Chapter 33: Rocks
Tulland did see. He could hardly miss it, once he got anywhere near it.
The ant mound turned out to be half-hill and half a mud tower that stretched its ill-built bulk much higher into the air than he would have thought possible. Everywhere on its surface, ants were at work. He could see hundreds of them.
Conventional tactics for getting through a fight like that weren’t hard to understand. Fast people would simply run in, dodge all the attacks they could, and blaze through the corridors, hoping to get to the end before they were chipped down by lucky shots. The strong would wade in slower, killing what was in front of them while maintaining their own health.
Both would go in through the big, obvious entrance, and both would stand a pretty good chance of making it. But Tulland was neither of those. He was slow compared to speed classes and weak compared to strength classes, able to take down a few ants if conditions were right but also perfectly capable of being killed by a single ant if things went poorly for him.
You see now, I suspect. Your stats contain not a single tool that would help you get through this gauntlet.
Tulland couldn’t contradict that. It was simply true. He had no ability to tank the kind of damage the ants could do. He could probably outrun one on open land, but not when he was weaving through random tunnels underground that they understood and he didn’t. And although he could kill one with enough time, nothing in his arsenal was strong enough to fight dozens or even hundreds of ants swarming him.
I can’t shoot fireballs. I can’t teleport. I’m just a man with plants.
Which means you must acknowledge this is pointless. What do you have? Ten or so days left in our wager?
Something like that. It’ll have to be enough, I guess.