Chapter 122: Rushing Forward

Soon after Amanda curled up on the ground and slept peacefully. Dracule, Aphrodite, and Lily arrived not long after.

They handed over all the biomass they collected, and not long after that, the monsters Aphrodite created returned with the monsters the Phoenix King killed.

The monsters Aphrodite created were relatively weak. They were better off as minions.

Allowing them to fight powerful ants would be just a waste of time since they would be killed easily.

That was why I tasked them with collecting the dead monster corpses left behind in the Phoenix King’s rampage.

Even now he was still at it. He was like a mad dog that needed to be put down. There were entire sections of the nest that were completely destroyed.

On the bright side, this gave me the chance to properly inspect his magic through the spy centipede’s vision. I had studied various types of magic before settling on Chao magic.

The Phoenix King’s magic was powerful. It was one of the rarest types there was, which made it difficult to defend against.

His magic was called "lightbringer magic."

For now at least we were at a considerable distance away from him, or so I thought, but for a moment he looked as if he had regained a bit of his sanity.

Using his magic, he split himself into several clones made of light. Each of them moved through the tunnel at the speed of light.

The situation was bad. If he found either me or Amanda, then we would have no choice but to fight him.

Without hesitation, I quickly shook Amanda awake. Her eyes snapped open the moment I touched her, and she drew her weapon, ready for combat.

"What is it?"

"It’s the Phoenix King."

The moment I said those words, she immediately understood.

We didn’t have much, so we simply stood up and left the chamber.

"Where should we go?" She asked since I was the one spying on him.

So far I had been leading him away from the Queen’s lair since that was the direction I was heading.

Whenever I molted. I would have Dracule drop the empty husk in one of the tunnels leading away from the queen’s chambers, so he assumed I was heading in that direction.

Still, with multiple clones working for him. It’s just a matter of time before he realizes this was all a hoax to draw him away.

We need to get closer to the Queen’s chambers before he finds out. That meant we no longer had the luxury of sleeping.

As if waiting for us, more ants attack the moment we break the seal to our chambers to leave.

It was the same ant with features similar to a bat. The moment I opened up the chamber, they let out a piercing screech that assaulted my antennae and the glands on my legs that allowed me to hear.

Amanda clutched her ear and froze for a moment. Powerful sonic blasts can affect the organs both inside and outside your body.

But for me it was more of a mild disturbance.

I shot through the air towards the monsters. My stinger ripped through their bodies, creating darkness in the air before their bodies rained from the sky.

Dracule quickly collected biomass without me having to say a word. We then hurriedly moved through the tunnels, going deeper and deeper.

More ants reared their heads. These ones are weaving webs and setting multiple traps throughout the tunnels.

These webs had a tensile strength multiple times stronger than steel. Even Amanda had to struggle to cut through them.

That reminded me...

"Here," I said as I retrieved an item from my storage space and gave it to her.

"This is..."

"You asked me to make weapons for you out of my obsidian. These are dual daggers, designed like the ones you usually use."

Amanda smiled as she accepted the dagger. It looked as if she were accepting a shiny new toy.

The first thing she did was balance the blade on the tip of her finger, as if testing its weight.

She gave an approving nod then expertly gripped the dagger and gave it a practice swing while channeling her mana inside the weapon. The blade made a sharp whistle as it cut through the air.

The blade was so sharp that it felt as if she were cutting through the fabric of reality itself. As if there were nothing that could not be cut by the blade.

She then aimed the dagger at the seemingly uncuttable webs, and in a single swing, she managed to cut the webs to pieces as if cutting through butter with a hot knife.

Seeing this, the ants began to shoot what looked like venom towards it. I quickly enlarged myself and stood in front of Amanda to act as a cover.

The sheer amount of ants spitting venom and the speed at which the attacks moved made it impossible for her to dodge all of them without getting grazed.

If they are somehow similar to the tarantulas I met before, then their venom is part acid, and it can melt through your skin and enter your bloodstream.

I then quickly sprayed the attacking ants with venom. The substance melted through their body with ease.

Even though it didn’t kill them, with their wings melted, they could no longer fly, and from the sheer pain of it, they could no longer fight.

With the ants down, Amanda surged forward from behind me. Just for a moment, I saw a small smile on her face.

Her daggers ripped through the air and pierced into the monster’s body, killing them instantly.

Lily created vines on the walls that perfectly trapped the monsters while Aphrodite shot them with fireballs.

Dracule disappeared during the battle, but just a few seconds later, he returned from underground with what looked like the remains of a monster in his mouth.

It was that moment that I activated my mana sight, and to my surprise, there were mana signatures underground.

"Be careful, there are more below us," I warned the others.

I then quickly activated my earth control spell and placed huge pressure on the ground, trying to rush the ants below us, but it didn’t work.

These ants seemed to have a stronger exoskeleton than the others. Maybe it was for this exact purpose.

Since I couldn’t kill them that easily, I turned the ground below my feet into magma and dove underground.

The ants lurking underground resembled the ones that dragged the weaker ants away on the night the queen laid her eggs.

They had huge pincers, which allowed them to dig through the ground much easier.

These ants didn’t seem all that powerful, but it was obvious they were valued by the queen. They were clearly of higher status than the other ants.

If I had to guess, they were in charge of building the nests, so even if they weren’t the most powerful, their role gave them high status.

I turned the soil under the surface into magma. Immediately the ants began to panic and tried to crawl to the surface, but the ground on the surface was covered in obsidian, making it impossible for them to break through.

The ants struggled and fought, but in the end, they were melted down until nothing remained.

I then crawled back to the surface to see that Amanda, Lily, Aphrodite, and Dracule had finished taking care of the other ants.

Soon the tunnels and chambers began to be obviously larger. The tunnels were at least double their size, and the chambers were so huge that it felt as if I were standing in a stadium.

"We’re drawing closer," Amanda commented, her face turning pale.

We moved noticeably slower through the tunnels, wary of being ambushed.

Before, if we were ambushed, it wouldn’t be much of a big deal, but now, it is just how powerful the monsters we would face from here on are.

The sheer size of the tunnels and chambers stood like a warning of the dangers that lay ahead.

Even the soil in the area had changed. Before it was a dark reddish color, but now it is a dark shade of blue.

Unlike the rest of the soil in the second strata, the dark reddish soil that made the nest did not have any mana; instead, the soil was acidic. There weren’t any trees growing in the nest.

But now the dark blue soil in this area of the nest was rich with mana. I could also see several mana veins underground.

It took a few seconds for me to realize that these veins were actually roots.

These roots were similar to the ones I encountered before. The ones Lily said contained ichor.

The mana in the air was also growing increasingly more dense. It felt as if we were breathing mana, and if our lungs or organs weren’t strong enough to handle it, it could kill us.

Aphrodite, Lily, and Dracule showed visible signs of being affected, so I quickly placed them inside my storage space before they could be severely affected. While Amanda and I weren’t affected much by it.

Just then a large shadow suddenly spawned out of nowhere at the exit of the chamber, as if a giant monster were heading our way from the tunnel.

A few seconds later, a giant ant covered in plant fibers spawned before us.