Emery

Despite feeling generally positive about the plan itself, as I tried to quickly traverse the smaller tunnels I was feeling less and less good about what actually needed to be done.

Avuri and I managed to sneak our way out of the camp again, thanks to the demons' group keeping such a lax watch. Once we slipped away back down the tunnels the way we came in, we both let our tight grips on our Qi lessen a little. Not so much that we'd be noticed, but now that we had some idea of how the enemy was set up, we knew what we could get away with when it came to Qi use.

Which wasn't a lot, but it was enough to feel a little less naked in the underground.

It didn't take us long to get back to the section of tunnels with the practically random smaller tunnels running off in different directions. And that was where things got uncomfortable.

Avuri and I shared a hug and kiss before I slunk into one of the holes. I was glad that I convinced Avuri to not follow me because the longer I went through it the more sure I was that she would've had a panic attack.

We knew antlions were big, so I had expected their tunnels to be large as well. The issue I was running into was that while antlions were big, they were mostly long and not necessarily all that tall, which left me doing some strange combination of crouched walking and crawling. And then some parts of the tunnel had partially collapsed, which made it even more difficult to squeeze through.

Once I was a solid distance into the tunnel I decided to try my luck with my Qi. If the demons noticed me, I wasn't in the human-sized tunnels, so they probably wouldn't be too worried about it. And if the antlions noticed me, all the better.

I pushed my Qi out down the corridor ahead of me, feeling for any meaningful change. I could tell that the tunnels went on for quite a while with nothing of interest, but I did manage to feel a spot where it broke off into a slightly larger tunnel. With a shrug, I headed in that direction.

And that was my experience for at least half an hour. I moved as quickly as I could, which admittedly was not all that fast. Periodically, I sent out feelers of Qi to try to decide which way to go, but it didn't really give me much useful insight.

Until it did.

Eventually, I did reach a noticeably larger cave with my Qi and even briefly touched what must have been an antlion. I moved that way quickly, moving with renewed vigor. I found my target.

When I reached the end of the tunnel that opened up into the underground nest, I paused. I was able to use Qi safely here and channeled some into a technique to see in the dark.

The first thing I noticed was the massive underground colony building. The cave was huge, but more than that, the whole room was littered with holes all around that lead to either tunnels away or hollow spaces for the antlions to live. And there were a lot of them.

I had expected the antlions to be far more disturbing than they turned out to be. I didn't really like bugs at the best of times, so I had expected giant ones to cause an immediate revulsion. While I certainly wanted nothing to do with them, the giant insects were less creepy than I had expected.

They looked like giant, wingless termites with a fur-like coating on various parts of their body. I knew that their carapace was supposedly as tough as armor, and the 'fur' was made of deadly sharp quills. They were not nice beasts.

They also had large mandibles in the front, lined with sharp pieces of carapace. The mandibles were shaped in a way that made them well suited for excavation, and the sharpness was developed by scraping against dirt and rock while digging.

I think it was the lack of insect buzzing that left me able to handle things better than I had expected. The antlions weren't exactly quiet, but the buzzing and other insect noises I had expected to hear were absent, instead replaced with a sound more reminiscent of a rodent's scrabbling feet and digging.

I took a deep breath to prepare myself and let it out slowly, choosing to ignore the awful stench that landed on my tongue. Then I lashed out.

I chose four of the antlions at random and launched Qi weapons at them. While the beasts were physically dangerous, they weren't all that powerful when it came to Qi, and they had no Domains. Their armored carapace could be a pretty significant issue for a Cultivator in the Sky Realm, depending on their strengths. Avuri might have even had some trouble doing significant enough damage to them.

Thankfully, my Domain was enough to overpower their raw defense with raw sharpness. My Qi weapons pierced their carapace easily enough. I made sure not to simply kill the antlions outright, as I needed a bit of commotion to draw them my way. Once they cried out in pain, I lashed out again with a big burst of Qi to get their attention and strike a few more - then I ran.

I knew I had to be as quick as the tunnels allowed, so I kept my Qi and Domain actively extended as I ran. I had kicked the proverbial hornet's nest, and the hornets were coming en masse. Any time they got too close, I struck with a Qi weapon, doing my best to not do so much damage that the antlions decided to back off. I needed them to keep coming.

And they certainly did. Three times I narrowly dodged strikes that erupted from the earth around me as antlions burrowed in from other directions. My Qi wasn't adept at travelling through the hard packed dirt, so I had little warning when an insect was about to burst out from below my feet or from a wall. One had even managed to get their mandibles around my arm before a quick burst of Qi through my Domain severed one of the creature's mandibles.

I ran single-mindedly through the tunnel, every bit of my concentration spent on survival instincts as I moved around and through narrow misses until I felt my Qi connect to Avuri's in the main tunnel. She must've felt my controlled panic immediately, because as soon as our Qi locked together, I received a half-panicked "Are you okay?" through the mental link.

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"I'm fine. We've got lots incoming though; start running."

It was another couple minutes before I broke out of the smaller tunnel and into the main one. The relief I felt at being able to move like a human being again was immense as I scrambled to straighten into a normal run. Avuri was already a ways ahead of me, but not moving at full speed. If I hurried I could catch up to her, but I needed to keep the antlions on my trail until we got closer.

When the creatures spilled into the larger tunnel, they changed their advance. Some were crawling on the rounded ceiling, maneuvering around the reinforced beams while others would dip into one of the smaller side tunnels only to emerge closer to me from a wall.

That was where I started to draw the line on how I felt about the things. Watching them pop out of the dirt in large groups was enough to set off my insect revulsion. I could feel my face changing into a disgusted scowl with little conscious thought.

As we came up on the demons' camp with a huge group of antlions in tow, Avuri and I had a decision to make. We had only briefly discussed it, but we had two options on how to approach this. If they didn't have guards sensing the incoming insect apocalypse at their door, we had the option of trying to sneak into the camp as the antlions followed.

Otherwise, we would need to play the part of dumb, weak mortals that somehow got caught up in everything, hoping the demons would attack the immediate threat of the antlions while we slipped off silently to do what we needed to do.

As we got closer to the enemy camp, I noticed the smell of food in the cavern. It was potent enough to not only overtake the stench of the antlions, but even sent some of the antlions into a frenzy of sorts, as they tried to climb over one another to get to me faster. It was disturbing, but did give me a potential third option for getting into the camp.

I hadn't expected my original plan to actually work, given I would be in front of the antlions to lead them to where I wanted them, but they had almost immediately seemed more interested in the smell of food than the person that was injuring them when they got too close. Apparently, food was more important to the creatures than the potential threat that was running away.

"Avuri, pick a side tunnel and duck into it. I think they're locked onto the food scent." I sent. "And pull your Qi in a little bit, but not entirely."

I felt a confused agreement come back over the link, then prepared myself. I felt which tunnel Avuri chose and followed it mentally as I ran. When I got within steps of the turn, I took my gamble. I pulled in all of my Qi and my Domain and leapt down the tunnel into Avuri's arms. My wife caught me easily, and surrounded me with her Domain. We both held our breath as the antlions continued charging by further down the tunnel. None of them so much as turned toward us to inspect us, although two of the things did break out of the right side wall of our little tunnel and immediately plunge into the left side wall to continue toward the smell of food.

Evidently, like actual termites, the antlions appeared to be mostly blind. I wasn't sure what kind of sense they had that was leading them to the cooking of food, but whatever it was, I was thankful that they hadn't cared enough about us to attack.

Avuri and I had planned to wait the couple of seconds it took for the antlions to pass us by before following them to the demon camp. But they just kept coming. A solid thirty seconds worth of stampede had passed before the group started to thin out.

"Do you think that was too many?" I asked Avuri through our link. She felt worried.

"I don't know. I had expected us to need to fight the demons here, but with that many antlions…we might have more issues with the sheer number of them than the demons."

"We should move. If they attack and the demons don't try to defend the people they captured, we may have just caused an accidental blood bath."

With only a mental agreement, we both leapt into the larger cavern and ran after the stampeding antlions. "How did you manage to find such a large nest by accident?"

"I don't think I did. I suspect they gathered more as we ran. The nest wasn't necessarily small, but it wasn't that big. Probably." I was positive that if I had turned to see Avuri's face she would either be rolling her eyes or giving me the most flat, accusing stare she could manage.

I didn't look back though, simply happy that the immediate danger and concern for the situation we had created seemed to push her worries to the back of her mind as we moved. For as much as I knew she was terrified by the potential of a cave in or collapse caused by the antlions, I was glad that she was so focused when it came to high pressure situations.

With the speed that the antlions were moving down the tunnel, we were able to make great time. We stayed a little bit behind their rear guard, but still followed at speed. And by the time we were nearing the demons' camp, we could already hear the chaos we had caused.

Avuri and I both were comfortable enough in the commotion to use our Qi as normal, as the enemy Cultivators using their own Qi for fighting the antlions would give us enough cover to be hidden amongst the melee. And through our Qi, we were both able to get some measure of the situation before we would be able to turn the corner into the camp.

The Cultivators were defending themselves well enough, taking few casualties so far. The antlions were dangerous, but more due to their numbers and ability to overrun the enemy line. But, for the moment, the Cultivators had managed to hold their first defensive line against the assault. I didn't think it would last, though, with how many antlions were still pouring in from the cavern. And worse still, it seemed like more of them were still gathering.

I didn't know if antlions had some sort of hivemind or special way to communicate, but after I had kicked the hive so-to-speak, they were clearly calling in reinforcements.

As it was, Avuri and I would need to either kill a massive number of them to get into the camp or find a way over or around them. And while I was pretty sure that the antlions would overrun the camp even if we killed a lot of their number, I wasn't about to help the enemy of my enemy.

"Think you can run over them with me?" I sent to Avuri, with a mental image of what I was planning. I felt the immediate revulsion at the idea coming from Avuri, but that was fine. I wasn't exactly excited by the idea either. But we needed to get into the camp.

"I'm not happy about it. But I can keep up."

"Good. Then let's go. We need to be quick and try to remain unnoticed if we can."

I felt the monumental sigh from Avuri before I got her already exhausted reply: "Lead the way, love."

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