Alexx pulled an Iron Ant free from the leg of a Mountain Goat and was about to rip its head off before he stumbled from another [SKULL BASH] shaking the earth. He dropped the ant as he focused on staying on his feet, cursing to himself about having missed another kill.

‘It’s fine,’ he told himself, ‘just get the next one.’

As he charged ahead he targeted an ant in his path. Throwing all of his weight forward, he stomped down on the ant’s back.

Alexx was sent upwards from the force of his attack. Glancing back he could see the ant trapped in the dirt, a spiderweb of cracks in its carapace.

‘But still not dead,’ he noted.

Even though his STR was double that of the Mountain Goats, Alexx was unable to kill the Iron Ants with a stomp as they did.

‘I guess it’ll take more than this to compensate for a few extra tons of weight.’

An ant lunged at him from the left, but Alexx easily swatted it out of the air. He hadn’t noticed over the last few days, but since Loran reminded him of his increased AGI he realized how much easier it was to fight the Iron Ants. Before, due to their greater speed and strange movement patterns, it took all of Alexx’s concentration to predict their moves. Even then he only struggled to predict them because he was more used to human opponents.

Now that he held a slight speed advantage, fighting them was almost beginning to feel easy. The ants clearly relied heavily on their armor to take down a target, but Alexx’s STR rendered that advantage useless.

There wasn’t much strategy in their attacks, just basic dodging and fearless charges. They may not have literal attack patterns like traditional video game enemies, but their simplistic movements weren’t much better. For someone like Alexx who was used to reading several moves ahead, this past week of fighting nothing but Iron Ants had shown him everything they were capable of, and although it was a strange adjustment period he was no longer impressed.

Their only advantage now was their numbers, and the goats were steadily changing that.

Alexx knocked aside a few more Iron Ants that tried to attack him. As he moved to step on another he aimed not for its back, but for its legs. The thinner pieces of carapace could not withstand the force of the attack and easily crumpled under Alexx’s foot.

Alexx glanced back at the ant, immobilized after having all of its left legs crushed, it was helpless as one of the goats delivered a killing blow.

Distracted by the sight behind him, Alexx steps on another Iron Ant and stumbles from the uneven surface. He remained on his feet but came to a stop for the first time since the battle began.

The ants around him did not let his mistake go unnoticed and three of them launched attacks from different angles.

Still in an awkward position, Alexx drops into a roll to avoid the attacks, catching one of the ants with his heel and sending it flying into the air. In his haste, Alexx rolled over an Iron Ant which used the opportunity to try biting at his back.

Thanks to the poor position, the jaws of the ant just barely managed to pinch him, but for an Iron Ant that little pinch was enough to rip away a piece of armor and a small chunk of the flesh below.

‘Fuck!’ Alexx thought as he hissed in pain. ‘Okay, need to keep moving, can’t stop moving.’

He started running, avoiding the surrounding ants as much as possible as he assessed the damage. He couldn’t actually see the injury or take the time to check his menu, but he could feel the pain flaring up with every move he made.

‘It doesn’t seem like my mobility has been compromised, so most of the muscle should still be there,’ he concluded. ‘Still, the damage will just get worse the more I strain it.’

The injury seemed to be more on the upper right side of his back, so he tried holding his arm close to his hip to keep it from moving too much. This reduced the pain slightly, but his running and even his breathing were causing the muscles to stretch.

‘I can’t apply any moss like this,’ he thought bitterly. ‘Guess I can only hope it doesn’t get worse.’

Unsure of what else to do Alexx continued running, disabling as many ants as possible.

~~~~~

Right heel.

Leap forward.

Sweeping attack.

Landing.

Swing left.

Downward strike.

Oh, how Zed lived for this feeling. Not a single thought in his head, only enough room for instincts and the rush of adrenaline. His muscles straining to keep his body in a perpetual state of movement. His heart trying to pound its way out of his chest, whether from exertion or from simple thrill he would never know nor care.

It was the same as with The Wise One.

This wasn’t a fight, it was a battle.

Whatever plan there was supposed to be about supporting the goats was completely abandoned, his only motivation was to keep fighting.

Zed dodged right as the horned head of a Mountain Goat came down too close on the left. He nearly fell into a group of ants but quickly used his spear to vault himself to an open patch of flattened grass.

Rolling to his feet, Zed dashed forward as an Iron Ant jumped at his previous position. With a swing of his spear, he knocked an ant into the air before chasing after it.

Dodge another attack.

Strike at the ant again.

Bounce it off the ground.

Attack.

Dodge.

Attack.

Charge.

Suddenly, three ants leapt at Zed's face, distracting him as he dodges one and knocks away the other two.

Fending off his attackers made him lose track of the ant he had been chasing. Normally he would’ve been slightly disappointed by this, but there was no time for that. More ants had noticed his distracted state and began to attack him.

Zed’s excitement grew as he defended himself and returned fire all in the same breath. His eyes glazed over as concentration shifted away from his vision to the information being given by [DANGER SENSE]. Blocking, attacking, dodging, every move began to flow into the next.

However, after a moment his excitement started to fade. As he began to wonder why Zed realized that there were fewer ants attacking him.

As dangerous as Zed was, he wasn’t a major threat to the Iron Ants in this battle. The Mountain Goats and even Alexx were far more dangerous thanks to their high STR, while Zed was only a problem because he had been preventing the ants from attacking the goats freely.

Zed cursed himself for being so distracted that he was being ignored by a bunch of ants. He made his way over to one of the goats, pulling an ant off of it and swatting a few more out of the air before they could latch on.

Suddenly, the ants began targeting him again. Shifting his focus once more, Zed began to slip back into his instinctive state once more as he defended himself. He did not fall into it completely though. He wouldn’t let himself be outsmarted twice.

‘...Outsmarted?’

Zed took a quick breath as a chill ran down his spine.

‘Since when can Iron Ants think?’

Over the last week, the three of them had fought against these ants many times, enough to feel like they had seen everything they were capable of. These insects were creatures of pure instinct; they did not think, they act and react.

So how were they thinking now?

‘Is there a leader somewhere nearby?’

Zed let himself be pulled away from the goats and soon the ants attacked him less. Now able to defend against them easily, he scanned the battlefield.

All of the ants looked the same, and none of them seemed to be avoiding combat. He considered that the leader could be further away like The Wise One had done but quickly dismissed that idea. There was no sound like before, so the ants had to be communicating in a way that he couldn’t detect.

‘They have pheromones, but those shouldn’t work over a distance. So is the leader here?’

As he continued searching, Zed noticed that the Iron Ants were no longer grouping up as they had at the start of the fight, instead spacing out to better avoid the attacks of the Mountain Goats.

‘If they’re smart enough to realize grouping up is a bad idea, why wouldn’t they do that from the start?’

Zed thought for a moment before realization struck.

‘There isn’t a leader, there can’t be.’

Something intelligent enough to be a leader for the ants would’ve known from the start the correct method to fight the Mountain Goats, especially since they likely fought against each other frequently. It wouldn’t make sense for a leader-type monster to not know that.

But it would make perfect sense for a bunch of inexperienced, disposable drones to not know that.

Individually, the Iron Ant Drones are dumb and instinctive, but as a group, they communicate, observe each other, and work toward a shared goal.

They attack as a horde because that strategy works against most animals, but after watching their own get slaughtered they learned to space out.

When they saw Zed defending the Mountain Goats while not being as deadly, they learned to keep him distracted.

They can’t think for themselves, but they can recognize positive and negative outcomes and can adjust accordingly. The more of them there are, the more time they have to learn and the smarter they get.

‘Is there a limit to it? If not, how difficult would strategizing a raid on the nest be?’ Zed wondered, unsure whether he was excited or terrified.

*AAAAAAAAA*

Suddenly the elder Mountain Goat let out a deafening bleat, so loud Zed had to fight the instinct to drop his weapon and cover his ears. Zed had seen the enraged goat that Bates drew to the campsite, and the elder goat’s behavior felt different from that. This wasn't a battle cry or a roar of rage.

It felt more like…

‘...A warning.’

The instant that thought passed through his head, Zed heard a faint buzzing sound. It was difficult to hear over the banging of goat horns on the dirt, but it was definitely there.

Then he felt a reaction from his [DANGER SENSE] Skill. It wasn’t anything specific, he could only tell that something was up above.

A second later, one of the Mountain Goats that had reared back to use [SKULL BASH] fell to the ground. The beast, which still had a few hundred HP a moment ago, was dead in an instant with a foot-deep gash cutting clean through its neck and the tough muscles that were supposed to protect it.