Danger

Their mission for the day from the mercenary hall, was to clear off the Ants nest that are situated in the farther area of the wilds. Since the reward for eradicating them was decent enough, Tyron had chosen it.

A mission like this wouldn't have been picked by other mercenary unless they had no choice. This is due to the huge population of the Ants monsters. The Ant queen, according to the statistics, lays a thousand of Ants eggs per day.

What a massive colony is that!

And besides, the defense of these Ants monsters are quite hard to break through, owing to their sturdy exoskeleton. It is said that their harden defense can only be pierced through after several strikes, but fighting against such a huge number would surely wears one off.

Yet, Tyron had picked up such mission. One of the reasons why he had done so was to let Xue Yiran practice more on her combat skills, and likewise for the other team members to practice on their skills. These kind of monsters with huge population was best suited for their aim.

The Ants nest was located deep inside the forest. The vegetation inside the wilds all grows vivaciously, as if they had all received some sort of stimulant. One of the things to watch out for in such a huge dense forest were the poisonous plants. But thankfully, the place where the Ant nest reside only has trees surrounding it.

"You've been staring at me for quite a while now. Is there something on my face?" Xue Yiran soft voice broke the silence. Everyone simultaneously turned their head to look back at her.

'Someone was staring at her?'

When they traced the direction Xue Yiran was looking at, they all saw that it was the guy who Amos had brought along.

Caught red-handed, Ian coughed out in embarrassment.

Making his voice a bit hoarse as he tries to masked his identity, Ian apologizes, "Sorry."

"Ha-ha." Amos gave an awkward laugh as he tries to lighten up the mood. "My brother here must have taken a like to this young miss beauty. Perhaps he couldn't hold himself back, which is why he kept staring at you. Please pardon him."

Seeing Ian lowering his head, they thought that he was feeling embarrassed from being caught. Indeed, Xue Yiran has a pretty appearance. Maybe he had indeed taken a liking to Xue Yiran.

However, the Tyron members were only familiar with Amos. As for his other party, they just knew that he wasn't a very chatty person. From his figure, he must be a very young man. But with his act of staring at Xue Yiran prudently, they all had an unfavorable impression about him.

Most especially Miley. Miley didn't bother hiding her disdain for Ian's action and beckon to Xue Yiran, "Come over here, Xue Yiran. We girls should stick together, in case we are taken advantage of by some pervert." She then reached out for Xue Yiran's hand and pulled her directly to her side.

Ian knew that he had been misunderstood. But there was no way he could turn back the situation.

Amos expression under the cloak fell when he saw Miley's action. Although this young miss was pretty, but he had heard from the rumors that Ian fiancé was a beauty. Meaning that Ian wouldn't have taken a liking to this young miss over here.

Although there had been a slight gap in their relationship, the group head deeper into the forest.

When they were about to reach the Ants nest territory, they each summoned out their contract beast.

Sky almost howled out in excitement when he saw that they were inside the wilds. Being cooped inside his master consciousness space for so long was quite tiring. As a beast king, he had long been used to the fierceness of the wilds, making him homesick.

Tyron gave a satisfactory nod when he saw the beast Amos summoned out. It was a monster beast known for both its attack and defense; it will be very suitable for attacking those Ants.

But when he saw Ian summoned a sword out instead of his contract beast, Tyron eyebrow rose a bit.

'A weapon type beast?' No, that wasn't a sword transformed from a weapon type beast. The sword in Ian hand did gave him a strange feeling. Looks like Amos partner does have a bit of background.

Soon, they entered the territory of the Ant monsters. Quite a distance from them was an Ant hill as big as a mountain. Unlike the small Ants people come across inside the city area, these Ants in the wilds were like the size of a hover car.

They looked big and imposing. Moving into the sand dune, were the worker Ants. They were busy moving in food supplies into their home. Most of the food supplies were carcass of dead beasts and some dead plants.

"On the count of three, we'll begin the raid. Make sure you all stick together with the group." At Tyron order, everyone nodded.

After the count of three, everyone immediately sprinted forward. Xue Yiran took out her weapon and began her killing spree.

Although the Ants were huge; once one knows about their weakness point, one would be able to take them down in a strike. Thanks to Susu information, Xue Yiran knew that the physical weakness of the Ants was the soft pallet located below their abdomen.

The Ants, noticing the intruders in their homeland began to spew out crazily from the sand dune. They were only C rank monsters. Despite their numerous numbers, most of them fall short to Amos and Gael contract beast.

Ian was also doing his best under the siege of the monsters. Due to his inexperience, his contribution falls short to the others. But thanks to his weapon, he was able to keep up.

However, he had failed to watch out for sneak attacks from these monsters. Three of the ants immediately pounced on him from his blind side. Sweat instantly covered his back when he realized that it was too late to defend against them. He was going to died.

"Puchi." Just a centimeters away from him, the three ants that were about to tore him to pieces dropped dead onto the ground. Ian looked up, only to meet Xue Yiran cold gaze.

"Thank you." The other party had saved his life. He was very grateful.

"Since you're weak. Try not to stray far away from the team. These monsters are quite cunning and will only target the weakest person in the team. So, try to stick close to me."

Ian had no contract beast to protect his back, leaving him opened to sneak attack. Amos, who was his protector couldn't keep an eye on him all the time since they were swarmed from all sides by the dense Ants colony.

"Okay." Ian didn't bother to be courteous and moved closer towards Xue Yiran.

[What a weakling.] Susu commented on Ian combat experience. Perhaps because of this, the disdain he had for Ian lessen down by several margins.

With Xue Yiran watching out for him, Ian saw an improvement in his combat state.

An hour later, the explosive that Tyron had planted on one of the Ants that had entered the sand dune took effect.

'Boom!!' The loud bang sent splashes of sands into the air. The already towering sand dune started to crumble.

"Hhriiek!" The piercing sound of ant's cries filled the air, as they tried to escaped the disaster. But most of them were unfortunately buried alive under the huge sand.

Xue Yiran and the others had already moved back to safety. While doing that, they took care of the escaping ants.

[Host, the ant queen is already coming out.]

As a boss, there was no way the Ant queen could have been buried alive.

Sure enough, they saw part of the fallen sand caving inward. And then, a behemoth figure crawled out of the hole.

"Shrii!!" The massive figure of the ant queen appeared in everyone's view. Since all she had to do was to eat and lay eggs, the ant queen had multiplied in sizes. Her subordinates were just like the size of a mouse in front of human, as a comparation to her size.

Due to being fed all along, the ant queen had already reached the A class. This was a fight Xue Yiran and Ian cannot partake in due to their low skills. Hence, Xue Yiran focused on attacking the weaker ants.

"Do you think they can take care of it?" Wanting to start a conversation with her, Ian moved closer to Xue Yiran and asked.

"They are strong." Xue Yiran calmly replied while swinging her sword at the ants.

"I'm sorry for ogling at you earlier. You seem to be in the same age group as me, which is why I was surprised to see someone younger like you joining a mercenary guild."

"I know."

"Huh?"

"Your gaze at me wasn't a perverted stare."

Thinking of how he had been called pervert by Miley earlier, Ian blushed in embarrassment. "Well, I should explain it to her that I'm not a pervert."

Xue Yiran didn't care whether he explained it to Miley or not. She regained her focus and kept on killing the fleeing beasts.

The fight with the ant queen was starting to come to an end. Faced with barrage of attacks from all sides, there was no way the ants queen could hold on any longer.

"Shriii!!" Perhaps giving out her last cry of survival, the body of the giant ant queen fell dead onto the ground.

It was a clear victory.

Amos was happy to see this. He turned around and saw the crown prince in the distance chatting with the other girl.

It was rare to see him chatting with the opposite gender freely like this apart from his mother. Amos almost suspected that he was dreaming, but seeing the scene once again, he knew that he wasn't.

'Don't tell me the Crown prince had truly fallen in love with that girl.'

Tyron and the others were tired from the battle and left the extraction of the ant queen beast core to Amos.

Amos walked towards the huge corpse of the ant queen. Beast cores are always located in the same area, which is beside the heart of the monster. Just as he was about to extract the core, Amos suddenly felt all his hair stand on head.

Danger!

"Damm." However, he was too late to dodge it.