Nymphs and Princesses at War # 1
━Kwijik-.
━Kwijik-kwijik-.
Ants the size of my palm came pouring in like a black tide.
"The soldier honey ants are swarming in droves, you see...! Honey ants are docile creatures, but once they band together into a colony like this, they become terrifyingly powerful, such is the truth of it...!"
Even without Oinoi making a scene, I could tell these guys were a formidable swarm. The soldier honey ants were advancing so relentlessly that even Keongkeongi, perched on my shoulder, could do nothing about it.
━Grrrr…!
All he could manage was a low growl of a threat.
And then it happened.
━Hio-ong….
Someone let out a pitiful cry. I turned my head—and there were the soldier honey ants, hauling a cage made of twigs on their backs, and trapped inside it was Kwang-kwangi, the spider glowing prettily in shifting RGB colors…!
━Hio-ong…!
The moment Kwang-kwangi spotted me, he waved his front legs frantically back and forth. To think that quick little guy had been captured by honey ants!
"Kwang-kwangi!"
He was a friend strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Keongkeongi. How on earth had this happened?
Soon, Oinoi hid behind me and spoke up.
"Honey ant colonies drive out other animals to build their nests, you see...! Judging by the look of it, they have clearly come to conquer this house and yard in order to make them their nest, that is so...!"
According to Oinoi, a honey ant colony gathered like this was strong enough to drive out even the trolls I had once seen in a rift. Strong enough to chase off B-rank monsters. No wonder Kwang-kwangi got captured.
"And here I thought every honey ant was as mild-mannered and gentle as Ang-ang-i!"
Ang-ang-i was a cultured ant. Cultured enough to operate my phone and watch MeTube. Last I remembered, he'd subscribed to Niflex and loved watching documentaries full of animals.
"Another name for the honey ant is the 'Conqueror Ant,' you see...!"
Conqueror Ant.
Quite a magnificent name. Apparently they had a habit of expanding their territory without restraint and bringing all manner of creatures under their dominion to rule over them.
"For now, retreat!"
I fled into the house to escape the advancing conqueror ants. Only after locking the door and checking that every gap and crack was sealed did I finally relax.
━Kwijik! Kwijik!
━Kwijijik.
The ants seemed determined to burrow their way into our home. How long could we hold out?
"What in the world is going on here?"
I come back home, and suddenly it's crawling with ants. If I wanted to get to the bottom of this, I would have to ask Ang-ang-i.
━Zzji. Jizuzuzu. Zzji. Zzji. Jizu. Jizu.
Ang-ang-i, emperor of the honey ants, kept chittering something at me. But I still couldn't understand a word. That said, I did get the feeling that he was trying to say, "This isn't my fault."
━Jiju.
Then a silver ant clinging to my body said something. It was a knight ant.
"Ah! It is fetching Oinoi's crayons, you see...!"
The knight ant, its silver carapace gleaming, picked up Oinoi's crayons and began drawing on the floor. Drawing on the floor of my room. For a moment I worried about the cleanup, but since Ang-ang-i did most of the cleaning anyway, I decided not to care.
Swish, swish-swish—.
The picture the knight ant drew on the floor was full of ants. An unbelievable number of ants.
"An ant kingdom? Is this a picture of an ant kingdom? An ant world? An ant civilization?"
━Jiju-.
Soon the knight ant kept drawing. Using a golden crayon, it drew a single ant. That ant was enormous and looked terribly dignified. Then it drew seven small ants. The little ants were each a different color, rainbow-bright, and among them one was golden.
"Is that Ang-ang-i? And are these Ang-ang-i's friends? No—his brothers and sisters? Are these Ang-ang-i's parents?"
━Jiju…!
I couldn't follow exactly what the ant was trying to say, but I got the gist. Apparently, deep underground lay a vast kingdom of ants, ruled by a single ant—and when that ant died, its children inherited the estate.
The knight ant kept drawing. A great black ant. Then an ant shaped like a winged hornet tormenting the other ants. Then a scene of forces advancing in full charge.
Soon, Oinoi added her commentary.
"Aah—! That is a princess ant, you see...! A princess ant of the honey ants...! One this large ought to be called an Imperial Princess Ant, such is my judgment...! The Imperial Princess Ant is invading her own siblings, that is what is happening...!"
So that was it. Those black ants must be the soldiers of an ant kingdom's imperial princess.
"Honey ants love to conquer this and that and keep subordinates, such is their way...! If you form an alliance with them or become their vassal, they will give you delicious honey, you see...!"
What a peculiar custom. So the golden Emperor Ant Ang-ang-i was an unusually gentle and well-mannered specimen among honey ants. I'd assumed they were all like that.
"So what am I supposed to do now?"
A black Imperial Princess Ant. No—since she'd expanded her territory, I supposed she ought to be called an Empress Ant now. And the Empress Ant seemed to regard this house as part of Emperor Ant Ang-ang-i's domain and was encroaching on it. All this had happened while I was away in the army!
It was more shocking than the time my little sister sold my computer while I was briefly away at boot camp when I was twenty!
━Hio-ong…!
From outside the door came the sound of Kwang-kwangi weeping sorrowfully. To think the ants even knew to hold an important hostage. Apparently one could not afford to underestimate ants.
And in fact, honey ants were brilliant. In my opinion, they were far more intelligent than chimpanzees or orcas, the animals commonly said to be the smartest after humans. Honey ants had their own culture, their own political systems, their own songs—reportedly even courts of law.
When Oinoi first told me, I'd thought, surely not—but it seemed to be true.
Lee Jina experienced something astonishing in the middle of hauling moving boxes. The refrigerator she'd left sitting outside for a moment was gone.
"Hey. Did you guys spirit it away?"
Lee Jina asked a junior in the gang. The junior was a woman who had made a name for herself in Macheon City as an information broker. The gang 'Fairytale' had recently morphed into the strange organization called the 'Nymph Human Rights Foundation,' the balance of power among the city's gangs had shifted dramatically because of it, and the girl had mentioned she was setting up a new office.
I didn't much feel like getting tangled up in gang business. I was planning to finish the moving job and head straight home, and of course a hassle had to crop up.
Who on earth had taken the refrigerator?
Soon, Jeong Bora—her school junior, active as an information broker—spoke up.
"Unni, the ants took the refrigerator! I saw it with my own two eyes, I swear! These ants came swarming in and hauled off all the cargo! There was a ton of chocolate inside it too!"
"What? That's nonsense. Ants took it? You trying to feed me a line?"
Lee Jina frowned. But Jeong Bora, trembling from head to toe as she remembered how terrifying Lee Jina had been back in their school days, protested shrilly.
"Eek! Unni! When have you ever caught me lying!? I live and die by facts! I hate lies more than anyone! I'm telling you, ants appeared out of nowhere and took it! Into the underground!"
Ants stealing moving cargo. Lee Jina couldn't believe it. She tried to pull up the CCTV footage, but the screen showed an ant that had spread its wings with a fwump and flown right up to block the camera.
"So now the ants are even blocking the CCTV?"
Lee Jina was dumbfounded. And why on earth were the ants so big?
"Did you see where those ants went?"
"Into the underground!"
The underground of Macheon City. They had once planned to dig a subway system, but after the rift crisis weakened the ground beneath Macheon City, the subway project fell through. Instead, maglev trains had been installed at street level, so transportation wasn't inconvenient. The half-built subway stations had since become gang headquarters, squatter camps for vagrants, and dens for every manner of suspicious character.
Soon, the information broker Jeong Bora said,
"Unni, ants that steal cargo. Doesn't that smell like money to you? You said you're done with the moving-center work and going pro as an awakener now. You need money to get your gear fitted, don't you?"
"Forget it. No matter how broke I am, I'm never working with you people again."
"Aw, why not—. Oh, got a text. Hold on."
Jeong Bora pulled out her phone. On the screen was a baffling emergency alert:
An ant swarm panic. Apparently this wasn't just happening in Macheon City—it was nationwide.
"Ants, huh…."
Giant ants. Lee Jina sank into her own thoughts. Because something did come to mind when she thought of ants the size of a palm. No—she'd even met one before.
"Ang…."
That ant had a name that was pure hotness. If anyone knew something about the current incident, wouldn't it be those guys?
"My thinking is, the ants want the sugar from our house. We give them the sugar, and we get Kwang-kwangi back."
I decided I needed to negotiate with the ants. The moment I opened the kitchen cupboard and took the sack of sugar in hand, Ang-ang-i blocked my path.
━Zzji…!
The expensive black sugar cubes I'd paid a fortune for. Ang-ang-i's favorite treat. Did he think handing this over to those conqueror ants was a humiliation? He seemed to be saying, "One must never submit to the enemy for the sake of peace!"
"But I don't exactly have any other options, you know. Bug spray doesn't even faze these guys."
Beep—.
Just then, my phone rang. The emergency alert sound. I checked it, and there was breaking news that ants appearing across the entire country were making off with sugar, honey, and other sweeteners!
"Unbelievable."
This wasn't only happening to our house!
It suddenly reminded me of that old story—if aliens looked at Earth, they would conclude that its true masters weren't humans but the mind-boggling numbers of insects, and above all, the ants.
And right at that moment—
Ssssssss—.
The ants surrounding our house withdrew. I looked out the window, and the soldier ants that had been gnawing at our house's pillars with such fury that they seemed ready to eat them down all filed into a sinkhole-like hole in the backyard.
Half wondering, I opened the door and stepped outside—and now that I looked, a glittering stone had been placed right in front of our house.
"Aah…! For the honey ants to leave a stone behind means we have been invited to their kingdom, you see...! This Oinoi's esteemed master, too, was once invited to the honey ant kingdom, such is the truth of it...!"