…

A few days back in the school.

The ash corps personnel who were in charge of monitoring the entire test map had noticed an anomaly in the ant colony

Not only had their numbers increased way beyond what they had projected, but they seemed to evolve way faster.

They call the attention of Principal Lovren, and after he had seen the activities in the area. He called for a small meeting between Gibson and Zirrack.

After the meeting, they had concluded that the ants weren't much of a threat. Only that it would be a little bit challenging for the students, but that was okay.

Besides, if they were to eliminate the colony, they had to make sure no student was in the area. This meant they would have to end the test and it wasn't worth it.

As the days went by, they watched as multiple knight rank ants were deployed out of the hive, but it still hadn't gotten to the level they had to intervene.

It was when the queen ant had deployed all of its generals and bodyguards that Principal Lovren decided it was time to end the test.

Calling Zirrack and Gibson, principal Lovren began explaining the situation to them.

"The ash corps suspects that the reason the ants have grown so quickly is because of a crystal mine vein. Judging from their rate of growth, they suspect that it is a thranium vein." Lovren explained in a hurried tone.

"It is common knowledge that the ant queen would use the area with the highest mana concentration as her lair. If we take a look at the level of her generals then that means it isn't far from the Queen rank."

(AN: It sounds odd using King rank for female beasts. So decided to change it :)

"So we have to warp all the students back to the castle and warp in the strike team to eliminate the colon." Principal Lovren gave then a detailed explanation of the plan.

(AN: In case you don't know the strike team. It is Zirrack ;)

"Bring the students back to the school and warp Zirrack into the area." Principal Lovren instructed the ash corps personnel.

"Mass warping commencing in 1, 2, 3…"

The warp arrays for every team began glowing, but when it when the countdown was over, nothing happened.

"What is going on?" Principal Lovren asked in confusion.

"We have no clue, sir. Let's try it again." They retried the mass warping, but it ultimately failed once again.

Seeing it wasn't working, the leader of the ash corps personnel frowned deeply as he began simultaneously tinkering with arrays to get to the root of the problem.

'Don't tell me it's happening again.' Principal Lovren paused for a moment as the reason why students had ended up dying in the last survival test replayed in his head.

It was the same reason why the school had changed from having the professors warp to the location, to warping the students out of the location.

It turned out that when the berserk king rank wyvern had crossed through the barrier placed around the location. For some reason, the arrays there hadn't warned them.

The worst part of the entire story was that when they had finally discovered the berserk wyvern. They had planned to send all available professors into the area to protect all students and then Zirrack to face the wyvern.

The same thing that happened now had occurred then. The teleportation was delayed for close to 6 hours because of a problem with the castle's core.

When the problem was finally resolved, the professors were warped to the location, but they appeared at random locations.

That was why Zirrack was extremely vexed as he had to fly to the location where Blake and his team were located.

(AN: There was a comment that asked for an explanation, here it is. Tell me what you guys think about it in the comment section.)

"The problem is from the core. An override should set things back in order." The leader of the ash corps personnel group reported.

The core of the magic school's castle was always bounded with the principal. Giving them control over all its defensive systems and arrays, but after the hack that occurred in the last survival test. Prince Bryon had sent the ash corps to fix and install measures to prevent history from repeating itself.

"The manual override!" Principal Lovren warped to the core room where a large pink thranium crystal was located.

Placing his hand on the control panel, he began activating the manual override which would take 2 and a half hours.

His only prayers at the moment were that the ant queen didn't evolve by then and that the students played it safe.

…

Blake and his team had left the area still swarmed by ants in search of the other teams.

"No other team is hunting. Do you think they found out that we are hunting them?" Damon checked the leaderboard and found out that the points of every team weren't rising.

"Since 3 teams were eliminated on the same night and another 3 were eliminated this morning it is logical for them to think so, but there is another possibility." Sach wanted to give the team, especially Blake a hint about the chaos that was about to occur. "There is a chance that something has gone wrong in the area all around the hive?"

"That makes sense because there is no way the ants wouldn't retaliate when so many of them were being killed." Kade stated.

"If what you are saying is true, then that means the number of ants needed to scare the other teams will be almost the entire hive." Damon pointed out.

[I don't think numbers would be enough to scare the other teams, especially people like Luciano.] The system said.

'Are you saying not only do they have quantity but quality?' Blake couldn't help but ask.

[Yes. If you have noticed, you all have been going on a rampage on the ants, but they never seem to finish especially the Knight rank ants.] The system pointed out.

'Since Ansgar's stupidity, almost every army of ants was led by a knight rank ant. It seems as if the knight rank ants are… common.' Blake said in realization.

[Exactly. If they are so common, then there is no way they could be the generals and bodyguards of the queen…]

'Unless there are things stronger.' Blake completed the sentence.

"There are chances that 1 of them will happen, but I think the 1st is the most likely to happen." Beyoni said.

At this point, every one of the last 5 surviving teams knew that Blake's team were the ones eliminating everyone. Because at the time the 3 teams were being eliminated, team 7's points weren't rising.

'Murphy's law says otherwise.' Blake thought when he heard Beyoni.

(AN: For those who don't know. Murphy's law states that if something can go wrong, then it will go wrong. All of his laws are funny but very true.)

Since all the teams were no longer in the open, the team decided there was no point in searching for them. So the next best thing was patiently waiting.

They were currently leading in points and even if other teams didn't come out they would still win.

On their way to the location of the water barrier, the team had gotten close to the second hive entrance, but that was where they saw a swarm of ants being led by an ant general.

The swarm of ants was more than 5 times greater than whatever they had seen so far. Making the area look as if trees were growing from a sea of ants.

"Is that a King rank ant?!" Beyoni asked in a hushed tone, afraid that even under the cover of darkbringer they would be discovered.

"No, it's just a much stronger knight rank ant. One of the ant generals to be precise." Blake answered after using the system to identify the ant.

"It usually takes time before we realize how much of a mess we are in, but just some minutes after talking about it, it happened." Blake bitterly smiled.

Having no business with the sea of ants, the team moved way higher on the treetops to avoid the few ants on the lower part of the trees.

They finally got to the 2nd hive entrance and to their surprise they saw only 2 bodyguards.

[There is something very wrong about this ant hive. Not only are they way stronger than usual, but the number of higher-tier Knight rank ants are just outrageous.] The system warned Blake.

If 2 bodyguards were position at each entrance, that meant they were up to 10 higher tier knight rank ants and that was apart from the generals.

Unknown to the system and Blake, even school had noticed this anomaly and had begun making plans to end the test.