Chapter 73
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 73
Chapter Title: Upgrade (1)
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“No, I can’t hold out any longer!”
In truth, the moment the final defensive line crumbled, the outcome was already set in stone.
The screams and desperate shouts echoing from all directions meant that control had completely collapsed.
“No... This can’t be happening...”
Erianne, fighting in the central square of the capital, gripped her mace with trembling hands.
The ants she had blasted to death were already piled high on the ground.
But no matter how many she killed, the ants swarming from every side seemed endless.
If anything, it was the numbers of those fighting beside her that were dwindling, one by one.
“I... I...”
The moment she foresaw her own future, Erianne hesitated, pushing back the burning rage as creeping terror took hold. Her eyes widened in shock.
But she couldn’t run away like before.
She knew that fleeing would mark her as a heretic defying the goddess’s command, stripping her of her power—and cursing her with something far worse.
“Eek?! G-Get this off me!”
Exhausted, Erianne became the target as spider ants hurled webs at her from all sides.
She burned them away with blazing holy power, but now she stood alone, surrounded by countless ants.
“No! Let go! You damn...”
With her last reserves of holy power spent, Erianne staggered on weary legs.
Bound by the sticky threads spraying around her, she had no choice but to collapse to her knees under the ants’ pull.
Her beautiful face and gleaming armor had lost their luster.
“S-Seira.”
“Erianne. Long time no see.”
And so, before the pitifully kneeling Erianne appeared Seira.
Her face visible through the cracked mask, Seira looked down at Erianne with eyes devoid of any real emotion.
“P-Please, spare me.”
For whatever reason, Erianne twisted her body desperately, crawling forward to beg for her life at Seira’s feet.
“We were good together. We loved each other so passionately. A-At the end, it wasn’t me who abandoned you, it was... it was Brandt who made me do it! I had no choice...”
Her face drained of all color, Erianne rubbed her cheek against Seira’s leg in desperation.
As if nothing else mattered now, pleading on old affections, begging just to be spared. Seira knelt on one knee to meet her gaze, faintly lifting the corner of her mouth.
“You want to live? Like me?”
“Yes! Please, just my life... I’ll do anything! Just tell me how!”
Erianne nodded frantically, bursting into sobs.
“You know nothing.”
“Se-Seira...”
At that moment, Seira shook her head pityingly and began to show Erianne something.
Erianne’s eyes filled with horror as she watched Seira’s body twist with grinding, crunching sounds. She screamed.
“You should be grateful the Queen has lost interest in you. For someone as arrogant as you, dying by my hand like a human in your final moments is far better.”
“Ah...”
Seira placed a hand on Erianne’s head, who was too shocked to even speak.
Erianne had no chance to say a word. A crackling surge of powerful lightning poured into her skull, her eyes rolling back in an instant.
[Asmodra orders the reclamation of resources]
Only then did the ants move, approaching Erianne’s smoking corpse.
Seira closed her eyes and turned away from the sight of Erianne’s limbs being torn apart and fed to the ants.
Whether to spare Erianne or not wasn’t even Seira’s call.
The thorn ant in her arms and the tortoise ants on her body were exceptionally rare variants among their kind, impossible to mass-produce due to the massive resources required.
If Asmodra had decided on death, then at least letting her die painlessly in one go by Seira’s hand.
That was Seira’s way of settling her last feelings toward the woman who had betrayed her.
‘Was it a long war?’
The victorious ants had ultimately toppled the Holy Kingdom.
They swept through not just the fallen capital but the entire kingdom, killing anyone who resisted even slightly or bore the goddess’s power, dragging them off as food for the ants.
Those who hadn’t earned Seira’s grudge managed to survive, but rebuilding from that ant-overrun, scorched wasteland would take ages.
The ants had promised only their lives.
Rebuilding civilization or gathering strength to rebel against the ants? That was another matter entirely.
And so, Goddess Henes had taken an irreparable blow to her forces and territory.
She was effectively out of the competition.
All this, less than a year after the ants first appeared on that land.
[Asmodra is satisfied with the harvest but instinctively senses the need for far more food in the future]
But Asmodra and the ants still hungered for more.
Toppling a single tiny kingdom on a peninsula was barely enough to fill their bellies.
[Bellona is stimulated by the great hive’s feat of toppling a kingdom]
‘There’s still so much left.’
Seeing the message that Bellona was stirred, I checked the updated Edellion map through Seira.
The rough map I’d sketched from the limited info I’d gathered so far was just the tip of the iceberg.
Beyond the Lucadia Empire and the orcs, countless other factions and races still thrived on that land.
Further west past the plains lay a great mountain range linking to another continent, and south beyond the Empire were deserts and jungles.
How many of those powers had other deities vying to claim the land as their domain?
Checking the Edellion boards showed plenty of deities already active.
[The subordinates hunger to devour it all]
They were enemies. And food.
Having learned through Seira just how vast the world was—like me—the ants burned with greedy flames.
Far from being overwhelmed by its scale, they rejoiced and thrilled at the thought of so much prey scattered for the hive to consume.
[Bellona marches out to exterminate the orcs]
Bellona made the first move.
On the western front, locked in endless clashes and attrition, Bellona led her vastly strengthened nomadic hive in a grand march.
‘At this rate, the orcs won’t hold out much longer.’
The Great Plains orcs were infamous among nearby powers, but even united, they fell short against the ants.
It mirrored the core reason the Holy Kingdom fell. The orcs weren’t numerous to begin with, and their overall size was small.
They’d compensated with superior combat prowess so far, but against ants, that prowess wasn’t much of an advantage.
If things continued, the orcs would be wiped out, and their deity would fail like the goddess.
I can’t stand by any longer. I’m pulling out of this game. I won’t let my subordinates die in this meaningless war anymore.
Hold on, what the hell is this insanity?!
In that instant, chaos erupted in the Divine Community.
The orcs’ deity, the Lord of Black Blood, ordered all his forces to abandon everything and migrate west in a single stroke.
[Bellona is bewildered by the empty enemy camp]
Bellona, resolved for battle, froze upon finding the orcs’ camp deserted.
Her scouts flew farther and spotted hundreds of thousands of orcs already thundering westward into the distance.
With their nomadic tendencies, abandoning their homes without hesitation wasn’t impossible.
Wait, don’t come here! If hundreds of thousands of orcs flood in...
We have to survive too, don’t we?
The other deities panicked, but the orcs’ god was resolute.
It was one massive snowball effect kicked off by the ants.
[Enraged Bellona wishes to pursue the orcs]
[Asmodra orders Bellona’s nomadic hive to pursue the orcs, leaving the Empire assault to the great hive]
The ants responded immediately.
Asmodra’s great hive, having toppled the Holy Kingdom, now set the Lucadia Empire as its primary target.
Meanwhile, Bellona’s nomadic hive, which had fought alongside them, was tasked with pursuing the fleeing orcs, playing to its strengths.
‘After the Holy Kingdom’s walls, now the Empire’s.’
On my screen appeared a massive barrier linking fortress to fortress.
Would it become the ants’ next feast—or another obstacle like the one they’d shattered against the Holy Kingdom?
Come at us if you dare. We’ve entered magic civilization stage 3. We can wipe out those outer god monsters in one go.
The deity rooted in the Empire, Arbiter of the Blue Eclipse, boasted of the Empire’s advancing magic civilization and its confidence against the ants.
Whether it was bravado to draw attention or genuine, they surely hadn’t been idle while the ants were distracted elsewhere like with Seira or the Holy Kingdom.
“We’ll need new methods too.”
“Trust me. I’ll find a new power to take Belzahard to the next level.”
As if hearing my absentminded mutter, Seira’s quiet voice reached me from the deserted ruins of the Holy Kingdom’s capital—once a gleaming city, now crumbling everywhere—where she prayed alone.
‘For now, all I can do is trust Seira. She found a way to access the hive mind on her own, after all.’
I didn’t know what emotions Seira felt after her revenge, but in her regained peace, she hadn’t rejected her role in the hive, working for the ants.
Her true goal remained unfulfilled, after all.
As the ants spread across the world, Seira would cooperate fully, minimizing needless killing and saving as many lives as possible.
Bloodline Adjustment - 6: Can now regulate produced specimens and create new castes using acquired information from devoured prey.
Omni-Cells - 2: Hive mind influence now extends to the cellular level.
*Expanded acquirable info: now includes some vertebrates.
[Asmodra molts once more]
Which meant it was time for me to move too.
Having toppled the Holy Kingdom, expelled the goddess’s forces, and secured vast resources in the process, Asmodra evolved once more.
Beyond upgrading her abilities, she could now devour new prey.
Including some vertebrates.
My eyes widened at those words.
‘Big animals are obviously still off-limits. But I need to experiment. What first? Frog? Lizard?’
My options had exploded in an instant.
And as we progressed like this, my guess that we might one day devour intelligent beings like humans was inching toward reality.