The flying ants coming at him had white glowing swords in each of their four hands. Six of them attacked him from several directions while the rest stayed in standby ready to intercept Edward if he attempted evasion maneuvers.

Edward showed a hint of a smile. “Rèng khwāmrĕw”, he used his acceleration, four additional arms made with his aura forming on his back. He dashed right into their formation. Each flying ant was at the predator level, a coordinated squad like theirs already represented a considerable amount of power. It was enough to tie down the elite force of a whole city, leaving free reign for the rest of their troops to conquer it.

This wasn’t enough to stop Edward. With his acceleration he was war faster than them, even outnumbered he was able to avoid their attacks, teleporting away when he had no other choice. And although they were insectoid in nature, Edward had the advantage in the number of arms. The ants found themselves on the receiving hand. Their formation was useless against an enemy that was teleporting whenever he was put in a tight spot. Additionally, with the aura density of Edward’s swords, two to three blows were enough to collapse their armor.

Having only witnessed his long-range attacks the ants had severely underestimated Edward’s fighting strength. The squadron was decimated in a matter of minutes. The rest of the army on the ground were powerless to do anything and could only watch the result. A tremor ran among the ant army as they began to retreat.

Edward’s eyes widened in surprise. Retreating to reduce their losses. They really are behaving like an army rather than like monsters. He glanced down at the dozen flying ants’ corpses under him. I will let them a few minutes lead. A dozen monster at the predator level is too good to let it pass. I may have gotten used to fighting monsters at that level but I have to remember that they are normally quite rare. I need their essence to grow my power. Especially since I’m now making visible progress.

Absorbing Nephelin’s essence seemed to have fulfilled some hidden requirement, and his progress was now much faster. Even from the amount of essence he had absorbed from the vines his teleportation range had increased from 600 meters to 621 meters.

If I play my cards right, I may be able to make a breakthrough before the Andherians’ offensive.

He quickly absorbed the fallen ants’ blood essence, steel hungry for more, and then pursued the retreating ants and vines. Without the vines the jungle appeared listless, a mere empty shell, even the ground displayed cracks as if it hadn’t rained for weeks, the soil having been sucked dry of all nutrients. Three more squadrons of flying ants went to intercept him while the rest of the army continued to retreat. Edward happily dashed into their midst. I can understand that only flying ants have a chance to slow me down. But if it was me, I would rather sacrifice small fries rather than elite soldiers.

The increased number of ants didn’t change anything to the outcome, the higher number of soldiers only managed to tie him up for some more time. Edward was unstoppable, with his speed, his teleportation, and his aura steps he could avoid most of their attacks while retaliating at the same time. Their formation was useless against his teleportation, and his speed rendered their numbers useless. The ants died one after the other, falling under Edward’s powerful strikes.

He stopped to absorb the essence of the defeated monsters, feeling his power grow with it. After fully absorbing their energy, his teleportation extended to 663 meters.

There were about forty of them this time. More than enough to conquer any city that doesn’t have the protection of a patriarch. And yet my teleportation improved only by so little. This means one predator-level monster is only able to increase the range of my teleportation by one meter…This is ridiculous. Predator levels monsters don’t grow like cabbages, without the surge I would be lucky to find even ten of them in a single region. I should make the best of this opportunity, I can’t let those monsters go away.

Edward chased after the ants making use of his enhanced teleportation, even going so far as to run between teleportation to increase his speed. His fight against the ants hadn’t lasted that long and within four teleportation he caught the tail of the retreating ants again.

Edward noticed several things at the same time. He had reached the ants’ main base, a large portal, as big as city doors, was letting the ants retreat to their home world. This was also the place where all the vines had fallen back too. Currently, the vines were feeding the growth of things that looked like a mix between a fruit and a crystal. The crystal fruits were the size of a grapefruit and glowed with a red light. In Edward’s sight, the vines looked like electrical cables pouring all of their energy into those fruits. There were six of them, some smaller than the others, still in the growing phase.

Those fruits are gathering all of the vines’ essence. Those ants. They know the Andherians will eventually come. Their objective was never to conquer territory. It’s a raid. They are hunting humans and anything else to steal as much as essence as possible.

Already the ground ants had picked up two of the crystal fruits and were in the process of carrying them to the portal while more ants were picking up the remaining crystals. Edward hesitated for a second.

Those fruits are tainted by all of the victims that fell to the vines. But giving them back to the survivors won’t bring back the deceased. I need those fruits to grow my power. I must grow as powerful as I can to stop the Andherians.

In that slight delay, the vines formed a giant cocoon blocking the way forward while the ants scurried away with the crystals. The vines were also preventing Edward from teleporting past them, their own vitality was preventing his aura to cross through them, and they had formed an airtight wall.

No time to waste.

Edward went all out, aura gathered around him as he charged a massive strike. Vines shot toward him but before they could reach him Edward let go, a fifty-meter-long blade leaving his dagger. The blade was unstoppable and all the vines attempting to block it were slashed without slowing it down. The wall of vines itself didn’t offer much more resistance. The vine bubble was cleaved in two, the blade continuing on its way, bisecting any ants on its path. Due to Edward’s orientation when he fired it, the blade even dug into the ground, leaving a large split behind it.

The ants ran everywhere to avoid it. Luckily for them, Edward’s attack didn’t change its trajectory to chase after them. However, the portal linking back to their world couldn’t displace itself. The blade was taller than the portal and it cut through it. The part within the portal crossed through it while the rest of the blade continued its way on the outside. This destabilized the portal which shimmered and distorted wildly before collapsing on itself, leaving the surviving ants stranded.

The monsters stopped in place realizing the gravity of the situation, they were on their own against an enemy that was an order of magnitude stronger than them. Only the ground variety had been left behind, the flying ants were faster and had managed to escape through the portal before its destruction.

Edward glanced down at them, searching for the crystals. There are only four crystals left, they managed to retrieve the other two. Edward wiped out the ants that had survived the attacks by throwing several dozens of blades that he controlled mentally to pursue the monsters. Then he finished destroying the vines, by pumping most of their energy into those crystal fruits they were severely weakened and they barely had the force to struggle anymore.

Edward was left alone with the fruits. He teleported next to the brightest one and seized it, he could sense the large amount of energy sealed inside. He slowly crunched it with his hand, absorbing the energy before it could leak away. This single fruit had enough energy to rival three squadrons of flying ants. So much energy is contained in such a small place. His teleportation benefited from the power flowing through him and its range expanded to reach 694 meters. For long-distance travels, he had now officially exceeded the speed of sound.

Edward then turned to the other fruits, crushing and absorbing their power one by one. Those had less time to mature and contained less energy. The first one was equivalent to the energy of twenty predators while the other two were each only comparable to the power of ten predators.

His teleportation range stabilized at 734 meters. Meanwhile, his aura increased in size until it could almost cover a disc of 1,5km in radius, and his domain in which his teleportation had no cooldown extended to a sphere with a radius of 22 meters. His domain had now a longer range than when he first obtained his teleportation as an awaken.

I almost wished that I hadn’t destroyed the portal. I could have obtained two more of those fruits with a large number of predator-level enemies.

I’m starting to understand the appeal of invading other worlds. When you reach the apex in your world it is becoming excruciating hard to make further progress. In normal times, even in a decade, I doubt I would have made as much progress as today.

Edward looked around at the battlefield where only corpses and a damaged landscape remain. It’s time to report the situation and then move to the next city, I guess.

Within a few minutes, Edward was back in Alaucocha, the fire that Edward had unleashed on the vines was still burning brightly. It had only stopped at the dead zone created when the rest of the creepers retreated. The soldiers were stunned to see him coming so soon unless they still hadn’t yet recovered their bearings since Edward singlehandedly defeated the enemy attack that they had such a hard time containing.

Edward stopped in front of the commander. “Did you manage to find back the enemy main encampment?”, the latter asked him.

“They retreated to their world. They won’t bother you anymore. Although you will still need to be careful since I can’t guarantee that I got all of them.” Edward replied still wishing he could have gotten more of those fruits.

“Y-You defeated them?! All of them? By yourself? The war is over?”, the commander exclaimed incredulously.

“This wasn’t a war. Not to them at least. They simply recouped their gains before they could suffer too many losses. They realized they couldn’t defeat me, and left before I could massacre them.” Edward replied laconically.

“This…” the commander didn’t know what to answer after having struggled to hold the city for a month only to hear that this was but a raid to the invaders.

Edward nodded. “I have to take my leave now. I trust that you will be able to handle the situation from now on. Things should turn for the better.” They will or it means we failed to stop the Andherians and you are all going to die. He added in his mind.