Chapter 100 - Battle of the Cavern

  I had my forces retreat a few feet, falling back a bit into the passage. There, my juggernauts formed a solid wall of bone, barring the ants’ way. By holding them back just inside the tunnel, the ants could only come at us so many at a time.

  That didn’t mean the defense was easy, though. The came at us along the walls and ceiling as well as the floor. The juggernauts weren’t great at spotting the wall-crawlers and were useless against the ants on the ceiling, so I had the fire skeletons focus on those.

  The fighting was brutal. Ants flooded the passage until I could barely see the light leaking through from the eggs in the chamber beyond. They were all over us. Hope’s barking from the rear warned me that this was a two-sided battle. I glanced back—my rear guard was holding on back there, but barely.

  There weren’t as many ants to our rear, so I was betting that I could still escape if I wanted to. All I’d need to do is shift our focus from most of my forces in the front to most behind, and we’d manage to blast our way out, same way we did last time. That would mean letting this nest of horrors live, though, and that wasn’t happening.

  Was it the right thing to do, wiping them all out? I had no idea if there were other ant nests in the world that had been enlarged by the Event. Maybe these creatures were the only ones of their kind anywhere. If I killed them all, was I making a species extinct? Was I becoming a monster, by fighting monsters? Thoughts like that briefly crossed my mind while I battled.

  I discarded them. If I had a choice, I’d still aim for a peaceful solution, like I had with the avians. I’d offered the same to the ants as well. Either the ant queen hadn’t been willing to make a deal and let me leave with Kara safely, or they hadn’t understood me well enough for the concept to get through. Either way, it made them a danger to any human in the area.

  We reached a detente, where the ants weren’t getting anywhere but neither was I, and then the ants withdrew, pulling back. The ones attacking the rear guard vanished into side tunnels, giving us a clear path out, while the ones ahead of us withdrew into the main egg chamber. There they stood, waiting for us to make the next move.

  “Smart. Too damned smart,” I muttered, eying the forces arrayed ahead of me. Over a hundred ants still stood out there, a formidable force. If they pinned me down, they’d tear me apart in seconds. Same for my undead. Even Sue could be defeated by a mass like that.

  In the tunnel, they were limited in how they could come after us, but now they’d pulled back to the large cavern. If we went in there after them, they could surround us, attacking from all sides. We’d be in deep shit if that happened. If I stayed in the tunnel, they couldn’t win, and they were intelligent enough to figure that out.

  I took the breathing room they’d given me and put it to good use, making sure to Heal any of my undead that were injured. I wanted us all in peak condition before we went in there. While I was waiting for the spell’s timer between casts, I tapped each ant corpse in range, collecting all the crystals I could. If for some reason I was forced to withdraw, at least I’d have some more crystals to show for the assault.

  Pulling back might be the smarter move. I could head back to the Guard base and get some more warriors. Heck, maybe they had a few big barrels of jet fuel I could roll in there and blow up with Sue’s Fireballs. That would cook the eggs and the queen, if I dropped them into this cave.

  But there was a part of me that didn’t want to pull in outside help.

  I’d experienced how strong I was outside, the afternoon before, when I’d been blowing apart undead like they were rag dolls in the cemetery above. Then when Kara was injured I’d been forced to push myself even more, to drive myself as hard as I could. Shocking myself as much as anyone else, I’d won through the worst the ants could toss in my path.

  My gut said I could do that again here. After collecting all the crystals from outside, I was far stronger than I’d been before. The last trip down there, I’d pushed myself to the edge, and made it. But now, that edge was already much further along.

  It was time to see what I could do.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I passed orders to my undead silently, giving them their battle orders for the fight to come. Then I calmly drew my sword, hefted my shield, and shook out my shoulders as I stepped forward between my juggernauts.

  The cavern ahead was about twenty feet tall, which meant I had some wiggle room if I needed to fly upward to escape. So I did the dumb, illogical thing that my gut said was the right move. I rushed forward, shield ahead of me, barreling my way into the front rank of ants!

  My shield slammed into the first, and it exploded in a shower of ant parts, legs and chunks of chitin flying ahead of me.

  I took down another with a quick slash from my sword that severed its head from the rest of it.

  A stomp killed a third.

  I cast Drain Life to kill a fourth.

  It took them that long to react to my rush. The ants swarmed around me, trying to close in from all sides. The press was intense, so I did the logical thing—I took to the air! With a burst of my Flight power, I went up toward the ceiling, leaving the ants trying to grab me behind. I soared past their front ranks and landed on the cave floor behind them.

  As a mass, the entire swarm turned and rushed me. I had their undivided attention, which was exactly what I had in mind. A quick glance over my shoulder told me that my undead were following their orders. Sue shot a Fireball into the ants’ rear ranks, blasting apart a few, and the rest of my undead rushed in. Since the ants had turned to deal with me, few were still facing toward the other threat, and my undead got scads of free kills in.

  The ants kept after me, but that was fine. I dispatched a pair that got too close, but then I was airborne again, flitting my way through the cave toward the queen. She was the real threat. If I took her down, we—

  BANG! I was knocked out of the air by something enormous slamming into me from above. I fell about ten feet, crashed into the sandy cave floor, and then whatever hit me piled down on top of me, crushing me into the dirt. I lost all my wind, and I was pretty sure I’d broken a few ribs to boot. The pain in my chest, shoulder, and right arm was incredible.

  The pain that followed was even worse. Something tore into my right arm, right where it met my shoulder. I felt scraping along the linothorax I wore as whatever it was tried to tear through my armor, but my arm lacked protection and was savaged.

  I screamed, struggling to see what had attacked me. I was face down in the dirt, so it was hard, but I finally caught a glimpse of my attacker. A massive tier four ant was on top of me, jaws shredding my arm. Blood poured down from the growing wounds as it kept worrying at my shoulder, and I realized through the pain that if I didn’t get the thing off me, it was going to bite right through the bone!

  On top of that, the rest of the swarm was still coming at me. The first one arrived, biting my leg and sending another wave of pain through me. I lashed out with my leg, my Strength enough that the kick shattered the offending bug, but there were so many—when that wave hit me, I’d be dead in minutes.

  I managed to reach out with my left arm and aim a Drain at the ant above me. It hit, and I felt almost immediate relief as the ant’s health poured back into me, healing some of my wounds. It was more than the ant wanted to deal with—the creature backed away from me, clacking its mandibles angrily.

  That was my cue! I took off again, zipping skyward just in time, as scores of ants flooded the area where I’d just been lying. Way, way too close.

  Flying was sapping too much of my mana. I couldn’t keep it up very long, and now I saw more ants scaling the walls, moving toward the ceiling. The little creatures were smart; they’d seen a tactic work, and now more of them were getting ready to try.

  I cast another Drain, killing a tier two ant and stabilizing my wounds. The healing felt so good that I gasped as the wounds in my arm and shoulder knitted themselves back together. I couldn’t remember ever being hurt so badly. That one was closer than I wanted it to be.

  It was a good reminder, that I could still be hurt, even killed. I was strong. I’d grown in power, enormously so. But an ambush could still surprise me, and the right series of attacks could still take me down for good if I wasn’t careful. Once the timer expired on my Drain, I used Health to Mana, then Drained another ant.

  While I’d been tied up on the ground, my undead had been busy. Their initial rush put the ants on the defensive, especially with most of the ants following me toward their queen. It left their rear heavily exposed, and my juggernauts tore into them, breaking apart one ant after another, while the fire skeletons picked off any that tried to circle around.

  But as I watched, Sue entered the fray.

  My dinosaur was big—so big that down in these tunnels, there wasn’t a lot Sue could do besides throw Fireballs as a mobile cannon. But that was in the tunnels. This cavern was more than big enough for Sue to go into action in a big way. The impact as Sue plowed into the rear ranks of the ants was almost comic—I got to watch three ants sail through the air from the crushing blow. The dinosaur’s tail lashed out, smashing another ant, and they grabbed a tier three ant in their jaws, crunching it apart.

  All of a sudden the ants had two targets to worry about again, which took a lot of the pressure off me. That left me free to face off against our primary enemy. Flitting forward, I dodged the places I saw ants trying to crawl along the ceiling above me, flying straight toward the queen ant.

  She screeched, giving off an audible sound again. Of all the ants, she was the only one I heard making vocalizations. She reared up, her front sections above the ground, jaws open as she prepared to meet me in combat.

  “Come on, then!” I shouted as I dove from the sky to land on the ground in front of her, sword held between us. “Let’s go!”