The Excelkitus Beneath the Ant Nest (1)
The four of them walked slowly through the Ant Nest.
The first floor's theme was a snowfield.
The only monsters there were Shabel Tigers.
"Then I'll begin."
"Right. I'm ready too."
After exchanging a few brief words, the two of them each prepared for what they had to do.
Jeanne closed her eyes and knelt down on the ground.
And Lee Jun… pulled a machine out of his Pocket.
"What's that?"
"This? Got it right here. A product made by one crackpot and funded by another."
A 256-round flare launcher.
The head of the Tech Bureau had thrown funding at it thinking it would be a fun little project, and the thing had blown past its goal by a whopping 1,800 percent.
As it later turned out, the person who invested in it was Yoon Seol.
Yoon Seol was famous for never indulging in luxury, so it was probably just that she'd spent all her money on things like this instead.
"But… what are you going to do with it?"
"Round up the monsters. I'm going to fire off Allure rounds."
An Allure round was a shell designed to lure monsters in.
Normally it was used to scatter a monster pack's attention or throw off pursuit.
Lee Jun was about to fire the thing at the sky like a maniac.
"If we gather every monster on this floor into one place, we can cut the clear time down to the absolute minimum."
The same principle applied to any gate raid.
Herd every monster inside a gate into a single spot and kill them all at once, and the whole raid becomes far easier.
Of course, everyone knew this. And yet it had never become the standard strategy — for the obvious reason: the difficulty of pulling it off.
"You want to do it here…?"
"Don't worry. For someone like Jeanne, floors one and two are a cakewalk."
"Hmmm…."
"I cleared the first floor solo, you know. You worry too much."
Even so, Siara seemed reluctant about this approach.
She was usually the most reckless of them all, but in moments like this, Siara was the most cautious.
For Lee Jun, who knew exactly how difficult the Ant Nest was, it was nothing to worry about.
This would be more than enough for the first floor.
"Alright, firing now."
"I'm ready."
Jeanne said, her eyes still closed.
Once Lee Jun confirmed her preparations were complete, he powered on the flare launcher.
Fweee―
A single Allure round climbed into the sky, trailing a long tail of smoke.
The faint tawny haze leaking from the shell was the scent that drew the monsters in.
Fweee― fweee― thwip― fweee―
Barely a heartbeat after one round went up, the next one launched in succession.
Then the next, and the next, and the next after that.
"There's no smell to the human nose at all. Wild, isn't it?"
"Monsters have far keener noses than we do."
Siara, Timothy, and Lee Jun watched the rounds sail skyward.
All that remained now was to wait for the scent to ride the wind and spread through every corner of the Ant Nest.
It would take five minutes or so for every Shabel Tiger on this floor to come swarming in.
Right.
Time was something they had plenty of. Waiting was fine.
Except…
Fweefweefweefweefwee―
Thwip―
Piiii―pyupupupu―pyupyuuuuum―
God, seriously.
"Ugh…! Isn't this thing way too loud?!"
"…We just have to bear it. You're firing over two hundred rounds."
"Still! My eardrums are going to burst!"
That raised the question of whether a plush doll even had eardrums in the first place.
Well… anyway.
"Okay, okay. Enough complaining. They're already coming."
"What?"
"Can't you hear? A whole stampede of them, furious as hell."
"I can't hear anything…."
"Ahem, Hyung's always had sharp ears. It amazes me every time. Are you sure you're not some kind of special constitution?"
Special constitution?
Wouldn't that be nice.
"Can't absorb mana, so I'm special in that sense at least. And that's irrelevant — hurry up and get ready."
Lee Jun picked up a pistol and, just like before, drew a dagger as well.
For now, they'd decided to avoid using Silhouette as much as possible.
She seemed reluctant to reveal her abilities in front of Jeanne.
So they'd handle things with the weapons in the Pocket wherever they could.
As long as no surprises popped up, there wouldn't be a problem.
After all, Jeanne would be doing more than ninety percent of the work in this raid anyway.
"Jeanne. They're here."
"Understood. Beginning now."
Kneeling as she was, she raised both hands and pressed her palms together.
Her eyes remained closed.
The pose was so reverent it might have been a prayer offered up to God.
⟨ Necromance ⟩
Jeanne's unique ability, Necromance.
Why it was "Necromance" and not "Necromancy" he had no idea, but that was simply its name.
"It amazes me every single time I see it."
The moment her ability activated, the rocks buried in the snow around them began to stir and move.
The power to grant souls to inanimate objects.
Guided by that power, the souls of the monsters slipped into the boulders and began thrashing about wildly.
"Haah… meanwhile the rest of us do all the sweating."
"Well, protecting our adorable little sister is always a welcome duty."
"I do most of the protecting anyway!"
That was true.
Siara was the physical one and Timothy the brains, by the feel of it.
For once, the division of labor worked beautifully.
Just then, a rock came lunging toward the defenseless Jeanne.
Infusing a soul didn't mean controlling the vessel, so this sort of thing happened now and then.
And every time it did, Siara was the one who stepped in.
"Ugh… honestly!"
Sacrifice
KA-BOOM!
A single cotton punch from the doll shattered the rock as if it had exploded.
"Nice shot~"
"Haah…."
Siara's unique ability.
Not the "descending god" Seance, but the "body-strengthening" Improve Physical Health.
And as for the official English name, Sacrifice… he had no idea what exactly was supposed to be sacrificed.
The system did assign the names of unique abilities, but what a sense of humor it had.
'Though the fact that she can use it in that state at all is the real mystery.'
Better not to try understanding.
When something was happening, it was simply happening.
Putting souls into rocks was already a mystery… no, the fact that there were people inside those plush dolls was the mystery itself.
What Lee Jun needed to focus on now was Jeanne's safety.
And his own.
Siara could cover most of the bodyguard duty, so this was the time to look after himself.
"Here they come."
Rocks rampaging across the battlefield in real time.
And on top of that, the Shabel Tigers lured in by the Allure rounds had arrived at the scene as well.
Click―
Lee Jun racked the pistol in his left hand and raised a knife in his right.
"Whew…."
With a single long exhale, the real battle began.
KA-BOOM!
Lee Jun ducked under a Shabel Tiger that came flying at him after being struck by a boulder.
At the same instant, attacks closed in from both sides.
A monster on the left, a rock on the right.
He took a light half-step back.
Krunch―
One tiger, unable to brake the momentum of its own charge, was flattened beneath the rock on the spot.
{Behind you!}
Behind?
"Ugh…!"
WHAM―
A dull shock slammed into his back.
It was only because he rolled to the ground the instant Silhouette spoke that he avoided, at minimum, a fracture.
{…Hmph. I told you to watch yourself.}
Putting aside the smug tone, she'd just gotten him past a real danger.
So even without being used as a weapon, she was plenty useful in a fight.
{You only figuring that out now?}
It'd be more reassuring if she could just be a little quieter about it.
{What did you say?!}
'Left, next.'
It wasn't that he was deliberately ignoring her — he simply had to focus on the fight.
Anyway. Moving on.
"Whew…."
Whoosh―
He slipped under the swinging forepaw of a Shabel Tiger and drove straight into the beast's chest instead.
Bang― bang―
Two rounds under the jaw.
Bang―
One into the joint of the outstretched foreleg.
Bang― bang― bang―
Riding his arm up along its body, three more into the collarbone.
And finally… the throat.
"…Huh?"
Click―
A hollow sound, no round chambered, the slide locked back.
He'd emptied the entire magazine.
"Tch."
He thought he had one left — must have miscounted.
Tap―
Contrary to his original plan, Lee Jun fell back and reloaded fast.
His left hand thumbed the magazine release while his right drew a fresh magazine from the Pocket.
He racked the pistol's slide with his teeth and seated the magazine into the empty gun.
Click―
All of it took less than a second.
"…Haah."
One breath out.
And then — he squeezed the trigger.
Bang―
Thud―
The Shabel Tiger, pierced precisely through the eye, collapsed without a sound.
The bullet had punched through the eyeball and reached the brain.
As expected, armor-piercing rounds were king against monsters.
"Damn it all… even this is twice as hard as it should be."
On his own, this kind of herd-and-cull hunt would have been impossible for Lee Jun to begin with.
The only reason he was managing to hold out at all was… entirely thanks to the others over there.
KRA-KOOM!
"Hyung! Help me over here!"
"Haha, sorry~ Against monsters like these there's really nothing I can do for you."
"Grrr, honestly!"
WHAM―
Siara grumbled as she caught a charging Shabel Tiger head-on.
That sight never stopped being astonishing.
A stuffed plush doll driving a monster tens of times her own size clean into the ground.
And an adorable little bunny plush, no less.
"What are you staring at?"
"I just can't get used to it."
"…Hmph."
Siara spun on her heel and walked off.
Pitter-patter.
Watching her do that in doll form really was cute.
And then Siara leapt into the air and hammered down on a Shabel Tiger's skull.
CRUNCH―
Just like that, it was over.
The headless tiger collapsed, leaving nothing behind but a body.
'That's… not cute.'
If a punch like that had landed on Lee Jun, it would have been instant death.
He'd probably have died with every organ ruptured.
He had no idea what kind of bizarre mechanism produced that kind of force, but it had long since left the realm of "cotton fists" far behind.
"Haah… Jun, when is this going to end?"
"Hard to say. Everything's so chaotic I lost count myself."
Lee Jun had assumed the first floor would be manageable, but that had apparently been a misjudgment.
The enemy numbers just wouldn't drop below double their expectations… Until the formation came together, this was brutally tough going.
"Wait, so how long are we supposed to keep this up…"
"At this point, everything that was going to come should have come? The first floor isn't all that big to begin with."
And besides — at last.
"The luring's finished too."
The view from a low hill, slightly higher than the battlefield they'd occupied until moments ago.
Countless rocks and tigers were locked in combat, tearing at each other like mad things.
One side shattering, the other bleeding.
On and on, grinding each other down in a war of attrition.
"Man, Hyung's touch never rusts."
"…It's amazing every time I see it."
Raids with Jeanne always followed the same rhythm.
Siara and Timothy were fixed in place as Jeanne's escorts.
And Lee Jun dove into the middle of the melee, carving through it and steering the flow of battle.
Making them beat each other to death, in other words.
"Predicting monster behavior is simple enough."
Observation and experience.
Lee Jun had an enormous amount of accumulated data behind him.
He used it to read each creature's next move.
"Easy for you to say. What you're describing is basically conducting the entire battlefield, Hyung."
"They're beasts with rock-bottom intelligence. It'd be stranger if I couldn't herd them."
"Haha, Hyung, you're always too modest."
"That's not modesty, that's self-deprecation? What am I supposed to do with you talking me down like that?"
"See, Hyung? Even Siara gives you credit."
"Wh-who's giving credit! I'm not!"
Lee Jun patted each of their heads as he passed and made his way over to Jeanne.
"Looks like things are more or less wrapped up, right?"
"Yes, I believe so."
The furious sounds that had filled the air until moments ago had all fallen silent.
The rocks and the Shabel Tigers had annihilated each other completely.
The ground below the hill was carpeted with shattered stone and monster corpses.
"There are no living souls."
Another application of Jeanne's unique ability.
Because she could see and sense souls directly, she doubled as a living detector for enemies.
And even by her read, there wasn't a living monster left.
Lee Jun wiped the blood from his hands and ruffled Jeanne's hair.
"Good. Then shall we go find the door?"
First floor of the Ant Nest — cleared.
Total time elapsed… thirteen minutes.
A full hour faster than when Lee Jun had cleared it alone.
"…Hold on. Why are we just casually petting each other?"
"It's a plush doll. A little blood isn't going to ruin it."
"It doesn't come out, you know!"
"I'll lend you Lux when we get home. Scrub scrub."
"Ugh… it feels gross."
Anyway.
On to the second floor.