Chapter 34: Persuasion
"Tell me you guys heard that too, right?"
Rudith’s voice carried over, bouncing a few times off the crevasse walls until it reached their ears.
A few seconds later, her figure came into view around the bend, followed closely by Sarah and Joe. All three of them looked tense.
Far tenser than when they first split up.
Rudith’s sword was still drawn, edge coated in dark ant blood, while Joe’s breathing was heavier than before.
Sarah’s face looked the palest out of the three, though whether that came from overexertion or something else was up for debate; Rohan couldn’t tell.
"The Soldier Ant?" Niko asked immediately.
"You mean the one we led away? Dead." Rudith answered curtly. "But we heard that scream the moment we finally took it down. What the hell is going on? Was there more than one Elite in this place?"
Her eyes swept across the group, then past them into the deeper darkness of the nest where the surviving Worker Ants had retreated.
Nobody answered at first, because everyone’s attention had shifted now.
Not to the darkness or uncertain foe that lay ahead, but to each other. Rohan looked at Rudith, then at Sarah, then back to Rudith again.
Aron turned to Rudith. "We were just deciding whether to pull out or regroup and push forwards together."
"Pull out?" Rudith asked, as if weighing the options.
"No."
That single word cut through the tension in the air.
Everyone turned to look at her.
Her expression was serious, but her voice remained steady.
"We’re already this far in; if there’s another Elite deeper in the nest, then retreating now only means we’ve completed half of what we set out to do. Remember, we said we’d wipe this whole place out, right?" She smiled momentarily before continuing. "Well, what’s one more! I still feel like I have about 80% of my peak strength left, what about you guys? Think you’re up for a tougher challenge?"
Rudith’s words were persuasive. Even Aron tilted his head down in contemplation, swayed by her reasoning.
But everyone there knew it wasn’t just Rudith having a way with words — it was the potential loot outcome that they could gain from this.
"Did you get anything other than an Origin Crystal from the Elite?" Niko asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.
"No." Despite her disappointing answer, Rudith’s smile only bloomed even wider.
"But who’s to say we won’t get lucky a second time around?"
That was it. The final persuasion needed to grab everyone on board.
Everyone but Rohan and Elane, that was.
"Are you guys sure about this?"
Rohan spoke up, sensing that Elane seemed a bit too timid in the moment to do so herself.
"That screech gave me a weirder, stronger feeling than the other Soldier Ant you just took down. Aren’t you worn out after taking one down already?"
Unlike everyone else there, he wasn’t the least bit interested in the potential of a Gene or Genetic Armament dropped from the Elite. It wasn’t like it would end up in his hands if it did.
What he wanted to know was why everyone there seemed so certain that they could face it.
"Come on, it only took three of us to kill that Elite, and do we look injured to you?" Sarah had to argue.
Rohan frowned at her interjection; he was already dissatisfied with her information being wrong. Now she had to come at him with this condescending tone.
"I’m just arguing for safety’s sake. Your information failed to tell us of this other Elite’s presence; there could be even more than just this one, for all we know."
Sarah grimaced at Rohan’s obvious disrespect for her previous failure.
"That’s why we remain cautious. We won’t immediately engage anything until we are 100% certain we can win. If we sense anything off, then I’ll be the first to pull out, I can guarantee you that!"
In the end, Rohan had no choice but to give in. Rudith and the others remained stubborn in their choice to stay and fight the additional Elite, despite how much he argued otherwise.
’We should have just turned back upon first encountering them. The potential risk is beginning to outweigh the rewards.’
His ominous feeling never went away.
***
Twenty minutes of walking deeper into the beast nest passed by, and eerily enough, they were yet to encounter another Worker Ant.
"It’s like they’ve all just disappeared..." Noa exclaimed, creeped out by the eerie silence that stayed behind.
His voice didn’t echo much. This part of the nest swallowed sound too well for that. But even something as simple as this attested to the power contained within the Elite screeching earlier on.
Rohan kept his hand tightly wrapped around the shaft of his spear as the group continued deeper into the winding tunnels. The orange-red veins running through the walls grew denser and brighter the farther they walked, to the point where the entire nest now looked like some sort of living furnace.
At least lighting wouldn’t prove to be a problem.
And yet there wasn’t a single beast in sight the entire way.
Just empty passages and the faint crunch of bots over dried debris.
Rohan’s bad feeling had grown to a sense of impending fear by this point. Maybe it was stupid of him to continue following Rudith and the others despite feeling this way, but he reasoned against it.
’Elane and I are getting pretty close to our time in the Origin Realm running out by now. I’d rather get this over and done with and be on our way back to Erenhot than risk being kicked out in the middle of a beast nest, returning to swathes of beasts attacking me the moment I reappear on my next entry.’
Today was their seventh and final day, and they only had about 1 to 2 hours left before they would be forcefully kicked out.
The only upside to their situation was that they seemed to be drawing in to the final stretches of the beast nest imminently.
"This isn’t normal, is it?" Elane asked one part out of curiosity, another part from unease.
Her voice was low, but everyone heard it due to the silence that caked their surroundings.
Aron answered her first.
"Actually, it is."
He didn’t elaborate further, which prompted Rudith to continue his explanation.
"They’ve all been called back inward." She said. "Ants are hierarchical creatures. If the stronger Elite deeper in the nest gave them an order, they’d regroup and follow it."
It was a reasonable explanation. The other Elite had ordered them to attack chaotically the moment it felt an arrow lodge inside it, while this one acted much more tactically.
It was clear which one was on the smarter side.
Another bed, another empty tunnel.
Then, finally, the passage widened out into something like a chambered corridor with pillars created from some sort of resin growing from floor to ceiling and thick shell-like materials layering the walls.
A few minutes later, Sarah abruptly raised her hand.
The group stopped at once.
"There’s a larger chamber ahead."
Her eyes were closed, clearly using that sensory ability of hers again.
Rudith immediately asked. "Any movement?"
"...Yes."
Everyone tensed.
Then turned at the same time to face Rohan and Elane.
They all showed knowing, mocking smiles. Even Rudith, who was only friendly the whole journey.
"It’s time you two fulfilled your roles!"
She gave them a one-over with her gaze before lifting her sword threateningly.
Noa had an arrow knocked before either of them could even realise it, aiming directly for Rohan’s head.
Their faces were a mix of mockery and schadenfreude.
"You guys knew all along, didn’t you...?" Rohan looked defeated.
"Did you really think my ability wouldn’t be able to detect this E rank Elite inside the chamber?" Sarah laughed condescendingly.
But her words left Rohan and Elane shocked.
’E rank Elite!? Just what kind of fucking trap did we walk ourselves into??’
It all made sense now, the odd feeling of déjà vu Rohan felt earlier, that wasn’t because of his previous encounter with the Soldier Ant but from experiencing the aura from an E rank Elite once before already! The Chief Appraiser of Red Fang!
Even the suspicion he felt towards Sarah’s information — why they seemed so openly welcoming to two newbies joining their group.
It was all a ruse from the very beginning.
’They were probably waiting in that section of the forest for someone like us to wander into them the whole time. No part of our meeting was a coincidence...’
"But what can you guys do against an E rank Elite? You may have tricked us into whatever scheme you had planned, but I’m not foolish enough to believe you could take something like that down."
"Haha! Even we’re not that delusional! Who said anything about killing an E rank Elite at our level? We’re not after the Elite, but the treasure it guards."
’So that’s the reason.’
They were to act as bait for them to sneak in and grab the treasure, escaping with their lives intact.
’Fuck...’