"This tastes even better than the mammoth chima, shame I can't eat too much at one time." Sitting in the darkness, Ray was feasting on the roasted leg of an ant-like corpse that when standing was about 4 feet tall. Not as big as the chima he had seen before, but still massive compared to normal ants. He had already taken off the robe he made and wore the old leather pants, otherwise he would practically be a beacon in this place.
These ants were called sun-eater ants and while the name sounded impressive, they just absorbed light from the sun, or its new world equivalent, and the corresponding elemental mana as food.
As such their bodies are practically filled with rich nutrients and mana, and even with his high vitality eating too much would make his body explode. The energy had to go somewhere and if he wasn't absorbing it then it would go out.
This was the 3rd one he came across on his descent, and they were getting bigger and bigger. The first one was only a foot tall but this one already reached his waist.
And this was only after half an hour of climbing, if they grew at this rate then they would soon be too big for the tunnels.
"I say that as a joke, but this is concerning. The size of the tunnels are getting bigger and bigger and I refuse to believe that ants this size could carve it out."
He got up and dusted himself off. "Well that just means more meat for me."
The ants here weren't very strong, only around the ascended tier, but if he suspected correctly and this was in fact an ants nest, then he would get run over extremely quickly. Thankfully because of the density of mana in their bodies, he could tell when one was coming so he was never caught off guard.
His sixth sense was useless here as as far as it was concerned the ants and the walls were made out of the same material. Even his mana sense was acting up because of the density of the mana here.
He had already eaten to his limits but he still ate another small piece. This naturally caused him a lot of internal damage and even more pain, but it was just what he needed.
To advance to the yellow stage of the golden body refining technique and begin practicing the Golden Overlord Physique, he needed to consistently take damage.
The extra nutrition from the little bit of meat wasn't going to get him there in one step, but everything counts.
He was currently on a little plateau in the descent and he was about to take off when he sensed a few more of them coming. He was calm at first until he realized that something was off about these.
For one they were much bigger, standing at 7 feet. And all around their bodies, including their giant 3 foot long mandibles, were covered in spikes. On their head were 2 pairs of eyes instead of the usual 1 and they looked like the definition of menacing.
It may be extremely dark, but at his level seeing with the miniscule amount of light produced by the mana stones was trivial. Plus with mana sense he could 'see' everything in a 5k radius, even when impaired.
If the ones that he killed were worker ants, then these 3 were soldier ants. But even still, they were not big enough to be appropriate for the size of the tunnels. There was still 30 feet of empty air above him and it was only getting wider.
He was alerted at first until he realized that they were only at the master tier, much stronger than the first few but still nothing for him. With a simple motion, 3 palms shot out and landed squarely in the center of their heads, killing them in one blow.
He stored them away and was about to continue when 4 more soldier ants came up.
'Huh' He again quickly dealt with them but was starting to get confused. "Why are so many of them coming up?" At the same time 6 more appeared, practically sprinting.
"Okay, what's going on?" Others may know that ants can tell when another ant died based on scent, but he wasn't aware. Every time he killed one of them he was sending a danger signal directly down the entire nest.
It was fine at first, since worker ants die all the time, but when it got to 3 of them so quickly a few soldiers came to see what was up and then it started to snowball.
More and more were appearing and more and more were being killed. Now they were coming in batches of 20 and were steadily increasing in size. The soldiers stood at 10 feet tall and were rapidly approaching the grandmaster stage.
He killed and collected and killed and collected for hours, at this point every batch was coming with an early grandmaster tier soldier ant. These were 20 feet tall and looked to be more appropriately sized for this tunnel, but he couldn't kill them in one strike.
They were still weaker than him on average, but their carapace wasn't there for show. And because of their nature his fire wasn't doing anything to them. It should be observed that because of the richness of the fire element in the air the flaming palm was doing extra damage, but it was still ineffective.
At first he tried to do a water palm based on his own understanding, but not only was it weaker than the flame palm, it wasn't effective in this environment. The moment it shot out it would instantly evaporate and wouldn't do any damage.
So he killed and killed, for days on end. Not stopping to rest and barely stopping to eat. The strongest ants were able to rival him, but thankfully they weren't accompanied by other ants so he could deal with them one by one.
All of this combat naturally meant that he was getting injured over and over again, non-stop. He had broken through to the yellow stage, pushing his strength up to the high end of the grandmaster tier.
But this comprehensive increase in strength didn't mean that he had an easy time. The groups quickly went from 1 middle grandmaster tier to 1 high grandmaster tier to 1 high and 3 middle. Because of their near perfect teamwork they had combat capability closer to the peak of the grandmaster tier and being outnumbered and out powered constantly was putting him in a bad position.
Even with his high vitality and under the passive effects of 5 breath of life flowers he was still covered in deep wounds. Half of his face was missing, his right leg ripped off and there was a hole going clean through his stomach. He was covered in blood, both his and that of the ants.
And because of his injuries his control over mana was getting worse and worse, especially the missing leg. But even under such conditions he was improving.
Lately he had a rapid increase in strength, but he wasn't familiar with it. He was sloppy, inefficient and all around clumsy. But now under the constant pressure of life threatening combat, he was patching these holes and ironing out the kinks.
Slowly but surely he was getting more and more powerful. His stats didn't change but the combat experience that he was accumulating allowed him to use what he already had more freely and naturally.
And he was getting faster too. Any hesitation that he had previously had disappeared and now he was moving on instinct. He and the ants were moving so quick that they couldn't be seen with the naked eye and the only way to know that they were there was the mana fluctuations, massive wind pressure and the occasional mangled ant corpse falling over.
He dodged a leg that would have punctured his heart and sent a fist, shattering its head. He was anticipating the next attack, but there was none. He was confused until he realized that he had killed all of them.
All around the massive cavern were innumerable corpses, at some point he couldn't avert his attention to immediately collecting them so they started to pile up, and he was ankle deep in blood.
He fell to the ground and panted heavily as he could relax for the first time in 2 weeks and was about to pass out from mental fatigue when he heard someone behind him.
"Took you long enough, I thought that I would have to wait forever. If you don't mind, well not that I care, but I'll be taking these."