Four arrows flew towards the fire ant from four directions and sealed every path of escape. Even retreating to avoid the arrows wouldn't allow the fire ant to escape because the arrows were too fast to stop and go back for.
He sealed the deal by letting the blade swarm attack the fire ants from the front. He didn't use any complicated maneuvers with the blade swarm. He just kept them at the edge of his divine sense.
His goal for the blade swarm was to turn them into a wall of blades that would stop his enemy from reaching him easily. So if the fire ant could avoid is attack and reach him against all odds, it would have a difficult obstacle to overcome before it could reach Arthur.
In response to the attack, the wings of the fire ant flared red. Then fire erupted out of them.
The erupted fire propelled the fire ant like a rocket. The sight caused Arthur's heart to tighten briefly. His heart didn't relax until he saw that the fire ant had been struck by an arrow.
The eruption of the fire ant's wings had granted it sudden acceleration that allowed it to dodge the blue arrows. But it couldn't dodge all of the attacks because there was one in every direction.
Unfortunately, Arthur had relaxed too soon. The arrow he thought had hit the fire ant hadn't truly hit it. The fire ant had knocked it out of the sky at the last moment by belching a ball of fire that collided with the blue arrow.
It had looked like the fire ant was hit by the blue arrow because the explosion was too close to the fire ant and had even covered the ant. But in reality, all four of the arrows of lightning had missed.
The three arrows of lightning that missed flew away and struck the ground, where they exploded harmlessly. If they were still in the range of his divine sense, he would have controlled them to circle around and make another attempt at hitting the fire ants.
Unfortunately for him, the range of his divine sense was too short. His range should be 100 meters, but the Mountain Karma divine ability enhanced it to 500 meters.
However, this was still too short to reach the fire ant. There was a distance of 3 kilometers between them.
He had allowed such a distance in order to make full use of his bow and allow space to respond to unexpected developments. Besides that, he didn't want to be too close to the tunnels of the fire ants, as that would make it easy for them to surround him.
He had prioritized safety over control. But now that he was too far to control his arrows, he could only watch the three of them go to waste.
He shrugged and said, "You win some, you lose some."
Now that he knew that the fire ants could produce energy attacks of their own despite lacking a divine sense, he knew that it was correct of him to keep his distance.
Since the previous attack had failed, he produced another attack to solve the problem that the first round of attacks had failed to solve. This problem was how to transform the living fire ant into a dead one.
He produced four more lightning arrows and released all of them at once again. It cost him a lot of energy, but he didn't have a choice but to do so.
If he tried to conserve energy by shooting less than four arrows, odds are that the fire ant would be able to dodge all of them, so they will go to waste.
It is clear that if he is to hit the fire ant from a distance, he has to give it all he's got. He has to do everything within his means to stifle the fire ant and make it difficult for it to dodge.
Even though the efficiency of the four arrows was 25%, he still had to give it 100% effort. The alternative was to watch the fire arrow close the distance between them without doing anything.
It is unlikely that he will be helpless if the fire ant comes within close quarters of him. In fact, it is more likely that he will be able to perform better because the fire ant will be in the range of his divine sense then.
But he still didn't want to watch and wait as his enemy approached him. At the very least, he must give it some trouble. He might just get lucky and achieve something.
He didn't decide to rely on luck, though. He still used wisdom by splitting the third wave of attacks into eight smaller and weaker arrows.
He used this maneuver because the outcome of the second wave of attacks was similar to the first. The fire ant managed to dodge three lightning arrows while knocking one out of the sky.
He thought that he shouldn't repeat the same thing if they are going to have the same outcome. This turned out to be a correct decision. For the first time since the fight started, he scored a hit on the enemy.
The fire ant was smart for an ant, but it wasn't smart enough for an entity at the third mortal coil because its foundation is fake. Its foundation granted it power but not intelligence and divine sense.
This fake foundation was bestowed by the queen of the colony. It meant that the fire ant was more dangerous than normal but was lacking in some decision-making skills.
The lacking mental faculties of the fire ant was why the eight arrows overwhelmed it. It knew that there were eight attacks flying towards it, but it didn't know what to do to resolve all of them.
The problem was that there was no way to instinctively solve the problem. As a beast of instinct, it was stumped when something beyond its experience happened.