More Bodies Than Bullets (2/6)
The Queen's plan to have her children carry the unhatched eggs with them is a success. When one Ant falls, a hundred more pop up in its place.
The Ant Queen expected this strategy to completely overwhelm the defenders here, but she's sorely mistaken.
Whenever she meets the human defenders, they've completely barricaded key points in the maze. With so many mages concentrated in such a little space, they don't even have to aim in order to decimate her forces.
What's even more infuriating is that whenever the humans run low on mana, they pull out huge arsenals of mana stones and rich, fatty meats in order to refill their mana. Seeing the humans eating all of this delicious mana sends the Queen into a rage. "NOOOO! How dare they!? That mana is supposed to be mine!"
As if her desire to kill the humans is personal now, she orders her Ants to attack with more fervor… but this extra enthusiasm does little to help her situation.
Everything seems to be going so poorly for the Queen when she suddenly has another idea. "Since my eggs are technically objects… doesn't that mean that I can have my children throw the eggs? If they can get the eggs past the humans' tight barricades, I can spawn them directly underneath the humans; their formations will be destroyed, and I can eat them quickly."
Almost immediately, the Queen's plan sees results.
Her Ants charge suicidally at the humans, and it only takes a single ant to get close for it to all be over.
In order for the Ants to throw as many eggs as possible before their deaths, the Queen instructs them to rip off their own limbs and throw them at the humans. Since the eggs stick to their arms anyway, this is as good as throwing the eggs themselves.
Once the eggs land on the ground around the humans, hundreds of Ants spring into existence, and they rip the defenders apart before they can even resist.
When her children start eating their first human flesh, the Queen is pleasantly surprised at the amount of mana she's getting from them. These mages aren't that weak; plus, they have storage bags with many enchanted equipment and mana stones which her swarm can snack on.
Every little bit counts in growing the swarm's strength, right?
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After the Queen finally figured out how to deal with the humans, the only thing left is to break through the maze and make it up to the surface.
The traps themselves littering the halls would've definitely ended any other invasion… but because of the Ant's infinite revivals, it's more of a delay than anything else.
Sure, the swarm has to sacrifice an ant or two for every trap, but all she has to do is run them through blindly. She has more than enough Ants to occupy the entire underground area this way, anyway.
Even when one of her Ants finds the exit after about half an hour, she continues sending her Ants to explore the entire place, as there are plenty of supplies left behind to be eaten, as well as human stragglers who couldn't get out in time.
Once the maze is completely silent except for the chittering of armored legs clacking on the floor, the Queen finally has her people pour out of the entrance to the top.
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Commander Fisco is watching from the mirror in his office, and his face is grim. "Lowski," he says to another far speak medallion on his wrist, "how's the progress on the world gate coming?"
"Not good," Officer Lowski replies, "We'll be needing a few more hours before we can successfully seal off the World Gate."
"As expected. Just… hurry up, Lowski. The Ants are faster than I expected, so we don't have as much time as I thought."
"I'm on it, sir!"
Once the call is ended, Fisco rubs his eyes and thinks about his decision to seal off the Gate. Frankly, he's not confident he can actually kill the Queen, since he can't even find where she is. Given how reckless, scarily coordinated, and endless these things are, he knows it's only a matter of time until the Fortress does fall.
Still, what about his choice of Time Locking the Gate? Time Locking Enchantments take a VERY long time to set up – several days if done optimally, and several hours if it's rushed.
Sure, there's other sealing techniques that could be set up much quicker, but none of them are as reliable, and all of them can be broken somehow. Even the Spatial Sealing spells that have trapped Haalfrin many times in the past require an enchantment Nexus, and those can always ben broken.
Only Time Locks are indestructible and can't be undone. Thus, this one will have to do! Even if the Queen's forces rip through his fortress too quickly for his people to finish the seal, it's already too late to give up and try another sealing technique.
Fisco shakes his head again. "No use regretting. It's better to think about how to delay the Queen longer?"
He looks around carefully, then makes his way to another room – a hidden space inside his office. There, he finds a large, glowing crystal that alternates between all the different mana colors.
This is the Enchantment Nexus for the Entire Fortress.
From here, Fisco starts fiddling with the fortress defenses…
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Abruptly, the shape of the maze seems to be changing. From the Queen's point of view (as she watches from her Ants' eyes), random walls made of gold and green light flare up in random places in the maze – sealing off certain routes through the halls.
These are the same Spatial Seals Haalfrin had dodged during his break through the place several years ago. He had only known where they were and successfully dodged them because his Wills had shown him the way by invisibly scouting ahead.
However, the Queen's forces aren't so lucky.
When the Spatial seals pop up, they effectively create new walls and change the maze's shape.
The reason why the maze suddenly changing shape is so frustrating to the Queen is that she no longer has the path figured out to the exit. While some of her Ants make it outside by sheer luck, the rest of her horde is trapped inside with no way of following.
What's annoying is that whenever she figures out another path to the outside, she only gets a few thousand through before the maze changes shape again, and she's sent back to square one.
Of course, Fisco is allowing a few to make it through on purpose; he knows that even though it doesn't take much, the Queen still spends SOME mana reviving her children.
If he can let her swarm trickle through just enough to be blown to bits by his cannons, but not too much that his walls are seriously challenged, that would be great! Since his ammo reserves are Time Locked (like the traps), it's not like he'll ever run out anyway!
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Being aware of the situation up above, the Queen knows full well that her swarm alone won't be able to break out of the maze and into the fortress proper. They'll need BIG firepower, like herself.
The problem with that is that the Queen is still hanging outside the canon blast door with her arm sticking through. "Seriously, how am I supposed to get inside?"
She had already had her Ants explore the entire inside, and these humans were very careful to not leave any openings in their indestructible stone large enough for a person to fit through. She hisses in annoyance, "It's like I can break my skull and lob myself through the opening piece by piece; unlike my children, I only have 1 life."
The Queen looks up and considers finding a way to climb up the fortress, instead of going inside.