I Became an Ant Lord, So I Built a Hive Full of Beauties

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She loved that feeling. It meant the drop. It meant the slam. She kept her hunger on a short line.

On the ground, the fight chewed seconds in small bites. Kai's arms burned. His lungs pulled fire and gave back steam. His aura engine ran hot, but he kept it fed. He let Essence Eater sip and not gulp. He used Devourer's Bite once, quickly, on the edge of a spear that came too close. The iron groaned under his bite and the point bent. The four-star who held it stared at the broken tip and then at Kai and took one step back without meaning to. In that heartbeat, Azhara slid a knife under his ribs and laid him down like clothing. She moved again. She kept the count. She never let two men see her in the same place.

[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]

"You are obviously an ant. From your transformation I can see it." The captain dragged in breath and spat blood in the sand. "What is your name?" he said between teeth.

"Kai," he said.

"Good, I will remember it." the captain grunted. "Mine is Rauk."

"I will not need it," Kai said. "I don't want to know the name of a dead ant."

Rauk snorted. "We will see."

They hit each other again.

This time, Kai let the anger go a shade closer to the surface. He drove Rauk backward with a flurry of short, hard blows that did not look pretty, and did not need to. He broke the rhythm and kept it broken. He made the line adjust to him, not the other way. He felt Azhara's cut on his right edge like a cool wind. He heard one man cry out and then bite it off. He smelled fear turn sour in the back ranks where the men started to see that numbers can still lose when the thing in front of you will not stop.

Rauk's spear slipped in his sweaty hand. Kai saw it, snapped a strike at the wrist, and made him drop it for real this time. Rauk went for the knife he did not have a second time, cursed, and then did something clever again. He grabbed a handful of sand and threw it into Kai's face.

Kai's eyes burned. He blinked hard. He turned his head a fraction and let the sand sheet off his cheek plates. It still stung. It still made him lose the thread for a heartbeat.

Rauk slammed his shoulder into Kai's chest. Kai took it and gave back more. Rauk stumbled. Kai brought the spear down across the man's back and would have finished it, but three spears came for his ribs at once and he had to choose defense. He turned them with the shaft and felt one bite his side, another scrape his belly, and the third rake his thigh. None went deep. All hurt. He let the pain keep him here and not in the camp where the cage sat.

"Hold him," Rauk rasped, grabbing someone else's spear and coming in again, face a mask of blood and sand.

They held him for two breaths. They did not hold him for three.

Kai dropped low and swept the spear butt in a flat arc that took four ankles in a row. Men fell. He rose into the space he had made and drove the blade into the sand to make a post, used it to pivot like a dancer, and kicked a shield up into a face. He ripped the spear free on the spin and brought the point up.

[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]

[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]

Rauk met it with his own point and the two locked again, wood groaning, faces inches apart.

"Move aside," Kai hissed.

"No," Rauk said, smiling with red teeth though his eyes were tired.

They shoved each other apart.

Far to the east, a soft drum beat started. It was not the column's march beat. It was a light, quick tap that meant a runner had brought news and a plan would be made from it. Silvershadow heard it and knew what it would do to this line. They would want to stall. They would want to tie Kai up and wait for the trap to close.

Kai heard it too from silvershadow. He did not let it slow his hands. He fed the Star core in his chest more and felt the aura from the core's answer. He watched the men's knees and saw them start to shake in the small way men shake when they have been holding a wall too long. He pressed. He did not give them time to fix their feet.

Azhara took the last man on the far right and let him lie in his own shadow. She looked at the center. She looked to the left. She looked at the line of sand that Silvershadow had scratched in his mind and sent to her through the road. She made her choice. She whispered, "Three," and then, "Two," and then, "One." On "one," she moved closer by ten paces, still two hundred out, still a ghost, but now in a spot where one arrow at the right time could make the next minute belong to them.

Kai slammed the butt of his spear into the sand again and used it to jump over two points. He came down in the gap and punched the closest man in the throat with the heel of his hand. The man folded.

[System Notification: You have slain a Four-Star Soldier. +40 Experience.]

He swung the spear up and batted another man's point away. He stepped in on Rauk again and this time he did not match strength. He used speed. He let Reflex Mode buzz his nerves for one ugly second and struck three times in a blink. Rauk blocked the first, parried the second, and took the third on his forearm. The plate held. The meat under it did not like it.

Rauk grunted and took a step back he did not want to take.

"What the fuck are you all doing? Press him," he barked, angry at himself.

They did not press in time.