More Bodies Than Bullets (6/6)

Some more minutes pass, and Fisco is still observing the battlefield… He frowns as he watches the next wall be engulfed by the Ants. "The invaders don't have much further to go before they reach the World Gate…" He bites his fingernail. "Ugh. The Queen's way too powerful."

Then, suddenly, something clicks in his mind.

Hastily, Fisco reaches for Haalfrin's far speak medallion and gives an order, "The Ants' leader can't attack and defend at the same time! When she ducks for cover or even when she attempts to hide, constantly pepper her with small attacks. I don't care how many walls of Ants she uses to protect herself, make sure she ALWAYS has to have a mana barrier erect."

"Yes sir!" Haalfrin had been too wrapped up in killing things, so he hadn't noticed this important detail about the Queen. Now that he knows, this battle should be considerably easier.

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And so, as the Ants are surging towards the 3rd and final wall, Haalfrin's Wills concentrate on holding the Ants back from advancing while he and Dakka cooperate in keeping the Queen occupied. With them constantly attacking her, she has to have her mana shield up.

Sometimes the Queen will try to fight back by making huge walls of Ants to shield herself while she makes a mana blast. However, Dakka would blast apart these Ant walls, while Haalfrin strikes at her – forcing her to cancel her attack in order to defend.

Eventually, the Queen screams in frustrated rage before diving into one of the houses; with the building's indestructible walls, she's at least safe from their attacks.

"Heh," Haalfrin slaps Dakka happily, "We might actually win this if she has such a glaring weakness. We'd just need to pummel her constantly until she runs out of mana."

"Umm…," Dakka points out, "she has more mana than both of us combined. we'd run out first."

"Nope!" Haalfrin grins, "Remember my Fel Name? I don't use it often because it requires me to permanently sacrifice Death Aura, and permanently losing strength doesn't feel good. However, I can convert Death Aura into mana with this Fel Name."

"Ah!" Dakka grins (mentally), "With these millions of Ants dying over and over again, you basically have an infinite amount of Death Aura to supply yourself with mana."

"Enough talking," Haalfrin says while focusing on the Queen's house. "We have to keep a VERY special eye on that house; don't allow any Ants to go near it, in case the Queen tries to hide among them. I want to force her to hide for the rest of the battle! We can't afford for her to keep destroying the wall defenses!"

"Yes bro!"

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With Dakka and Haalfrin successfully keeping the Queen from attacking the Walls herself, the human cannon masters, sword mages on the walls, the Wills patrolling the streets, the tar bombs engulfing the streets in coats of fire, and the chasm in front of the wall, the Ants can't get anywhere near the final wall.

The only reason the Ants don't run out of reinforcements entirely is because the Queen sticks her hand out the window every now and then to drop more eggs.

Even her creating eggs has to be done carefully, since she has to have her children keep an eye on where the dragon slayer and his cursed ax are so that she can extend her hand through a window that's not facing them.

Despite her being able to keep the pressure up, she knows she's not going anywhere at this rate. What makes her even more anxious is that the longer she sits alone in this room, the more she starts to overthink things. "What will the humans do next? Will they find a way to trap me in this house if I stay here? Will the dragon slayer be able to kill me in this confined space?"

She doesn't know. What she DOES know is that she needs to think of something new.

Then… it dawns on her. "I remember how I made those eggs explode by spawning too many of my children so close together… Also, spawning more children doesn't require me to put my shield down... So... how can I weaponize my spawning children?"

She spends a few minutes to consider this.

"I can't just throw little balls of eggs and explode them, since there's no way to aim this properly; they'll just go everywhere. I mean, I can launch the Ants pretty far with this, but so few of my children would survive that I won't be able to capture the last wall with this. The explosive force also isn't nearly enough to hurt a man who's as strong as a young 4-horned dragon…"

"Hmm… I remember how I had my newly spawned children carry eggs on them… Could I set off a chain of explosions like this?"

Perhaps having her mind linked to millions of little brains has made her smarter than a human, but she's rapidly able to imagine something so abstract as this.

What she imagines is herself launching a ball of eggs. Then, she'll have the Ants in the center of the ball hatch explosively. All the hatched Ants will have eggs stuck to them. Then, the exploded ants who are flying towards the dragon slayer will have all the eggs on THEM hatched at once – causing ANOTHER explosion – except this explosion would be right next to her target.

It's a little clumsy, but she might be able to use this to at least be able to target things down without dropping her barrier.

"Hmm…," she thinks, "I have the feeling that learning this technique will be a little clumsy, and I don't want to give the food time to come up with a countermeasure before I'm effective with it enough to capture the last wall."

So, she resolves to sit in her little house and practice with this technique. With only a few eggs at a time, she tries over and over again to have an effective chain explosion – so as to avoid drawing attention.

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"Haalfrin," Dakka complains, "I really want to go down and kill the Queen already."

"Let's wear her down more first," Haalfrin says as he grabs the ax to prevent it from leaving. "I can feel the abundant energy leaking off of her, now that she's not trying to hide. She's still more powerful than us."

Indeed, her mana pool has hardly gone down at all… though it HAS gone down.

"Just focus on setting the fire off next to her open doors so that our explosions forces her to keep her barrier up and waist mana," Haalfrin orders again firmly before releasing Dakka."

"But Bro!" Dakka protests more loudly, "That woman is REALLY SMART! If we let her sit around, she'll think of something – some way to break out!"

"Don't care," Haalfrin shrugs, "I know she's planning something – I can feel her determination leaking from her spirit. However, so long as we make her plan take as long as possible, I don't see a reason to bother about it."

Banking on the slim chances of defeating her is less important than evacuation the Threshold inhabitants and sealing the Gate off, after all.

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Only a little more than an hour later, the Queen finally makes her move. She steps out and ignores the dragon slayer's onslaught. She reaches out her hands and drops another pile of eggs before ducking under cover again.

Her movement looked so identical to what she's been doing all this time that Haalfrin thinks nothing of it. However, instead of dropping her eggs on the ground, she drops them between a door frame. This way, when the egg explosion happens, the enlarged Ants will only fly out the window and through the door, rather than in all directions; it's concentrating the energy, like a really inefficient cannon barrel.

Then, the Queen waits for the right moment as her children's mangled body parts fly over the walls… before she detonates the second explosion.

In that next instance, huge swathes of the cannons atop the wall are blown off their hinges, and even Haalfrin gapes in shock after seeing what she did. He only has to see it one more time to realize how she was doing this.

"Wow," he whistles, "that takes sacrificing your own children to a whole 'nother level."

Since the Queen is able to attack and defend at the same time now, she's able to finally advance towards the final wall again.

So, Haalfrin slaps the visor of his helmet on and mutters, "Well, back to work, I guess."