060 – War Between the Nymphs and the Princesses # 2
Seo Yerim was a little irritated.
Today was her day off.
It was supposed to be a rest day. But a urgent call had come from the government first thing in the morning, and she'd had to rush to Seoul.
"This Illinoi had a promise to make apple pie with her nymph sister Oinoi today, that is the fact…! Such a sudden schedule change…! It is very nymph-phobic, that it is…!"
That was right. Illinoi was supposed to meet Oinoi today.
Seo Yerim had also been planning to go see Ha Ildo. After all, if she was going to drop Illinoi off with Oinoi, she'd have to do the driving herself.
She'd even intended to bring up the B-Rank evaluation while she was at it, but the emergency call that morning had thrown her whole schedule into disarray.
And so she arrived at the Emergency Response Headquarters in a mildly aggravated mood—only to find someone there who made her furrow her brow even deeper.
It was a woman wearing a name tag that read VVIP, dressed in an aloha-patterned outfit that looked like it belonged at some warm southern resort. With sandals done up neatly on her feet, no less. Watching her, Seo Yerim spoke up.
"Cha Yura, what brings you here? When did you get back to Korea? Weren't you in Hawaii? I heard you were planning to stay for another few months."
"I got an urgent call from Dad yesterday and came back. Since you can't fill the gap Lee Jeonghun left all by yourself, someone enjoying her sabbatical has to get dragged back, doesn't she?"
Cha Yura, one of only three S-Rank awakeners in Korea. She, too, gave Seo Yerim a blatant once-over, top to bottom.
"Seo Yerim, seeing you look so dimwitted, I'd say the country's falling apart… no, falling to pieces at an ant's pace."
"As expected of a cold bath—you're telling cold jokes too. And what are you even wearing? Why not just take it all off? There's nothing to see anyway. Do you pay middle-schooler fares when you fly? You look like a middle schooler!"
Seo Yerim snorted at Cha Yura's flat, boyish figure.
Cha Yura didn't take the loss lying down.
"There's no such thing as a middle-schooler fare on a plane, you idiot. Are you stupid?"
"Oh really? I wouldn't know. I fly private."
"Hmph!"
Cha Yura gave a scornful sniff, but a strange current was already crackling between the two of them once again.
The Ice Princess, Cha Yura.
The Witch of Fire, Seo Yerim.
The two women were existences that could never mix.
True, Seo Yerim's original rival had been Yu Ari, but now that Yu Ari had retired from active duty, Cha Yura—the standard-bearer of the next generation of awakeners—had taken her place as Seo Yerim's rival.
Fire and ice.
Veteran and super-rookie.
Even in terms of contrasting imagery, this pairing was the cleaner match.
Before long, a tidy middle-aged man in a suit, his hair swept neatly back, appeared.
"Now then, I, the Prime Minister, will begin this meeting. This is an urgent matter, so I'll dispense with the usual formalities and get straight to the point. First, the current state of the damage."
Shwk—.
A screen mounted on the wall of the spacious room lit up, displaying a map of the peninsula.
"These strange ants began appearing nationwide all at the same time. Unreported in any academic literature, they have been invading homes and driving out cockroaches, rats, and stray cats—."
Palm-sized ants.
Ants with fearsome black carapaces.
They had seized control of Korea's ecosystem in the blink of an eye.
"If they're driving out cockroaches and rats, aren't they beneficial animals?"
"But they invade homes and extort every last bit of sugar and honey!"
That was the problem. These ants' mischief didn't stop at merely driving out pests and vermin.
They demanded sugar from humans, and countless households had suffered losses.
"This is the total damage so far. And this is the projected total of future losses."
An astronomically enormous figure spread across the screen.
Seo Yerim thought about it.
So the damage is really that big, just from all the sugar in Korea disappearing?
There was a good reason the S-Ranks had been summoned after all.
I guess it was worth calling even Cha Yura. Not that I'm happy about it.
Shwk—.
At that moment, Cha Yura raised her hand.
"Mister, so what exactly do you want us to do? What did Dad say?"
"The Chairman has ordered a swift investigation into this matter. The two of you, as S-Rank awakeners, must identify the cause and the epicenter of the problem—."
"I can handle it on my own! Ho-ho—."
Shwk—.
Cha Yura rose from her seat.
Then, as if there were nothing more worth hearing, she left the room.
The only S-Rank awakener remaining in the room now was Seo Yerim.
━Gyujeok.
━Gyujeok-gyujeok.
Seo Yerim stared at the ants on the monitor, something nagging at her.
That strange cry. That glossy carapace. They looked nothing alike—and yet they resembled a certain ant someone she knew was keeping.
"Those guys are honey ants, that is the fact…! Very friendly and nymph-friendly ants, but when their numbers grow, a fearsome lust for conquest wells up within them…! Which makes them dangerous, that it does…!"
Illinoi had piped up, playing knowledgeable.
Honey ants.
Sure enough, they were the very same species as the ants Ha Ildo kept!
"I've got a feeling Yerim's probably texted me by now."
I was walking through a pitch-black cave.
What's with the sudden cave, you ask?
I was wondering the same thing.
Clutching the invitation the honey ants had handed me—which, to be precise, was a rock—I'd stepped into the sinkhole that had opened up in our backyard, only to find a tunnel far bigger and wider than I'd expected, carved out like a proper cavern.
Just how deep did this tunnel go?
No signal down here, either.
━Beu-seot, beu-seot—.
Then something appeared in front of me.
It was a creature that reached only up to my ankles—a strangely shaped mushroom.
"It is a unicorn mushroom, that is the fact…! Its cap bears a horn like a unicorn's, which is its defining feature, that it is…! A mushroom hired as a worker by the honey ants, that it is…!"
According to what I'd heard, the honey ants used their own honey to tame and employ all sorts of animals as laborers—or slaves.
The unicorn mushroom was apparently one of them.
"What a fascinating ecosystem."
But—.
By now, the whole country was probably in an uproar over the ants' rampage.
If I handled this well, I might even make the news as something like Ha Ildo, the Hero Who Defeated the Ants!
Instant fame, just like that!
"Heh heh."
Just as I was laughing to myself, Oinoi spoke up.
"This Oinoi's master once said that she too was invited to an ant kingdom long ago, that she did…! She said that the ants' kingdom lies close to the underground world and is filled to the brim with all manner of treasures, that she did…!"
"Oh yeah?"
Treasures, huh—.
Come to think of it, the rock the ants had handed over as an invitation wasn't just any rock. It was a gleaming raw gemstone.
I had no idea what kind of jewel it was, but it looked like it would polish up quite beautifully.
After walking for a good long while with that thought in mind, something appeared before us.
━Gyujeok, gyujeok—.
━Juji, juji—.
A vast open plaza stretched out before us.
Stones that glowed like sunlight were laid into the ground, and before them countless soldier ants stood in formation, receiving orders from silver-armored knight ants.
And at the very center of it all—.
Wuuuuuung—.
It was a rift!
A blue rift!
Zuuuung—.
Zuuuung—.
And from beyond that rift, ants kept spilling out into the open!
"For the contents of a rift to be coming out into the open like this… it's already reached the 'terminal' stage?"
Rifts typically passed through four stages.
The early stage: the moment a rift suddenly comes into being. If you were nearby when it formed, you'd get swept away.
The middle stage was when it stabilized. Most of the rifts that awakeners destroyed fell into this category—and most fixed rifts, too.
The late stage was when a rift began radiating intensely unstable wavelengths. If the rift wasn't dealt with at this point, it would reach its 'terminal' stage, and sometimes it would spit its contents out into the world.
In other words, the monsters inside would come pouring out past the rift's boundary.
"Looks like this rift is older than I thought. Well, I suppose—how would anyone even have detected a rift forming this deep underground?"
"There is no doubt that the ant kingdom lies within this place, that there is…!"
The ant kingdom.
So something like that was on the other side of this rift?
Which meant Kwang-kwangi had to be in there.
"I have to rescue Kwang-kwangi."
Kwang-kwangi was my friend.
A spider that glowed in RGB colors.
I entered the ant kingdom to save the little guy.
Perhaps because I was carrying the invitation, no one tried to turn us away.
And the place we entered—.
A strange castle, or rather a full-blown palace, spread out before us.
This wasn't a palace built by ants. It was a real palace.
There were castle walls, statues, and even an enormous wooden horse.
"A horse made of wood?"
It was a colossal horse, towering high overhead.
Some kind of structure built from wooden planks, and it looked remarkably majestic.
"Aaah! That is the Trojan Horse, that it is…! Master spoke of it, that she did…! That great wooden horse brought down an even greater nation, that it did…!"
"That's the Trojan Horse?"
Even I knew the story of the Trojan Horse.
I mean, how could I not?
But a rift containing something like that. What on earth was this place?
━Orolong.
Just then, a strange sound rang out.
It was like a clear golden bead rolling across a silver tray.
I turned my head and saw a wondrous creature.
Its body glittered black like obsidian. About the size of a palm, with wings.
If you carved a black gemstone into a winged ant, or a bee, would it look like this?
━Orolong~.
"Aaah! It is the Imperial Princess Ant, that it is…! This is the first time since Ang-angi that this Oinoi has seen a honey ant so large, that it is…! How splendidly it is made, that it is…! And what a very pretty color, that it is…!"
Oinoi cried out.
The Imperial Princess Ant came crawling out from beneath a crumbled stone wall, flanked by knight ants.
━Orolong~.
Such a wondrous, luminous voice.
Weren't honey ants supposed to just go zji-gyuji all the time?
━Keureureung…!
Keong-keongi, clinging tight to my shoulder, growled in anger.
Then Ang-angi, who had been perched on my shoulder this whole time, stepped forward to face the Imperial Princess Ant.
Very brave of him.
━Zeuji…!
Ang-angi moved his forelegs left and right as he said something or other.
What was he saying?
Soon the ants clacked their mandibles together, tak-tak-tak, producing an eerie sound. It sounded like a forest swaying in the wind—and like crashing waves all at once.
I didn't know what it meant, but there was something I needed to do.
"So you're the Imperial Princess Ant. Ang-angi's little sister? Big sister? Whatever you are—could you make the ants stand down for now? And I'd like you to return the Kwang-kwangi you've taken captive, too."
They said honey ants were terrifying in swarms, but at heart they were good-natured ants.
One look at Ang-angi told you as much.
They were clever, so surely they'd understand what I meant.
━Orolong~.
Well, what do you know. She understood.
"Ha Ildo! You're ignoring my calls again!"
Seo Yerim was furious.
Because Ha Ildo wasn't picking up his phone.
"That Ha Ildo—when you call him, there is never a single time he answers on the first ring! If he's going to be like that, why does he even bother carrying a phone around?!"
Seo Yerim was mildly enraged. And somehow, before she knew it, she had arrived at Ha Ildo's house.
She noticed right away that Ha Ildo wasn't home.
"Aaah! Kore Yerim is looking at the housemaster's background, that she is…! A very big hole has been decorated into the backyard, that it is…!"
Calling it a 'background' one moment and a 'backyard' the next.
Seo Yerim still hadn't adjusted to Illinoi's way of speaking.
She probably never would, even given a lifetime.
But Illinoi's words were true.
A truly enormous hole had been bored into the backyard.
"Looks like they went in through here."
Dududududududu—.
Just then, something loud came flying through the sky.
It was a helicopter, and it touched down in the middle of a rice paddy.
"Cha Yura, way to advertise that a celebrity's arrived."
"This counts as arriving quietly, thank you very much. Anyway, this looks like the culprit."
Cha Yura and Seo Yerim stood at the edge of the same pit.
Just as each of them was thinking she refused to lose to the other—.
Drrring—.
Cha Yura answered her phone.
"Yes, Mister. What is it? What? The ants are going back underground? All of them?"