Chapter 177: The Ianians
Ch. 177 The Ianians
The next day, I wake up beside the swamp. My fatigue is completely gone.
We only have three more days before Nina is executed at Haranae. It’ll be difficult, but I’d like to be able to evolve either by today or tomorrow. For today, my goal is the red ants. On top of each red ant being C-rank, there are a lot of them. It’s just a mountain of experience points. As far as the potential experience points go, I expect to get more from this than I did from the giant centipede.
Although… even the giant centipede looked like it was on the verge of dying back there, when the ants crowded around it and drove it into a corner. It’s obvious that if I foolishly jump into the ant’s nest without some sort of plan, I’m going to be quickly mobbed to death. I managed to greatly increase my level yesterday, but my stats are still far from the giant centipede’s.
The most number of ants that I know that I can fight at once is three. I don’t know if I can take on four at once. And I’m almost certainly going to die if I try to face five. If I manage to get myself surrounded by a horde of them like the giant centipede did back then, then I’ll be unable to escape and I’ll die. It’s incredible that the centipede even managed to get away alive. I can honestly respect it for that. It truly is the Lord of the Desert. No, wait, I defeated it.
Should I steadily defeat the ants as they come out of their nest to raise my level instead? If I evolve and my stats go up significantly, I might be able to just charge right through the nest of ants. But I wonder if I’ll be able to make it in time then… If I’m cautious about this I may become painfully short on time. Don’t those guys move as a group pretty often?
Oh yeah, now that I think about it, I did breathe [[Plague Breath]] on them. I wonder if that weakened them? Maybe not; given the distance that I moved away from them after I used it that time, there’s a good chance the curse’s effect will have dissipated by now. Surprisingly, even this way of thinking might not be too bad.
I seem to recall a way of exterminating ants from my previous life where you’d use poisoned bait. The bait would kill them all in a single stroke after they’d bring it back to their nest. Ants do have a habit of bringing food back to their nest and sharing it among their colony.
We’re gonna need a huge amount of meat in order to carry out this plan. There is that giant centipede that I just defeated. I can use its meat. I can strip off the meat from its carapace to make insect dumplings, then alter them with [[Poison Fang]] to complete my poison bait. Afterwards, it’ll be good enough to put it near the ant’s nest.