I Became an Ant Lord, So I Built a Hive Full of Beauties-Chapter 200: Survivors of the Battle.

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Together, they administered the healing honey. They were careful not to agitate the broken shell.

"That’s one," Sha murmured. "Keep moving."

They searched further. Behind a huge pile of stone which was covered in slime and moss, Vel uncovered another. "Here!" she called.

This one was younger—one of the scouts ants, barely full adult size. Her limbs were twitching erratically, spittle frothing at her mandibles. Poison veins were visible under her translucent exoskin. It was burning green.

"Damn," Naaro muttered. "They used venom that eats through aura nerves."

"But she’s breathing," Sha said.

One ant dashed to her, almost tripping over her own long legs. "We can save her, right?"

"We will," Vel said fiercely. "Carry her."

They fashioned stretchers from bark and silk clothes, bundling the two barely-breathing ant warriors and marking their spot.

"Two more," whispered Tissa. "Please let there be more."

They moved into a collapsed tunnel shaft, the remains of the secondary nest. There, buried under rock and frog intestines, lay the curled forms of two ants. They were motionless.

"Dead?" Vel whispered to others.

Naaro crouched—then yelped. "No! One’s mandibles just twitched!"

Sha and Vel hurried to lift debris, slowly, with precision. Each motion risked collapse—but the assassin ants were trained.

As they freed the first body, a ragged cough sputtered from its thorax. A second later, the other shivered and curled tighter.

"They’re alive," Naaro whispered, voice catching in her throat.

"Four saved..." Zia murmured in wonder. "Four... from forty-five."

One ant’s face hardened. "Four that will live to remember the fallen."

The four barely breathing ants were bundled in stretchers of bark-slats and silk cloth. Vel led the descent into the intact tunnel artery while Sha and another ant supported the rear. Naaro smeared fresh antidote herbs across each wounded thorax to blunt the poison’s crawl through aura nerves. The air grew colder the deeper they moved, the tunnel walls glittering with flecks of mica that caught lamplight like distant constellations.

Azhara padded behind them—limping but game—carrying two small portions of glowing amber honey. She’d already mixed in crushed mint-lichen and a drop of her own regenerative liquid from her clan. It was an old savage-rabbit remedy for venom rot.

They reached a low chamber whose roof was ribbed with living roots. Thick vats of healing honey lined the walls, each urn capped with resin. Three torch-fungi flickered, revealing a carved bas mural of ant queens long past.

"Lay them here," Akayoroi instructed, settling the first stretcher onto a mat of moss and bark. "Steady—watch the cracked plates."

Vel and Sha obeyed. Azhara uncorked a portion; the sweet, iron-rich scent filled the chamber. She dipped two claws and spread the honey salve across the scout’s twitching abdomen. Steam hissed, and the greenish veins pulsing under the shell dimmed one shade.

Naaro cut away shredded armor fragments and dabbed more honey along hairline fissures. One ant placed a thorn-splint under a fractured leg. Within minutes, all four wounded were coated in shimmering gold, breathing easier than before, though still unconscious.

Azhara wiped her brow. "Rabbit field medic reporting decent success."

Akayoroi clasped her wrist briefly—gratitude without words. Then she turned to Kai, who waited at the threshold.

"These chambers will hold," she said. "My sisters will take shifts feeding honey every hour. In two days we’ll know who survives."

Kai nodded. "Good. The battlefield stinks of venom. Those frog bodies are still seeping toxins. I’ll deal with them."

"I’ll help," Akayoroi offered, stepping forward.

He shook his head. "Tend your people. Besides, your pheromone signature’s on every wall. If the swamp’s predators sniff so much blood, they’ll track here. I’ll drag the carcasses beyond the perimeter."

Azhara raised a claw. "I’ll go. I can lug half a frog in each arm."

Kai eyed her cracked rib. "You will supervise from a stump."

She pouted—then grinned. "Supervising is my specialty."

Akayoroi touched Kai’s bicep lightly—a queen’s gesture of trust, not possession. "Thank you. And be careful. Some of them had acid pouches that might still rupture."

Kai simply inclined his head and vanished up the sloping corridor.

Outside, the Southern Forest felt different without screams or thunder. Sunlight filtered through green leaf canopies, turning every dew bead silver gold. A croaking chorus had begun somewhere inland—ordinary frogs, blissfully ignorant of empire and death.

Kai flexed his shoulders, inhaling the cool air to clear the scent of battle from his mind. He lifted the first bloated corpse—a four-star frogkin whose chest still oozed dim aura sparks and tossed it over one shoulder like a sack of mulch.

He repeated the haul for the second four-star victim. The destroyed third core—shattered earlier by a stray elbow—meant that carcass was useful only for alchemical fats; he lugged that one under an arm. All five frogkin bodies are collected. Finally, he dragged the massive five-star Frog-Prince’s husk by the ankles, its head leaving a sludge trail through crushed lilies.

After a quarter-kilometer trek, dawn’s gray edge bled across the horizon. Kai reached a clearing where the trees gave way to broken basalt columns of old ruins smothered by moss. Ferns taller than warhorses rustled in a breeze that smelled of citrus and wet stone.

In that clearing, he paused.

Towering trunks ringed the glade, their bark mottled with blue bioluminescent lichen. High in the canopy, strangler-vines dangled like starless constellations. The clearing floor was dark loam layered over basalt shards—perfect for deep digging.

Kai rolled his shoulders, then activated Adaptive Armor along his palms, hardening claw/hands edges. With a repeated thrust-and-rake motion, he excavated a pit. Soil and rock flew in parabolic arcs. Each swipe removed half a meter. Aura-reinforced muscles hummed like living engines. Within minutes, he’d carved a 15-meter deep shaft. It was steep, neat, with walls corrugated by claw gouges.

Satisfied, he heaved the first two four-star corpses into the hole—they tumbled, limbs flailing like grotesque marionettes, and landed with a wet THUMP far below. The shattered-core corpse followed. (These three cores he already ate during battle.)

He crouched beside the huge Frog-Prince body. A moment’s hesitation. "Essence first," he thought.

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