Chapter 67: All of Us Are Dead
’It’s quiet.’
This thought passed through Jason’s mind as he glanced around the tunnel that they were moving down. Jason was still riding on the back of the large scout that he had chosen as his designated ride, and all around him, his Legion moved as one unit as they headed down the tunnel. Behind Jason, the bodies of dozens of ants lay broken and destroyed. Once more, Jason decided not to resurrect them since he didn’t want the distraction that would come with the added numbers.
Jason had already given orders to all the subordinates under his command, and that had drained a lot of stamina from him. Right now, he estimated that he was at about half his full stamina capacity, and he knew that adding more ants would mean he had to give more commands to them as well, and that would only drain him even more. It might look like a beneficial strategy on paper, but in reality, the added numbers would just cause him more problems.
Jason would handle the resurrections after he was sure that the ants were all dead. After all, the number of subordinates he had now was almost twice as many as the remaining ants in the colony. And since they were attacking from both the eastern and southern regions simultaneously, they would easily force the ants into a corner and kill them.
Screech!
Screech!
Screeech!
Jason finally emerged at the other end of the tunnel, and he arrived at a large cavernous space right in the middle of the hill. The space was so large that Jason guessed that it took up nearly two-thirds of the entire hill. In front of them was a large gorge that had no visible bottom. Jason’s [Predator’s Gaze] was active as he looked down, but he was still not able to see where the Gorge ended, so he could only guess that the Gorge was far deeper than one kilometer, since that was the distance limit of his eyes.
Jason’s eyes traveled over to the southern region of the cave, and he grinned when he saw that the rest of his Legion were also appearing from that area. The Legion there was mostly made up of wolves since the leader was the Moonlight Wolf boss, so they were all growling angrily towards the large gorge in front of them.
On the platform in the center of the Gorge, the last remaining ants had mounted their final defense. There were only about fifty of them standing there, and for some reason, their number gave Jason pause. Jason’s eyes narrowed as he suddenly thought back to what crossed his mind earlier. It was quiet. Too quiet.
Jason already knew that the ants weren’t stupid. They were at least capable of forming semi-complex attack patterns, so the quietness of the cave led Jason to wonder what exactly they could be planning. Jason hummed, then looked up before blinking in surprise as his [Predator’s Gaze] caught something up there!
There were more than fifty ants clinging to the ceiling of the cave and holding large, football-shaped eggs in their limbs! Jason knew that if not for his special skill, there was no way he would have caught this plan! The eggs were most likely the same as the ones that exploded in the tunnel earlier, and Jason was able to guess what the plan was.
The ants were planning to bombard them with attacks when they tried to cross the gorge!? That was the most hilarious thing that Jason had ever seen! Jason didn’t know why, but at that moment, he felt an fierce laugh bubble up from inside him! It was the same way a human would laugh if they caught rats trying to make plans to kill them! It was just so laughable that Jason couldn’t help himself!
The grin on Jason’s face widened and his eyes met those of one of the ten large ants in the distance. The ant had been waiting patiently for Jason to try to cross the cavern so that they could bombard him, but once the ant saw Jason look up, it knew that Jason had already seen the ants on the ceiling and deciphered the plan! The ant immediately screeched to all the ants on the ceiling, telling them to attack! It was sure that Jason would retreat to avoid the bombardment! If Jason retreats, then they could come up with another way to defeat him!
"Attack!"
But the ants were shocked when Jason put his hand forward and told his Legion to attack! Did they really think that Jason would retreat!? Were they stupid!? The ants might have created a plan that they thought would work against Jason’s army, but in a situation like this, the larger army would always come out on top. Only those who were afraid of death would try to think of an alternative plan in this situation, and Jason’s army was death itself!
All the ants in Jason’s Legion immediately took off towards the incoming bombardment, and the more durable subordinates of the Rooks went to the front and braced themselves to take the full brunt of the bombardment!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Massive explosions echoed throughout the gorge as the ants unleashed the bombs on their enemies! The eggs needed to experience massive compression before they could explode, so the ants couldn’t just throw them at their enemies and hope they went off! Instead, the ants had to hug the eggs to their bodies and then get close to the enemies before setting off the explosions, basically sacrificing their lives so their enemies were killed!
All at once, more than fifty ants set off huge explosions, making the gorge echo with the intense reverberation from their attack! The air grew musky and green with poison as the methane in the eggs spread throughout the region, and Jason made sure that his scout was far enough so that he didn’t inhale the poison.
The ants on the other side of the Gorge began to move once they saw the explosions go off! They thought that the enemies would retreat once they faced the bombardment, but it turned out that the enemies really didn’t care about their lives! They couldn’t fight against something like this!
The ten ants that were leading the charge told the other ants to move forward and sacrifice themselves so that they could get the Queen to safety, but as the poisonous smoke cleared, the ants were all stunned to see that the explosions had done no harm at all!
The rooks that were in front of the charging Legion didn’t face any form of damage since they were far more durable than the damage the explosions caused, and the poisonous gas did nothing to the Legion since they were already dead!
The entire Legion was still in perfect health, and once the explosions died down, they all began to race forward like a wave of pure carnage towards the center of the cavern! The ants quickly began moving back to try and form a protective ring around the entrance to the Queen’s inner chamber, but they were immediately blindsided by the large Adamantine Ant Soldier Rook that arrived sooner than the other ants! The Rook slammed into the first ant, taking it to the ground and biting into its neck!
The Moonlight Wolf Rook was being carried across the gorge by five large soldier ants, and once they were over the gorge, they released it and allowed it to smash into the ground before it ran forward with a ferocity that bordered on pure insanity! It slammed into another one of the ten Queen subordinates before it used its claws to tear into a third one!
An ant tried to bite into its body with its mandibles, but the Rook didn’t even register the attack as it grabbed that ant by the head and bit down hard on its neck to tear it in two!
SCREEEECHHH!!