As the soldier’s words faded away, everyone in the room stared at him blankly. The information hadn’t quite reached their brain yet.

When I realised what the soldier had said, I immediately started thinking.

There are currently roughly eighty people in the colony and, although everyone could defend themselves somewhat, only about forty of them would be able to fight off the monsters that could break through the barriers.

Since all 89 barriers are under attack, this means that there are at least an equal amount of monsters. Previous times barriers were attacked, however, there were on average three monsters per barrier.

Taking this into account, there were an estimated 250~300 monsters currently attacking; If we didn’t respond to this perfectly, many were going to die.

 

At the same time that I came to that conclusion, so did Mike; “They have us outnumbered by far, if we try to defend the barriers we’ll be spread to thinly and we’ll lose a lot of people. We have to get everyone out of the Hive--”

Interrupting him, Jules shouted; “You want to abandon the Hive?! Then where are we supposed to go?! I say we fight them off!”

Jules had joined a few Pits ago and, although he was quite strong and proved himself a competent leader, the Hive had been a safe home for him ever since he came here. That, in combination with his hot-headedness, made his reaction understandable. 

In response to him, Yeong-Gi spoke calmly; “We don’t have to abandon the Hive, we just can’t fight them at the barriers. We should gather everyone at the town entrance and hold up there”

Although most of the entrances to the Hive were blocked off, there were still two main ones that were open; The town entrance was the entrance on the ground where the town -Although it barely deserved the name- was. The other entrance, the top entrance, was the cave entrance that led to the top of the cliff.

Yeong-Gi’s suggestion was quite good. The town entrance was only five meters wide and, as such, not a lot of monsters could attack at once. Everyone’s back would also be protected by the wooden walls that surrounded the town, so there wouldn’t be any monsters attacking from behind. And if something did go wrong, it was easy to escape from.

 

Although Jules wanted to respond, I cut him off as I stood up; “Everyone! We don’t have time to talk this out, we have to act now. Yeong-Gi, Jules, gather your men and secure the town entrance. Mike, have your men protect the non-combatants. get them out of the Hive asap, if they’re closer to the top entrance, have them hold up in the ferry on the river. Alex and Luke, you’re with me”

Hearing me, everyone responded with a loud “Yes!” and quickly left the room to fulfil their task.

As I contacted the Moon party with my ‘Divine messenger’ skill, Alex and Luke contacted the people of their faction and called them back to the colony; Almost all of them were outside expanding our maps.

“What is the situation? Where are you?”, When I managed to reach Yuuto, the leader of the Moon party, I immediately spoke. 

“We’re at barrier 23, we’re facing a giant horde of ant-like monsters; We can hold on for now, but there doesn’t seem to be an end to them.”, Although he got somewhat startled by me, he responded quickly.

“Fall back to the dining hall quickly or you’ll get surrounded, the other barriers are falling.”, Including the cave with barrier 23, there were thirteen caves with barriers that converged on the dining hall, if monsters got there from a different route first, they’d be stuck in the midst of them.

 

After giving them several more instructions, I stopped the ‘Divine messenger’ skill and looked at Alex and Luke. With solemn faces, they were silently preparing for the upcoming battle.

The both of them had been in the third Pit and were now some of the strongest individuals of the Colony; They had both passed lvl 20 and had obtained classes. Luke was a Spearman and Alex an Elementalist.

Although they couldn’t defeat the Moon party as a whole, they’re able to defeat any single one of them easily. Even Yeong-Gi, who was considered the strongest after myself, would struggle against them.

“Alright, Let’s go!”, I yelled, as I sprinted off into the caves.

 

**********

 

“We have to make sure everyone gets out of the Hive safely!”,  As we were speeding through the caves, I gave Alex and Luke their orders; ”You two take those five caves. Send anyone you encounter here. We’ll rendezvous in 5 minutes.”

We were currently in a large room that served as a junction for sixteen caves.

Twelve of these caves eventually led to a barrier and, if we got everyone out of them, we’d be able to keep the monsters from all twelve barriers busy here.

 

As Alex and Luke entered one of the caves I pointed out, I rushed into one of my own.

I ran at full speed and after just one minute, I’d reached the barrier at the end of the cave.

There, a handful of people were gathered. They were using the small gaps in the barrier to poke the monsters with their weapons.

I quickly ordered everyone to fall back and hold up in the room I’d come from.

Approaching the barrier, I finally got a good look at the monsters that were storming the barriers.

Their black exoskeleton with green and yellow stripes, their long, strong legs, their voracious jaws and their large numbers; These ants were the most dangerous insects that I’d ever seen.

From seeing them attack the barrier for a while, I concluded that each ant was just a bit stronger than one of the dark wolves that roamed the woods.

Although about half of the people in the Colony would be able to defeat one alone, these ants weren’t close to being alone.

Just from what I could see, there were already several dozen ants attacking this barrier.

 

Although I had to quickly return to search for people in the other caves, I first wanted to test how tough these ants were.

As such, I rotated my mana. With my new mana paths, the mana moved much quicker and it was much easier to use.

I led the mana through my mana core, endowing it with the fire attribute.

Then, I moved the mana to my hands. Continuously circulating it there whilst more mana gathered. 

Although I could gather it on top of my palm, some of the mana would dissipate and, obviously, the ants would spot the fire, possibly scaring them off.

When a significant amount of fire-mana had gathered in my hands, I expelled all of it at once, guiding it into two fireballs the size of oranges.

I quickly lobbed the fireballs through one of the gaps in the barrier and watched as they fell in the crowd of ants.

The first fireball landed right behind one of the ants, firing off chunks of rock that it tore from the ground as it exploded.

Although the flames instantly killed the ant it landed near, the chunks of rock were the real killers; Like fragments of a grenade, they tore through the ants’ exoskeletons and, although they didn’t die, at least a dozen got heavily injured.

The second fireball was less effective. It landed directly on one of the ants and, although it killed it instantly, it failed to injure any of the other ants.

 

Having satisfied my curiosity and having riled up the ants, I turned around and quickly ran back to the large junction. I picked another cave and entered it.

This time I didn’t encounter anyone and when I arrived at the barrier, I again stopped.

“It’s about to break… Let’s try that.”, Seeing that the barrier was about to be broken through, I decided to take inspiration from a spell I had seen a few days ago.

I took out the ‘Flask of the water mage’ and emptied the contents over the barrier, dousing it in water.

Then, I roused my mana and used the attribute I’d obtained most recently.

Icy cold air blew from my hands, quickly freezing the water and reinforcing the barrier somewhat.

“Hmm… It’s not that effective.”, Although the ants didn’t seem to like the low temperature of the ice, they had no trouble breaking through it.

In just a few seconds, the layer of ice had been rendered useless and the only parts left were the chunks melting on the ground.

Since I had to quickly go to the next cave, I made a single fireball and threw it at the ceiling above the ants.

When it exploded and used the rocks that used to be part of the ceiling as ammunition to tear through the ants, I had already turned around and run away.

 

I quickly went through the other caves and encountered five more people.

Every time I reached a barrier, I gathered my mana and launched an attack at the ants. This way, I figured out the most effective attribute to use on them.

I had four attributes available to me -Fire, Space, Lightning and Ice- and the lightning attribute that I had gained alongside the ‘Limitless core champion’ class did the most damage to the ants.

I don’t know whether the ants’ exoskeletons are conductive, or something similar, but the lightning that spawned from my mana jumped from ant to ant when I attacked.

So when I launched a lightning bolt in the middle of a group of ants, I’d be able to take out a bunch of them.

 

I exited the last cave that I’d take care of, and saw the group of people that had gathered.

There were just over a dozen people and they all had their weapons out; Ready to defend themselves if need be.

After looking around me for a while, I couldn’t find Alex and Luke anywhere. After asking the group of people, I learned that they had entered their last cave a few moments ago.

“Right, everyone! Get ready to move. We’ll get out of here as soon as Alex and Luke return.”, I say to everyone as I leisurely approach them. 

Right as I did, the sound of running is heard from behind me.

I turn around and see three people appear from the final cave.

Among them, one was running, whilst the other two were draped over hid shoulders.

“Run! We gotta go now!”, When Luke’s voice reached us, a giant horde of ants exited the cave; entering my vision.

I unsheathed my knife and ran forewards; “you guys get out, I’ll hold them off!”

 

Arriving in front of the ants, I used the ‘Void rending blade’ skill as I swung down my weapon.

Although, when I just started learning it, it initially only increased the sharpness of my knife, now when I used it, a thin blade of energy would be shot out.

As I cut through the air, a blade of energy roughly one meter long extended out from my knife.

When I finished the motion, the blade of energy fired off and quickly arrived at the front-most ant.

“Now, let’s see how well that’ll work”, although I had practised a lot during the past few months, I had yet to use the mana technique on any strong monsters.

In the beginning, training the technique went quite quick -I managed to raise my proficiency to 20% in just two months-, but afterwards, it slowed down; In the five months after getting to 20%, I only managed to raise it by 8% more.

 

When the blade energy struck the ant, I was positively surprised; The attack was much more effective then I’d thought.

The blade cut through the ant like butter and then continued on to the ant behind the first.

After tearing through that one as well, the blade energy cut through three more ants before finally dissipating.

 

Seeing that my attack caused the ants to pause for a moment, I quickly took the opportunity to glance behind me.

After confirming that the others had all left, I couldn’t help but let out a laugh; “Ha! I haven’t had a proper fight for a while now, I’ll finally be able to let loose a bit.”

 

When the words left my lips, a response floated out from the dark caves behind the ants: “Hehe, yes, let’s make it a good fight.”