Chapter 100
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 100
Chapter Title: The Price of Choice (4)
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‘Thorough destruction.’
Asmodra gazed at the city, which had become hell itself, through the eyes of its soldiers.
The moment the barrier they trusted collapsed, the mages were swept away like infantry that had allowed an enemy cavalry charge.
“No... not here!”
“Defend it at all costs!”
Of course, the mages, with nowhere left to retreat, fought back desperately.
This was a place where some of the Empire's top talents had been gathered. Naturally, their combat prowess wasn't to be underestimated.
However, the ants pressed forward, using their comrades' bodies as shields and their corpses as bridges.
Even if the mages fought with desperate resolve, the ants were born, lived, and died with that same desperate resolve since primordial times.
In the process of killing and being killed, it was inevitably the mages whose spirits would waver and reveal their limits.
“The dream of the great magitech empire crumbling like this...”
The lab director in the deepest part of Arkaina Zero tightly closed his eyes, sensing the ants' presence slowly approaching through the corridors.
Behind him were vast resources gathered from across the Empire, along with books and documents containing the knowledge Astragon had delivered.
He had to protect these at all costs, but the explosions and screams were drawing ever closer.
Gritting his teeth, the lab director raised his staff.
He intended to self-destruct rather than die helplessly.
“Come...!”
Finally, the ants melted through the thick door with acidic venom and charged at the last remaining mages.
The lab director and mages' eyes flashed at the sight of the ants filling the floor, ceiling, and walls of the narrow corridor, swarming in en masse. Their staffs spat fire.
“Die!”
Blazing flames engulfed the ants in an instant. Even feeling the scorching heat on himself, the lab director desperately poured on more firepower.
‘I'll kill you again and again.’
When the flames finally died down...
The lab director and mages assumed the ants had been annihilated.
So as they reloaded their spells to deal with the next wave...
“Th-they endured it?!”
The surviving ants resumed their advance.
The blade-wing ant·Tyrant at the forefront, its barrier at maximum output shielding allies from enemy magic, swung its razor-sharp mandibles and lunged at the horrified mages.
[Asmodra is satisfied with the considerable spoils of war and great victory report]
It didn't take long for the ants to capture Arkaina Zero.
The ants pursued relentlessly, determined not to leave a single mage alive. The mages, knowing they would die fleeing anyway, fought to the bitter end but were all slaughtered.
No one left in Arkaina Zero to resist the ants. Only countless corpses remained, which the worker ants dissolved into nutrient solution.
“...Hic.”
The survivors were but a tiny fraction.
Only a portion of Renoa's native residents had barely saved their lives by abandoning resistance against the ants and cowering in terror.
Seira glanced at the survivors, who trembled in fear at the sight of her as she passed the gruesome scene.
‘The Lukadia Empire—no, the subordinates of the evil deity have no choice but to fall now.’
As Seira walked, the swarming ants parted in unison, clearing a path for her to the heart of Arkaina Zero.
Upon arrival, Seira confirmed the resources and materials—stained with blood but perfectly preserved.
These were the accumulations of Astragon's subordinates, who had seized the Empire, mobilizing its entire might.
Seira let out a small sigh upon seeing knowledge that had evolved at least two generations beyond what she'd encountered during her infiltration.
‘Ours. All of it. Everything.’
Asmodra's will echoed in her mind.
The sole reason the ants had sacrificed more to preserve these intact: Asmodra's greed.
Asmodra's greed for knowledge would never allow it to miss this treasure trove.
‘The Queen will catch up to me someday.’
After skimming the magic-related materials, Seira bit her lip.
Asmodra's growth rate was staggering.
Not mere growth, but evolution—far beyond Seira's expectations for a long time now.
Seira was certain it was only a matter of time before Asmodra, who had begun craving not just food and nutrients but magic and all sorts of knowledge, surpassed her.
It had already developed its own reinterpretation of barriers.
Just as it devoured diverse creatures to absorb their abilities and spawn powerful variants, its capacity to assimilate vast knowledge into its own far exceeded even Seira, a genius among humans.
“Most are biased toward war magic, but these are certainly high-level studies that didn't exist on this Edellion land.”
Seira began committing it all to memory as she examined the materials.
She wasn't alone.
Even with her hive-mind-enhanced learning ability, absorbing every scrap of knowledge in this massive facility would take too long solo.
Instead, Asmodra mobilized its ants to pore over the materials collectively.
One of Asmodra's attempts to bolster its intelligence had been learning this land's language and script through Seira.
Though its vocal structure prevented speech, the hive mind made textual records unnecessary anyway.
The ants learned solely to steal and absorb from others.
‘Not just defeat. They gave up so much.’
Jin-hyuk turned the screen, imagining Astragon in extreme rage, rampaging about now.
The others clearly didn't yet grasp the ants' learning capabilities.
If they had, they would have destroyed the materials at any cost.
“Your Majesty! Renoa has fallen, and Arkaina Zero has been annihilated...!”
“This is grave news.”
The news spread quickly.
However, unlike the ants' devastation of the southern regions, no wave of massive terror swept the central areas.
Unlike their total annihilation tactics with nest erosion in the south, they had targeted key fortresses and facilities like Renoa without indiscriminate attacks.
Panic and despair from Arkaina Zero's collapse gripped Astragon's followers, but most residents hadn't even heard proper reports.
“Raum, now it truly begins. They kept their promise for now, but that's not the end. From here on, I must protect the imperial family and the people.”
The boy emperor turned to Raum, who had delivered the urgent news, with a calm expression.
And Karian's prediction proved spot on.
Shuber and the others insisted on immediately relocating the capital near the barrier to wage resistance.
“Does that make sense? Flee north, abandoning countless subjects who haven't even heard proper news?”
“Your Majesty, this isn't the time for stubbornness!”
“Silence! You always knew a day like this would come!”
Karian no longer restrained his anger toward the visiting Shuber.
His face twisted viciously as he raised his voice, bluntly telling Shuber to take his people and get out if he wanted to flee.
He himself would stay behind with those who had no choice.
“Enjoy being the Empire's proud last emperor.”
Shuber sneered and abandoned his fixation on the emperor.
Astragon's subordinates were the very power holders and elites who had propped up the Empire until now.
A crippled Empire, halved in an instant with all its talents gone—could it even fight the ants for a single day?
With them controlling diplomacy, the military, and every key national function, there were scarcely any proper standing troops, let alone guards.
“Your Majesty...”
“Believe in me. And convey this to the remaining people: Do not defy Belzahad. We are not their prey.”
Finally able to claim the pure throne he'd longed for, Karian calmly issued his “first” imperial decree as emperor to the scant few who remained for his sake, like Albel.
Those left behind had no choice but to obey the emperor's decree. No means or destination for evacuation.
At best, they took solace in the emperor staying with them personally.
“Demons...”
“The demons are just passing us by. Just as Your Majesty said.”
But when the countless ants in the sky flew north, bypassing villages and cities, and the ground ants ignored fields and livestock while crossing highways...
The survivors watched in disbelief, shuddering.
‘Surrounded on all sides.’
Jin-hyuk impassively watched Astragon's forces get encircled in the north by the ants.
The history of Jin-hyuk and his ants had been one of struggle.
They had seized survival and desires through battle alone.
So even on the cusp of exterminating another deity's forces, he felt little stir.
‘I've changed a lot.’
Glancing in the mirror on impulse, he frowned at his appearance, unchanged from a year ago.
His looks were the same. But having awakened as a deity, his body was no longer human.
Above all, the biggest change he felt was in his mindset.
“Can I really go back to how things were?”
Scoffing despite himself, he reflected on his transformation.
From denial, partial acceptance, and attempts at compromise, he had now reached the stage of accepting everything to achieve his goals.
The world's hidden secrets, the deities' system, competition and war.
Experiencing it all had changed him bit by bit.
“It seems we'll need far more magic stones.”
“But we're already straining to divert what we have. Any more risks detection by the management bureau. To ramp up magic stone supply further, we'll need more contracts or specialized tech and equipment.”
As the ants evolved beyond ordinary life limits, magic stones were essential for those miraculous leaps.
To meet the surging demand, Jin-hyuk reached out to Baek Jin-seong.
“More contracts. And stronger hunters—then it might be feasible.”
His eyes lit up at Baek's words.
His hunter company, Hankyeol, was small-to-mid scale.
It could barely cover one or two neighborhoods, with C-rank gates and dungeons as the highest it could handle.
He'd recently brought in promising talent Ji Ye-eun for a fortune from the Divine Community, but it still wasn't enough.
「Trait Extraction」
‘What if I use it in reverse? Inject some of the ants' abilities into people.’
His eyes wavered as he contemplated testing that possibility.
If discovered, it might horrify others as monstrous—but Jin-hyuk now possessed a resolve different from before.
He was an evil god.
Evil gods were what the Divine Net called deities who spared no means or methods.
Though his own will accounted for less than half that path, sensing the vast fate before him, he deemed such concerns meaningless now.
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