Don't Fault Them

"Hold still."

Camelia pressed Trevor's leg down firmly while Aldrich worked on removing the arrow lodged in his flesh.

"You try having an arrow stuck through your leg and try to remain calm," Trevor yelled, his voice muffled by Fiona's hand pressed against his mouth, attempting to keep him quiet.

"Here it goes!"

Aldrich's voice cut through the tension as he braced himself and yanked the arrow free, in one swipe.

Trevor's face contorted in agony, his body tense and trembling, fighting the pain as a scream bubbled up.

The sound of his terrorizing scream was smothered by Fiona's hand, her grip firm to keep him under control.

The moment the arrow was out, blood began pouring from the wound in torrents, staining the ground below them.

Aldrich acted quickly, placing his hand over the gaping wound, trying to staunch the bleeding.

He tore a strip from his clothes and used it as a makeshift bandage, pressing it against Trevor's injury.

"That should stop you from bleeding out."

Aldrich's words were more hopeful than reassuring.

The open wound could kill him, but worse yet, their confined space and the lack of air were far more pressing concerns.

Trapped underground with limited breathing room, their survival was becoming increasingly uncertain.

They were sitting ducks, at the mercy of the impending darkness closing in around them.

"Damn it." Aldrich cursed under his breath, his mind racing.

None of this was supposed to happen.

The test, meant to be gruelling but survivable, had taken a dark turn.

Death wasn't part of the plan, not in Eldora, not in their training exercises.

The second-year students might have set up this test to weed out the weak, but they'd never intended to cross the line into something deadly.

At least, that's what Aldrich believed. No, that is what Eldora's standard belief is.

But here Trevor was, on the verge of death, with no one intervening.

No one was coming to help.

This was not how it was meant to go.

Aldrich's gaze flickered to Trevor's pallid face, beads of sweat glistening on his brow as his strength waned.

There was no doubt about it now, Trevor was slipping away.

'Why isn't anyone doing anything?' Aldrich thought, his frustration mounting. 'Why is nothing being done to stop this?'

The rules of Eldora were simple: testing was a harsh reality, but death was never on the table.

Someone should have intervened by now.

The challenges were designed to push boundaries, not end lives.

By now, Trevor should have been disqualified and whisked away for medical attention.

That was how the system worked, or at least how it was supposed to.

The longer they waited, the more impossible it seemed that they were still stuck in this nightmare.

Aldrich clenched his fists in frustration. Something was very wrong.

It was no longer just about the situation, they were being played, and he could feel it in his gut.

"Anyone mind telling us what the hell those things are?!" Trevor coughed weakly, blood sputtering from his lips.

He tried to force out the words, desperate to understand.

"Pharaoh's ants," Aldrich muttered, his mind partially on the question.

"You know them?" Camelia asked, her curiosity piqued despite the gravity of their predicament.

"Only what I have read on them. They're a special breed," Aldrich explained, dredging up fragments of knowledge. "They operate like a colony, relying on numbers for strength rather than individual power. But some, like their queen and her guards, are much more dangerous."

Aldrich spoke from memory, recalling the details he'd read about the Pharaoh's Ants in his studies, not that he ever thought he'd actually face them.

These creatures weren't ordinary ants, they were walkers, creatures that had evolved beyond mere beasts due to mana involvement.

"They start off as regular ants, living under their queen's command. But once the queen awakens to mana, everything changes. All of them become mana users. It's a scary process. The workers are weak, barely even beta-ranked walkers. But their true power comes from their numbers. For every one you kill, a hundred more will take its place."

Aldrich paused, his eyes darkening as the weight of the situation sunk in.

"And when the queen's around, you can bet that these ants aren't mindless creatures. They're rational. They still follow orders yet they can think. That's why they're classified as prime walkers. They're more than just mindless killers."

Camelia, who had been silent up until this point, looked at Aldrich, her curiosity piqued. "How do you know so much about them?"

Aldrich met her gaze, his expression grim. "I make it a habit to never underestimate information, no matter how insignificant it seems at the time."

The truth of the matter was that their current predicament, fighting off the Pharaoh's Ants, shouldn't even be on the list of struggles for them.

Why?... Because it shouldn't be.

Pharaoh's ants are predators, not as ranked walkers but as leaders of a specific animal kingdom.

They do not get preyed on, they do the preying and they are opponents that every mystic at their earliest stage would want to avoid.

You don't just go finding them with hopes of winning, they are creatures you pray not to run into so life as a mystic wouldn't be cut short.

So yes, whatever it was those second years were thinking, bringing in Pharaoh's ant as a test to be overcome was a dangerous game on their side, one that wouldn't be agreed on by Eldora's professors or any other ruling body.

The number of ants they had faced so far suggests the involvement of a queen.

With a queen involved?... The playing field from Aldrich's deduction says they won't just be fighting tens of them going forward.

An entire colony is what is involved. Possibly in the hundreds, or worse, thousands.

Another of what makes them dangerous is not accounting for the actual number.

However, a queen does suggest more than what any of them would bargain for.

Undoubtedly!!!

"I knew it," Trevor muttered through gritted teeth, his breath shallow. "I knew we shouldn't have followed those footsteps. Look where it got us." Another spasm of coughing wracked his body, and blood trickled from his mouth.

"Calm down, Trevor," Fiona urged, her voice steady despite the situation. "You're just overexerting yourself."

Trevor spoke the truth that none of them could completely deny.

They can try to shut him out, but he made a point. They should never have followed those steps.

No, that isn't right.

The only reason they decided to follow those steps in the first place was due to their desperate motive of finding the exit and completing this sickening test.

Without an actual clue to work with, the steps proved the most obvious on ground.

Aldrich saw it, and he confided with Ian who was on the same page as he was.

So, it did not matter if they followed the steps or not because one way or another, they would eventually encounter the Pharaoh's ant as long as they decided to linger around their territory.

Though perplexed, Aldrich remained clear-headed enough to know the fault doesn't lie with any of them.

It however does with whoever is responsible for this test.

Besides, the unending change of events has Aldrich questioning if even an exit from here ever existed in the first place.