can’t even see!
[Crinis! Crinis! Where are you?] I frantically yell in my mental channel.
Turning quickly, I unceremoniously drag the queen this way and that until I notice movement in the grass. Rushing over, I see several little tentacles extended straight up, wiggling frantically.
There it is!
I carefully place one of my legs so that it is just touching the seeking limbs.
[It’s me, climb up!]
Moments later, a much more relaxed blob is resting on my back and a very small worker has emerged from behind a nearby tree and also climbed up onto my head. Mini crew assembled, I return, queen in tow, to the scene of the carnage.
Surrounded by the remains of her own deceased children, the queen isn’t looking good. A horde of workers are rushing about her, their anxiety plain in their disjointed movements, darting backward and forward, unsure what they should do to help the situation.
The human queen seems rather unhappy about being this close to such a massive monster, but I hardly care. Her people are what caused this problem. If she gets uncomfortable, I’ll shed no tears. If she tries to harm the real queen, then she will very quickly regret it.
“Mother! Are you ok?” I cry.
In my mind, I hadn’t imagined she could be injured this badly, she’d always seemed so indestructible that even if I worried about her getting injured, I hadn’t really believed it would happen.
Her super hard carapace met its match in those devastating sword skills today. Numerous cuts and gashes mar her body, some of them very deep.
“I will… be ok,” she replies, her usual calm voice strained to the limit.
“Can you heal yourself? Cast some magic?”
She doesn’t reply for a moment, her great body heaving as she labours to draw in air.
“No… strength,” she manages.
No strength! What the heck does that mean? She can’t concentrate enough to cast the spell? Does she not have enough Mana? This is really bad!
Becoming more concerned every moment, I start to tap up and down her wounds with my antennae almost without thinking about it, my ant instincts kicking in and overriding my more rational behaviour as I try to scramble for a solution.
Holy heck!
One of these cuts is way too deep! Right in the centre of her thorax, a deep and wide wound has opened in her carapace. Within the wound, I’m sure I can see something glittering.
Is that her core?
A chill strikes me to the bone. Had that skill gone any farther, it might have damaged the core directly, something I feel very confident would be immediately fatal to a monster. Just a few more inches and mother would have perished.
Appalled by the thought, I turn on my Mana Sense and examine her core. Usually blazing bright, her core is more of a dim ember right now. Why is her core so weak? It should be full of Mana and packed with energy. Is this why she seems so weak? Is there something wrong with her core?
Desperate to make a difference, I start pulling all of the Mana I can out of my own core and sending it in a stream of mist toward the queen’s. Without knowing if it will help in any way, I persist until my core has almost been tapped completely dry, before I flick on my Mana Sense again and anxiously seek any changes.
There is a slight difference, I think. The response seems a little more energetic this time.
Is she not getting enough Mana in her core?
“Take the queen into the farm!” I shout as loudly as I can to all of the surrounding workers. “Rush in there and destroy everything and then take mother inside and protect her!”
If she needs more Mana, then placing her inside the farm is going to be the best place we can find in the short-term. If the workers pack in there tightly enough then there is practically no chance that a monster will be able to spawn and have a chance of hurting the queen.
“As soon as you can, you need to heal yourself!” I urge the queen. “Your injuries are very serious!”
I’m worried she’ll start trying to heal the injured workers before she bothers to cast the spell on herself. She is usually selfless to a fault.
She begins to carry herself away, painfully and excruciatingly slow, moving toward the farm. Half the colony has assembled to help her, many workers walking straight under her and using their own backs to lift up their parent, trying to help her take the weight of her feet.
I watch her go, still very concerned.
I have other work to do right now though. I’ll have to trust my siblings will be able to complete the task they’ve been given.
Tiny is already on his way back to the battlefield to complete his task. He’s already transported the officer to the top of the anthill where several workers have surrounded him, tapping him with antennae and taking the odd nibble as he resolutely lies face down in the dirt.
“Watch him and don’t let him move,” I tell the workers as I move past, dragging the human queen up the side of the ant hill toward the opening at the top.