Chapter 101 - The Harder They Fall

  A tier two ant tried to get in my way, but a quick blow with my sword sliced it in half. I glanced behind me. Sue and the rest of my undead were keeping the remaining ants occupied. Sue had a way of taking up a lot of space in the room, what with the roars, the Fireballs, and the sheer damned size of the dino.

  I turned back toward the queen, who rushed toward me, hoping to catch me off guard while I was gazing into the distance. That wasn’t going to happen. I met her charge with my shield, slamming her full in the snout with the aluminum circle. The blow stopped her charge cold, but physics still worked, more or less, so I went sailing back about five feet from the impact. I used my Flight power to halt the motion and return.

  “Come on, then,” I told her, slicing at a leg with my sword. She darted out of the way, a neat reminder that she was tier five. I might be tier seven, with a stack of other powerful crystals, but this fight wasn’t going to be simple or quick.

  She dodged sideways, trying to circle me. I backed up, until I realized she was working to position me under one of the ants that had taken up a perch on the ceiling. I rolled my eyes. That wasn’t going to happen! A quick Drain Life killed the offending ant, sending it plummeting to the dirt floor with a crunching sound.

  The queen screeched her fury at me and rushed again. She was like a living station wagon with big mandibles on the front, and for a moment I froze, unsure how to respond. My Agility was high enough that the hesitation didn’t cost me too badly, though. I sidestepped, narrowly avoiding her lunge. Her bite hit my shield with a sound like crashing cymbals.

  More ants were taking up stations on the ceiling to ambush me, though, and I couldn’t watch everything at once. I took to the air, winging my way up toward the would-be ambushers. One, I killed with another Drain, but I didn’t want to burn too much of my mana. The Flight was using up a ton of it by itself. I really hoped the mana cost for that spell would go down as I ranked it up, because it was really hard to stay aloft very long.

  I had to use my sword on the other three, which took a little longer, but I dispatched them all swiftly enough. With flagging mana, I dropped down about twenty feet from the queen, casting a quick Health to Mana to restore myself some. With some of that new magical energy, I cast Drain Life on the queen ant to recover my health. She screeched in pain as the spell slammed into her, sucking her vitality away and transferring it to me.

  “You want me? Come and get it,” I told her.

  She obliged, rushing at me again. There was a desperation to how she moved now, though. Like she already knew she was beaten.

  And she was right. I simply went aloft, letting her pass beneath me, then dropped down on her back and stabbed my sword into her thorax. The armor was tough, but my Strength was more than a match for it. I had a feeling that the sword almost wasn’t even necessary. That if I wanted, I could literally punch through her armor.

  She shook her back, sending me sailing into the air, but once again my Flight took over, catching me before I collided with the wall. I flitted back her way and landed as she whirled toward me, rearing up to attack.

  All of that weight came crashing down on my shield. This time, although my Strength still held, the shield didn’t. It was just aluminum, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised, but it just shattered as her mandibles crunched down on the sides. I let go of the handle, backing away and slashing with my sword as I did. One of her antennae was left on the ground from my wild swing—more luck than skill, that. I needed to practice with the sword if I was going to keep facing serious threats like this.

  She’d almost knocked me to the ground. That would be bad, if it happened. My mobility was key in keeping myself in one piece. Strong as she was, if the queen got a good shot in, she could potentially disable me. She was outmatched, by a long shot. But I wasn’t invulnerable.

  We continued the dance, the ant queen chasing me around while I slowly whittled her down. Each time she rushed too hard, I’d fly clear and then land again. Each time my mana was running low, I’d cast Health to Mana and then Drain her again. Those Drains were adding up. Her Stamina had to be incredible—maybe that was her tier five stat? I’d already cast four Drains on her, which ought to be enough to kill a tier five foe, but if her Stamina was healing her as we fought, then time was working in her favor a little bit.

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  Even so, she was weakening. As she rushed me again, I didn’t even need to fly clear; I just sidestepped instead, slicing off two of her right legs in the process. She staggered, almost falling over as she struggled to turn and face me again. A little part of me almost felt bad. She was dying slowly, piece by piece, because I just wasn’t strong enough to give her a quick death—and I had the sense she wouldn’t accept that, even if I could offer it. At heart I was still a doctor, and while I’d done a lot of killing since the Event, causing unnecessary pain was still anathema to me.

  But all I had to do was recall what I’d seen in those larder rooms near the entrance, and my fury came back in full force. I’d still rather give any enemy a quick death if I could, but there was no question in my mind that she had to die. Too many human lives were at risk if I let her go.

  I slammed in another Drain, pretty near tapping out my mana, but that was fine—she was done in, and she knew it. The queen tried to attack me again anyway, but her speed just wasn’t there anymore. When she tried to bite me, I cut off one of her mandibles with my sword. When she staggered back from the blow, I stepped inside her guard and stabbed upward into her head, the sword sliding in all the way to my fist before it stopped.

  The ant queen shivered, then went still. As I withdrew my blade, she slumped to the ground, finally dead.

  I turned then, checking on my other undead. The two zombie ants were both destroyed, and I’d lost eight juggernauts and six fire skeletons. Clearly, it had been a tough fight over there, too. But the remaining ants were scattering now. There were only a couple dozen of them left, so I sent my minions off chasing them down, keeping Sue and Hope in the main chamber.

  “Sue, can you do something about all of these eggs?” I asked. There were a ton of the things, and they were everywhere, all over the floor. Some of them had been busted apart in the fighting, but there were still scores of eggs left intact, and I wanted them all destroyed before we left. The last thing I wanted was for one of those eggs to be another queen and start the whole thing rolling all over again.

  Sue went to work chomping one egg after another, which let me turn back to checking on the queen situation. She was definitely dead, which meant it was looting time. I reached out to tap her on the forehead, and got a real surprise when three stones plopped into my hand!

  “Three?” I stared at the contents of my hand. I hadn’t been expecting that at all, but maybe I should have. She was clearly a ‘boss mob’ like the goblin mage had been.

  One of those stones was a tier five Stamina, so I’d called that right. As I held it, there was a tingling in my hand. It wanted to merge with the tier five Stamina I already had socketed. Back when I started doing this, they’d just merged, whether I liked it or not. Somewhere along the way, I’d picked up a little more control, because now I could stop it, if I wanted.

  I didn’t want. It was easy to relax that control and allow the Stamina stone to be absorbed into me, merging with the tier five stone I already had to make a tier six. A new sense of vitality and health flooded me, and small scrapes that my Drains hadn’t quite healed before now started knitting themselves back together.

  The second stone was a tier three Natural Armor power. That was pretty cool. I hoped we’d find more of those, because I had a hunch they’d be useful as hell, down the road. I slipped that one into my pouch with the other stones.

  It was the third stone which required the most attention and thought. It wasn’t a crystal at all—it was a control stone. The stone flickered with green and blue lines of power, but as I watched they were replaced with black lines, and tiny flashes of gold—my colors.

  I hadn’t expected the ants to have a control stone. It hadn’t even crossed my radar as a possibility, because I could sense when a new Domain was forged. She clearly hadn’t used the stone, hadn’t set up the domain. Why? It was hard to say for sure, but we were pretty close to the mall and the airport, both of which now hosted Domains. My best guess was that she’d either gotten it after the other Domains were founded and couldn’t use it because they were too close, or she’d gotten it earlier and like me, hadn’t used it.

  There was no way to tell which of those things was true, but now I had two of the things. Intrigued, I pulled my first one from my pocket, holding one in each hand. They tugged at each other, almost like they were magnets that wanted to come together. For a minute I wondered whether that was a good idea or not. If I brought them together, I had a feeling they’d merge into a stronger control stone, and that might not be the best option for me. Right now, I could trade one and keep the other, if I wanted. If I merged them, that option was no longer on the table.

  But the only way I could find out what happened when you merged two control stones was to try it and find out, right?

  With deliberate care, I gradually brought my hands together, allowing the control stones to come into contact.