Chapter 12: “Ants and Wolves”
The mysterious hole was actually a tunnel leading to an ant nest. The “ant” part was fine, but these things were freaking huge. The situation was probably that since this was the ice wolves’ den, they never used the tunnels on this side. The ants probably aimed to come when only the wolf pups were supposed to be here, based on their reconnaissance, and that just happened to be right now.
Depending on the size of the nest, Rare would have thought they could easily trample over eight giant wolves with pure numbers, so there must be some reason they never did that.
“Monster ants… Damn pain in the ass. What do we do, Boss?”
“What do we do”… How should I know…? Rare retorted mentally, though she was already formulating a plan in her head.
Tame the ants. If they can be used as labor, then it would be easy to enlarge the cave. If these ants had the same kind of ecology as the kind she knew from real life, as soon as she tamed the queen ant they’d be victorious. In that case, they’d need to venture into the depths of the nest.
“Is there any way for us to get to the deepest part of the nest…?”
Was what came out earlier a worker ant? If she had tamed it when it was here, then they could just tame their way through the nest. However, to do that, they’d need to make contact with an ant, since the one from before already left. Right now, the only way they had to access the nest was this tunnel, so the only option now was to take the plunge. Not only that, Rare herself had to go too.
“It’s suicidal to charge into a place where only our movements are restricted…”
That said, Rare’s skillset didn’t contribute much in terms of direct offensive power. She was quite confident in her combat ability without relying on skills or stats, but that was still at best only useful against single, individual enemies. But when facing six-legged creatures that didn’t even come up to her knees, it was hard to expect a proper one-on-one duel. In which case, whether or not Rare had freedom of movement didn’t change much in terms of strategy. If it came down to it, leaning on her [Mental Magic] and going alone was probably the most logical option.