The one-year-old baby, who couldn't even walk for more than a few steps without falling down, was currently flailing his hands up and down as he clutched a pair of antennae in his enclosed palms. His baby face now filled with an expression of terror.
The survival instincts of a child are very high and Akash was currently displaying it now. But, it was quite useless. There were tens of ants around Akash, maintaining their distance of about 3 centimetres around him as they saw him smashing one of their own as if it was a ragged doll.
'Snap'
The antennae came off from the head of the ant and it flew off for a centimetre high and crashed into the other watching ants. The antennae-less ant wasn't dead yet and the moment it crashed into the surrounding ants, all the other spectating ants charged towards Akash.
'Boom'
A humanoid figure arrogantly jumped into the charging horde, removed a safety pin from its back, straightened the two ends and began to attack the ants. A series of quick consecutive thrusts immediately pierced through the heads of the ants and instantly killed them.
Diana lifted up the crying Akash who was terrified on being surrounded by numerous scary creatures and secured him with her left hand. She used her right hand to keep attacking the ants and sent swift deaths to them. The lightweight but sharp safety pin that was made from stainless steel helped her greatly.
Within a few seconds, all the ants that had surrounded Akash were killed off.
Diana then began to cautiously walk towards the water bottle near the door and felt the thickness and texture of its surface. It was just a cheap plastic water bottle that Diana used regularly.
Diana gently placed Akash on the ground near her feet, removed the other safety pin from her side since the previous one was coated with the blood of all the ants that she had killed just now. Diana focused towards a spot as high up as could and jabbed the sharp tip of the safety pin at the bottle.
She couldn't make much damage with her first strike but, Diana continued in her endeavour and also spun the safety pin in place as she applied pressure on it. A minute later, Diana was awarded for her efforts as she finally managed to puncture a hole in the water bottle.
A tiny jet of water gushed out and made an arc spanning at least 5 centimetres before touching the ground.
Diana immediately washed her hands, legs and the safety pins of all the blood, then scooped out a handful of water with her cupped palms and poured it over Akash's scratch on his knees.
Akash eventually stopped crying as the injury on his knees looked like they would form scabs soon. They were just a small scratch in the first place.
Diana was only worried about the possibilities of infection due to the scratch, not the injury itself.
"Che" Diana clicked her tongue as she saw the silhouettes of another 30-40 ants running in their direction as she entered a battle-ready state, with her right hand carrying a safety pin, (The other was already pinned to the sides of her skirt) and her left hand carried Akash.
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"Huff…..puff..." Diana gasped for breath as she stood atop the mattress on the bed, having already killed the ants that had chased after them and eventually climbed up the bed to get some breathing space. She was tired.
By the time she could climb up, she had already faced off against 3 waves of ants, with each wave numbering in the 40s.
The current baby boy Akash just silently sat on the mattress beside the resting Diana. The child seemed to have somehow instinctively comprehended their predicament and didn't make much noise. He behaved himself and stayed near Diana.
Suddenly, Akash tugged at the corners of Diana's paper dress as he began to cry unconsciously. By the time Diana could react to it, she had already fallen unconscious.
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Diana woke up with a start, her surroundings were completely dark. She could barely make out anything concrete until her eyes could adjust to the darkness.
Before her eyes could adjust to the darkness, Diana instantly sprang to her knees, picked up the sleeping Akash and dashed away like her life depended on it.
Her limbs were bleeding profusely. It seems that those ants made their way to them while they were unconscious, those cunning little bludgers.
Diana carefully groped around Akash's body as tears streamed out of her eyes. She couldn't bear the pain that she was experiencing.
Her entire right arm had been chopped away by the ants including flesh around various parts of her body where they were in excess, such as the regions of her thighs, stomach, breasts, and buttocks.
None of her internal organs were taken away yet thankfully but her situation didn't seem optimistic, the pain was too unbearable and she had lost too much blood. Thankfully for her, Akash wasn't harmed in the slightest as he didn't pose much of a threat to the ants. They figured they could kill him after the threat that was Diana had been taken care off.
Her vision was blurry due to the blood loss and also due to all the tears streaming out of her eyes even though they had adjusted to the darkness of the room. Some moonlight also seemed to enter the room as the clouds covering the moon seemed to have opened up a gap for the moonlight to pass through.
Diana saw hundreds of ants around her and she didn't even know what to do. How could she survive?
Her right hand was no more; her left hand was carrying Akash who she didn't have the heart to abandon even now. Her brain had long since cut off the signals from her pain receptors as they had clearly surpassed the tolerance limits of her body.
"Madam…." Diana subconsciously sought for her madam to help her, like she always did in a timely manner whenever she encountered some problem. It created a sense of dependency in Diana towards Anita.
"Gueee" Akash tugged at her now white hair and used his tiny hands to wipe away her tears. The way he wiped her tears was completely unprofessional, it even smudged her vision further but, Diana felt her fighting spirits reignite.
"As if I could abandon Akash! I must have lost my mind for even having such a thought against the child of my saviour. If I really did such a horrible thing, then I would no longer qualify as a human and rot in the depths of hell." Diana admonished herself as she raced towards the shawl while slipping through the gaps of the horde of ants.
Diana took a deep breath as she jumped down and slid over the shawl. She made use of the friction generated between her body and the shawl to control her speed of descent.
'Bump'
The impact wasn't as severe as she had expected since the shawl had cushioned most of her downward momentum.
"Guu…gueee" Akash began to once again tug at her hair and pointed towards the door and shouted some incomprehensible syllables.
Diana couldn't understand much of what he said but still decided to run towards the door. Maybe she could find a way to survive if she managed to open the door and find Anita.
As she was running towards the door, Diana stepped on a small puddle of water when she felt as if her entire bleeding body was electrocuted.
Her feet burned as the water seeped into the injuries on her foot. Shocked, Diana lifted her foot and was astonished to find that the injuries on her foot seemed to be….healing!
It was also only at this time that she noticed the colour of her blood looked different. She wasn't exactly sure of it due to the low visibility provided due to a lack of ambient light.
The gears in her head churned as Diana dashed towards the water bottle, placed Akash on a puddle on the floor and poured some water over the scratch on his knees.
'Swish'
With a small sound that is produced when water evaporates on a frying pan, the scratch on his knees magically healed themselves within a few seconds.
Diana removed the safety pin that was pinned on her dress (She couldn't pick up the other one as her right hand that was holding it got chopped) and began to poke at the bottom of the water bottle.
Diana saw a horde of ants charging towards her from her rear. There was probably about 6 feet between them as Diana hurried to punch a hole in the plastic bottle.
'Puchi'
A jet of water once again gushed out as Diana placed her mouth in the path of the water jet and voraciously drunk all the water.
She felt as if her entire body was on fire as all the water that had entered into her stomach seemed to rapidly get consumed. The water that didn't fall into her mouth ended up falling on her body.
'Psss'
The water gushing out became a trickle eventually and soon stopped.
Diana tilted the now almost empty water bottle, rolled it a little on the ground till the remaining water seeped out through the hole she had punched out and made Akash drink it.
She could see flesh growing anew all over her body that were bit off by the ants. Diana regained some hope as she also saw some faint growth in the stump of what remained of her right hand.
She had drunk so much water that she felt her body would burst if she pricked herself. She scooped out some handful of water that formed a small puddle on the floor and cleaned her body of all the blood. She also poured some cleaner water from the nearby puddles on her severe injuries to speed up the healing process.
As hope was relit in her heart, Diana calmly gazed at her surroundings, picked up Akash and dashed towards the bookshelf without overexerting herself.
She would survive this ordeal for sure, along with the one-year-old Akash!