While Moretti was distracted by Gunther, the guard gave Piper a rough time. Her formation bloomed with impact points under a barrage of chitin needles he fired at her.

And that was with her pulling tight loops on her board, dodging most of the shots, probably seventy percent of those chitin spikes went wide.

At the same time, Piper ran out of bolts. About ten of them were now sticking out of the ant's back, so its own accuracy wasn't exactly perfect either.

"Why the hell is this thing so tough?" she complained.

"Aim for the central nervous system instead of spraying shots at random!" Moretti snapped back.

Tough or not, Piper had done a decent job neutralising it. The insect's aim and movement speed had dropped to near zero, giving Moretti an opening. She looped a vine around its neck and flew in close, abandoning her shield in the process.

The vines coiled tightly, wrapping ring after ring around the ant's throat, then began to contract like a spring.

There was a crunch. The creature's neck twisted at a grotesque angle. The vine suddenly thinned and stretched, as if the ant had grown a second, elongated neck.

The guard stopped moving.

Moretti withdrew the vine. The head flopped down, hanging by a bundle of exposed pink muscle, stretched out from the torso.

Moretti turned back toward the main battle. Piper dove in after her, yanking her spikes free from the corpse.

Kate and van Dyk were still fighting the jumper guard while cutting down worker ants as they went. They worked well as a pair. Kate shocked, van Dyk crushed.

The jumper had already lost functionality of two legs, which now dragged along by sinew, and had a deep crack in his back, but still stubbornly fought on.

There were now at least a dozen live soldier ants in the chamber, and just as many sliced, crushed or dismembered ones — Moriyama's handiwork.

But new ones kept flooding in every minute, both soldiers and workers.

The workers didn't fight so much as swarm. They scrambled beneath everyone's feet, getting in the way, unable to reach the flying boards.

But the Mace could reach. He ran straight up the shattered wall, then along the ceiling, and from there, pounced down at Moriyama, who was flying lower, closer to the queen.

The final guard attacked Moriyama from below, with a silver projection of his crushing mandibles. It was a synchronised, deliberate strike.

Moriyama barely twisted out of the way on his board, threading between living chitin and silver energy.

The Mace streaked past like a cannonball, slamming into the floor with full force and caving in the chamber under his increased weight.

He didn't fall through.

There was enough stone beneath him to hold his weight, but he had definitely sunk the platform.

"He's one of the two!" I called out, meaning the general.

"I got that already, genius," he snapped back at me.

"I think it's the 'Projection'," I said, watching the guard stick close to the queen while nearby workers frantically dug her free from the debris.

"There's only one way to know for sure!"

Moriyama spun away, dodging another upward strike, but this time, the projection of mandibles caught the nose of his board and sheared it clean off.

Blade projection? Looked like a Blade-Fist, judging by the colour.

Moriyama lost control and had to leap off his board mid-air.

The Mace instantly calculated his landing point and launched himself at it, mandibles wide open.

Moriyama fired a heavy projection right into its gaping maw, so forceful that the jaws snapped shut before the ant even hit the ground.

His foot landed square on the guard's head, and from there, he launched into a movement technique aimed toward the other enemy. Since it was a Fist-style move, the surface beneath his foot exploded on impact, tearing off one of the Mace's antennae and throwing him off balance.

"Alessia, finish it!" he commanded.

"Mori, they're taking the crystals!" I reported.

The queen had finally been freed enough to move her legs, and the workers instantly shifted focus to salvage the secondary assets namely, the crystals.

They were stored in a kind of niche-trough, mixed in with other food: the green jelly milked from aphids, dead aphids themselves, and leafy green shrubs. The queen consumed crystals physically, chewing them along with the rest of the mix. A sort of balanced diet, in her own insectoid way.

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But even the ants understood that the crystals were more valuable than the jelly, and they were now clawing them out with frantic urgency.

"Start collecting crystals!" Moriyama ordered. "And no nonsense, Gunther. Greens on the ground, stay alert!" he added to the rest of the squad, which basically meant: keep an eye on the rookies.

Not me. I was still meant to stay airborne.

Moriyama himself moved to engage the Projection. The guard tried to defend with a shield, but couldn't hold it: Piper pierced it with a bolt.

Moriyama immediately followed up with a rapid series of strikes, aiming for the antennae and eyes.

Kate and van Dyk finally finished off the jumper and shifted focus to the Mace, whom Moretti hadn't managed to kill.

Kate turned her attention to regular soldiers and the swarm. Not killing them, but shocking them generously.

The four second-periods dove into the pit, heading straight for the troughs. All except Gunther, who dived at a worker instead, tipping his board into a vertical tailspin so the jet exhaust scorched the ant beneath him.

The creature writhed in pain, opened its mandibles, and dropped a crystal onto the ground.

Gunther jumped off his board and tossed the crystal into the basket strapped to his back. Then he went after another ant and snatched a crystal from it too, while the rest of my teammates were dutifully digging through the jelly by hand.

Crystal by crystal, their baskets filled, while Piper kept the workers at bay, holding them off from the troughs.

The queen had begun retreating deeper into the anthill, into the only tunnel wide enough for a human to turn around properly. It had been built solely for her and her enormous body, nearly two metres tall. As soon as she passed through, the workers collapsed the tunnel behind her.

"Phase Two," I broadcast to everyone.

From this point, we had only seconds before the workers brought the entire central chamber, and a few levels above it, crashing down on us.

"Alessia!" Moriyama barked. "Drag mine out! Move!"

Moretti abandoned her efforts to finish off the indestructible Mace and shifted to the last remaining and most intact guard. Despite Moriyama's best efforts, the thing had only lost one eye and one antenna, its mandibles were still intact, and it kept launching projections without pause.

Moretti tried to catch it by the leg with a vine, but the guard spat out a projection directly along the vine and sliced through it. Then it darted back into one of the tunnels.

Moriyama and Kate both moved to intercept, but the guard threw up a shield their projections couldn't penetrate.

The moment it reached the tunnel, the worker ants blocked the entrance with their bodies.

"Move it!" Moriyama shouted and gave up on the general.

Now it was clear, beyond doubt, that this one had been the real deal.

Frustrated, the raid leader turned and launched a furious series of strikes at the Mace. His final barrage shattered the ant's skull and tore off one of its mandibles.

"Take this one!" he ordered Moretti. "Sullivan, how's structural integrity?"

"Hard to say," I replied. "I'm seeing ants two levels above you…"

And then I saw something else, a few soldiers who had been trying to reach Moriyama suddenly turned and headed for the tunnels.

"Soldiers are retreating!" I shouted.

"We're done!" Moriyama announced, and he was the first to lunge toward the second-periods.

"Move! Move! Move!" he shouted at them. "Gunther, you son of a bitch, I'll kill you myself! Get on your board and get out!"

Gunther scrambled aboard last, just as the cracking of stone above him and the tremors in the ground became impossible to ignore.

Gunther had his board.

Moriyama didn't.

He was forced to escape on foot, leaping in great bounds between falling chunks of rock.

He made it.

The anthill behind him went still, almost mockingly, and the tremors ceased.

And just when we all thought it was over, it collapsed. Folded in on itself like a skyscraper in a demolition vid.

Whatever crystals remained were now buried under tonnes and metres of rock.

"Let's get out of here," Moriyama said wearily and jogged toward the crawler.

Everyone else overtook him. I, as usual, stayed back, keeping an eye on him and the rest of the squad. There was no longer any point in lingering in the field. Once Moriyama was back, we powered up the crawler and headed for the Monfarm outpost, where we turned in the guard ant corpses.

The Point earned us fifty thousand units, the Mace seventy. It wasn't much. Among the loot we had small-grade crystals which fetched more.

In total, we pulled out eighteen smalls ranging from 51 to 74 units of qi, two mediums at 250–270, and one large crystal holding 610 qi units.

Finding a large crystal in an anthill was rare. Finding one on Verdis at all was rare.

That single crystal alone made up nearly half the entire haul and over 40%. Even Moriyama and Moretti didn't dare lay claim to it.

We all had the right to buy it at minimum price, but Moriyama himself set the 'minimum' at three million.

If anyone had that kind of cash, it was probably Gunther, but he didn't need it. So the crystal was set aside to go up for auction.

The rest was split.

Moriyama and Moretti laid claim to the two medium crystals. Their combined share just about covered it, but that left them short on cash.

Kate and van Dyk each took four small crystals. Piper and I got three each. Mine were far lower quality than hers. In fact, they were the three worst in the haul, but it was still enough to reignite the second-periods' hatred towards me. They each got just one.

Of course, we all had cash payouts still pending, to be finalised after the auction in two months' time. Even there, mine were set to be far higher: four hundred and forty thousand to their one hundred twenty. And that was on top of the ten grand Moriyama had handed out right after we turned in the guard corpses.

Moriyama had a short, tense conversation with Gunther. He told him not to even think about asking to join another of his raids. The rest of us? He said we were welcome again, if the occasion arose.

I had a separate conversation with him in the pilot's cabin over a cup of tea. He kicked everyone else out for it, which earned me another round of dirty looks.

That same day, Moriyama offered me a place on a future raid.

"Half a year from now I'm flying out to Ontell. Think you'll make third stage by then?" he asked.

"You offering me a spot?"

"I'll need eyes," he said. "I don't know what techniques you use, but you're a Novak's, so they're good. I'm guessing you'll have at least four parallel mind channels by third stage. That's three drones."

"Yeah," I confirmed.

"No more than that?" he asked.

"Stability suffers," I shook my head. "I sacrifice quantity for quality."

"That's your cultivation," he replied. "Still, consider the numbers. In raids, 'eyes' are valuable. We protect them."

I shook my head again.

"Remember when I collapsed with that migraine? A new technique will let me keep working even after losing a drone. What's the point of six channels if they all crash at once? Besides, if I configure the birds right, I'll be able to launch more and just switch between them."

There was a flicker of interest in Moriyama's eyes, but he quickly masked it.

"I'll give you thirteen percent," he said. "If we settle it now."

"Sorry, can't," I replied.

Moriyama tilted his head slightly, asking for an explanation.

"First, I won't make it in time. I haven't cultivated seriously in six months. Second, I don't want to rush it. I'm not a first-year anymore. I've got no reason to hurry, so I'd rather use the time for personal development."

"A real, real shame," Moriyama said.

Seemed like he was already regretting giving me the full ten percent.

"I think I'll break through sometime next year," I said. "So if you've got raids planned for the months after that…"

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