"What is it?" asks Sam.
"There is a group of 6 ants ahead," answers Daniel.
"That is a problem… Daniel, how confident are you in killing an ant in 1 blow?" Everyone except Daniel knows the reason for this question.
"Not very, I'm a dagger user, the ants are too big for me to deal that much damage in a single attack," he replies.
Hearing Daniel's reason, I add my opinion, "Aim for the neck, it is the thinnest part of their body. Even if you don't completely sever it, you should be able to disable it."
"Right! Your ranged attack crushed that ant's neck, and it wasn't even that powerful," Anna chimes in.
I ignore the blow to my pride and continue speaking, "Chris should also be able to abuse of that weakness."
"Hmm, that sounds like a good idea, but a group of six is more likely to spot the ambush," says Sam.
"Oh, if you want to ambush them, I know a concealment spell. Just keep in mind it is rather expensive," Daniel says with a worried expression.
"Can you fight right after using it?" I ask.
"Yeah, but I'll have to rest afterwards," he answers.
"Then that's what we are going to do, even if it takes us longer to clear the dungeon, I'd rather take it slowly than dying. We will use Daniel's concealment to ambush the ants, each one of us will kill one ant. Considering Anna definitely can't kill an ant with a single arrow, that means we will only kill 4 to start. After the first 4 die, we split into pairs again to deal with the remaining two while Daniel rests. Anna, try and get a shot on one of the ants we don't target initially," Sam lays out the plan, we all nod and prepare to execute it.
Daniel's spell is interesting, it creates a dome of mana around us that blocks our sounds and smells. The smells are particularly important, since ants rely mostly on their sense of smell rather than sight. With the spell cast, Daniel begins to breathe heavily, I turn to him with a look of worry. He notices my gaze and gives me a thumbs up which surprises me, he didn't appear to be the kind of guy to gesture like that.
Soon enough, the ants arrive to our location. Unlike the other times, we wait for them to get very close. The one at the front is only a couple of meters away from us when Sam gives us the signal. The melee fighters target their closest ant, while Anna chooses a target from the pair that is left. Like all the other times, my spear proves to be the perfect weapon for situations like this. My target dies in a single breath, Sam and Chris have a similar experience, although they targeted the neck. Daniel on the other hand, his daggers were indeed too small. The ant's neck has a deep wound, but that isn't enough to stop it from retaliating.
The ant instinctively tries to bite at Danie, however, due to its injured neck, can only manage a headbutt like attack. Daniel is flung towards the tunnel walls, thankfully, these are made of dirt, instead of a cavern's rocky ones. Chris is the closest one to Daniel, yet it is Sam who reacts first. He sprints towards the ant, but before I can see what happens next an ant rushes me. I cannot parry tis mandibles, since there's two of them, so I roll forward. My roll helps me evade the bite, while also placing me under the ant's head. Focusing my reinforcement onto my legs, arms, and spear, I thrust upwards with all my might. The spear's tip drills through the exoskeleton and kills the ant, causing it to collapse.
'Shit!'
I dive to the side, trying my hardest not to get crushed under the massive dead ant. After successfully surviving, I gather my focus and turn to the other battles. Chris and Anna already killed the last ant, so I head towards Daniel's fight. Sam and the porter are kneeling over Daniel, who has passed out. Sam just finished checking Daniel's condition, he sighs and says,
"He's fine, looks like he managed to reinforce his body before getting hit. The reason he is out cold is probably mana exhaustion. We were thinking of resting anyway, so loot the ants and take a seat."
We weren't so lucky this time, out of the 6 ants, only 2 had stones. Still, the fact we got any at all is good enough, plus we also gather some more ant parts. After this haul, the porter looks uncomfortable with the loot bag, he should be reaching his limits. 'I doubt he will say anything though, a porter who complains is only asking for trouble. Lucky him, Sam is the type to notice other's struggles, he will probably ask us to focus only on mana stones next time.'
Sam assigns a look out schedule, 2 at a time since we have to check our flank as well. The lookouts need to get quite far from where we are resting, so that when they spot something, the people resting have time to get ready. Considering how it has been a lot easier for me and Anna, we are the first lookouts. Once I get to drink some water and eat a small snack, I go deeper inside the tunnels. Unlike Daniel, I don't have any experience in scouting, so I take my time and go very slowly. Now that I've put some distance between the group and me, I sit down to rest. Of course, I'm still paying attention, not even forgetting to check the ceiling for the creepy crawlers.
Not brining a watch was a mistake, I'm so used to having my phone that I forgot how miserable it feels to be unable to tell time. 'Let alone that, sitting here in complete silence is killing me. Why does mana have to interfere with electronics so much? Maybe it's a good thing, don't want to get too comfortable in here.' After god know how long, Chris arrives to relive me of my shift, any longer and I would've gone crazy. 'The walk back seems shorter than before, why does it always feel like that?' Arriving at the makeshift camp, I notice that Anna and the porter are taking a nap, while Daniel focuses on recovering his mana.
"How are you doing?" I ask Daniel.
He opens one of his eyes and says, "Still somewhat stiff and dizzy, but at least I'm alive." With that, he goes back to meditating. I already recuperated all my mana, so I decide to rest like the others. When I wake up, nothing has changed, which means I didn't sleep that much. This time, none of the king's memories assaulted my dreams, maybe that's why I feel so refreshed. Daniel finished absorbing his mana, so I try to initiate some small talk with him.
"So-"
"I'm going to sleep," he interrupts me and lies down.
Like that, I'm sitting in complete silence again. My stomach is the one to break that silence, I rummage trough the food pack, seeing if there is anything good. No matter how hard I search, all the food is purely nutritional and resembles military MREs. 'Maybe I should ask Tom to make me some lunch next time. Not getting comfortable is different from suffering needlessly after all.' I settle on more energy bars, briefly pondering on eating ant meat. 'I struggle enough with cooking normal meat, let alone giant ant monsters. Not only that, Ron also isn't paying for it this time.' Sometime later, Sam returns from lookout, and wakes up everyone.
"Let's get moving, we will catch up to Chris," he says.
We pick up our stuff and start going down the tunnel. The plan was to pick up Chris at the lookout post and continue clearing the dungeon, however, that didn't happen. When we reach the marked spot, Chris is nowhere to be seen and Sam speaks up,
"Will, did you mark two spots?" he asks.
"No, I didn't," confusion is prevalent in my voice.
"Where did he go? Did something happen?" Sam sounds concerned.
"Maybe he went to take a piss," says Daniel.
"Let's keep searching," Anna says, not so coldly.
Daniel proposes he scout again, but Sam declines, saying he feels something is wrong. After traveling a fair distance, we run into another fork, neither of which have markings.
"No one spotted anything in between here and the lookout spot, right?" Sam asks and we all shake our heads. "Did the ants take him? No way, he isn't careless enough to let some monsters sneak up on him. What the hell is going on?"
Daniel stops Sam's mumbling and says, "More importantly, how are we going to choose a path. If we choose wrong, Chris is going to be alone for an unknown amount of time, it will be even worse if we don't find the queen. We might end up having to back track and search a different path. We need to be smarter with our movement."
"Well, all the paths continue to head downwards, so I doubt we will stray too far from the queen's location, but looking for Chris is going to be challenging," says Anna.
"Something else is bothering me," says Daniel. "There are no tracks. Look behind us, we've made quite a mess on the floor. The loose dirt makes is easy for footsteps to appear, but there are none in front of us."
"Does that mean he went back to camp? Shouldn't we have noticed if he did that?" I ask. "Daniel was awake while I slept, and he only started to sleep himself until after I woke up. There was always someone awake; did something happen on his way back?"
SCREECH!
An ear-piercing sound travels through the tunnels. Everyone gets down onto their knees, the porter collapses entirely. After what feels like ages, the sound fades out of existence. Only to be replaced by Sam's yells,
"FUCK! WE NEED TO GET OUT! THE QUEEN ALERTED THE ENTIRE COLONY!"