Chapter 123

It took Zea two days to admit that she just couldn’t do the enchantments that blocked scent with her current level of skills. “Maybe we should call off the whole thing,” she told Luke.

Considering that she hadn’t been all that keen on Project: Ant Smiter to begin with, Luke wasn’t terribly surprised that she was ready to give up on it. “We still have the bombs,” he said. “Can’t hurt to chuck them from a ways away and see what happens.”

“It very much could hurt,” she said. “If they figure out where we are, they’ll chase us until they catch us, even right back into the city. And if they find anyone else on the way, they won’t hesitate to attack those people either.”

“Really? What are they going to do if they can’t find anyone then? Just loiter around for a bit and then go back underground?”

“Reanimate the dead if they can, set them to work expanding the colony. I don’t have the exact numbers on this, but I’ve heard as many as half the ants in a colony are reanimated.”

“Fucking zombie ants,” Luke muttered. “So if they’re dead, do they have XP?”

“They do not,” System said, appearing suddenly. “The reanimation effect is a result of a skill used by the queen and carried by the other ants.”

“But they’re ants,” Luke said. “How much could possibly be left of one after it dies. Are they just reanimating random legs and antennae?”

“The explosion is going to throw a lot of them straight up into the air,” Zea explained. “And they’re just going to land wherever they land. That’s why it’s a big deal to not get tagged with their tracking pheromones. They’re not fast, but they don’t quit. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night fifty miles away from the anthill only to find a hundred thousand of them swarming over your camp.”

“Is this pheromone thing some sort of system fuckery?” Luke asked. “I would think that a dip in the river would be enough to de-stink someone.”

“The skill varies from species to species, but it usually allows for any other ant in the colony to follow the pheromone trail for upwards of several weeks. And it’s practically impossible to remove the scent manually. Special counter-skills need to be employed, such as those that prevent the pheromone from being applied in the first place,” System said.

“So the best strategy is just not to be anywhere near by when these detonate. Can we set them off from far away, or on a timer? That way I could just place them near the ant hill, we could fuck off to some place a few miles out, and there’s no risk of us getting pheromoned or whatever.”

Zea frowned and looked over at the two explosives she’d made. “I can modify them to delay a few minutes after activation, I think. The one I do with [Ghost Script] will be harder. There’s only so much I can do with that to copy actual enchantments.”

“Let’s do that then. We’ll go give it a try, and if the whole idea’s a flop, we’ll abandon it.”

“Ugh. Fine. But I swear by the Gods, if you get us killed…”

“Then the Gods will thank you for a job well done and reward you in the afterlife?” Luke finished for her.

“Ugh,” Zea said again.

* * *

The bomb didn’t look much like any bomb Luke had ever seen. It was made out of a chunk of wood that Luke had carved into an oblong box for her, and which she’d cut a big chunk out of the middle afterwards and wrapped a couple dozen feet of twine around. Tiny little squiggles covered the whole thing like some sort of hieroglyphs, none of which he had the first clue how to read.

They stood about fifty feet away from a massive anthill that rose up well past their heads and which, thanks to his high perception, he could see thousands upon thousands of individual ants crawling around. There were thirty feet of empty space between them and the closest ant, which was not nearly enough, in Zea’s opinion.

“That thing’s going to last about two more minutes before the runes lose power,” she said. “Toss it over there and let’s go. As soon as we’re clear, I’ll detonate it.”

Luke gave it a gentle underhand toss and watched it sail in a smooth arc through the air to smack into the side of the ant hill. Loose dirt shot up twenty feet in the air, along with a few hundred ants that were too close to the drop zone.

“Whoops,” he said with a wince.

“Go!” Zea hissed back at him, already retreating deeper into the woods. They ran as fast as they could for about a minute, then stopped. “Here we go. Ready?”

“Do it.”

The explosion was entirely audible even through all the trees. Branches shook and loose leaves fluttered down to rest on the ground, and Luke was overwhelmed with a massive ding that left him dazed. It wasn’t so much the volume, which was the same as always, but the fact that it was so much… deeper than normal. It resonated through his mind, and he soon saw he wasn’t the only one.

Zea was staring off at nothing, her mouth hanging open. She recovered a second after him and said, “Holy shit.”

Luke wanted to check the notification, but at that moment he noticed a wave of ants bursting out of the anthill. “Time to go!” he said, grabbing her hand and dragging her away from the epicenter of the blast.

They ran another ten minutes or so until he could no longer sense the ants in any way. They stopped on the other side of a small stream, only ten feet wide, but hopefully more than enough to provide a physical barrier that would slow down any insectoid pursuit.

And now to check his gains. He grinned in anticipation and mentally opened up the system notification in his head.

[You have assisted in slaying 72,624 creatures between levels 1-3. 60,960 XP awarded.]

“Holy shit,” Luke said.

“That’s what I said!” Zea told him.

“I gained 5 levels.”

“I got 9.”

“Holy shit,” Luke said again.

“This is why people who take out anthills do it in big groups. They have to, or they’d only be able to do one or two before going mad. Even then, it’s a short-lived career and they’re only acted against if they become a direct threat to a village or town.”

“Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t be as impressive if it was divided thirty ways.”

“This also isn’t the whole colony,” Zea warned him. “See how we didn’t get anything above level 3? The bomb must not have gone deep enough into the ground.”

If they used both those other bombs on that ant hill, he’d probably be at least level 45, maybe even 47 or 48. As nice as that would be, ultimately it would depend on if he could reset XP Madness. If that wasn’t an option once he upgraded his bloodline again, it might be too risky. They had no real control over how many ants the bombs killed, and he could easily end up with two or three times as much XP from the next shot.

“I think we need to find out if I can control XP Madness before we go any further with this plan,” he said.

“We also need to make sure we’re not leading a bunch of ants back to the city.”

“Do you think so?” Luke asked. “We were pretty far away when it went off.”

“It’s better to be sure. I’d rather not have an army follow us back to the inn in the middle of the night. That would get us executed as soon as they figure out who was screwing around and attracted their attention.”

Luke felt like he had to be missing something. Ants were annoying, and maybe Aros ants had some weird skills, but so did the people. They weren’t a threat, not even if they could reanimate their own dead to continue working. Other than society’s tendency to not want to gain a lot of XP, which Luke understood the reasoning behind, he just wasn’t getting the overblown fear of ants.

“So what now? We spend some AP?”

“I’ll pick up rank 2 [Bloodline Purification Ritual]while you scale a tree and see if you can track which way the ants are going.”

It was the work of seconds to leap up, hook his arms around a branch, and climb the rest of the way to the top. From there, he jumped to another, taller, tree that was blocking his view, and peered out across the canopy. “Not much to see from up here,” he muttered.

There were enough gaps for him to get a general picture of what was going on at ground level, but he didn’t have a good look at any single place. It was like looking through a thousand key holes and trying to put together what the door behind them looked like.

Luke stared east for a minute, looking for signs that a swarm of tiny black bodies was washing across the forest. There was nothing. After another few minutes, he dropped down, happy to give Zea the good news.

At least, he was until he got half way to the forest floor. That was when he noticed the movement. Frowning to himself, Luke dropped to the ground and started moving towards it. It could be nothing, but something told him he wasn’t that lucky. It only took a few minutes of running for him to confirm it. Thousands upon thousands of ants were following their trail through the forest.

“Son of a bitch. How did they mark us with their pheromone stink? We never even got close to them.”

Though the question hadn’t been directed specifically at System, he still appeared to answer it. “You were well inside the radius of the underground portion of the colony. It’s possible that just by being nearby, you picked up some of the pheromones the ants themselves leave behind as they move around.”

Luke glanced over at System, who was watching the ants’ silent march. “If it’s just something we stepped on, then they’re really only looking for our shoes, right?”

“That is possible. I am not able to confirm it.”

“One way to find out. Zea’s going to be grumpy about having to walk back barefoot.”

He rushed back and leaped the stream to land next to her. She glanced up, took one look at his face, and said, “Fuck. They’re following us, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, but I have an idea. System thinks just by stepping on the ground the ants walk around on normally, we might have picked up the pheromones. If that’s the case, then they’re just following the stink of our footsteps, right? Abandon the shoes, let them eat them, and we’re good.”

“I… will that work?”

“System wouldn’t tell me,” Luke said.

“Of course,” she said with a sigh. “Okay, well, good news. I think I can get everything we need to do the next ritual pretty easily and cheaply. Less good news, I’m going to need at least a little more AP to upgrade all the support skills.”

“We have two bombs left, and there’s time to make another temporary one before the ants get here. Let’s leave the shoes as bait with a temporary bomb tucked in one, and we’ll blast the ants to hell with that.”

“Eeehhhhh. Let’s not fuck with this colony anymore. If this shoe thing works, we can see about hitting a different one later. Maybe I’ll take another rank in [Runeforging] and [Arcano Dynamics] now that I’ve got some loose AP and try those scent blocking enchantments again.”

Luke shrugged. “Okay, that sounds like a good plan.”

He was just happy she wasn’t mad at him.