Anthill

Sammy told Hera to head to the tree house in the middle of the village. She gave one last look at the area beyond the wall, just to confirm that there were no ants still coming, and headed out. As she walked, she called Nimbus and Lurize over, "I want the two of you to be close by. Lurize, you stay near me and Nimbus, you didn't complete the Royal Quest, right?"

Nimbus nodded, "Yeah, I didn't kiss your hand to give the mana back."

"Ok. Daskka, can I give another task in the same quest?"

"Well… You can, but it won't count for the actual completion. I mean, he can still finish the quest at any moment, and if you ask something else, it would be like unpaid overtime."

Hera frowned, "Shit... I really don't like that concept."

"I disagree, it would be like asking for help from a friend. We help with no strings attached," Nimbus replied.

"Ok, then, if we are going after the curse, I want you to be scouting ahead," Hera turned to Lurize, "And you stay close to help anything that comes after us."

"Agreed," Lurize nodded.

"Understood," Nimbus replied at the same time as the royal tutor. He still had over 90 thousand mana since he never went far enough away from Hera's range to spend too much mana, and the attacks he used to kill the ants were using his own mana.

It didn't take her long to arrive at the tree house. Some ways outside it, on top of one of the tables that they used for meals, Blue was standing while moving both arms almost like a dance.

"Blue!" Hera called.

"Hey, Hera," Blue said while still keeping her eyes glued to something no one else could see, "I have to say. I always thought that camera skill controllers got was kind of bland, but combining with this spell, it's amazing."

"Really?" Hera asked.

"Yeah, I can… One moment," Blue waved her left arm, and a lightning bolt came crashing down inside the wall, frying one of the large ants that managed to come through a blindside on the guards' defenses, "I can use my spells anywhere that camera shows, even if I don't see it from here."

"That is awesome," Hera smiled, but she quickly remembered why they were here, "Did Sammy talk to you?"

"Yeah, Alex found the curse, right?" Blue asked.

"She did," Sammy appeared beside them, "I'll explain. Just wait a moment. The rest of the group is almost here."

As he finished speaking, Helena and the others came from behind the tree house. They had split up while Hera was taking care of a side of the wall, but since they were on the same side of the city, they all arrived at the same Tim.e

"She found it, right? Where is it?" Helena asked.

"It's… Reynara," Sammy replied.

"She was infected by the curse?" Shane asked.

"No. She created it. I can't say for sure how, I could only hear a bit of their conversation before Alex's curse progressed and blocked me from hearing her. I don't know how it managed to do that, but this thing was already something very confusing by default," Sammy continued.

"And where are they?" Adriel stepped closer to the turtle, his eyes a mixture of worry and anger.

"On top of an anthill. With the queen by their side."

"Fuck!" Hera, Shane, and Bonnie gasped at the same time.

"The good thing is that I'm positive that the ants won't bother you. So you can just walk out and head towards them. I don't know how to get there, but I know the direction they, or at least Alex, is in," Sammy tried to cheer everyone up.

"I'm not going," Blue replied.

"What?" Hera turned to the controller.

"If I leave here, the village will be overwhelmed."

"Blue, these people are going to die, one way or another," Sammy replied.

"So? I can tell that I'm currently the only thing between them and a gruesome death. If the timeline fixes itself, it can do that when we are not here. Besides, even if Reynara made the curse, we don't know all the curse is with her. Maybe she left something behind, or she infected someone here. You said it yourself, Sammy, if a monster gets the curse, it will be really hard to track it down. So we need to cover our bases," Blue moved her hands again, and a few more lighting strikes came down on the ants that managed to break through her Eye of the Storm skill.

"Wait, Blue brings up a good point. If the ants won't attack us, aren't they already cursed?" Shane turned to Sammy.

"No. I heard the beginning of their conversation. Reynara is spreading the curse to the queen, and to stop the ants from attacking the infected queen, or herself, she told the curse to make the queen release a smell that would tell the other ants that the smell that comes from the curse is part of the colony. Again, I don't know how she did that, but that is what Reynara told Alex," Sammy explained.

"Right, then we go after them. That's the plan, right?" Adriel stepped towards the gate, "Let's go!"

Hera turned to Blue, "Are you sure about this? You know that the people here are already…." She couldn't finish her sentence. Despite rationalizing that, the idea of leaving them to die didn't sit well with her.

"I am. Everyone will die at some point. That doesn't change the fact that everyone I managed to save counts. Even if to save someone, we have to kill someone else," Blue looked down.

"Blue… did you kill someone during the attack?" Hera asked. She realized that after the Night River hunt, she didn't ask anyone about what they had to do. She remembered that Blue fought against someone that they knew, but not the outcome of their fight. Now that she thought about it for a moment, she understood that she shouldn't be the only one dealing with things.

"Yes. We can talk about that later. Now go, I'm guessing that time is of the essence," the controller turned to Sammy.

"I think it is. If Reynara was infecting the queen, we don't know how long it will take for her to infect others," Sammy replied.

"How do we leave? Can we just pass by the cloud?" Adriel asked.

"No, but it doesn't go underground. A tunnel?" Blue suggested.

"I can work with that. I can enchant the ground to make one and then collapse after we come out on the other side," Shane nodded.

"Ok then. Let's move," Hera touched Blue's shoulder, "But please, be careful. If you see you are in danger, just run. You can't help people if you are dead."

Blue just nodded, but she didn't say anything as the rest of the party rushed out. Some of the people from the vanguard started yelling at them, asking for help or giving orders for them to move to a different place, but they all ignored that. They climbed on top of the wall and dropped to the other side. The area was clear of live monsters, but the corpses still littered the ground, forcing the group to walk over them until they reached the clouds. To Hera, the Eye of the Storm that Blue created looked like a tidal wave moving sideways. A powerful current that would drag everything that went inside of it. Out of curiosity, she even tossed one of the ant corpses in the barrier, only to see it being dragged to the right at high speed.

"This might be amazing for some Rampages. Blue might want to check on that. She could make a lot of money, levels, and get some good gear just helping out random places," Helena said.

Hera nodded in agreement, but she didn't say anything. She was worried about Alex and about Blue being left behind.

During that small test, Shane used her legacy to soften the ground, then she used another skill from her legacy to dig a tunnel under the massive cloud wall that went up to the sky. Dig wasn't the right word, but instead, she was enchanting the soil to move and create a natural passage. As they walked inside the seizable underground network that was being born in front of their eyes while they moved, Bonnie couldn't help but look around in awe, "Your legacy can do some amazing stuff."

"I know, right? The weird part is that this is not a skill to make tunnels, just to change the environment. In theory, this is not like a mine but like a natural formation," Shane explained.

"Is this as fast as it can do that?" Hera asked, she couldn't help but feel like they were taking too long.

"Yeah, if I try to do it faster, the cave will collapse. I could make it faster if it were a smaller tunnel, but then we would have problems moving everyone through," Shane explained, and they all kept quiet, only hearing the sounds of an army of ants marching above them. They spent about ten minutes making that cave that was just three meters long until Shane stopped the spell, "Ok, a bit more, and we will be outside. In the middle of the ant army."

"Sammy, are you sure we won't be attacked by them?" Bonnie asked.

"I am. Mylo and Helena stood in front of a couple of ants, and they completely ignored them," the turtle explained.

"Let me be in front. If push comes to shove, I can trigger my All In skill to increase my endurance, use my armor, Nimbus can share the damage, and I have the increased defense from Lurize," Hera said.

Shane glanced back to the Empress, "You know. The fact that your legacy, which should be all about offense, gives you that much defense feels unfair."

"What? It's just a couple of skills. I can't make a cloud barrier like Blue!" Hera huffed.

"I know, but it still feels unfair," Shane shrugged.

"Says the one making a natural cave in less than half an hour," Hera rolled her eyes.

"Can we stop wasting time? Alex could be in danger!" Adriel gasped, and Shane nodded, sending Hera to the front and continuing to open a path with her skill.

When the wall in front of them finally opened, revealing the outside, they were met with a horde of ants. They were everywhere, trying to climb above each other, collapsing against the wall of clouds, and moving as if they were hypnotized. Hera was already worried about using her [Observe] because of the amount of ants when she was defending the village. Not because there was a limit but because there would be so many small windows popping up that she wouldn't be able to see anything. Yet, here, if she used that skill here, she doubted she could even see what was written in the notification. The giant ant approached, its jaws slowly opening as the antenna reached out to Hera. Then it stepped back, moving away from the tunnel. It was hard to tell if this was because of the Empress or because the passage was too small for it.

Stepping forward, the group of people opened a small path in the army of ants, who rushed inside the cave right away. They didn't bother going after them since Shane had already enchanted the place to collapse after they left the tunnel. Hera stepped forward, and the ants moved away, almost as if she was parting the ocean, and the group continued walking. They were slow at first, but as more ants passed by, they felt confident in their stride, and soon, the entire party was running with Sammy in the front, leading them toward Alex. No one was saying anything, just dashing madly through the area while making sure to keep a pace that everyone could follow. The more they ran, the more ants they would see until, after 20 minutes, they managed to leave the jungle. It was odd since the jungle wasn't supposed to end there, and the trees had been recently uprooted. In the middle of this new area, there was a large hill of sand from where the ants were coming from. On top of it, they could see the ant queen and two people. Reynara and Alex are just staring at them from their advantage point. Alex's face was completely covered in black veins that would wrap around her head almost like restraints, and Reynara was crying an odd purple goo. A goo that was also falling from the ant queen's mouth.