“Ok, everyone, listen up.” said Joseph in a loud voice, and the room grew quiet. He pushed a button on his podium and the screen behind him showed the same aerial map that Gabriel had already seen. Gabriel sat at the back of the room beside where Mikhail stood, so that the two of them wouldn’t disrupt the briefing. After all, they already knew their roles in this, as Mikhail would be remaining onboard and coordinate from here, in case something happened here, as he was the second strongest person in the guild.
“This is an ant nest.” Joseph said, drawing a circle around where the opening into the tunnels would be. “We are sending out drones to look for other exits, but as far as we know, the only one is right here. We don’t, however, know how deep the tunnels go. Regardless of how deep it goes, it will need to be cleared before we bring in any support personnel to start building actual services. Once it is cleared, however, this will be the location of our new base.”
He pushed another button, revealing a black ant that was as large as a person. “This is one of the B rank ants that call this location home.” He pushed another button to show another ant standing beside the first, which was at least 30% larger. “This is an A rank ant, which also lives there. While outside the tunnels there are roughly equal numbers of both, inside we suspect that the A rank ants are in far greater numbers.”
He pushed a button again, showing the map again. “The ants like to hunt penguins and fish in this area.” He circled a nearby coastal area. “Both are monsters, resulting from local dungeon breaks, but even the strongest penguins are only B rank. Gabriel will be leading a team to mop up any ants that are outside, while I will lead a team to set up near the mouth of the tunnel to prevent more of them from leaving. While we estimate about 150 outside the tunnels, I don’t know how many there will be inside. Standard claim rules apply, though.” Standard rules were that anything that came out of a dungeon raid organized by the guild would be split equally between the guild and the Hunters. A Hunter could choose the half they wanted to keep of anything they killed, and the guild would take the other half. In a situation like the tunnel raid, though, with everyone firing at enemies and no one being able to keep track of who killed which enemy, they would likely need to base things off of flat percentages governed by rank and assumed contribution, however.
“We are now asking for volunteers for the mission. In the initial assault, we will be taking five B rank and ten A rank hunters per team, but once we have made our way into the tunnels, the rest of you are welcome to join the cleanup crew.” The tunnels were likely too extensive to hunt down the ants in every side corridor with the initial 32 people, so they would be allowing B and A rank Hunters to come in and clean up the side tunnels while they focused on making their way towards the queen. Unlike in a dungeon, when she died the rest of the ants would still need to be dealt with, so it could take weeks to finish clearing and mapping the cave and getting rid of all of the stragglers. For that, large numbers would be needed. “The only spot filled so far is by Healer Li Xiu, as she will be joining my team at the tunnel entrance, in case there are more insects than we can easily handle.
He pointed towards a Chinese woman on the front row and the crowd started clapping. She got up and bowed slightly in response. She was very popular with the people, and had healed most of them at some point, so the fact that she would be there in the initial push would make the people far less nervous about joining such a raid.
With that he ended his short briefing and sat down behind a table with his B ranked assistant to start taking volunteers. Around fifty people came forward, the rest preferring to wait until they could hunt in the side corridors. While most of them would gladly step into an A rank gate, even if they knew it was an ant nest, an ant nest that resulted from a break would be far less lucrative as there would be no mana crystals or valuable ores. This, combined with the fact that the ants would likely have far superior numbers, meant that they would be taking more risk for less reward. Those that volunteered were either desperate for money, hoped for fame, or were bored and wanted to fight something, an activity which hadn’t been possible outside a few light sparring sessions in over a week.
Two hours later a helicopter sat down five kilometers from the penguin area. A group of ants would be here soon, and Gabriel’s team would be ambushing them before the ants attacked the penguins, as they would need to use the penguins as a food source, as well as the monster fish the penguins ate. While Gabriel had never heard of an underwater gate before today, the scout team informed him that there had been cases of such gates in the shallow waters off the coasts of other countries, with teams of hunters in scuba gear clearing them. They were always low ranked gates, however, which is why the monster fish nearby were only E or D ranked. Apparently the scout group had found three dungeon break locations within the waters 100 kilometers of the shore, which had stocked the local waters with those monster fish.
The sixteen people of Gabriel’s team jumped out of the helicopters and four of the five people left on each, not including the D rank pilots, started pulling out the snowmobiles. While the others were there as part of the gathering teams, and would be grabbing the ant corpses for eventual transport to the ship after their cores were removed, Gabriel’s team would need to travel over eighty kilometers to get to the next staging area, so they would need a way to do so quickly, hence the snowmobiles. Every battle location would be sent back to the gathering team, once the battle was over, however, so they would have no problem finding the bodies.
Once everyone was ready, the team set out walking towards the incoming ants. A few minutes later the ants saw them and they lined up for battle. Twelve melee fighters lined up in front, with Gabriel, a B ranked healer, an A ranked fire mage, and a B ranked support mage specializing in debuffs in the rear. When the ants got thirty meters away, Gabriel opened by throwing small balls of ice at the ground. Wherever they hit ice crystals quickly formed to trap the legs of the ants. While they wouldn’t last very long due to the strength of the ants, it slowed them down enough for the wave of ants that were approaching the front line to get spread out somewhat and gave the debuff and fire mage a chance to use their own spells. Of course, Gabriel could use attack magic and throw ice bolts at them, but at his strength that would have quickly killed most of the ants. He wanted to give the others a chance to earn some money, as well as conserve his mana for the battle that would occur once they met up with Joseph.
Soon the first ten ants clashed with the front lines, but it only took most of the Hunters a few seconds to slide a blade into a gap in their exoskeletons or cause enough blunt force trauma for the ant to be seriously wounded. By the time those that had broken out of the ice leg trap and had recovered from the blindness spell of the debuff mage made it to the front lines, the ants were severely outnumbered and it only took a minute before they were all dead, many falling to fire bolts before even reaching the line.
The B ranked healer ran forward and fixed a cut on the arm of one of the melee fighters from an ant managing to bite him just before its head was severed, and, after sending the location of the fight to the scavenger team, they walked back to where the helicopters were waiting, their engines still running so that they stayed warm. The team took the eight snowmobiles, doubling up with the healer behind Gabriel, the mages on one, and the fighters on the other six, and set off towards the next group of ants.
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There were three B ranked fighters and nine A ranked fighters with them, which allowed the front line to hold out with relative ease in the next several battles. It took them three hours to make their way back to the main lines, leaving seven different groups of dead ants behind them. The ants from the first group would be taken back to the ship so that the harvesters there could start collecting the materials and the crafters could find a use for everything, but all of the other groups of ants would be taken to near the cave once the entrance was clear and piled up there. Likewise, any ants that were killed at the cave would be taken outside and stored in the snow so that they didn’t rot, then would be brought to the harvest teams and crafters as needed, hopefully not being needed before the caves had been cleared and the non-combatants could start living in rooms in the caves.
Once Gabriel’s team pulled up, he immediately went to meet Joseph in the command tent. “Any problems?” he asked, and Joseph shook his head.
“Not really. A few ants tried to attack us, but they were quickly dispatched. I had the bodies taken to a nearby snow bank. We set up a mess tent, a latrine, and a barracks, in case we need to fall back to here, but we’ll probably only need to stay here for another day.” This camp was about five kilometers from the cave entrance, so the ants could easily go around it, but they had decided to attack it instead.
Gabriel nodded. “If you guys are ready, once my men have had a meal and rested for a few hours we’ll head to the caves and engage the ants, then.” Joseph nodded and Gabriel set out for the mess tent.
They spent the night in camp and the next morning, after everyone had rested, the thirty two people there had gathered together and were ready to get started. Besides Gabriel, there were five mages, an A rank support specializing in Buffs, the B rank support specializing in debuffs, an A rank each for Fire and Ice magic, and a B rank Lightning mage. Then there were Li Xiu and the B rank healer. The other twenty four people were fighters, seven B ranks and seventeen A ranks, including Joseph. They quickly marched to the cave entrance and, when killing the few ants near the entrance didn’t draw the ants out, Gabriel threw a blue ball down the mouth of the cave which quickly exploded a hundred meters inside, throwing ice shards in every direction and killing over a dozen ants.
This let the ants know how serious of a threat the enemy was and they charged, hundreds of ants flooding out and running towards the line of fighters. Gabriel repeated his trick for slowing them down, and the debuff mage hit them with multiple effects, while the three attack mages sent attacks over the heads of the front-liners. This scattered the ants enough that their assault broke when it hit the front line, and between the buff mage improving their performance, the two healers keeping them healthy, and the mages dealing with any ants that went around the sides, the ants were quickly wiped out.
They waited a few minutes for the healers to finish and started harvesting the crystals, leaving the bodies where they were for the gathering teams. An hour later they lined up again and made their way inside. After one hundred meters they had a repeat of the last battle, but with only thirty or so ants, then moved forward again. This time the cave opened into a cavern that was at least fifty meters across and hundreds of meters long. ‘This must be an ancient lava tube’ thought Gabriel as he took in the size. While he was pondering how easy it would be to turn this into the main part of the city the sound of hundreds of ants started coming their way from beyond the light of their flashlights. The high levels of mana inside of dungeons interfered with electronic devices, so flashlights were unreliable inside them, but as they were outside dealing with dungeon breaks they were a perfectly valid option for lighting up the area. “Fall back.” said Gabriel, hearing the increasingly close cacophony, and they quickly retreated to a section of the cave just before the large room where it was just slightly narrower than their front line.
There they set up for the same strategy they used last time and, when the ants entered the beam of the flashlight, Gabriel opened fire, freezing dozens of them in place every second. This created enough of a barrier to slow the ants advance due to having to make their way around their relatives, and when they got closer the mages also opened up with attacks. Fifteen seconds later the first of the ants reached the main line and crashed with the fighters there.
For the next several minutes everyone put everything they had into the battle, with Gabriel mostly throwing attacks over the heads of the front liners and killing dozens of ants with each attack, the attack mages killing one or two with each attack, and the healers treating injuries as quickly as possible. Thankfully the guild had trained its people in actual combat situations and strategy, so they were able to perform a bit better than most guilds would, acting as a proper military unit rather than a ragtag group of Hunters. It took almost ten minutes before the last of the ants were killed, and by that time all of the mages except Gabriel were out of mana, with Gabriel being below half due to having used so many large scale attacks.
Half of the fighters were sent forward past the bodies just enough to keep watch while the other half and Gabriel started harvesting cores and throwing them into cloth bags. Every time they filled a bag it was tied up and set against the walls. Two hours later, with the fighters rotating out every thirty minutes so that they could rest, all of the cores were harvested and the mages had mostly recovered their strength. There were seventeen bags of cores, with around 30-40 cores per bag. That put the number of dead enemies in the last engagement around six hundred. The thirty six people that were gathered here would be quite rich after this.
With everyone healed and mostly recovered, they set out once again to make sure that the main chamber was cleared. There were around fifty ants left in the area which hadn’t participated in the battle, most of them B rank, but as they attacked no more than a few at a time the advancing team made quick work of them. There were four tunnels leaving the main chamber, one of which was larger than the others and part of the original lava tube, so the group continued down that corridor.
They had another large engagement about two kilometers into the tunnel, facing another sixty ants in an attempted ambush, but only one of them was injured, so they merely waited a few minutes for him to be healed and set off again. Several more ambushes like the last occurred from time to time, and at around six in the evening they decided to end the fight for the day.
They pulled back to the main chamber and Gabriel left the cave to call in the backup teams while Joseph set up watches on each of the four tunnels and had someone start setting up a copy of the four tents from before, plus a shower. They didn’t actually need a tent for the dining area, as they were inside and it was around five degrees in here, so one of them got to work cooking some sort of pre-made soup.
Around 21:00, nine PM, the back up people started to arrive. With another hundred people down here to watch the tunnels the first team was able to get some sleep.
The next morning they grouped up and, after breakfast, set off for where they hoped the boss chamber would be. They ran into three more large groups of ants, but around noon Joseph had them stop. He had borrowed a quad copter drone from the scout team and sent it ahead. It was equipped with an infrared camera, and in the large chamber ahead it detected a massive ant that was at least ten times the size of the others. Furthermore, the chamber was filled with hundreds of eggs. And behind the giant ant a large swirling gate could be seen.
“Queen.” said Gabriel, seeing the pictures. “And the dungeon boss. At that size, though, I doubt she’s still a Rank A.” He thought for a minute. If he killed her, the gate would close an hour later, and there might be useful thing inside there. But she was set up in front of it, so they couldn’t sneak around her. If he wanted to get the most out of this, he would need to come up with a plan.
After a few more seconds, he had an idea. “Ok, then. I’ll trap her and Joseph can lead the rest of you into the dungeon to see if there is anything inside worth taking.”
“Won’t that mean you are out here by yourself?” asked Li Xiu, a bit concerned. “I won’t be able to heal you if you are attacked.”
Gabriel nodded. “The Queen is most likely an S ranked monster, but is at least peak A rank. I doubt many of you can even injure her. I can make an Ice Wall that can trap her for a few hours, though. That will let you guys get in and survey the area. If there isn’t anything worth taking, then I’ll kill her and let the gathering team handle her. If there is something, however, I’ll keep her trapped as long as possible so that you can collect as much as possible.”
“Then shouldn’t we get a mining team here before you trap her? That will mean that they have the maximum amount of time to harvest everything, and can therefore get everything possible out of it.”
Gabriel nodded. “How about a compromise. I don’t want to put any low ranked people at risk, but plenty of C ranks have worked on mining teams before. How about we only bring in miners that are C rank and up?” Joseph nodded, and they pulled back a few hundred meters so that the queen couldn’t here them as they sent a runner outside to call for as many C rank miners as possible to come here.
