Azimuth: The Elden Throne

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/SPLATTER!/

[DING]

[DING]

[DING]

[DIN…]

As chaos spread and the Ants shuffled about in confusion, waving their antennas around as they tried to communicate with each other, Dale heard a flurry of notifications which were all quickly deafened by the cries of anger and rage of the bugs around him.

/SCREEECH!/

However, none of those were of his concern.

Using Caladbolg, after cutting the brooding cells down, and slaying thousands of prospect Ants, he rode it toward one of the many exits of the chamber, making his way toward the next Queen through the rough tunnels of the hive.

/Shoosh!/

'This method sure is better, it took me days upon days of exploration to figure out where the first Queen was, and that was mostly because I couldn't spend too much time in the hive at once since the Ants would swarm me after I killed too many of them.'

'There was one time I almost got myself stuck in a room due to the Ant bodies pilling up...'

'Now I can just breeze through.'

As he flew in the air, he noticed he had some time to check on his condition.

With a few hand motions, Dale opened his Status menu and checked his Level:

[Your current Level is 79 (39.42%)]

'It went up by quite a bit, somewhere around 25%.'

'If I take down the other two Queens and the bugs in between… I'll still lack a little.'

'Of course, there may be more Queens waiting for me... Maybe even other unique Ants... Okay, that won't happen.'

'These are just ordinary creatures, not some sort of alien species with unique breeds with different functions...'

With haste, Dale avoided any highly populated bug zones, opting to follow the longer path if it meant he was constantly moving.

Within another hour, he arrived at his destination, and within five minutes of that, everything was up in flames… Ants ran up and down across the chamber, falling atop each other... Larvae bits rained down upon them, staining the entire room, the giant Ants collapsed on the floor, unable to get up on their own, and the male Ants were still confused that the Queen had stopped mating with them.

Moving on from his pest control work, he moved deeper through the mineshafts, eventually leaving its space entirely.

Eventually, the Mine rails stopped, the wooden beams collapsed, and he reached an area with materials scattered about, the end of the mines where construction was due, but not that of the tunnels.

"Huff… The air's getting hard to breathe…" Dale said out loud as he rode Caladbolg

'There's also a strange smell in the air... Like uh... Rotten Eggs.'

'Gas?... That doesn't sound good...'

'We're now past the old mines, this is all new tunnels dug by the Ants... Or it should be at least, something doesn't look quite right.'

'I never had much of a chance to appreciate my surroundings before, I quickly came here, killed the Queen, and left in haste.'

'Checking the maps, these tunnels haven't been added onto them, but they still exist and they're proportional in scale... Maybe they dug the tunnels but didn't map them yet since they were still being reinforced.'

'Strange nonetheless.'

"You know, I'm surprised, this proved to be quite the experience… I'm deeply impressed by how deep these Ants dug." David said as he looked around

"I expected them to occupy the mineshafts, but I didn't expect them to expand upon them. And now that we're this deep, my curiosity has been piqued."

"Just where do they take all of their food from?"

"... This is something I was previously curious about too. Maybe we'll have a chance to figure it out today." Dale replied as he stopped walking

'These Ants can only feed on the mushroom chambers within the hive to sustain themselves as there's no way they can harvest anything from the surface, that's proven by the complete lack of their tracks on the shafts near the surface.'

'These Ants don't move around there much.'

'As for water, I can make do with them collecting and storing enough from the rainy season, it lasts 3 months and they just need to conserve enough water for the next 9. Depending on how waterfalls, they may have access to small lakes and underground rivers for a few more months as the water seeps into the land.'

'But food? Unless I missed their main harvest chambers, there's no way they can sustain their numbers even if they ate each other.'

...

/Stop.../

Coming to a halt, they had arrived, the final brooding chamber Dale explored in his alternate future.

"Make it quick." David said in a deep tone as he tried to act tough

"... Sure thing." Dale replied with a small smile, playing along

/Grab…/

Holding onto his spear, he executed his plans…

…

/Splatter…/

[DING]

[Your current Level is 79 (79.10%)]

"... Huff."

"Guess we can cross that off the list now huh." David said as he stretched his nonexistent arms

"Yeah… I'm technically done here."

'This is enough to have the Miners return, if they see a rise in the Ant numbers, then they can call me to take care of it.'

'Most sections of the Mines can be sealed off and in the case they're breached, the Miners can deal with the Ants that come through the gaps as they flee.'

'I don't remember any problems rising as they worked but I can't rule out the possibility the Ants are still down here, somewhere.'

'In any case, this is far too deep for the Miners to reach on their own, I imagine we're around 2.5 km deep now? Maybe a bit more… The air here isn't as bad as I thought, but saying its breathable is a stretch.'

'I can make due for now, but I won't last long here either.'

'Most of the mineshafts were built around the 1 km range, which is already rather deep.'

'This current depth is rather unusual for what I would expect from a species of Ant, after all, they also need to breathe, I dare even say they need more air than Humans.'

'Well… They are called Ants but they don't look like one at all, so their habits should be completely different from them.'

'Still… This answers no questions.'

"Are we turning back here?"

"No way… Let's get to the bottom of this." Dale replied almost instantly as he jumped inside a slopped cavern

'Whatever's down here I'll figure it out now and cross it out from my to-do list.'

'I have to be efficient with my time if I wish to prevent the future from happening, and for that, I'll have to go on adventurers more often.'

'Even if it means risking myself like this.'

...

/Slide…/

He slid down into the complete and utter darkness.

Many dangers awaited him, and maybe his biggest threat wasn't the creatures that prowled the shadows but the very earth around him.

Tens of thousands of tons of rock stood above him, supported only by the solidified saliva and architectural mastery of these insects…

While above he had sturdy shafts with smooth ground, rails, wooden beams, and old infrastructure to support him, down here, the only light he had came from his orb spell and the scarce glowing mushrooms on the walls.

Those mushrooms grew everywhere but the Ants were constantly eating them. Some rooms were dedicated to their growth, creating quite an exoteric image.

A single room hundreds of meters underneath the earth full of giant glowing mushrooms…

He wondered what sights this place had to offer.

…

/Slide…/

/Stop/

/Step…/

"... Okay. Here we are." Dale said out loud as he dusted his armor

"That was quite the slide. Such a straight path is unlike that of what we saw so far from the Ants, it's almost as if they were excavating with purpose, to reach somewhere rather than to build a new chamber." David pointed out as he took some time to think

"I was thinking that too. This passageway is a bit strange as well… I think this wasn't built by the Ants at all." Dale said as he walked around the place, his right hand clutching onto his spear

"... This was built by the Miners, although I'm unsure why."

"It's clear the last Queen chamber was a mining site due to its shape and size, but the complete lack of infrastructure around us is rather harrowing, to think the miners of the past were working in such conditions is a bit…"

'There's no equipment lying around either, this doesn't look like a mining site from that perspective... It's too barren.'

"But the question is why would they come so far to mine when there were so many ores above? And it's not like we're seeing rare ores here, it looks the same to me." He added as he put his left hand on the wall

"That's a good point, but I think I have an idea... Who was here..." David added upon hearing Dale

"Remember the Sewers? The passageway connecting the Church to the Southern Wall? It was all built with the use of magic."

"Every single block of the passage was perfectly homogeneous and they had been fused as if they were one singular tube, one that had been carved rather than constructed. That's an obvious sign of Geomancy, as we discussed before."

"I believe that everything we saw so far is likely a product of Geomancers, they dug these mountains and the Miners installed infrastructure after to make it safe for them to work."

"Geomancers on the other hand need no such protection, they fear not the stone so they pushed deeper, maybe looking for something like rarer minerals for their studies or just for the sake of wealth."

"And that leads us to now…"

"Yeah. But still, why would they be here? And if they were here, why are there no records of their operations? It's not like excavating mountains with magic was anything special for the people of the past..." Dale asked as he looked at the passage he just crossed

"Above all, it seems they did find what they were looking for given the strange shape of this hallway…"

"Then how about we go after them? Thinking about it now won't give us any answers." David asked Dale as his curiosity began to rise

"That's exactly what I was thinking about." He replied as he started walking

'A new mystery, how thrilling.'

'Many things were lost with the 100 years of sand and decay, maybe this place has one of the many lost fragments that were scattered in the wind...'

'Well, enough with being romantic.'

Dale stepped forward with determination, going further into the darkness.

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Notes