Chapter 1100
While she was perfectly capable of fighting from space, and indeed in some ways more effective there if her arrows were bulky enough, Nthanda chose to fight on the ground for one reason. Void ants. They were a continual problem, but if she provided a target it was easy enough to distract them from other targets.
At least, until they realized that they could do nothing to her. Technically, she had natural energy that they were able to devour, and that lasted all of a few moments before they realized that they couldn’t actually hurt her. But by then, a good portion of their forces would have latched onto her, able to be squashed en-masse.
There were a few reasons Nthanda was willing to kill the void ants, besides having many as friends. First, they were dangerous to others. Second, many of them weren’t quite people. Even those that might have developed to that point were kind of jerks. They should know better than to attack random people who were clearly at war with their captors. But every time, upon being broken from their confinement, they went after every available source of natural energy.
Had Everheart somehow stumbled upon particularly tame void ants, or had the Exalted Quadrant turned them particularly aggressive? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she was covered in ants and they were getting in the way of her vision.
Different colonies tried different tactics. Some immediately abandoned attacking Nthanda upon realizing she couldn’t be harmed, aiming for other targets. Others tried various ways to kill her. It wasn’t actually pleasant, but Nthanda was so far being damaged by standard void ants that she didn’t have to do anything. Though she could always crush them all by squeezing a hand tightly around an arm and sliding along.
This colony was persistent, and was using the most unique method she’d seen. They couldn’t hurt her… but they simply began to pile on greater and greater numbers. Now she was something like ten ants deep. Frankly, though it was original, Nthanda didn’t find it particularly practical. They seemed to be trying to crush her with weight. She supposed they might actually succeed if it was a normal cultivator. They were up to a few hundred kilograms now. The colony seemed to be extremely numerous. Far more than she expected that anyone would let them grow, in fact. This wasn’t just millions of ants. Maybe tens of millions? Hundreds?
A portion of them died every time she fired her bow, but so far they weren’t really slowing her down. But they were quite useful in case anyone launched an energy attack… if a bit impractical. Her own training to modify her skin to absorb natural energy was sufficient.
Nthanda let them continue to come. She did determine she had something they could damage- her communicator. So she had to call for aid- not because she was in danger, but because she would prefer not to kill so many all at once. They had ways to contain them, all she needed was to detach them all at once. It was easier than it sounded, if a bit uncomfortable.
Though any of that was better than when they tried to climb into her nose. Even if they couldn’t hurt her from the inside it was weird, so she put a swift end to any trying anything like that by blasting them away with high force winds. A colony that merely wanted to crush her was much more acceptable, though clearly poorly informed. Then again, it wasn’t like the Exalted Quadrant shared any information with them.