When, three hours later, the mining team arrived, the fighting team set off once again. Several of the people that were left behind to guard the main tunnel had started pushing their way into the side tunnels, so when they arrived they found many people creating piles of ant corpses near the tunnel entrances, using them to partially block the corridors.
Soon the miners had joined them near the queen’s chambers, and they were ready to keep moving forward. Gabriel was the first to enter the queen’s chambers and, when she noticed him and screamed for others to protect her, he stomped his foot and a wave of blue light left him. It went towards the Queen and, when it had almost reached her, quickly went up the wall, then across the ceiling, separating her from the rest of the room. A few seconds later the Queen had backed up further in the corner and ice started to form on the walls. By the time ten more seconds had passed, however, the ice had completely closed off the area and was starting to grow thicker.
Gabriel exhaled a bit of fog and the Queen, recovering from the shock of the unexpected attack, started attacking the ice. While each swing of her massive legs chipped a bit of ice from the barrier Gabriel was able to repair it as fast as she injured it. “It’s all yours, Joseph.” he said, and pulled out a folding chair to sit down and watch the queen.
The queen’s shriek had brought in backup, but between Gabriel and the other people there they were able to quickly defeat them. Joseph nodded to him and the group entered the gate.
An hour later the first group left the Gate, carrying boxes full of magic crystals. Gabriel was staring at the barrier, the Queen having given up on breaking through it fifteen minutes ago, and was slowly recovering mana. “So, there were crystals inside, huh?” he asked the man carrying the box.
“Lots of ores, too. We should be able to mine everything in a day or so, though.”
“Not sure she’ll let me delay for that long, but I can try.” Gabriel responded and the man nodded before heading back inside with an empty crate.
For the next three hours the queen watched him coldly, seeming to get more and more tired as the hours went by. Then she stood up and moved slightly forward to look at him again. He could tell that she was getting annoyed, and suspected that she was planning something, so he got out of his seat. A few seconds later she opened her mouth and spit something at the ice. At first, Gabriel though it was some sort of acid, which wouldn’t do anything to an ice barrier, but then the substance started to glow slightly, and gradually glow more brightly and in a brighter shade of red.
He recognized at once that she was melting her way through with some sort of chemical that got extremely hot, and tried to seal the area off, only to have his ice melt a second later. Obviously she had only needed time to make this substance, and he had given her the time to do so.
Fifteen second later a small hole had been melted into the ice and she started striking near the hole. Gabriel sent an ice shard through the hole, only to have the Queen spit the substance at him as well, melting the ice shard mid-air. He jumped out of the way of the weird spit and a few seconds later the spit started glowing as the floor began to melt. “Well, I guess that’s it for the mining operation.” he said, and some of the men who were bringing ore out agreed before heading back in to warn the others that the Queen might die soon.
Fifteen seconds later the Queen managed to finish breaking through the ice wall and ran at Gabriel. He jumped forward just as she got there and started running between her legs. In case she decided to just sit down and crush him he ran beside her legs instead of down the middle, and threw ice at each of the appendages as he passed them, freezing her in place. “Like Mother like son.” he said, noticing that it seemed just as effective at trapping her as it had been on the other ants. Unlike them, however, she had a way out. She spit a tiny amount of the liquid at her legs and, while they were slightly burned, the ice quickly melted and she was free.
Gabriel continued to run around underneath her as she tried her best to hit him. He knew that this would only buy him time eventually she would manage to maneuver herself in a way that she could attack him.
That came five minutes later when he tried to run between two of her legs on one side and she moved it sideways, hitting him and sending him flying. While he was wearing armor, it was only upper A grade and flexible, so he had a cracked rib from the impact. His fighting style relied on being fast and agile while attacking with powerful magic, but against such a large creature any blow that managed to land would be able to injure him. He would have to go on more of an offensive, then.
He stood up and started throwing ice shards at her. While she could intercept most of them with her spit, it was in a more limited supply than his mana and soon she started to run out, letting several ice bolts get through. Instead of attacking her center, which might seriously injure her, he aimed for her legs. Two legs on one side were blown off and he quickly ran at her. She used the last of her fiery spit to try and hit him, but he managed to dodge despite the pain and run under her head, at which point he threw a bolt at her face. This time, however, instead of piercing her, it form ice under the bottom of her head and quickly froze her mouth shut.
Hoping she could still breath, he ran to the other side and quickly blew off the three legs on that side before returning to the other side and blowing the last one off as well. While she had a way to melt the ice, in order to let her mouth free, she would have to hold the spit in her mouth, which would greatly injure her.
With her laying on the ground he started covering her in a layer of ice so that she wouldn’t be able to move. While she might freeze to death from this, it might take hours for her to do so, so they would have enough time to mostly clear the dungeon of valuable materials.
After she was frozen in place, not even able to turn her head, Gabriel walked back over to where he was sitting only to realize that the camping chair he had used was half melted, one of the balls of spit getting underneath it and the aluminum it was made of getting too hot to stay solid. He sighed and sat on the ground beside the cooling area of caustic smelling spit, the heat of the material keeping the area quite warm.
After a few hours the Ant Queen went completely limp, no longer able to fight, and an hour after that people started leaving the dungeon. Joseph walked over to him. “So you had to kill the queen?”
Gabriel got up and looked at her, noticing there wasn’t even minor movements coming from her. “I guess she froze to death. Get everything?”
“Most of it. We’ll probably be hauling things out for the next thirty minutes, but we got about 80% of what was there.”
“Good.” said Gabriel. “In that case, I’ll help you move crates.” He was no where near as strong as Joseph despite being a much higher rank, as he was a mage and Joseph was a fighter, but he could at least carry the crates the C ranks were carrying.
Thirty minutes later the last of them left the dungeon and twenty minutes after that the gate closed. Gabriel had gone over to the corpse of the queen and dug around a bit, and brought a large purple crystal over to Joseph. “Think you can make me something out of that? I was thinking about maybe getting a staff so I can be a traditional Mage.”
Joseph shook his head. “Not really my specialty. I could make a really nice sword from it and some of the ore we just pulled from the dungeon, or a suit of scale mail if you want the protection, but I’m not good at making Mage items. I know someone that is good, so if you don’t mind I’ll give it to her and let her make you one.”
Gabriel nodded and smiled. “In that case, do you mind getting me some armor made from the exoskeleton of the queen? Should make some decent scale mail.”
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For the next two days they carefully cleared every side tunnel, killing every ant in the caverns. They discovered that down one of the side passages a large number of magical plants were growing. From what the scouts said, there was a C rank dungeon break in that area about two years ago, but the ants had killed anything inside tunnels that was a threat to them. All that was left were a large number of fruit bearing vines which fed on the ambient mana instead of sunlight. These were likely the ants primary food source, with the penguins and fish being a supplement.
One of the C ranked teams that discovered the fruits decided to eat one and, surprisingly, not only were the fruits safe to eat, but the Hunter reported feeling well rested afterwords. The medical and alchemy division later tested the plant and found that the juice from it had the ability to restore both mana and stamina, approximately 20% of your stamina and 25% of your mana if you ate a fruit at your rank, or a tenth as much for a rank lower. Eating one a rank higher, however, would cause a condition known as Mana Overload. Essentially, the mana would disrupt the neural activity in your body, leading to pain, disorientation, and exhaustion. If it got bad enough it could even lead to a person losing consciousness. There were only E, D and C ranked vines, however, so the higher ranked hunters didn’t risk much by consuming them, the original idiot to eat one having been a C rank but also tired and having eaten a C rank fruit. Still, they were extremely delicious, so Gabriel was certain that they would be a very popular food.
Once the cave was cleared of enemies, the helicopters started bringing in construction crews as well as what steel and concrete they had brought with them. It took them about a month to get all of the basic amenities up, including power from a mana generator, water, sewage, and a few buildings for people to live in, with restaurants on the ground floor.
After another month everyone had moved to the cave town and a month after that all of the cargo had been moved into the cave, all of the needed buildings except one built, and the construction crews were ready to start on the new Guild Hall. With the satellite communication equipment being set up outside as well as several landing pads for helicopters, they were able to contact the other guild branch halls in the United States and send the cargo ship back with a skeleton crew to pick up the others. Mikhail, who had worked on a fishing boat before Awakening, would serve as the ship’s protector for the trip, in case any of the rare oceanic monsters decided to attack them. Some B and an occasional A rank monster had been seen in the deep ocean, though they weren’t sure where they came from.
So that people could continue to trade, the guild would have a bank, with money based on the mana within essence stones. The standard unit would be a Shard, equal to one hundredth of an E rank core, putting a Shard at roughly the value of a dollar, but slightly less. Each rank of core above E contained about ten times the magical energy, and so would be worth ten times as much, with D ranked cores being worth 1k shards, C rank 10k, B ranks 100k, A ranks 1 million, and S ranks 10 million. Of course, it was unlikely that anyone would deposit a stone above C rank, as they were far too valuable in crafting and hard to get, but the option to drop off stones at the bank counter and deposit them into your account would still be there for all guild members and their families.
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Five years later the city had grown into a bustling metropolis, home to over fifty thousand people. The local specialty was magic equipment, and the city produced far more than it could use. For that reason, most of the cargo ships that left would carry the equipment to the various countries they traded with and sell it, then bring back people, food, or non-magical items and equipment that people might want.
Every day the guild sent people out to scout the local area for more dungeons, though they didn’t usually try and stop dungeon breaks, even with the frequency of dungeons increasing every month. If the creatures inside could survive outside they would help expand the ecosystem, and if not they would serve as a renewable source of monsters for the increasing number of Hunters to hunt.
One such example was the Fire Forest about one hundred and fifty kilometers south of the city. It had been a C ranked fire based dungeon that appeared about six months after the ant cave was seized, and the fire based plants inside had spread across the ground, using their abilities to melt the ice and form a forest which surrounds the gate. The only two animals which seem to have survived were the flame Monkeys, which looked like capuchins and threw fire balls, and the Flame Wolves, which could breath fire and hunted the monkeys for food and sport. While the monkeys were rank E and D, the wolves were rank D and C. This added two new monsters for the local Hunters to hunt, as well as created a warm swamp nearby where people could visit, as it stayed between 25 and 35 centigrade there regardless of what the outside temperature was like.
They were no longer the only guild in town either. While the town technically belonged to the Fenrir guild, which Gabriel Nolan was the CEO of, several other guilds had built branches in the city, sending out their own people to hunt monsters before selling their loot in town. They didn’t severely impact the Fenrir guild’s income, and in some ways improved it, so even if they wanted a monopoly on the region, which Gabriel didn’t, it would make sense to let the guilds remain for now.
There was a knock on the door of Gabriel’s office and he looked up from his computer. “Come in.” he said, and Joseph entered the office.
“I have the report on the latest group of recruits, sir.” he said, handing over the folder. “Though, if you don’t mind me saying so, I think we are starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel as far as Hunters are concerned. We may need to improve our recruitment campaign so that we can bring in more qualified Hunters. Otherwise, the other guilds may start to out-compete us with talent.”
“Why do you say that?” Gabriel asked, glancing over the report that was laying on his desk, including a page on each of the one hundred and seven new recruits. “As far as I know our employment terms are still better.”
“Yes, sir.” said Joseph, nodding, “but they still seem to be bringing in higher ranked candidates on average, which I suspect is the result of our advertising campaign losing its effectiveness. Take this Hunter for instance.” He flipped to the twenty third page. “Sung Jinwoo, 19 years old, from South Korea. E rank hunter. Barely. His magic power rating is as low as it can go and a person still be a Hunter. Technically he’s a melee combat type, but he’s barely as strong as an unawakened person that has some muscle.”
“You don’t think we should have recruited him, then?”
Joseph shrugged. “Well, there was something special about him that caught our attention. He’s actually the guardian of his 15 year old sister. Not that we brought him here as some sort of charity case, though. He’s his sister’s guardian because his mother has the Eternal Sleep.”
This got Gabriel’s attention. The guild’s medical division had recently started developing a treatment for the disease, but, as there were only two people in the city with it, they didn’t have enough test subjects for proper research. “So we brought him in to get access to his mother for research?”
Joseph nodded. “In fact, it was the main reason he agreed to the contract. He has been working as a Hunter in South Korea since he awakened despite being as weak as he is because it’s the only way to pay his mother’s medical bills. When we offered to not only use traditional means to stop the degradation, but also let her participate in the research for a cure, he jumped at the chance.”
“Then I don’t see how he’s considered ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel.’ It seems that his mother makes the contract worth it.”
“The reason I said that is because his mother is more valuable to us than he is, but we recruited him to get access to her. How many people with the disease don’t have Hunter relatives we can invite in order to gain access to them? He barely qualified for recruitment, and now I’m not even sure what we can do with him. The only ideas we had were either to train him as a crafter of some sort, or assign him to the construction team, as he was working on a construction crew when his Awakening occurred.”
Gabriel shrugged. “He won’t be useless forever. Give him a free month of E rank elixir. Maybe he’ll decide to use it on his own and will get strong enough to be moved to a better job.” Elixir was something the alchemy group had come up with three years ago. Made from the blood of E, D, and C ranked mammalian monsters as well as the juice of what people were calling Divine fruit, the recovery fruit they had found when clearing the tunnels, it was able to slightly increase the power of a Hunter up to the peak of their rank, and even sometimes push them up a rank, though that was extremely risky. Each dose at a Hunter’s rank improved their mana level by about five percent, and the change was permanent as far as the researchers could tell. If one wanted to improve their rank, however, they needed to be at the peak of their rank, then use the elixir for the next highest rank. That had a considerable risk associated with it, however, as it almost always caused Mana Overload. In some cases the condition was so bad that it could even put a person in a coma, mimicking the Eternal Sleep, though they would eventually wake up after a few weeks unlike the people with the disease. And even after all of that, a person had less than a ten percent chance to increase their rank after recovering from the Mana Overload.
This extreme form of Mana Overload was actually what had gotten the researchers interested in the Eternal Sleep and developing a cure for it, as the symptoms were so similar. This had resulted in a treatment being developed one year ago which relied on a specific property of Hunters. Their body could metabolize mana, using it to improve. Mage types primarily improved mentally, and Combat types primarily improved physically, but both could use it to fuel improvements to their bodies. The people with the Eternal Sleep, however, had no way to use mana, but their bodies had a way to gather it. This caused the levels to build up until it was too much to handle. This was similar to Hunters who had too much mana in them from consuming dungeon plants or monsters above their level, but in their case their bodies could eventually make use of the energy, so the levels would eventually decrease to manageable levels. In those with the Eternal Sleep, however, there was nothing to lower those levels, and it builds up to the point where it damages their bodies.
So one of the researchers had the idea that, if they could transfer the mana from someone suffering from Eternal Sleep into a Hunter, the Hunter could use it, decreasing their mana levels. They thought of doing this through a blood transfer, but, of course, they couldn’t put the Hunter’s blood into the sick person, as it contained high amounts of mana as well. They thought of simply draining the person’s blood and letting their body regenerate it, but while this showed some ability to lower the mana levels, it appeared that the levels couldn’t be decreased to a low enough level to let the person wake up no matter how much blood was lost.
So what they needed was someone that had the Hunter’s ability to use the mana, but no mana in their blood, allowing them to act as a sink for the mana through a continuous transfusion. In the end they settled on what some were calling ‘pre-awakened’, or sometimes ‘sleepers’. These ‘sleepers’ had the potential to Awaken, but didn’t have the ability to gain mana more quickly than they could use it that Hunters did, the thing which Elixir improved. After several months of trials and developing the means to identify them, they found three people they thought might be Sleepers and, when they hooked up the one that was the same blood type as one of the two patients, the patient’s blood mana levels immediately dropped. While it took about a month of treatments, the person’s mana levels dropped low enough that they are now capable of remaining conscious for around four hours per day, and that amount of time is slowly increasing. While it isn’t a cure, the Guild doctors had technically developed a superior treatment for the disease.
