Chapter 134
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 134
Chapter Title: Crack in the Bond (1)
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'The ants know full well that subordinates blessed by a deity are different from ordinary people. They must have something in mind.'
He simply trusted his subordinates and watched quietly.
Just as they always had, they never acted without solid evidence and reason, even if that basis turned out to be wrong.
That was why he hadn't interfered when the ants accepted Seira's opinion and devised a plan to convert Arie.
The ants always pursued the most efficient form of combat.
Their leader, Asmora, was especially voracious when it came to new genes and techniques.
If there was an easier way to gain more than just clashing head-on, crushing the enemy with brute force, and devouring them...
There was no reason to avoid it. In his view, the ants needed more knowledge and experience right now anyway.
Knowing this, Jin-hyuk trusted them and waited.
He made it a point not to interfere with the ants' ecosystem, which ran itself smoothly. That was practically his first principle.
'Fortunately, He hasn't said a word yet.'
And Jin-hyuk's trust was conveyed directly to his subordinates.
As her plan progressed, Seira, who had been gauging Jin-hyuk's mood, grew even more confident in it. There was nothing more reassuring for a subordinate than knowing the great deity trusted her.
"We don't need to subdue her perfectly from the start. We just need to confirm if she has the will to break free on her own."
Seira had instructed the troops waiting in the trap—after destroying a small supply base in the rear and driving out the garrison—that they weren't to fight at full strength.
At the same time, she spotted someone hurtling toward them from beyond the sky at tremendous speed.
Just as planned, Arie—who had sortied the moment they appeared—had arrived.
"Witch!"
Arie landed on the ground with a heavy thud, sword in hand as she charged in.
Unlike before, Seira wasn't wearing her mask from the outset.
She wasn't here to fight Arie, after all.
She had come to prove her analysis: that Arie could be converted.
Even now, the ants' nests were being destroyed.
If all the erosion swarms' nests, positioned inside to check the Elf Empire, were wiped out, the elves would surely redirect their full forces north and launch a full-scale invasion. If the emboldened elves pushed in, it would mean more losses for the ants.
So Seira's actions were a desperate trump card, with the fate of the entire swarm hanging in the balance.
"The report said there were multiple enemies, but you're alone?"
Arie scanned her surroundings, using senses she'd heightened on the way.
Unlike the report of a small enemy unit's surprise attack, the ruined supply base felt devoid of any presence.
Arie's senses as a holy knight were sharply enhanced, but even they couldn't detect the ants that had deliberately entered hibernation, effectively entering a coma-like state to hide.
"Targeting the supply base was just a ruse. I just wanted to meet you and talk. To answer the question you asked me that day—why I offered myself to Belzahad."
"What...?"
Arie faltered at Seira's sudden declaration of wanting to talk.
It was the last reason she could've imagined, having flown here expecting a brutal rematch to settle their last bloody clash.
"As you know, I was originally just an ordinary human."
Seira calmly began her story to the bewildered Arie, explaining what she'd been through, what she wanted, and what she'd given up for it.
'Belzahad's witch isn't a madwoman who offered herself to monsters to destroy the world?'
Arie was shaken. She'd heard from surviving holy kingdom folk under the ants' protection—after renouncing a deity's blessing—and from Lucadia Empire people that the ants were the Heralds of Doom, creations of an outer god bent on exterminating all life on this land.
The one thing she'd accepted was that they were absolute evils trying to wipe out every living being in the world. Now even that was being denied.
"So just tell me this one thing. Are you truly fighting for your master of your own free will?"
"...!"
Seira's question struck at the heart. Arie, already tormented by doubt, found herself utterly unable to answer.
'It's all lies. Kill the enemy now.'
At that moment, the spell etched into Arie's body glowed, forcing her into motion.
Her watching deity wouldn't tolerate a subordinate wavering like this.
"As expected."
Seira gritted her teeth, quickly donning her mask again as she soared into the sky, evading Arie's sword strikes.
"All troops, subdue the enemy."
At the same time, the nearby ants snapped out of hibernation and swarmed, encircling and attacking Arie.
"A trap...!"
The startled Arie swung her sword, severing the neck of a charging blade ant.
Then Seira activated her pre-prepared spell and fired it at Arie.
When a grand mage like Seira went all-out preparing traps and magic circles in advance, she could unleash grand-level binding magic without delay.
"Urk?!"
A massive magic circle hidden in the ground lit up, exerting powerful gravitational pull on Arie.
Arie, who had tried to escape into the sky, was yanked back to earth as if by gravity affecting only her. Forced to fight with a heavy body, she was instantly buried under the ants that surrounded her like a small hill, with no gaps.
Arie swung her sword in horror at the swarming antennae and legs from all sides, but the ants pressed on relentlessly, even as her thrusts killed them and their comrades in droves.
"Eek..."
Spider ants lurking midway fired tentacles and webs indiscriminately, binding their bodies to hers. Arie's face paled at the writhing legs and antennae everywhere.
No matter how much she summoned mana to burn them away, the ants sacrificed their bodies and lives to seal her bit by bit.
Even the corpses of the dead became parts in the structure, as countless living ones piled on, forming an even sturdier tomb.
'Self-destruct.'
In the end, the final command came to Arie: sacrifice her life to kill the ants.
"Ah..."
Feeling the mana in her body surging hotly toward meltdown regardless of her own body, Arie despaired.
She intuited her end: from start to finish, used up as a tool.
"That won't do."
But then Seira burst through the ant-tomb they'd formed with their bodies and thrust her staff at Arie's chest.
'As I thought, something is forcibly controlling her body.'
Seira herself was a being assimilated with the ants via a parasitic entity in her body, possessing their innate keen detection abilities.
There were clear awkwardnesses in Arie's movements and power manifestations.
That unnaturalness—which wouldn't occur if she were voluntarily drawing on her power—was one basis of Seira's analysis.
"Seal her!"
Seira poured her power in, suppressing the boiling surge in Arie in reverse.
Of course, suppressing this rampage was impossible with Seira's power alone.
But nearly simultaneously, the ants forming the massive ant-tomb enveloping the two lent their strength.
Borrowing power from tyrant-class individuals and above with mana hearts, Seira barely managed to seal the rampaging power in Arie just before it erupted.
Many individuals perished in the process from overexertion, but the ants sacrificed their lives without hesitation.
That was the law of their existence as parts of the swarm, living within the swarm.
"What do you plan to do with me? You're all monsters. In the end, you're just using me too!"
"I won't deny that, but I can offer you choices."
Arie spoke in a trembling voice now that the rampage was halted.
In her eyes, the other ants casually sacrificing their lives seemed no different from her own plight.
"I'll tell you the truth."
Seira took Arie and escaped the ant-tomb before enemy reinforcements arrived, hurrying to the nearest ant nest where everything was already prepared.
Asmora examines the special power dwelling in the enemy's body.
Sharing everything through the hive mind, Asmora detected an unfamiliar power in Arie's body that Seira had brought to the nest—the blessing of the enemy deity.
As Jin-hyuk had worried, converting a subordinate already blessed by an enemy deity was extremely difficult.
He watched the scene with great interest, curious what method Asmora and the ants would use.
"No... no more modifications."
"Modification, as expected. It seems our Queen can likely remove the bindings on your body."
Inside the nest dug into the earth. With her power sealed and tightly bound in spider silk, Arie showed fear at the ants swarming everywhere.
"It depends on your choice."
"You're not going to let me go."
"Correct. The option of not fighting doesn't exist."
Seira shook her head pityingly, knowing Arie had been betrayed by her kin and modified into expendable tools.
However, neither Seira nor the ants intended to grant Arie complete freedom.
Their goal was to pull her to their side, collapse the enemy, and win the war. Seira wanted Arie to perform as well as she did. And through her and Arie, she hoped to fully establish a new rank in the swarm: 'Legion Commander.'
"But if there's something you want to protect, wouldn't it be better to fight for that than to fight pointlessly?"
"..."
Seira emphasized that the old daily life Arie longed for could no longer return to this land.
Edellion had already been observed by the deities and selected as a contested zone.
Deities coveting territories and subordinates would cross cosmic space at any moment to invade this land, and its inhabitants would either become their pawns or die.
Only those two paths lay ahead.
"That's why I chose. To help them and make them win. At least they won't use us merely as tools for their wars."
The ants existed for a single value through the vast hive consciousness linking all individuals. No external entity could rashly interfere in this immense consciousness.
That was the decisive difference from other deities' forces, who absorbed locals to expand territories and subordinates.
It was a nature utterly incompatible with coexistence with other races.
If push came to shove, the ants could exterminate all life on this land and take their place.
But conversely, this allowed the powerless to survive and keep living.
Jin-hyuk and Seira had prevented massacres and were now devising alternatives.
"Are you prepared to sacrifice? Not a false sacrifice forced upon you, but one of your own resolve."
"...My choice?"
Arie's eyes wavered at Seira's words.
With the coercive force sealed and her betraying kin gone, leaving her alone, this was exactly what she needed most right now.