Hitting the Motherload

"It probably goes without saying," Yang said. "But can we all agree to never piss that fucking monster off?"

"Yep," Alexx said quickly.

"For now." Zed was lying back with one arm draped over his face, but could understand what they were talking about through the tremors alone.

"Zed. Seriously. Don't even think about it."

"It'll be fine once we level up a bunch," Zed said as he moved his arm to stare confidently at her.

"First of all, I'm pretty sure killing her will enrage all the Mountain Goats. The last thing we need is them hating us on top of the Iron Ants."

"I mean... That would give us a new source of EXP..."

Alexx lightly slapped Zed in the stomach, which caused him to curl up in pain as Alexx apparently wasn't holding back at the moment.

"Okay okay, I get it," Zed groaned.

"Good." Yang returned her attention to the fighting below. "Besides, it'll be a long time before anyone can take on a giant, tanky, regenerating monster like that. Even you would need to be like level 100 at least."

"Wait, regenerating?" Zed asked, sitting up suddenly.

"Oh yeah, that reminds me, you didn't say anything about her having a regeneration Skill."

"Because she doesn't," Zed said seriously. "All of her Skills were basic stuff aside from the Unique Skill, but that just gave her debuff immunity."

"That... doesn't make any sense," Yang said nervously. "I saw her wounds close up."

"So did I," Alexx said, staring at The Guardian Elder. "She's not getting any HP back, though."

"Then it's from the Unique Skill," Yang realized. "Physical damage can result in debuffs, meaning she's literally immune to injury."

It was an intimidating thought. When Zed had mentioned her immunity to debuffs during their first meeting with The Guardian Elder Yang knew that it would be impossible to circumvent her massive HP, such as with a [FATAL BLEEDING] or [DESTROYED HEART] debuff, but the fact that her wounds healed entirely meant that they couldn't even hinder her movements without some kind of external restraint.

'That Skill would also make it immune to Exhaustion debuffs as well, right? Would hunger count as a debuff? Thirst? Sleep? Could she literally fight forever, without ever needing to rest or slow down?' The more thought she gave it, the more Yang was relieved to know The Guardian Elder wasn't their enemy.

"Oh, speaking of Skills..." Zed said, a dangerous edge to his voice. Yang turned to look at him and took a quick breath at the coldness in his eyes and the grip he had on his spear. "Yang, can you please explain this to me?"

"...Explain what?" She asked, slowly reaching for her War Pick as she wondered if this was the moment that everyone's fears about Zed became true.

"Skill A?" He said, slow and menacingly.

Suddenly she understood what they were talking about and all of the murderous intent he was giving off became far less intimidating. "Oh, right, that."

"What's going on?" Alexx asked, worried about the vibes Zed was giving off, but unsure what to do now that Yang had calmed down.

"I managed to create a Skill earlier and-"

"She named it Skill A!" He shouted without breaking eye contact. "I know you said you were doing this to spite me but seriously, what the fuck is this?!"

Yang raised her hands defensively. "In fairness, that was an accident."

"Bullshit."

"No, really. I triggered the Skill, was in the middle of an intense fight, thought about naming it that so I could focus instead of coming up with an actually good name for it, but the system decided to take my dumb thought and run with it."

Zed relaxed slightly, but still seemed tense.

"Trust me, I know this one is shit. I still plan to come up with names that are going to piss you off, but none of them should be as bad as this."

"....You promise?"

"Absolutely," Yang said as she put her weapon away.

"....Alright," he said, lying back as he put away his spear. "You get to live."

"Yeah sure," Yang said brushing off the casual threat. She looked down to the battle being finished below. "Looks like the Drones are almost wiped out, you guys want to get back in there?"

"Not while I've got this debuff."

"Uhh, what was that Skill you guys managed to get?" Alexx asked, looking through his menu.

"Extra damage against insects for killing a hundred insects," Zed said. His brow furrowed. "Wait, do you not have it yet?"

"That might be the most bullshit thing I've heard all day."

"Maybe I'm like one away? I'll just jump down there and- Oh, nevermind. It triggered it already, I just lost it in all the kill notifications." He sqinted. "Okay, I knew the name already, but seeing it in the menu is really dumb."

"I get it, I fucked up," Yang sighed. "So you're not going down there with me?"

"No, I'm good," Alexx said with a shrug. He blinked in surprise as he realized what Yang had just said. "You're heading back in there?"

"And you say I'm bloodthirsty," Zed said with a smug grin.

"Because you are," she said without missing a beat. "I'm not going down to fight anymore, but we absolutely need to take back some of that loot."

Alexx's eyes widened and Zed sat up suddenly as they both realized what she was talking about. They had just participated in the largest battle against the Iron Ants to date, featuring all of the different subspecies aside from the Queen.

Not only did the numerous dead Soldiers and Warriors mean that there were plenty of naturally formed weapons lying around, but the Guardians seemed to be so dense with iron that a single corpse was likely equivalant to hundreds, or even thousands of Drones. Add in the countless number of drones that were killed, and the three of them were standing on a supply of Iron that could supply the village for years, or even decades.

"So, are you guys ready to start mining iron?"

~~~~~

"Just!"

*BANG*

"Fucking!"

*BANG*

"Break!"

*CRACK*

"Finally!" Yang shouted as a piece of the Iron Ant Guardian's carapace shattered under the repeated attacks of her War Pick. "Even in death, these bastards are a pain in the ass." Wiping the sweat off her forehead, she set down her weapon and sat down to catch her breath.

Once the Guardians had been defeated by The Guardian Elder, the rest of the Iron Ants were dealt with in a matter of minutes, with the whole battle lasting maybe half an hour at most. With the ants dead and many of the goats injured, the majority of them began retreating into the basin to rest while The Guardian Elder began carrying the bodies of the dead Mountain Goats out of the passageway.

With the area around the Guardian corpses cleared, Yang and Alexx set to work breaking them into pieces, a task that was proving to be much harder than expected. Dealing with the legs wasn't too difficult (although removing the meat to help save space in the inventory was downright stomach-churning), but the pieces around the body and head seemed nearly indestructible.

'Before we just needed to damage it, but actually breaking it down means having to tear apart metal cables!' Yang thought as she began drinking water from her inventory.

Alexx was strong enough to slowly work his way through the metal, breaking each cable one by one, but for that to work, Yang needed to get rid of all the carapace around it, and doing that with a hammer was slow work. Still, the reward was more than worth the effort. Every piece they tore away had several pounds worth of iron, a single leg was more than what they had stored at the village, and the whole corpse likely totaled in at over a ton of metal!

Putting her cup back in the inventory, Yang looked up to see Zed scouring the battlefield for Warrior and Soldier corpses, picking up a mangled blade before shoving it into his inventory with a disgruntled expression. In all the fighting, most of the Iron Ant bodies had been trampled repeatedly by the Mountain Goats, warping the blades and significantly reducing their usefulness. Zed had also hoped to turn some of the Warrior carapaces into armor, but once again most of it had been shattered or crumpled.

Yang stood up, hefting her weapon onto her shoulder, and was about to get back to work when she heard the sound of beating hooves coming closer. Looking back towards Ziege, she saw Alvor riding Van at a quick pace between the piles of dead Drones.

"I can't believe you guys actually survived that!" he shouted, eyes wide and with a slight grin.

"We didn't come all this way to get killed by a couple stupid ants," Zed called out boastfully.

"It was definitely rougher than expected," Yang shrugged.

"Yeah, I get that," Alvor said, his smile fading as he climbed off of Van and looked at the dead body of a goat nearby.

"Um, sorry we couldn't do more," Yang said awkwardly.

Alvor shook his head. "Don't be. These fights always have fatalities. I honestly got a little scared when four Guardians showed up."

"Right, about that," Zed said, walking over while pointing accusingly at Alvor. "You sir, are the absolute worst at descriptions. 'Almost as tall as a Mountain Goat' did nothing to describe those things!"

"I did say they were massive." Backing up slightly as Zed got closer.

"Not enough!"

Yang shook her head as she watched the two argue. She was a little worried when Van started to move closer, probably thinking Zed was threatening Alvor, but the goat seemed content to just push Zed away in an attempt to break up the argument.

"Ragh!" The two suddenly stopped as Alexx tore a huge piece of iron away from the body of the Guardian, the sound of tearing metal faintly audible over his frustrated shout.

"Hey, Alvor. Do you think you could put this in your inventory?" Alexx said, holding up the twisted piece of iron.

"Oh yeah, if you and the others don't have that much to bring back to the village, do you mind filling up on some iron?" Yang asked.

Alvor's eyes widened slightly. "You guys really plan to bring all this back with us?"

"I mean, we can't get all of it, but this is literally iron!" Alexx said, feeling the reasoning was almost self-explanatory. "The Workshop guys need this for tools."

"And weapons!" Zed shouted as he went back to picking up scraps.

Yang shook her head and raised her War Pick to start hammering away at the Guardian again when a question popped into her head. "Hey Alvor? Where does The Guardian Elder take all the dead ants?"

"What do you mean?" he asked while taking the piece of metal from Alexx.

"Well, if we know where she's dumping them then-"

"Beskyd doesn't move the ant bodies."

"What?" The two locked eyes, equally confused.

"She moves the dead into the valley so their bodies don't get trampled once the others start coming and going again, and the ants will get eaten by the rest of the herd over the next week or so. The corpses don't get moved."

"That's..." Yang's mind began forming an idea as she processed what Alvor was telling her. As she reached a conclusion, she knelt down and started brushing aside the gravel, looking for something beneath.

The others asked what she was doing, but she ignored them and, after clearing away about a foot of gravel, found what she was looking for.

The top layer of gravel was dark grey, nearly black, but the gravel beneath came in different shades, mostly lighter greys and orangey-browns. They were also noticeably heavier than the darker gravel.

Yang held out a handful to the others. "One of you, Analyse this."

Zed was still under the [EXHUASTED] debuff, so Alvor took the gravel, still unsure of what Yang was getting at. When the Skill activated, his eyes widened slightly as he read the item name and description out loud.

"Iron Ant Pellet. A piece of iron from the carapace of an Iron Ant that has had the chitin ground away."

Alexx stared numbly at the metal in Alvor's hand as Zed began looking up and down the several-hundred-foot-long passageway to Ziege Basin.

"Oh holy shit," Zed said after a moment of silence.

How many years had The Guardian Elder been guarding this territory?

How many raids had the Iron Ants put together in that time?

How many TONS of iron were they standing on top of?

Yang nodded, as a small grin formed on her face. "Now that's what I call a quest reward."