Do Ants Eat People?
While walking, Roa asked, “Do ants… eat people?”
Eat people, huh. Monster information isn’t exactly common, but explorers at least share intel on the monsters they hunt. Especially anything about what a monster eats—that’s the easiest detail to come by.
“What kind of question is that?” Sion asked, narrowing his eyes. His sharp features made even a slight frown look fierce. Roa shrank back under his glare.
“...”
Ants eat anything that falls to the ground. Being giant doesn’t change that. Human corpses are a favorite meal for giant ants. If you’re still alive, they’ll turn you into a corpse first. Cruel little bastards. Either way, it was information anyone could reasonably infer. Roa’s question was oddly out of place. Did she not know, or was she overwhelmed by too much knowledge?
“Roa. Is this your first time going into a dungeon?”
“Yes.”
Figures. Roa was a fresh recruit dispatched from the Guardian Guild on her very first dungeon run. Given that the city I was staying in was crawling with novice explorers, it was inevitable. Getting carried by veteran explorers was rare—like finding a needle in a haystack.
“Why? Afraid you’ll get eaten?” Jangcheok teased Roa, twirling a branch he’d picked up like a staff.
“N-no, that’s not it…” Roa’s face flushed crimson as she bowed her head. Jangcheok looked thoroughly delighted and launched into a full performance, complete with second and third verses.
“Becoming ant food isn’t a big deal. Back when I was—about fourteen years ago, I think—I went hunting goblins and ran into some bandits in the middle of it…”
Roa’s flustered expression was cute, but Jangcheok’s excited rambling wasn’t. His story went like this: Jangcheok’s party had the misfortune of encountering two goblin scout groups at once. Inexperienced, they panicked and ended up in a chaotic melee. The unluckiest one died—a man whose lover had been secretly dating him. Jangcheok, unaware of their relationship, had been looking after the woman. After the fight, when she tearfully confessed, he got so furious he returned alone.
“So I left her behind and came back by myself.”
“…Excuse me?”
Hold on. Wasn’t that a crime? Jangcheok, lost in his memories, raged as if the woman he’d supposedly loved was standing right in front of him.
“No, no—if there was another guy, there was another guy! I have someone I like! That’s what she should’ve said! Then what about everything she took from me until now? I even gave her extra pay and slipped her potions one by one! Was she just playing me for a fool?”
In my opinion, that woman had probably been dropping hints like crazy for Jangcheok to stop. Please, just shut up already. Sion and Roa looked like they agreed. But the hints clearly never landed. Jangcheok had gotten himself worked up telling an old story to Roa. Was he low-key an old geezer?
Just then, Roa muttered something with her head still lowered.
“…please.”
I couldn’t make it out over Jangcheok’s loud voice. I leaned in closer.
“What did you say?”
“…Stop. Please be quiet.”
Yeah. Jangcheok was pretty noisy. Roa had been staring blankly at the ground for a while. Then, in an instant, she unslung the crossbow from her back, aimed it straight at Jangcheok, and shouted.
“Jangcheok-ssi!”
Jangcheok went pale and dropped flat to the ground on reflex. The sudden crossbow in his face had triggered pure survival instinct—and it saved his life.
Thwip!
A steel bolt sliced through the air and embedded itself in the head of a giant ant that had appeared behind him. Roa hadn’t been aiming at Jangcheok at all.
“Son of a bitch!” Jangcheok cursed, scrambling back to his feet. While we’d been chatting, we’d already wandered into the ants’ territory. The ant twitched, leaking its characteristic sour fluid, then died. A single shot through the brain. The destructive power of a Guardian’s crossbow.
We halted and scanned the surroundings. Fortunately, no other ants were in sight.
“Scout ant.”
“Ants have scouts too?” Sion sounded surprised. He really didn’t know much.
“They’re the oldest, most useless ants. They wander outside the nest looking for food or enemies. There must be an entrance nearby.”
Sion’s opinion has been adjusted. (+ Highly Educated)
A little bit of showing off and he accepted it on his own. Must be because he’s educated—he knows a lot, apparently. Made things easier for me.
“We’re already here.”
Jangcheok, who had nearly gotten bitten, seemed embarrassed that he’d let his guard down so close to the dungeon. He cleared his throat awkwardly and paced near the dead ant. Roa and Sion gathered around the corpse as well—it was their first time seeing a giant ant up close.
◈ Affiliation: Queen’s Excavators
◈ Classification: <Living Being> <No Intelligence> <Exoskeleton>
◈ Description: An ant mutated by twisted underground mana, grown to abnormal size. This individual serves as a worker in the ant colony, roaming the dungeon in search of fresh corpses to feed the starving larvae. Extremely simple yet highly socialized ants are driven by loyalty to the queen, excessive appetite, and a craving for pheromones.
*This is <Alive>. Various traits applicable to living beings apply.
*This is <Without Intelligence>. It does not fall into confusion and cannot assess its current situation on its own.
*Instead of bones, it is encased in a hard <Exoskeleton>.
Roa pulled the bolt from the corpse and retrieved it.
“Its companions won’t come, right?”
Naturally, she directed the question at me. Among this party, I was the only one she could ask about monster information—and I actually knew it.
“They won’t come right away. They might later, but ants don’t make a fuss over just one dead scout.”
What was the party leader thinking? I glanced at Jangcheok. He seemed to share my thought and immediately ordered us to enter the dungeon.
“Hajun. You can read the map, right? Do you know where the entrance is?”
“Just a moment.”
I easily located the entrance on the map—and also discovered why the Ant Cave dungeon was called a dungeon in the first place.
Standing before the entrance, we paused to marvel at the sheer scale of the Ant Cave.
“Whoa.”
It was on a completely different level from the Goblin Nest. That place had a low, shabby rabbit-hole entrance, but the Ant Cave’s entrance was a massive archway. It had the grandeur of forgotten kingdom ruins. The height was just under four meters—huge enough for people, let alone ants.
“Definitely looks like there could be ruins here,” Jangcheok muttered, scratching his bald head. The ants had taken over an abandoned underground kingdom and turned it into their nest. In a broad sense, weren’t they just a type of house ant? Typical ants—making a home out of anything, even a fallen subterranean kingdom.
From now on, we had to descend into the underground where dog-sized ants swarmed.
“Let’s move out, then.”
I hoped no one would become a sacrifice.
#
Sion, heavily armored, took the front. I followed behind him, then Roa. Jangcheok guarded the rear. Ironclad, Necromancer, Guardian, Raider—the safest formation for narrow corridors with poor visibility. At least in the early stages, an Ironclad standing at the front was almost never breached. Even against a swarm of ants, if Sion started blocking with his shield, we could create a makeshift wall. With Sion holding the line and Roa and I supporting, it should be fine.
“It’s not as dark as I expected,” Sion said quietly from the front. His voice echoed through the narrow passage. After passing through the giant archway and entering the dungeon, we moved deeper through tunnels the ants had carved. Patches of glowing moss and mushrooms grew here and there on the walls. Thanks to the luminescent fungi emitting a bright blue light, the inside of the dungeon looked as if a blue filter had been applied.
“When do the ants come out?”
Easy for him to say. The fewer enemies we encountered, the better—especially in a vast place like the Ant Cave, where starting a fight meant you never knew when it would end.
“Be careful…” Roa’s voice was so soft I wasn’t sure if anyone heard it.
Up ahead, Sion slipped and crashed into something, followed by a curse. He wasn’t hurt, but he didn’t sound happy.
“Watch your step—it’s slippery.”
The corridor was cold and damp, tailored to ant tastes and unpleasant for humans. Here and there, smooth stone walls peeked through—remnants of the old kingdom. The occasional architectural fragments exposed in the haphazardly dug tunnels felt out of place. Sion stepped on a glowing blue mushroom, pushed aside a pile of dirt, and pressed forward.
After about three hours of this…
“Hmm.”
After crawling for ten minutes through a tunnel that had lowered to waist height, we suddenly emerged into a wide-open space. The air itself felt different. I unfolded the map and checked our location. We had passed the dungeon’s entrance and arrived at a plaza—the former central square of the underground kingdom. Vaulted ceilings and straight pillars filled the space. Fresh air and light poured in through skylight-like openings in the ceiling. It was bright and comfortable, hard to believe we were underground.
The moment we stepped into the wide, pleasant underground plaza, Sion crouched low and went on alert.
“Jangcheok-ssi. We’re going to have to fight those, right?” he whispered.
The plaza wasn’t completely underground. Light and wind entered through openings between the vaults. With low humidity and sunlight, it was also a place where ants could sunbathe without leaving the nest. In the center of the plaza, a group of about twenty ants huddled together, basking in the light. They hadn’t noticed us yet.
Jangcheok carefully scanned the surroundings, then nodded.
“We fight.”
Sion lowered his helmet, covering his face. Roa loaded her crossbow. I drew the saw blade from its sheath. As Jangcheok strung his recurve bow, we prepared for battle.