The Elite Team

’It’s starting.’ Aubrey spoke through telepathy, the mental link having been extended to everyone in the group.

As she said that, there was both the sound of that mind-numbing buzzing as well as a concerning amount of rumbling that came from underground.

In that moment, the Tank ants—which the group dubbed the large variants—were making holes to go under the ice. Originally, this hadn’t been an issue as one of the measures Landor put in place was reinforcing the earth beneath the area in the event that the ants did try to burrow underground, and it seemed like it had worked well, enough for the queens to deem it something to be adapted to, hence the creation of these variants.

That said, Xander had expected something like this. Not this exact situation, but he guessed the ants wouldn’t sit idly by and allow one of their better advantages to be neutralized just like that. Luckily, Curtis’s frost didn’t just extend to the surface. The intense cold also bled underground, to the point where if the ants wanted to go even deeper, they would have to drill through rock that was especially dense and durable, making it not worth the effort.

However, like on the surface, there were convenient openings that the ants could use to pass through, which is what the Tanks were making use of at the moment.

Looking up, Xander first observed them swarm of flying ants, and with Aubrey’s directions, he caught sight of the shield variants.

Each one was about the size of a normal soldier ant. However, their antennae were longer than usual, and their heads lacked the single eye the other soldiers had. Instead, they had odd geometric shapes that were distinctly biological. It looked very strange. And like Aubrey said, there were numerous of these groups.

Xander then strained his eyes, and sure enough, among them was a significantly smaller ant that was zipping around haphazardly. Not straying too far away from the others, but still had enough room to move around freely.

When they appeared, the antennae of the shield ants let out a strange noise. Then, points of light connected between the heads of each one, and as soon as it connected to the linchpin, a barrier with multiple sides was formed over a large area, and as more ants flew out, more of these barriers formed with each group of barrier ants.

’I’ll deal with the tanks.’ He said simply and grabbed the string attached to a pole. After making a request, Xander got actual metal poles to use his Vibration Traversal instead of his stocked up swords.

With that, he plucked it, and he moved with the vibrations towards one of the spots Aubrey indicated.

Meanwhile, soldier ants began to pour out of the few openings in the walls while the airborne ants were getting ready to attack Landor, the ranged variants readying their stingers. Even with the number of openings the ants had access to, their numbers were still pretty scary.

Not that the group cared very much.

"Starlight Magic: Stellar Shower." Falael waved their wand, and above them, several magic circles appeared in the air before unleashing a torrent of silver-white beams that showered the approaching soldier ants. The fact that they could only pass through specific openings meant that they could be funneled.

As for why Falael didn’t directly attack the the flying ants. Well, the magic reflection was an obvious issue, though they were sure they could blast through it regardless. That said, it wasn’t their job.

It was Ragna’s.

"RAH!" Ragna, who had taking position, threw a javelin. His body glowed an angry red as it was suffused with his aura, his muscles taut.

The moment the javelin left his hand, there was a clap as it broke through the sound barrier multiple times.

The closest linchpin which had been flying "unpredictably" wasn’t able to react before it was reduced to a bloody haze.

The barrier instantly collapsed, exposing a large number of soldier ants. And as though prepared, the sound of a projectile was heard before a rapidly expanding sphere of immolating heat bloomed among that group of exposed ants.

Clearly, the artillery had been on standby.

The exposed ants immediately moved to hide behind another barrier. Meanwhile, the group had successfully drawn even more attention towards themselves, so a sizeable part of the swarm started heading towards them. At the same time, lots of the stinger-like projectiles shot at them from multiple angles.

Curtis acted then. He calmly created several ice barriers that deflected the projectiles. These barriers then turned into floating ice platforms, and Sparrow, who had already unsheathed her short swords and gotten into a running position, immediately dashed forward, her body a blue blur.

She jumped between the platforms with stunning agility, and they accurately followed after her as she singlehandedly went into the approaching swarm.

Now, while she was confident in her abilities, fighting so many creatures in the air when she wasn’t super used to flight wasn’t ideal.

That said, she had no intention of fighting most of them.

Rather, like a ping-pong ball, she jumped between both Curtis’s ice platforms and the soldier ants who were too slow to stop her from using them as footholds.

The ranged ants tried to shoot her down, but they either missed or had their projectiles blocked by Curtis’s platforms.

Soon, Sparrow reached her destination, and it was the area where the linchpin ant was flying around.

As soon as it spotted her, it immediately started moving erratically, but that simply made her snort in her heart.

’Trying to use speed in front of me?’ In her eyes, its attempts at being unpredictable just looked slow. And like Aubrey said, in their attempts and being random, they still ended up creating a pattern that could be read.

In that moment, as she jumped between platforms, her eyes moved around dozens of times in a mere moment, calmly calculating. Then she acted.

Just as the ant was preparing the fly in one direction, she threw one of her throwing knives at it. The ant immediately changed direction... only to fly into another knife that had been waiting for it.

It struck its wing, making it lose its balance midair and wobble briefly, but that was more than enough.

A blue line cut through the air as Sparrow appeared behind the ant, and an X shaped line appeared on its body before it was sliced into four.

The barrier immediately began to fall apart, and she held unto Curtis’s ice platform which rapidly plummeted, just in time to avoid the spheres of immolating heat that vaporized the ants that had been protected by the barrier.

In that moment, another javelin tore through the air and reduced another linchpin to another state of matter, undoing the barrier and letting another set of ants meet their brethren in the underworld.

As for the remnants of the swarm that was headed towards the group on the ground, they didn’t manage to get very close before they suddenly lost their balance midair and plummeted to the ground. And when their bodies landed, they splattered unnaturally, like they had turned soft, and the remains they left behind implied that their insides had been melted.

Zeke calmly flicked small needles which had sickly green magic circles following behind them at the approaching ants. The needles finding gaps in their chittin and poisoning them.

Aubrey was even more precise. She fired arrows with channeling (the good kind) and accurately struck the ants in their weak points, killing every ant she attacked with one shot. The large size of the soldiers meaning nothing to her. Sometimes, her shots would go through one ant and hit another, earning her two kills for one shot.

And she wasn’t just killing either.

Using her Information Clones, she was still communicating with everyone telepathically, giving them callouts and the like without burdening herself in any way.

This just left Nash and Bodhi. The latter was looking around with his broadsword on his shoulder, looking bored, while the former was inspecting a piece of soldier ant he had retrieved with his magic, the piece encased in a glowing green cocoon surrounded by vines. He looked quite engrossed in whatever he was doing, not minding the surrounding chaos at all.

While that insanity was happening, Xander was also busy.

’Rupture Thrust. Rupture Thrust. Rupture Thrust.’

And that involved spamming his move, Rupture Thrust, with no reservations whatsoever.

To be clear, the Tanks hadn’t actually made it out of the ground yet. And Xander had no intention of letting them do so. As such, he would use Vibration Traversal to move from one emergence point to another, make everything that was trying to come out hate its existence, then move to the next.

Xander had to say, though, the tanks were truly durable. Even after multiple Rapture Thrusts, he’d only managed to heavily injure each of them to the point of immobilizing them. Granted, he wasn’t attacking with all his might to conserve energy, but considering the mechanics behind that specific technique, it was certainly impressive.

Xander took this in mind. Then...

’Rupture Thrust.’

He continued his actions.