RoleplayNovel Chapter 606: Ant Tide [1]
Chapter 606: Ant Tide [1]
After the rain, the wasteland should have been empty and desolate, but right now, as far as the eye could see, the entire land was blanketed in a strange dark purple.Ants!
There were countless ants!
Each one stood at least as tall as a man’s chest, some even higher, their bodies a sinister dark purple that gleamed with a metallic sheen under the post rain sky.
They crawled forward on multiple jointed legs, forelimbs evolved into sickle shaped serrated blades that quivered faintly in the air. Round, unblinking purple eyes fixed on the campsite without the slightest flicker of fear. The antennae atop their heads swayed constantly, cutting the air in sharp twitches as if something far more intelligent than instinct was quietly measuring the distance.
Above them, a darker cloud of winged shapes hung lower in the sky, flying ants, separate from the soldiers below. Their wings produced the suffocating buzz that had torn him from sleep.
More terrifying was their number.
They were not dozens or even hundreds.
Thousands upon thousands, perhaps even more. Starting from about two hundred meters ahead of the campsite, the entire horizon was submerged beneath a purple tide. They were packed densely together, one pressed right up against the next, forming an endless wall of purple.
Not a single one made any sound, only that relentless buzzing from the flyers overhead merging into a single oppressive roar.
Gabriel’s expression cracked for a second. He could have sworn that before now there hadn’t been any ants. In fact, even before sleeping he had spread his senses far and wide and hadn’t sensed anything.
’Except they tracked me here specifically,’ he thought, his eyes glinting. ’But on the bright side, this is also an opportunity.’
He had killed ants before, purple ants to be specific. He had killed worse than ants. Whatever had driven this colony out onto the open wasteland, whatever had made them stronger than the common trash monsters that prowled near the roads, it did not matter.
Their number would only be turned into precious extraction points.
Gabriel did not feel the slightest need to look closer.
The antennae of the frontmost ants swung frantically, and then they halted. The entire swarm stopped in unison, as if receiving a silent command. Hundreds of purple eyes aligned toward the tent, tens of thousands of antennae swaying simultaneously in the air, their movements eerily synchronized, as if conducting some kind of signal exchange.
Then, as if receiving confirmation, the front row of ants began to part to either side.
A significantly larger figure slowly emerged from the ranks.
It was a tall humanoid ant close to three meters high, milky white chitin clinging to a slender armored body like natural armor, and vivid gold stripes ran across its shell from the ridge of its shoulders down to its arms and along the curves of its waist, clearly differentiating it from the other ants. Its eyes were golden, and its massive scythe like forelimbs arched back.
When it opened its mouth, the sound that came out was distorted.
However, in the next instant, the front several hundred worker ants moved as one. The flyers dipped from above while the ground force surged forward at terrifying speed. Their claws tore up great swathes of soil, their sickle like forelimbs producing sharp whistling sounds as they sliced through the air.
Gabriel drew a deep breath. He shifted one foot slightly back, lowering his center of gravity, and gripped the hilt of Crimson Judgement with his right hand.
Then he drew the greatsword.
A crescent shaped arc slash swept out along the ground, slicing an entire row of the foremost ants in half at the waist. Purple bodily fluids and chunks of viscera splattered everywhere, and a pungent, acrid stench instantly filled the air. The bisected ants did not die immediately. Their upper halves still writhed on the ground, sickle forelimbs flailing madly, trying to continue crawling forward.
Gabriel gave them no chance. A second slash followed immediately, this one a vertical cleave, splitting several ants that had tried to flank him from head to tail.
But more ants surged forward.
Two hundred. Three hundred. Five hundred. They swarmed in from all directions, wave after wave, utterly ignoring the corpses of their fallen kin. Each time Gabriel cut down one row, the ants behind simply trampled over the remains and continued their advance.
Their attacks were devoid of any flourish, pure and direct. Every ant that got close to him would madly hack at every part of his body with its sickle forelimbs. Individually, each attack was not particularly powerful, but when dozens of sickles came chopping down at once, even Gabriel was forced to split his attention to defend.
With a thought, seven black iron nails tore through the air behind him.
The nails shot into the ant swarm at the speed of a railgun, like seven streaks of black lightning, piercing through the bodies of dozens of ants. Their tough carapaces were like paper mache before the iron nails, each strike bringing forth a burst of purple blood mist.
But it was still not enough.
The more ants he killed, the more ants surged forward. Two hundred meters away, the golden striped ant’s shrieks grew increasingly sharp, and more worker ants were fed in from the rear, like an endless purple river. Gabriel could see that some ants were beginning to circle around him, trying to approach the tent behind him.
His gaze sharpened. Gabriel sheathed Crimson Judgement and raised his hand. A sphere of dark flame condensed at his fingertip.
Dark Flame Orb!
The orb detonated in the heart of the swarm. A wave of black fire rolled outward, scorching carapace and wing alike. He did not stop at one.
Dark Flame Orb! Dark Flame Orb!
Each blast tore a hole in the purple line. Wherever the flames passed, the bodies of the ants were ignited instantly. Their carapaces melted rapidly under the intense heat, their purple bodily fluids vaporized into acrid steam, their wings shriveling, charring, and turning to ash. Hundreds of ants let out piercing screams simultaneously, short, shrill cries, and then were swallowed by the fire.
Within mere seconds, every ant within a fifty meter radius of the campsite had been reduced to charred, blackened remains.