24 The Tribulation of Overcoming a Squad

"I think that the Zap Ants are in their nests, yes," Velvet responded to Enzo's question. "The book stated that they are primarily nocturnal creatures that seldom hunt. Thus, unless they are disturbed, they should most always be in their trees during the daytime."

Neither Saiph nor Enzo could argue with her logic.

"That's good," Saiph said. "Then, how should we go about this?"

The group pondered over the matter for a good few minutes before reuniting with their newfound ideas.

"Who wants to start?" Velvet asked.

"Enzo can," Saiph replied.

"Eh? Um, all right, sure. Firstly, I think that those trees are pretty dried out from being so dead. I like the idea of burning all of 'em down. I can use Fire Pellet, Saiph could brew a potion that blows up, and Velvet, you probably know at least one fire spell, right?"

"..."

Saiph was speechless. While yes, technically he could make an exploding potion of some sort, it would take days to gather all of the ingredients necessary. He had brought some ingredients in his backpack, but they were just mortal ones that had limited uses. In terms of action potions, he had brought along a completed Minor Acid Splash for emergencies.

"Yeah, I know three variations of Fire Pellet," Velvet responded.

"I counted nine dried-out trees. How many fire pellets would you two be able to shoot in, say, 30 seconds?" Saiph asked.

"Three."

"Five."

The trio looked at each other and laughed; it all worked out, then.

"I just need to catch a large stick aflame and toss that into one of the trees," Saiph decided. "Then, hopefully, at least a few of the ants die from the flames and most get injured and confused."

The trio didn't see any blatantly obvious holes in their plan, besides maybe a theoretical "What if, since they can take lightning bolts, the ants are immune to flames?". But, none of them were too worried about that. Despite their similarities, fire and lightning were different elements. The ants' uncanny resistance to lightning didn't come from their physical structure, but the lightning affinity in their soul.

That was the key difference between humans, animals, and beasts: Humans had Spirits, Beasts had souls, and animals had neither. The Spirit was what allowed humans to be able to become Mages, but it didn't have any affinity to the various elements of the Tower.

From what Saiph had learned, the step to becoming a Rank 2 True Mage was imbuing elemental affinity into their bodies or Spirits- the teacher didn't go into too much depth.

The trio decided to enact their plan right away. Nightfall was not too far off now, which was when the ants would possibly awaken and become active, ruining their plans.

Enzo made a quick brush fire using some flint and dry moss. Saiph grabbed a large enough stick and got it to catch on fire.

With that, they started their plan. The idea was that Saiph would carefully approach the largest tree -- which should be the queen's -- and toss the flaming stick inside.

Then, while Saiph was running away at full speed, Enzo and Velvet would start shooting off fire pellets as fast as they could, catching the remaining eight trees aflame too. Of course, they coordinated who would shoot what so they were no conflicting shots.

"All right, you guys ready?" Saiph confirmed. Being met with no disagreement, he started slowly walking over to the largest tree. He carefully made sure to not step on any of the awry branches littering the ground as he did.

In a moment that seemed like an eternity, Saiph had reached the large tree, flaming stick in hand.

Hesitation completely overwhelmed the greenhorn. This was provoking a freaking Chaos Beast! If something went wrong, he was very, very dead.

Gritting his teeth, Saiph decided to just do it. He tossed the flaming stick into the vast opening and bolted back toward his companions.

They both immediately started flinging out fire pellets at each of the trees, Velvet firing slightly faster than Enzo.

Saiph soon reached the other two and grabbed his shortsword that he had left here to increase his speed, turning around and looking for the Zap Ants.

Sure enough, as he did, large, black ants the size of a large dog jumped out of their respective trees and started converging.

Saiph felt the blood drain from his face as he looked on at the monstrosities that they had pissed off.

Soon, out of the large tree, the boss appeared. Agilely hopping out of the flaming hole, an ant the size of a grizzly bear landed next to its brethren. Its large mandibles pulsated with sparks as it angrily hissed at the other eight ants, none of which had died to the flames.

The Zap Ant Queen was truly worthy of being a Chaos Beast. It naturally dwarfed its Common Beast counterparts by a few times. Its abdomen alone was about 2 meters wide.

"Oh fuck," Velvet gasped. "That's larger than I expected."

"Damn it, I guess just focus on the little ones first," Saiph hurriedly said. "I need time to process the queen immediately after its death so it needs to go last."

""Got it.""

Two fire pellets later and there were now only six normal ants remaining. They were tough for Common Beasts but the power of a 1-Circle Spell wasn't to be underestimated.

The group of ants were no longer disorientated with that and started to rush toward Saiph's group, queen in the lead.

Both Velvet and Enzo managed to form their Spell Circles and fire them off before the queen reached them, downing another two ants.

All three members of the group drew their shortswords and steeled their nerves, preparing for the incoming onslaught.

"I'll fend off the queen!" Enzo yelled and leaped to the front, slashing down at the vicious beast. It caught his blade with its mandibles easily, whipping its head around with Enzo in tow.

Saiph realized that he didn't have the time to worry about his friend and turned to focus back on the normal Zap Ants.

They scurried along at a relatively slow pace, about the speed of a jog, so Saiph could have outrun them and led them all out of the battle. However, he still needed to help out with taking down the queen so he abstained from that choice.

Velvet fired off another fire pellet, killing an ant once again.

"Argh!" Saiph shouted and swung down at the leading ant of the charge.

It received his blow with only a slight stumble. As it started to support itself, another ant came up from behind it and lunged at Saiph.

He brought his sword up to deflect the ant away, successfully doing so. Jumping back to avoid being overwhelmed by numbers, he stabbed at one more ant, blade sliding off its face without any damage.

The ant retaliated and lunged at Saiph. Saiph, out of position to defend properly, dove to the ground to avoid the possibly lethal attack.

Fwoom

Pssss

Thud

Saiph looked to the side, seeing the body of the ant next to him with a smoldering hole in its head. He quickly got to his feet and jabbed at the nearest ant he could see, piercing it in the thorax.

That didn't kill the ant, though. It hissed loudly while trying to take a bite out of Saiph.

He managed to hold it off by keeping his elbow locked, which kept the ant at a comfortably safe distance from him.

However, another ant came out of nowhere, clamping down on Saiph's leg.

"AHH!" he screamed as the ant discharged its electricity into him. He fell down to the ground, sword still barely held on to. He swung at the ant that was clamping down on his leg's head.

CLANG

The ant's head withstood the blow but it recoiled from the impact, letting Saiph free.

Saiph quickly scurried up to his feet and swung at the other ant, slashing its face but once again not doing any real damage.

"Use a Spell!" Saiph heard Velvet call from behind him, grunting as she took on her own opponents.

"I can't!" he yelled back as he tried his best to keep the two ants at bay. "My only Spell takes too long to charge, except Zap which wouldn't even do anything!"

Saiph, unsure of what to do, decided that going for the kill would be for the best right now.

"Argh!" he shouted as he swung downward hard at one of the ants. His blade met its head and went through it.

As Saiph went to pull his sword out of the corpse, the other ant lunged at him, once again clamping down on his already-injured leg.

"AHH!" Saiph fell to the ground once again, this time losing his grip on the sword.

Saiph screamed once again as the ant increased the pressure it exerted on his leg. He was just about to go insane from the pain when he took a glance behind him, seeing his backpack laying just a few feet away.