Magic Breaker Ch 55-57

Chapter 55: Tunnel Rats

/Multiple hunter teams vanished at disparate points in the tunnels. Tracking devices broken, final spots recorded. What the hells is happening out there? Are we really having whole teams hunted down by people barely past the integration?! Get your act together, I wanna see a report of their team comp, stat!/

-Envida Irest, branch head of the Hunter’s Guild in Espiree

- - - 

Living in the caverns is a little dreary. They’re dark, damp, and the food is mid at best. There are no baths, and that’s been getting on my nerves, too. We need some more infrastructure, but none of us have been offered a cleaning job yet.

I don’t mind too much, really. Other than the baths, I can tolerate the food. I like the darkness, even, and I have no issues with things being cramped. It’s calm, and so long as I keep warm, it feels nice. Sometimes I ask Richard for a little help with that, and the little hiy’ht enjoys sitting next to me.

She sometimes hums a few calm, quiet tunes. I hear them more, now that my phone is out of battery. That’s honestly the worst bit of all of this. 

The caves echo. I like Richard’s humming, but her hymns get distorted by the caverns, and the echo is exhausting. It makes it hard to focus, when there are occasionally dripping and skittering noises. But I can’t use my headphones, since those, too, ran out of battery. Bay better figure out how to recharge them soon, or I’ll do it myself.

We have, however, gotten a lot better at navigating the tunnels. There have also been fewer hunters than we expected. Occasionally we find a colony of insects, but we’ve always been able to dispatch them. It’s kinda annoying, I don’t really wanna kill the critters, but such is life. I don’t get too broken up about it, either.

Instead, I focus on the mana maze. Whenever I get bored, I form my mana into a stylus and scratch runes into rocks. If I mess them up, they like to explode into mana-shrapnel, which seems like I might be able to use in combat, but it’s horribly inefficient. I could just make mana orbs and have those explode for cheaper and less time.

Plus, Bay’s job is much better at helping her make bombs. I try inscribing those, too, seeing how the enchantments react. Unfortunately, most of the runes I know are for storing or moving power, as well as sending and receiving signals, rather than anything else. I’m still learning from our water-items, but it’s slow going.

Ah, I wanna steal more.

With a sigh, I relegate myself to practicing the enchantments I already know, and shoring up weaknesses in them. It’s slow going, but I make progress.

[Inscription 5 > 6]

[Job up! Enchanter 7 > 8]

Another point trickles into vessel, and the pressure against my chest grows again. I sometimes have to pour a little bit of mana into [Flesh Restoration], just to deal with the minor amounts of damage it’s doing. I could just keep my mana bottomed out, but honestly? This is good practice for my heart stat.

To train power, I also keep [Suppression] active on myself. With the skill being my highest, the efficiency of mana is pretty good, and I can keep a weak version on me with just what I regenerate. It’s almost like a passive effect, a constant workout for my mind and body. It’s nice, like stretching a sore muscle.

Plus, it helps me understand it and my other skills. Using [Suppression] when I try to solidify mana, or change its shape, makes it much harder. I use it when I practice with the mana maze, and I even deconstruct my own skills sometimes, just to see what would happen.

It’s fun. I learn more about mana, more about skills. Another hunter team finds us, but they’re looking ragged even as they show up. We take them down with little fuss, to the point where I don’t even level from it, the tower not deeming them a challenge.

“What do you think they encountered in the tunnels?” I ask absent-mindedly, while practicing my mana a bit.

“Maybe a gloomstalker?” Richard suggests.

I hum in thought. “Nah, don’t think so, it woulda killed them all.”

She nods, just a bit. “Fair. Probably some cave insects, then,” she notes. 

“Probably,” I agree, then put the thought aside. 

“They smelled weird,” Richard says.

“Hmmmm,” I hum.

When I do so, she quiets down, focussing on the food. She stirs the pot, filled with mushrooms, water, and cuts of meat. We found a small cavern with a dirty spring in it before, and using the purifying waterskin, we can now make stews. Lovely.

Richard’s cooking is good. I think she has a cooking-related job, but I haven’t checked yet. She doesn’t volunteer much about herself, and I respect it. She sure can eat, though. Makes fires, then eats them when we’re done, while also monching plenty of food herself. We forgive her, ‘cause she cooks well.

A few more days pass that way. We walk through the caves, relying on Thatch to spot things and Norman to check them out. We gather up mushrooms where we can find them, cooking them into meals. Jess turns some of the less disgusting cave-critters into decent looking cuts of food. And we survive.

I sigh. Is this… really it? 

All that anger I had at the [Darkbreaker] is still there. I still wanna kill them. I still want to bring Sylves’ arm back, but at the same time, I’ve been feeling a bit stuck. The lack of challenge, of lethality, is making me anxious. I wanna throw myself into the thick of it again, not stand in the back, casting [Suppression] over and over. I’ve run out of magic items to take apart, too, and tracing the runes on the mana maze is getting boring. 

We’re not even fighting anything fun. Just insects. They’re mindless little critters who’ve done nothing to deserve what we’re doing to them. I don’t mind hiding away from strong enemies like a rat. I don’t want my friends to get hurt. But surely, they could spare a couple bounty hunters that don’t almost die in the tunnels, right?

So, when, after some days of scurrying, I find an ant around a corner of a tunnel, I’m intrigued. Ants, huh? Weren’t those known for levelling cities?

How curious.

Chapter 56: Ants

The ant is about the size of a dog. Not a small dog, but not a large one, either. It stands a little smaller than my knees. I tilt my head at it.

Its carapace is a dark grey, almost stone like, with some hints of brown and red in there. It has long mandible, and they look kinda wicked. Ready to bite into flesh, at least. I tilt my head at the critter, and Richard, my partner for today’s exploration, mimics the motion.

And then the ant mimics us, too.

I tilt my head the other way.

The ant tilts its head the other way, too.

Very slowly, I kneel down, and stretch my hand out to it. It moves a little closer, antennae twitching faintly. I wait, patiently.

Richard chirps. It’s a noise that doesn’t get translated, despite the nature of the system. The ant looks at her, then curiously at my hand. It’s antennae twitch. What a curious little creature. 

Another chirp. Another twitch. “What’s going on?” I ask.

The hiy’ht tilts their head, speaking quietly. “She says we smell like enemies. But we don’t look like enemies.”

I nod, then very gently push my hand out further. Very slowly, I cast [Suppression] on myself, trying to mute my smell. 

A twitch, something changed. The ant flinches back a bit. Dang it. Wrong one. I shift my suppression, trying out a few different modes, until Richard whispers again. “Like that,” she says. “Hold it.”

The hiy’ht returns to chittering at the ant, who seems even calmer now. It takes another step towards me, bumping an antenna into my hand. It’s a little fuzzy, covered in tiny hairs. It feels strange, but I don’t mind too much. 

Animals are different from humans. It might be an ant. Maybe there are another hundred thousand out there, but right now, it’s a little critter. And it’s cute. I tilt my head again, and it mimics the motion. I wish I could talk to it. The system rears its head before I can voice it.

[Ascension Quest: Ecosystem Balancing. Earn the assistance and favour of a reasonably dominant force on the first floor. Help them acquire adequate territory in the caverns.]

I blink. Then I look at the ant. 

A reasonably dominant force.

“Richard, did you also…?” I ask.

She nods, slowly. “Yes. An ascension quest.”

Gently, a smile spreads across my lips. The ant chitters, touching another antennae to my hand, and I reach out a little further, brushing it across the critter’s head. It makes a noise that seems eerily close to purring. 

I don’t fully understand the mechanics of the tower yet. There are clearly multiple steps to ascension. An aspect of time, I’m guessing, since integration took a while on Earth. An aspect of discovery, since we only got the quest when finding the ant. Maybe the city, Espiree, could have also provided it, but maybe we hadn’t fulfilled the time requirement then? 

There are more aspects yet. One of change. We need to change something in the tower. About the ecosystem, about the forces in it. Changing the world, for better or for worse, is an indication of progress, after all. And finally, an aspect of challenge. I’d wager that once we complete the challenge, we’ll be able to see the ascension wells again, and then find one.

The ant purrs, and I rub the top of its head. A few bits of mushroom are clumped in the fine hairs there, and I shake them loose, brushing them off. The ant chitters happily. Richard hums with amusement.

“She wants to mark you as a friend,” the hiy’ht informs me.

I look at the critter, then nod. “Sure.”

[The Creeping Darkness reminds you that you have a companion in your shadow!]

I have to hold back a snicker at the message. “Don’t worry, Kuro. No one’s replacing you. Just setting us up for success.”

No reply comes. The ant beckons me forward, and I lean in. Her antenna taps against my forehead, and I feel a thin tether of mana. It’s weak and thin, but it feels heavy. I analyze it for a moment before letting it connect.

A tether forms between me, the ant, and thousand upon thousands more of the creatures.

It’s such a thin connection, though, that despite knowing there are thousands of creatures in it, it’s quiet. There’s no rush, no push. All I feel is a knowledge that they exist if I focus on it, kind of like realizing there are other people living in the same city as you. And even that fades if I don’t focus on it.

What it does do, other than giving me vague impressions of ants existing, is giving me vague impressions of what the ant in front of me, specifically, is thinking. She seems pleased that I cleaned away some of the spores clumping her hairs. She also seems glad that I no longer smell like an enemy. 

I tilt my head, wondering if she can hear me, too. She nods, confirming my curiosity. 

The ant isn’t super smart. She can’t form full sentence like, say, Richard or me, but she’s much sharper than, say, a dog. In fact…

[Worker - 5]

The ant has a job. Not just a species and a supremacy level, but a job, and probably a class too, but since she gives me a somewhat offended huff when I check the job, I don’t try again. Instead, I thank her by brushing some more spores from her hair, and picking out a few pieces of spider web, and my rude infraction against polite ant-culture is forgotten.

Eventually, I step back a bit, and Richard also gets a tap from an antenna. My connection to her is a lot duller. I don’t feel any emotions from Richard, just a vague awareness that she is an acquaintance of a friend. How funny. 

We look at each other, and the hiy’ht smiles. “I am glad we did not fight.”

I nod. “Let’s get the others,” I say. “We should give this ascension quest a shot.”

Richard nods. “Yes,” she confirms, then turns to the ant, chittering a bit again. After a few seconds, the little critter nods, and Richard turns to me. “She’ll wait here, she says. She’s a little scared of our ‘hive’,” the hiy’ht explains, sounding a bit amused. 

Again, I nod, smiling faintly. Ants are such silly critters indeed. “Let’s get the others then.”

- - -

“Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Norman says. “I finally get used to living in the tunnels and now you want us to come with you, find a colony of monster ants, and try to win their favour so that the tower deems us worthy to ascend?!”

I shrug. “Would you rather try to exterminate the hive?” As the words leave my mouth they taste terrible, as if I just asked him to kick puppies. I hope he’ll say no, for his own good.

Norman just throws his hands up, helplessly. “I don’t know, okay? Shit. I don’t know at all. Fine, let’s go to the stupid monster ants. Whatever could go wrong?” 

With a smile, I give a nod. “Exactly, glad you understand. Alright, let’s go.”

And then, I turn around, and walk. The others follow, some more begrudgingly than others. That’s okay. I’m sure the ants will be more pleasant company.

Chapter 57: Colony

We find our way back to the ant, still waiting for me. It seems a little worried at the size of our party, but when I apply the same suppression as before, the wariness wears off. She quickly rushes in and gives me a flick of an antenna and a tap from a mandible, noting her displeasure at being made to wait in the tunnels for so long.

I reply with a small request to head back quickly, if she’s in a hurry.

The ant gives me a click of her mandibles, which I choose to interpret as a huff, then walks off. And we follow.

Watching her maneuver around the tunnels is fun. She picks each direction so confidently, probably following a trail of some kind. After a few minutes, we see another ant. Another little while passes by, and we see two more. Soon, there are dozens of ants in the tunnels, carrying bits of mushrooms and insects in the same direction as we walked. 

Sometimes, my ant friend stops to brush some spores out of the sensory hairs of her sisters. It takes a little while, but eventually, Inu tries to help one. And, as before, the ant hesitates, then presses into Inu’s hand.

She melts, just a little bit. Her [Empathy] probably gives her more insight into the critters than I have, she’s always been good with animals. Well, maybe not that wolf that tried to eat me. That one didn’t get along well with us.

I shrug, discarding the train of thought, as my mana pushes heavily against my chest again. Since the ants seem a little wary of us, I don’t wanna use too many skills. It feels like they might see that as a sign of hostilities. So, instead, I create an orb of solid mana in my mouth, reshaping it in there. I try to chew on it and make it feel like bubblegum.

The mana crunches a little bit as I chew it, mentally making it shift to fit my teeth. It feels like there are crystals of it grinding against my teeth, creating a funny feeling. Then, I cast [Deconstruction] on my little exercise, trying to break it and hold it together at the same time.

We walk further into the tunnels. Norman yelps when he sees the ants carry their first humanoid body part. 

It’s a leg, overgrown with fuzzy fur, but decidedly still leg-shaped. 

A little bit of blood leaks from the appendage, dripping onto the floor. An ant is carrying it in her mandibles, shuffling by us. Bay swallows drily. I feel Inu borrowing a bit of calm from me. She sends over a bit of the horror she feels at the sight. Curious.

Soon enough, the ant passes. We keep walking anyway. “Snow, are you sure we should throw in with the hive?” Thatch asks.

“Would you rather try out luck with the city?” I return. 

He grimaces. “No…”

I smile, a little. “I mean it,” I say. “If this is too much, we’ll walk. We’ll journey through the tunnels until we find another city where my bounty is forgotten. Or find some other species we can help. But, well, do you think the sapients hesitate to murder the ants?”

“Probably not,” he says, dejected. “It’s… fine. I just worry. My eyes are hurting. There are so many of them.”

That, I agree with. Through the tiny link I have, I can feel them. They’re below us, above us, beside us now. Other tunnels, filled with them. Sometimes, the stone rumbles and shifts slightly, as they use magics to adjust the tunnels. 

It’s amazing, feeling the mana buzzing in the air. So many creatures means a lot of vessels producing, using, and shaping the ethereal substance to manipulate the world. I don’t think any one of these ants is stronger than me. If I really tried, I could probably crush a dozen, maybe even a hundred, but there are already thousands.

We’re at the mercy of the swarm. It’s lucky, then, that they are silent and polite. They don’t come too close to me, they aren’t very loud, and the amount of them breaks up the echo in the caves. They also don’t need much light, leaving some strange globes hovering about.

Somehow, they have more advanced magical lighting than we do. 

I wanna take one of their lamps apart, but that feels rude, so I let go of the urge. Instead, we follow the ant, on and on and on.

- - -

And then, we stand in front of a door.

I’m very serious. The ants carved a door. It’s made from solid stone, but it has hinges, and opens from the middle once a lock is lifted from the inside. Not a very refined thing, at all, but terribly heavy and rather secure. It’s hewn into the solid wall of a cave, meaning the wall is probably about as thick as that of a fortress. 

There’s a scraping noise, and the heavy stone pushes aside. We are led inside what I can only describe as an antechamber. It’s lit with spell-globes, and has a vaulted ceiling. Inside it all, there are a few smaller monstrous ants, about the size of weasels, scurrying about, and caring for a much larger one.

Compound eyes the size of my head turn towards us. Mandibles that could snap me cleanly in half. The monstrous ant is the size of a car, laying down on a bed of dried mushrooms. She tilts her head at me.

I tilt my head in response.

Her mandibles click together three times, a little bit like applause. I feel vague amusement, blurred through the double link. It seems to be more specifically with my newfound buddy, rather than the queen, specifically.

Apparently, that doesn’t stop her, because, as a moment passes, the chitin begins click-claccing. Plates shift. Inside rearrange. The flesh beneath ripples and compressed. A second passes, then ten, and grotesque snapping noises ring out.

A hundred thousand ants are outside, their heads snapping back to attention. From what was once a car sized monstrosity, steps an elegant looking humanoid. Segmented arms ending in two grasping claws, four legs, each ending in tiny little hooks, made to cling to ceilings, a pair of thin, insectoid wings behind her back, and the head of an ant. 

But still. Decidedly humanoid. The mandibles on her face shrink further, sinking back to reveal what almost looks like a mouth. Her… I struggle to call them lips, because they’re not, but what almost passes for lips move, making chittering noise. I listen intently, trying to decipher it.

Richard has more luck, stepping forward, and giving a small bow.

“Yes,” she says. “Until the system translates, I may serve as an intermediary?” she asks, formally.

The queen nods.

Richard turns to us, giving me a cheeky smile. “Hive queen Meg greets us. The tower has told her we may be suitable as champions of the hive. She asks if we are amicable to discuss this further?”

I smile, faintly. “Yeah, alright,” I say. “We can talk.”

Somewhere out there, I hope Philia the [Darkbreaker] is scared. Me and my ant buddies are about to make her life a lot worse.