A typical forest anthill on Earth houses anywhere from a hundred to five hundred thousand insects.

If the Metal Ants on Verdis bred in such numbers, it's likely there wouldn't be anything left alive here. The worker castes were the size of pit bulls, and the soldiers were twenty to forty percent larger. But beyond them, there were also four guards the size of donkeys who spent ninety percent of their time in the queen's chamber, protecting her. One of them was the general, responsible for coordinating and leading military actions.

However, as long as the nest wasn't at war, it was impossible to tell which one it was, since there were no visible distinctions. That said, each of the four guards had their own unique features, so-called qi mutations, which gave hints as to their combat capabilities.

For example, one of them, the one who gave me the most trouble, had small mandibles and a lot of sharp bristles that it used as projectile weapons. He was the only one who revealed his nature, attacking my drone. Another bastard had massive, heavy jaws with rounded spikes, most likely he cultivated a mace. The remaining two had long, thin mandibles with sharp tips and a blade running along the inner edge.

But those were all external mutations. What made the general different was something internal.

Thanks to the guards, I hadn't managed to properly scout the central chamber. The bastards were incredibly alert and aggressive. While the regular workers didn't react to drones at all, and soldiers could easily be evaded, the guards, especially the one who'd cultivated Point, were something else entirely.

The first drone was destroyed within seconds of entering, and I collapsed with a splitting headache for nearly a full day.

Good thing we'd used a cheap 'bird' instead of my dragonfly.

It took me another two days and a heap of mobile relays to build a stable channel and get our smallest, least noticeable drone into the chamber.

Our raid leader was pleased. He said it was the first time they'd had such a detailed map of a nest and such an accurate assessment of enemy forces.

Normally, second-stage newbies were offered 2–3% of the total haul.

For my drone work, I was set to receive the full 10%. That was with a squad of just ten people. In other words, on my very first raid, I was getting almost the same cut as the main strike team — the third-years.

The raid leader, Kaito Moriyama, pure Fist cultivator, was fourth-stage, as was his second-in-command, Alessia Moretti. They were a couple and the only fourth-stagers in the raid, so they took 40% between them. Normally, the raid leader would take 25% alone, since most of the expenses fell on him: supplies, transport, and spare drones.

The second-in-command usually took 10–15%. The fighters received between 8–12%, depending on their abilities and usefulness. In this particular raid, Fist cultivators were especially valued, since they were the ones expected to break through into the central chamber.

Despite their massive size for insects, the ants didn't require high ceilings in their tunnels. Even the guards, the largest among them, stood only around 1.2 to 1.4 metres tall. The tunnels themselves were 1.5 to 1.6 metres high. Even Kate, the shortest of us, wouldn't have been able to turn properly at full speed in that space.

Kate, my former mentor, the one who had signed me up for this job, and another third-year, Tobias van Dyk, were the ones tasked with carving the path through. Their job was to collapse several tunnels on top of one another so we could move in across the rubble.

Kate's friend, Piper, was also part of the raid, though she didn't have any special assignment. The rest of the raid group consisted of second-periods from my intake and the one before. They, especially Gunther, weren't too happy about the cut I'd been promised.

Still, the second-periods' role was fairly straightforward: grab and run.

In order to reproduce and sustain herself, the queen needed to absorb a large amount of qi, so the worker ants consistently delivered her crystals mined from deep beneath the colony. Our mission was to snatch those crystals and get out before the fighters had to pull out or the generals turned on us.

If we were lucky, we'd get away with a general's corpse too — their body parts sometimes made for excellent breakthrough materials. Even if not, researchers would still pay decent coin for a specimen.

No one planned to kill the queen, if the colony collapsed, it couldn't be milked any longer. Still, that wasn't always avoidable.

So here was the breakdown: one queen, four generals, thirty-five soldiers, over two hundred and fifty workers, at least fifteen scouts, ninety-three larvae, and a batch of eggs I didn't bother counting. Protein didn't pay well, and we weren't planning to lug eggs back with us.

We were in the final stage of planning. Kate and van Dyk had their strategy ready, but Moriyama and Moretti couldn't agree on which guard to take down first. While they argued, I was getting used to the heavy, armoured, sharp-eyed drone that would be overseeing the entire operation.

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In the end, they decided that the general must be the Point, and we all received the go-ahead.

Our crawler was parked four kilometres from the anthill, in a designated safe zone. The colony itself was built partly into and partly upon the side of a canyon. It was a place that collected rainwater during storms and grew grass and shrubs during the dry season.

On this vegetation, the Metal Ants raised Black Aphids — roughly shaped like school scarabs, but five times smaller. This was a 'milking' breed, from which they harvested green jelly.

Moriyama and Moretti were the first to launch, speeding ahead on their high-performance jetboards. Their mission was to eliminate the scouts before any could alert the colony. Kate and van Dyk were set to launch later and fly straight to the main entrance. Then, together with Moriyama, they would blow it wide open and create a tunnel big enough for our horde to surge through.

As soon as the entrance to the queen's chamber was breached, Moretti and Moriyama would attempt to isolate and drag out the 'general'.

Kate, Piper, and van Dyk were to engage the remaining three guards in combat and clear the chamber. Only then were my fellow second-periods to swoop in and start looting crystals.

Me? I was lucky.

All I had to do was stay high in the air and monitor the overall situation through the drone. Moriyama still held overall command, but it was my job to warn him promptly of any tactical shifts.

Moriyama and Moretti were the first to jump onto their boards. Their turbines roared to life, and they shot forward along the pre-planned route, weaving between the canyon's outcroppings toward the locations where I'd repeatedly spotted scouts.

The ground here was riddled with ant tunnels, going in on foot would've been suicide. At any moment, a sinkhole could open beneath you, or a soldier ant could crawl out from below.

After a two-minute head start, Kate and van Dyk launched, following close behind. Since they weren't stopping to deal with insects along the way, they were gaining ground quickly. Another minute, and the rest of the squad, led by Piper, followed.

The second-periods moved slower. All of us had less board experience, no exceptions.

I stayed a bit higher than the rest, in the observer's position, maintaining visual contact with the team ahead of me, the drone above, and the two strike pairs via the drone's feed.

Standard multitasking, two streams of consciousness, though in this case, if the ants managed to knock out my drone, the backlash could be fatal.

Moriyama's and Moretti's boards skimmed along the canyon walls as they cleared out patrols and lone workers in their path.

Moretti did it silently, using her Point technique. Moriyama couldn't help himself, explosions cracked through the air, silver flashes of projection lighting up the rock face.

Kate and van Dyk caught up to the leaders just as they reached the anthill's mouth. For a split second, they all hovered there on their boards. Then, two massive fists materialised in the air, one of them crackling with violet electricity. One after the other, they slammed into the wall above the entrance.

This time, the explosion hit just right. I didn't know how well ants could hear, but they had to feel that vibration all the way to the back of the colony.

The first, silvery fist took out part of the wall, exposing a honeycomb of tunnels stacked across several levels. The second fist shattered the remaining structure, widening the breach and stunning the insects caught in the blast.

For a moment, silence.

Moriyama held back, waiting for any secondary collapses. Then his board plunged into the opening, smashing and carving through walls and partitions with less destructive but more precise technique.

In ten seconds, he released two dozen projections, diving in and out of the breach, which extended not only horizontally, but downward.

A mass of shattered stone caved in, crashing into the queen's chamber, right onto her and her gigantic chitin arse.

The queen let out a revolting screech.

Two guards leapt up onto the rubble, charging into battle.

The one who had cultivated Point, immediately fired chitin needles at Moriyama, but he blocked them with a shield.

Moretti struck with a vine, snagged one of the creature's legs, and zipped out of the breach, dragging him further and further away.

The other guard vaulted dozens of metres into the air, nearly biting Moriyama's board in half, but mid-leap, he was struck by projections from both Kate and van Dyk.

That guard slammed into the wall, but didn't fall, instead, he pushed off it again, this time launching straight at van Dyk.

For an ant, his movement technique was remarkably good.

Moretti had managed to drag the first guard about a hundred metres away before he broke free, but Piper arrived just in time.

She unleashed three spikes from her bandolier toward the ant. The booming sound came from the fact they had broken the sound barrier in flight.

That was already her third ult today.

Two of the spikes pierced straight through the ant. The third embedded itself in the chitin near its head, not a killing blow, but enough to disorient it.

The other two guards had by now emerged from the rubble, tossing aside debris. Somehow, they'd managed to shield the queen's delicate boudy, it hadn't taken much damage. I suspected it was the Mace who had reduced the impact of the collapsing rock.

But now, all three were in the fight, and on top of that, soldiers and workers were pouring into the chamber.

Then Gunther, for whatever damn reason, tilted his board and dove straight down, right into the thick of the battle, before the command had even been given.

"Mori, Gunther's pulling something," I warned the raid leader.

"What the hell, Gunther?" Moriyama barked, cutting down another soldier.

Though whether he'd actually killed it was another matter, the bastards kept twitching even after you took their heads off, or tore off their back ends… or whatever that part was called.

Kate strongly insisted I avoid them, even if they weren't moving.

Right now, they were doing that ridiculous jerking thing again, spazzing out after catching one of her projections. That was mainly her job: stunning them senseless, while van Dyk followed up with brutal finishers.

Gunther didn't make it far with his heroic dive, Moretti's vine snapped around his ankle and yanked him back like a rag doll.

"Back in position, dumbass, before I turn your face into minced meat!" she roared.

"I was just—" Gunther tried to protest.

Moretti hurled a needle at him in response, it pierced through his defensive formation and his thigh like paper.

"What the hell!" Gunther howled. "I was trying to help!"

Instead of answering, Moretti gave him a light tap with her vine, not hard enough to hurt, just to drive the point home.

"Back in position, you little shit!"

Gunther obeyed, and Moretti turned her attention back to the guard she and Piper were trying to bring down.

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