I just woke up from a good sleep and started practicing my daily intermediate great sword arts when Scratchy who was lazing about shot up with alarm. I have never seen it does such a thing before and so I walk over to him.
"What's wrong Scratchy you look spooked right now?" His ears straight up with its nose in the air and its bunny tail twitching, it was in high alert.
Scratchy bolts for the door into the great hall and then sprints to the entrance going so fast even with my current speed I have trouble keeping up which surprises me, maybe he is stronger than I thought.
after only a minute we make it to the front door where he exits and heads to the tunnel I first came in. Stopping after running through the tunnel for about a mile Scratchy holds still.
I have no idea what's happening, but I keep quiet and try to hear what he hears. After five minutes went by I started to get impatient and when I was about to ask what's happening I hear it. A faint scratching sound was constant but almost inaudible.
Was there a mole making a tunnel underground, is it heading here?
"What is making that noise Scratchy do you know?"
Scratchy looks at me and then screams loudly before booking it back to the temple. I follow it not knowing what it's doing. He stopped at the end of the tunnel then starts digging?
No, he is piling up dirt at the entrance, is he trying to cover the tunnel up because a mole is coming here?
"Scratchy it's okay you don't have to be so scared even if the mole is a three-star I can still kill it with a surprise attack. If I fail we can still retreat and come back when stronger you don't have to be so afraid." I tell it while trying to put it to comfort poor scratchy who seems terrified right now.
By this point, I am hearing the scratching noise again and it's louder... and it seems that it's not just one creature, but multiple making that noise.
That's when I realize two things, that the scratching was not just coming from the tunnel now but all around us.
I quickly grab Scratchy and push my body as hard as I possibly could trying desperately to make it to the teleporter. The temple doors just started opening when I hear the walls of dirt all around the cavern opening and this grating scratching sound erupting so loudly that I might have a headache soon.
The doors open up enough to see holes opening up in this room too. The teleporter needs to be uninterrupted for at least five seconds and I no longer have that much time.
Especially as a hole is opening up where the teleporter is.
I let go of scratchy and position myself to face whatever creatures I am about to face. Then my eyes widen as I finally realize what I am facing.
Ants a lot of ants. I notice Scratchy is now nowhere to be seen which makes me panic even more, but I still ready myself for the hardest battle of my life so far.
Racing down the hall to my room the doors open in the distance and this sees of black and brown flood through with the temple door behind me opening as well, cutting off my retreat.
I know the only way to survive now is to fight, so I look around me and think up plans on how I might survive this ordeal, I wasn't given much time to think when the first ants already make it to me.
Each one is about a foot long with massive strength in its body and medium level earth or darkness talent easy to kill if it just one but their terror is their numbers.
I first start sending out thin waves of fire to save manna. Those in front catch fires and die with the ones behind crawling over them and then catching fire and dying.
Darkness and earthy sticky slime burst from their dead bodies soon smothering the fire. by now the entire horde is bearing down on me, I repeat this all around me killing hundreds every minute.
An ocean of essence is continuously absorbed and putting it all into my manna since it also speeds up my manna regeneration so my manna usage is almost negligible, but I am still slowly using up my manna.
Every wave of fire I send the ants used their darkness or earth magic to smother and put out my flames faster every time.
I switch to my light magic-making thin lasers that cut through hundreds every second making even more essence rush into me like a torrent making it even hard to see because so much is crazily climbing into me, likewise though this uses much more manna than I am gaining so I am still slowly being drained of manna.
Continuing this for ten minutes I am already down to forty-eight percent of my manna now and thus decided to use my great sword arts.
"Time to put my intermediate sword art to good use" I mutter while I swing my sword in great arcs around me.
The intermediate manual is worlds apart, not only does it teach powerful techniques and forms but how to form and combine your magic with your weapons when attacking which makes devastating attacks. These weapon manuals are rarer and held with greater importance than the body or manna training manuals.
I jump up to the top of one of the pillars then cut the pillar below what I am holding on away, watching as it fell down crushing many ants on the way.
Balls of darkness and earth start shooting at me. Dodging them and watching the ants pile on each other quickly closing the distance between me I wait until they are about to touch the part of my leftover pillar and attack.
"First Art: Setting Sun!" Waving my sword in a crescent slash bearing down, my flames churning, cutting and burning everything in its path.
A red-white flash that gave off an orange glow reminiscent of a sunset cut through all the ants burning them along the way killing too many to count in seconds. It gave me a short reprieve letting me look around to try to find where scratchy went.
I have only practiced this for a week so I only have beginner accomplishment with it thus I still burned a lot of manna and stamina with that move.
Massive essence waves churning into me once again I put half into manna and the rest into my body and prepare to use one of the sword techniques for drawn-out battles instead that doesn't use manna.
But the next second a hole bursts open to my left with more ants flooding into the hall.
I drop onto the pile of ants I just decimated and run into another part of the temple with the ants close behind me.
I get into position just in time for them to bear down on me once again.
"Second Art: Twisted Sword Dance"
The first mandible comes at my front hitting my sword at an angle that spins me around cutting that ant and a few others, another comes at my side hitting my sword spinning me faster.
With every ant a cut I do it at an angle that doesn't slow my spin and every mandible that comes at me hits my sword that slowly spins me faster and faster.
I have little practice with this move so it greatly strains me and I have far to long to slowly pick up speed. My body twisting incredibly strangely as I slowly spin faster.
After a few minutes I am panting heavily with my muscles starting to shake, but I am finally going fast enough where it starts to no longer need my control anymore.
Great winds start forming as I slowly release my magic along my sword until it forms a great tornado that grew three meters all around me, that pulls the ants in then mincing them into pieces like a grinder.
Ants die in droves every second, it didn't take long before they started trying to retreat I am constantly moving around drawing them all into my winds.
With not enough practice and the immense burden on my stamina and strength when I first started this technique, I can't keep it going for long, but I push myself even as vomit from all the spinning if I had practiced these forms to a higher accomplishment I wouldn't be facing these problems.
The essence I am putting all into my body to restore as much stamina as i can.
I started adding my fire into the tornado turning it into a flame tornado. Making the it even larger with more lethality not only sucked them in but burned them while at it.
When their dead flaming bodies landed among the hordes it caught others on fire and spread my flame around killing just as many as the tornado is.
Ten minutes later I collapse to the ground with most of the tornado already gone with only the burned ground and what looks like thousands of burnt ant corpses.
The few ants that are left are hesitating to come close to me. I have some breathing room while my aching body and low mana recover, all that essence I am still absorbing helping in my recovery faster.
I look around me once again to try to spot scratchy but don't see him anywhere, I start to relize he probably already ran leaving me behind.
I have been abandoned again, this realization hurts almost as much as when I was sold to the slave traders. I have only known him for maybe a few months, he doesn't owe me anything, yet I can't help but feel betrayed yet again.
I have no time to feel sorry for myself over these last few minutes ants continuously poured out of the holes all around me and even put out the fire and the ant corpses. I move the betrayal to the back of my mind to ponder later as I look around me.
I find the and hole with almost no ants coming out and know that is my only ticket out alive.
That is when I notice a different type of ant with a larger more bulbous head start appearing among the rest of the ants.