Antelligent Design

91. The Third Ambush, Part 4

I should learn to hold off on the healing gland. Was I missing part of a leg? Maybe. But in this moment, charging into the literal teeth of a myriad of angry monsters, I think perhaps holding off on spending it might have been the better choice. Because this is going to hurt.

BAM!

I slam into the front line, their bodies smash into mine, and without missing a beat, claws and fangs are tearing at my carapace, wild and eager to rend me limb from limb. I can feel them scraping on my carapace, sometimes harmlessly and other times digging grooves that threaten to tear through my defences.

My shiny carapace! Don’t damage it! The regenerative upgrade will help heal that damage over time, but I can’t sustain this battering indefinitely.

Thankfully, I still have my Gravity Domain cranked up, meaning most of the weaker, tier one monsters aren’t able to move properly beneath its effects, let alone launch attacks. They feebly crawl through the dirt and run each other down in order to reach me. Most are stomped into the ground by larger, more fearsome monsters.

Bring it, punks!

My mandibles glow with energy as I pour Mana into them, activating my stamina-draining Bite Skills. I need to go all out here. I can’t afford to hold the energy in my core back. Every second I buy will allow more scouts to make it to the other side of the wall. Stupid mage slaves… if they weren’t so far from me, I’d have ripped them a new one. Sadly, I don’t have the option.

CRUNCH!

With a satisfying slice, my mandibles tear through monsters, cutting away limbs and digging deep into flesh. Naturally, I wouldn’t forget, even in the midst of this crisis, to Level my Severing Bite! Gwahahaha! The melee whirls and dances, and a wild excitement builds in my thorax. My little ant heart is pumping with energy as I cut down my opponents and they break themselves on my exo-skeleton.

Impossible odds, high chance of death, it would sound crazy to say that I missed this kind of fight. There is a certain feeling I can only get when my life is on the line. My concentration is honed to a razor’s edge while my mind processes a thousand different things a second. The heat rolling off the bodies that crowd around me. The blurred images of their future movements. The sensations of my sub-brains straining to hold and direct the flow of Mana through my domain spell. It’s draining, exhilarating, terrifying and fulfilling all at once.

Perhaps I’m starting to understand Tiny more and more…

Wait, is that a bear?

OOF!

An Earth Bear tyrant reared up and battered my left side with one mighty claw, sending sparks flying as it dug channels into my carapace but fails to break through. Still, the impact was enough to stagger me, an opening that the enemies swarming are quick to exploit.

Dangit! I don’t have the time or space to rip through one of those bears. They’re too tough to kill that fast. Mind racing, I scrabble my feet underneath me and move away from the horrid creature, Mana-empowered mandibles chomping as I go. Thanks to the domain, the lumbering brute struggles to keep up so long as I keep moving.

OUCH!

I think I just lost a chunk out of an antenna! How much longer?

“Senior!” came a pheromone shout.

Who the heck?

Next second, several new forms appear in my vision, crashing forward and grappling with monsters around me. Then a larger ant leaps into the fray, slashing about with her deadly mandibles. Larger than the regular soldiers, I can tell her body has been heavily mutated due to her higher-than-average colony member Biomass intake. I could never forget the ant that I’d raised from a mere grub what felt like years ago.

“Vibrant! Aren’t you supposed to be at the ambush point?”

“You can’t keep all the fun to yourself, senior!” she cheerfully replies whilst cutting down monsters with every chomp of her mandibles. “The way is clear, it’s time to go!”

Finally!

“Thanks, Vibrant. Let’s bug out!”

Mandibles flashing, I bite several times in rapid succession, draining my energy dramatically as I attempt to clear a space. After crunching through several monsters, I turn my thorax around and get the heck out of there.

Dash! Dash for justice!

Leaving a trail of howling and angry beasts behind us, Vibrant, her squad and I disengage and flee. The magic wall still glitters with a bright magical energy. The acid has continued its delightful work and the gaps have grown larger, but more important than that are the many tunnels that have been dug. Even now, I can see the scouts who were successfully able to flee have begun to retreat into the forest, still firing acid over the wall and into the swarming horde.

I line myself up with one of the gaps and hurl myself through it with a daring leap, legs scrabbling as I land on the other side. Vibrant’s speed aura paid massive dividends as we charge with all our strength to gain some separation between us and the monsters. Once we’re through the fence, the fence works for us rather than against us, the sheer mass of monsters struggling to push through the gaps and narrow tunnels.

It didn’t take long for the slave mages to realise this, and they allow the wall to fade. Free of the obstacle, the monsters roar anew and charge, ravenous for more ants.

The wall hasn’t gained us much time, but each second counts. The scouts had been able to regroup, but my heart twists when I realise a third of them are missing. We’d approached on a front more than a hundred metres wide, and powerful as I am compared to a regular soldier, I wasn’t able to protect all of them. On the left and right flank, the scouts had been overwhelmed. Only those who’d been able to regroup in the centre behind me had a chance to make it out.

I knew things wouldn’t keep going our way forever. Perhaps the loss of one third of the scouting force is a cheap price to pay for the first intervention of the mages in this battle. It’s still bitter to me. The anger toward the mages, Garralosh and the stupid horde itself continues to build inside me, its heat fuelling me onward.

“We made it!” Vibrant cheers next to me. “Are we still going to go ahead with the plan?”

“We are,” I grate out, struggling to control my rage. “We need to kill as many of these trash as we can.”

Vibrant either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about my aggressive tone. “Sure-sure!” she chirps and turns to her squad.

“Keep running to the next point, spread wide and lead on as many as you can. Get pumped for the battle!” she exhorts them and they respond with a variety of cheers and shouts.

It seems Vibrant’s squad is turning out to be as high energy as she is herself. How… exhausting.

The scouts ahead of us, we run, staying close enough to the horde to tempt them, allowing them to draw a little closer whenever their charge falters, then speeding away before they can catch us. With Vibrant close by, it was childishly simple. Her Speed Aura enhances our already quick ant running speed to the point I don’t need to use my Dash Skill and am able to preserve some stamina. I allow the Gravity Domain to lapse at this point; slowing the enemy down right now would work against the plan, not for it.

If we are to make the enemy pay a bloody price for the damage they’ve inflicted on us today, we need to drag as many as possible with us.