The passage was not as long as it seemed, it only required ten minutes of walking to reach the end. He flashed the severed hand on the sensor and prepared himself for what was to come.

“...”

“...”

“...This... What is this?”

His eyes were wide open. He gazed at the distance with an expression of shock and disbelief.

He expected a super-sized forest, filled with towering insects and creatures he had never seen before. But the reality was... Hell.

Buildings that spanned from all eras, covering many civilizations, were buried inside each other, rusted and eaten by the sands of time. The steel structures bent to form impossible angles, steering from the ground and from the skies to paint the scenario of a thorns tree, a deceased flower that already started to rot and decompose, showing its black contortions.

There was no sky, only dark red glow that cast shadows, clouds of smoke and dust were visible as they ran into debris, leaving behind foul chemicals that corroded everything. Just breathing the air would spring up a burning sensation, as if one’s flesh was consumed from the inside, Seven covered his face as keeping his eyes open for too long would make them sting.

And amidst all of that, a thick river of blood cut through the destroyed landscape, lumps of flesh and rotten waste floating in the surface and obstructing the passages, splitting apart and drowning everything with is gloomy colors.

There was only the rustling of an abysmal wind, devouring the emptiness of the silence.

And at the very top of this nightmarish scenario, where the light shone brighter, he could see silhouettes.

Worker ants. A constant flow of them.

He went back groggily as his mind drew a few blanks.

“...”

“...”

“...”

“I must be mistaken...”

If his suppositions were accurate, and their next mission involved exploring this place... Death was guaranteed. The survival rate would be on the single digits, unless they were wiped out.

“Did Arthur know about all of this...?”

Seven stood a full minute coming to terms with what he saw. He managed to calm down, somehow, but his expression was gloomy.

The mastermind might like interesting developments, and killing everyone was not a satisfying ending to this. However... He figured from his code number, that there should be many people abducted and put into this place.

Why hold back? Their lives were expendable anyway.

“What an ominous page...”

He didn’t think the system would throw them an impossible mission, but this view would surely break the spirits of many.

“Natalya shouldn’t be discouraged by this... Right?”

Seven clenched his fist and started handling the parts.

It had taken him a long time to get everything he needed after waking up, especially since he had to handle it all with only one arm. He had to struggle like a worm just to pick up some material, and in the end, it was just the bare minimum – if possible, he would’ve taken more.

He knew where Arthur took the dismantled ant parts, and they had been handled well. Otherwise, he would’ve immediately given up on his plan and would’ve never taken it upon himself to go outside.

In regards to details, he took calculated risks.

First, he took off his clothes and the materials he had gathered from the warehouse to create a suit. He couldn't boil the soft parts to soften the tissues and interweave them on the clothes, so he had to make do with tearing them bit by bit and attaching the regular strips.

He made sure to create holes in a few places, passing a thin rope from the two points and attaching the hardened carapace on a frame he had made earlier, making something close in appearance to an armor.

It was uncomfortable to move in and it gave off a strange smell, but it would protect him from the poisonous substances in the air. Or so he hoped.

The helmet was the easiest to make, but it wasn’t very reliable. There was no way to penetrate the carapace to make holes and attach the rope, he had no choice but to make do with the best glue he could find. He didn’t think it would fall off if he were to run, but its defense value against direct attacks was close to zero.

Taking advantage of the glue, he put soft tissue to the side of his glasses. It blocked part of his view and it wasn’t completely airtight.

As for his respiratory system, he could only hope that the ant tissues filtrated part of the air instead of just blocking the substances, making a mask with the leftovers.

It took him the rest of the evening and the later parts of the night to craft this. He had never done it before, but had some knowledge in the matter – the biggest challenge was doing it all with one arm.

[You are quite crafty. This will help you a lot]

“Hearing you speak like that only makes me suspicious”

[You can scan the item you made with the Human System]

“Huh, no wonder...”

He already knew to an extent what his suit entailed, but he checked it anyway.

||Ant Armor (Low Quality)||

||Defense: 13||

||Comfort: 37%||

||Durability: 13/13||

||Toxin Resistance||

||Smelly||

A graph showed the distribution of defense value throughout the body parts, non-surprisingly they were concentrated in the carapace-covered areas, save for the head.

“Does the system reveal characteristics I’m not aware of?”

[Unless you have no idea about how durable or strong your equipment is, no, it doesn’t]

“... This thing is basically useless”

Checking that everything was in the right place, he strapped a gourd on his belt and picked up the half-moon blade before heading out. Natalya’s martial art was quite versatile and it wasn’t hard to adapt it to use the blade on the opposite hand, Seven wasn’t terribly bad with his left either. It would hinder his progress, though.

The soil was barren, but sharp rocks and pieces loitered the ground and made it difficult to move around.

Soon, the gates closed and the only light was the one emanating from the building.

He walked carefully.

The base of the steep hill was quite far away from the destroyed city in the distance, he had to walk and sometimes climb down for 30 minutes before he reached it.

There were wooden stairs on the sides that led to shabby structures resembling outposts. They didn’t fit the main building, Seven thought they must have been built by previous survivors.

“I didn’t see much wood in the warehouse, though, or nails...”

Glancing back, it occurred to him that it might not be a coincidence that the ants invaded them every 24 hours. And similarly, not a coincidence that there were caves filled with worker ants when they first arrived.

“I see... This is a sort of feeding ground for their colony”

If everything was linked, the previous people at the base were massacred by ants and they were sent in when most of the workers had left. The next wave would be of warriors, but that should have something to do with the mastermind, ants communicated mostly through chemicals left behind, and they could only smell them at close range.

For regular ants, that is.

Regardless, a big colony should be able to wipe them out instantly.

“Either their colony has few ants, given their size, or there are multiple feeding grounds...”

They weren’t mutually exclusive theories.

All of a sudden, he felt a presence looming on him.

The nasty hairs that dangled from its huge legs, it always started with this image. The noise they made when caressing the wind was unsettling, and in this darkness, it only served to intensify one's deepest fears.

And next, the antennae. They moved ever so slightly with every bit of naturality, looking at them for one more second would make you unable to look away from the sheer level of bizarre.

What was that thing doing there, so far away from the colony? It was still not time for the feast.

Cold sweat dripped from his forehead. Seven could only feel its general location, and the ground was unfit for quick movements. He slowly moved away from the slight noises.

Carefully.

Silently.

Stealthily.

He went on, and spotted a crevice up ahead.

As he walked, he bit down on the sword’s handle and recovered the gourd from his belt. He unsealed the bottle with his thumb and sent the liquid splashing as far as he could before closing the lid and hiding in the crevice.

Seven froze on his steps and waited patiently. Once he heard the ant going the other way, he breathed a sigh of relief and went out.

“I didn’t expect to use this so soon...”

He had forgotten that, because of the armor, he smelt like the ants. Ants were very particular about the number of chemicals to differentiate their classes and send signals. If there was anything off, they would immediately categorize it as an enemy.

It wouldn’t matter when facing a colony, but finding a lone ant like this was very unfortunate.

The gourd contained a concentrated secretion produced by those ants, and he could use it to dismiss them during a chase.

“At least I know it works, now”

He retroceded and headed to the destroyed city.

Seven steered far away from the ants’ beeline, but it was clear that they were carrying food uphill, there were no warriors in the entourage. They all flocked to one district and carried on lumps which he couldn’t recognize, and he also noticed that they stayed far away from the blood river.

He used this opportunity to look through the buildings and see if he could scavenge something, but it was all either buried away by debris or had been corroded by vapors.

Every now and then he would find unnatural skeletons or decomposing bodies on hiding places, their clothes didn’t show any sign of a struggle, which meant they must have died from breathing the toxic air.

As soon as an opportunity came, he went further towards the ants’ colony. The entrance was big enough that he could avoid detection by standing at the edges, he continued on his way, not exactly sure as to where it led him.

5 minutes.

10 minutes.

20 minutes.

The path branched endlessly, and he could only trail behind the scent left by worker ants, going where it was at its thickest.

The more he walked, the more suspicious he got.

Logically, they should be amassing food for the Queen, this path should lead directly to the heart of the colony, but he hadn’t seen a single ant for the past ten minutes.

He was in the middle of an intersection, the smell branched both ways. But in one way, it was left behind on the ground. On the other way, it was so strong that it could be felt in the air.

He slowed down and carefully approached the second way, and what he saw made him stand on alert.

A creature so humongous that alone it filled the several meters wide tunnel with no space for movement. Its large protruding belly was tainted red with blood, while two thick and ringed legs fiddled with a big lump like a squirming muscle. It seemed to be molding it into a ball.

The ground was covered with waste: an unclean watery substance produced small puddles and thin streaks, emitting a foul smell, hatched eggs and pupa remains strewn about.

“... An abandoned Queen”

It seemed to be in the middle of feeding off of the last remains brought in by the workers.

Seven descended further in the tunnel to take a better look.

As he came down, more of the body was revealed and an extra two pairs of legs fiddled with the lump, much gentler and caring, but such a difference evoked goosebumps. It was like watching a cockroach laying on its back, endlessly moving, always fiddling around with its filthy limbs.

He proceeded.

One by one, the lumps became perfectly round. He now recognized them: human corpses and carcasses of other insects that he couldn’t discern, scraps of organic tissue, dead fauna, and flora. They were hastily woven into a nutritious meal.

The third pair of legs revealed themselves, they rarely touched the food and only moved to bring it upwards, but the head should already be visible. Instead, the pale-yellowish skin was quickly substituted by a rosy pink tissue that extended further.

He could only go on for a few more meters before it became too close for comfort.

The pink tissue continued smoothly until two arcs were drawn and something akin to wings was shown.

The wings moved and his blood ran cold.

“It can’t be... This doesn’t make any sense...”

In the last few meters, the Queen came to be in full view.

They weren’t wings, they just looked like that because of the angle.

It was a pair of human hands that received the fleshy meal. They greedily shoved the ball into a blood-dripping mouth and ferocious eyes, that were, in fact, the conjugation of multiple vision organs, gazing downwards, desperate for more.

An incredibly beautiful Queen with milky white skin, golden hair, plentiful breasts.

An abomination.