Jake kept staring at the corpse of the Hive King for several more seconds, still ready for anything to happen. It looked like it could begin moving at the very next second, even if he knew it wouldn’t. It took a few seconds for Jake to finally dismiss the katars as he fell backward onto his ass, breathing out a loud sigh of relief.
“Damn, you were tough,” Jake said out loud to the corpse of the Hive King. Even now, with the carapace broken in so many places, the termite still looked indestructible. It had not lost a single of its legs despite the continued bombardment, but he could see that the damage to its internals was an entirely other matter. It was all just a mush of flesh and blood beneath the armor, the explosions doing quite a number on the C-grade.
Laying there on the ground, he checked some of his other notifications. Funnily enough, he had another identical string of “branding failed” messages, and he also saw at the very bottom he had indeed gained a level from the Hive King.
*’DING!’ Class: [Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 203 - Stat points allocated, +50 Free Points*
Getting only one level for killing a monster like that seemed bad… but one had to remember Jake had only spent about a day in the termite hive. Earning three class levels in a single day for a C-grade was considered extremely fast, even if one took insane risks to accomplish it.
Reflecting on the fight, there were a few standout moments.
Jake had not really thought about it in the heat of it all … but Eternal Shadow usually had an innate cooldown of sorts. Yet he had used it twice in a row, somehow bypassing it. He frowned, looking for an explanation. Even now, as he lay there on the ground, he knew he could not summon Eternal Shadow again. The cooldown was active, despite far longer passing than the time between his last two casts.
After thinking about it for a bit, he saw only one real explanation: Moment of the Primal Hunter. Somehow the skill being active meant that the cooldown of Eternal Shadow hadn’t properly been applied, something Jake had never even considered was a thing. In combat, he had just acted on instinct most of the time. He still wasn’t sure how and why it had worked, but he wasn’t one to complain over a good thing.
Closing his eyes, Jake wanted to take a breather and relax but knew he would have to move soon. The cavern was collapsing all around, starting mainly at the edges. A massive hole more than two hundred meters deep had been blasted into the ceiling, still pulsing with destructive arcane mana even now, speeding up the collapse.
With a bit of struggle, he got up and cracked his neck. He had stored the bow back into his necklace, despite a deep tear down its middle and small fractures all over it. He felt lucky that it still registered as an item and hoped it could still prove useful somehow. Maybe he could find a talented crafter to repair and improve it… who knows. Speaking of items… it was looting ti-Just then, Jake felt like something was off, and he promptly released a Pulse of Perception. Just as he did, his eyes opened wide. “Well, shit.”
Mustering all the speed he could, he jumped over and stored the corpse of the Hive King. Next, he stored the entire corpse of the Queen as well as all the Guards he felt cores had manifested within. Rushing forward, he got into the egg chamber of the Hive Queen, the barrier having faded after both the King and Queen had fallen.
He summoned his wings and pumped out poison as he also shot off a bombardment of explosive arcane bolts. Arcane Awakening was still active, and he was on a timer before he would have to deactivate it and experience what he reckoned would be quite a hefty period of weakness.
However… that was not his only problem.
From the Pulse of Perception before, Jake saw the network of the hive beneath. He saw termites, all running upwards. Thousands. All C-grade. Jake had wondered where all the spawns were… and now he got his answer. He knew this had to mean there were more C-grade Hive Queens too, but quite frankly, he was in no condition to try and find out where they were.
After all the eggs were destroyed, Jake began charging his wings, using a skill he had never properly used before. A cloud of mist formed around him as his body began to change color, and just as it did, they appeared. Termites streamed into the chamber by the hundreds, but just as they were about to reach Jake, Wings of the Malefic Viper activated, and Jake disappeared using the escape skill.
He passed through space itself, bypassing all concepts as he reappeared only a few seconds after disappearing down in the hive. He had made it all the way to the middle of the valley with his lodge in Haven, his wings turning to mist and dispersing the moment he did. Jake didn’t have the energy to do anything besides falling forward onto the grass, Arcane Awakening deactivating, and Jake taking a well-deserved nap as weakness flooded his body.
Back at the hive, towards the upper layers, weaker termites had appeared again to rebuild and reclaim. None of them noticed as thousands of invisible metal spheres entered through the mounds, invisible and undetectable by them all. The spheres spread out once they were inside, each scanning its surroundings as a map was created.
Whenever a drone did get unlucky and was discovered, it simply self-destructed, releasing a wave of disruptive energy into the air, helping hide all other drones. Slowly, a map was formed of the hive, hundreds of thousands of kilometers of tunnels were put into a three-dimensional model, and Arnold, as well as Haven as a whole, began to get an understanding of what they were dealing with.
A total of forty-eight D-grade Queens were discovered spread throughout an expansive but not overly deep network towards the surface of the Earth. Deeper down, it was suspected more C-grades hid, but scouting them out was difficult for the drones.
One drone – one of the newest models – did manage to get deep. Managed to get past where Jake had fought. It went even deeper than that, remaining undiscovered or perhaps just being ignored. Its goal was not to map out anything but find out how deep the tunnels went. It flew a few hundred kilometers deeper than Jake had managed to get, and it finally reached vast expansive caverns. Caverns larger than was imaginable by pre-system standards. Their sizes were measured in hundreds of kilometers rather than hundreds of meters, and there, the drone managed to catch a glimpse.
Armies of termites battled as they tried to conquer more land. Thousands of C-grades fought local wildlife, claiming resources and battling for experience and power. Like the depths of the ocean, the pinnacle of the sky, and the restricted areas of the surface, this was the domain of C-grades.
A domain embroiled in constant war – the termites being one of the most dangerous factions. At least they were… things were perhaps about to change as the underground monsters got an opportunity to fight back with the menace of the Hive King gone.
Not to mention the coming storm as the Council, with Miranda at the helm, would also soon make their move.
Jake awoke with a huge yawn, only to cringe as his entire body hurt. He opened his eyes and stared at the sky, seeing it was now night. Not that night and day mattered much anymore. Any human, even in E-grade, was totally fine with seeing at night, and with sleep not being a thing for so many and the need reduced for everyone, there was no reason for society to function off a day-night cycle.
With a bit of struggle, he sat himself up. The period of weakness was still going strong, Jake reckoning he had only slept for an hour or so. He had really pushed himself with that Arcane Awakening, and flooding out all the earth mana had caused quite a lot of damage, as pure destruction didn’t discriminate.
No rest for the wicked, Jake joked as he forced himself to stand. He started out by taking out his loot, more specifically, the corpses of the many ectognas. It took quite a bit of effort for him to dig out the cores from all the Guards, netting him another eight. Finally, he took out the two big ones.
First was the Hive Queen. The core she had dropped had an identical description to the other C-grade Hive Queen Jake had killed, but Jake felt the Records within were a lot more potent. Not just in quantity but quality, making it a far better ingredient for the Bee Queen ritual. After depositing the core, Jake stored the corpse again, something he had also done with the Guards.
Next up was the Hive King’s body. Jake took it out and still felt intimidated by its appearance as he looked at it. Upon closer inspection of the corpse, he didn’t feel any core anywhere. Instead, he felt strong energy from a solid piece of its armor covering the back of the Hive King. This specific piece was about a meter and a half long, and eighty or so centimeters wide, with everything around it cracked and broken. Meanwhile, this big shard of chitin looked pristine.
[Isoptera Hive King Chitin (Epic)] – A piece of carapace from a slain mid-tier C-grade Isoptera Hive King. This material is extremely durable, offering incredible defenses against all types of attacks. Has high natural rigidity, making it a difficult material to work with. Has low to limited uses in alchemy.
Jake nodded at the description, finding it very apt. The armor had been insane, and Jake was more than happy to get it. However, he was also fully aware he could not really use it for anything by himself. He needed a good crafter to work with it, but he doubted he would find such a crafter on Earth. Arnold definitely didn’t strike him as the type to use chitin. He was more of a metal kind of guy.
He considered prying loose this big shard of chitin but decided to put it off as he stored the entire corpse. Jake was way too darn tired to do it now and wanted a proper break. Feeling tired despite just waking up, he stumbled into the lodge and headed straight for the bed. He wasn’t sleepy-tired, but the kind of tired where you knew you couldn’t sleep.
Laying down, Jake closed his eyes as he reached out to a certain someone.
“Hey Villy, had fun? Were you at the edge of your seat at the final moments of the fight?” Jake said semi-jokingly.
The god entertained him as he promptly answered. “It was acceptable indeed. How about you? Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Wasn’t bad,” Jake smiled in response. “But I do have some questions about a certain Fourth Desert Queen.”
“Yeah, I reckoned that one was coming. So, what do you wanna know?”
“Who is she? What is this Desert, and why is she the fourth Queen of it? Will there be any future trouble with her or this Endless Empire?” Jake asked rapid-fire style.
“The Fourth Desert Queen is one of the gods of the Endless Empire, as you said, and the ruler of the Fourth Desert, hence the name. The Fourth Desert Queen is quite a high title, and as far as I know, she is likely close to the level of Godqueen. Which makes her pretty strong, but not anyone to be worried about,” Villy answered. “For some context, the Endless Empire is one of the pinnacle factions in the multiverse, their total military power surpassing that of the Altmar Empire, making them equal to the Holy Church. However, they are not usually a faction you interact too much with. They claim their own huge territories, and they only really have one true enemy: the Automata. The faction belonging to Rigoria the Maker, my fellow Primordial. So, yeah, if you truly did make the Endless Empire an enemy, it could be a problem, but I doubt that will happen. Their power lies in numbers and their huge armies. They would not be interested in making an enemy of the Order of the Malefic Viper. In fact, I think they would want to forge a good relationship with you instead.”
“Huh,” Jake exclaimed. “That was quite a lot of lore, but I get the gist of it. Massive ectogna faction.. Does the Endless Empire really not interact with other forces? Are there none from that faction in the Order of the Malefic Viper?”
“I never said that; I said you rarely interact with them. They do still expand and work with others, be it for trade or to recruit allies. What they especially want is something similar to what that Hive Queen wanted: powerful mates. They entice and recruit males from the humanoid races with the intent of having them help birth more powerful armies. Think about it for a moment. A Hive Queen can lay armies of eggs at a time after a single rump in the bed. What if the father of those eggs was someone like you? Someone with potent Records and a Bloodline? Well, they know what happens. Variants appear. Incredibly dangerous variants can then potentially breed further if one of them is a Queen. That is how the Endless Empire has become as powerful as they are today: through continuous selective breeding and constant improvement of their Lineages,” Villy explained lengthily. “And, before you ask, yes, there are Queens from the Endless Empire at the Order, all of them working on the side as honeytraps, though most are there to further their own skills in Alchemy. Not all Hive Queens are focused on breeding either, though it is a core skill for them. Also, funny fact, you being branded a traitor by one of them would not necessarily have been a bad thing, more of a note to others of the Endless Empire that you are noteworthy.”
“That sounds… annoying to deal with,” Jake said after a brief pause. “Will they be more annoying than the Emberflight if I enter their crosshairs?”
“No, probably not. They tend to be very respectful and not push the issue in any way… though I can’t say for sure what they will do if they discover the peculiarities about your race,” the Viper answered. “I also can’t say how they will react if you succeed with your Bee Queen ritual. Only time will tell.”
“Wait, they will react to my ritual?” Jake asked, a bit confused.
“If you do well, I damn well hope so. Ah, but worry about that afterward. It is only relevant if you actually do a good job,” Villy said a bit dismissively.
“Aight,” Jake nodded as he yawned. Earlier, Jake had seen his tiredness was the kind of tiredness that was not sleepy-tiredness… well, as it was, then this kind of tiredness had a tendency to transition into sleepy-tiredness once contact with a comfy bed was made.
“Thanks for the insight… I think I am taking another nap now.”
“Enjoy,” Villy said, his presence disengaging.
Jake yawned a single more time as he turned to the side and took another nice nap.