V2C11

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The overwhelming colony of ants brought with them a tremendous amount of stress- there were just too many, an almost endless amount. It was something that weak humans could never be able to resist.

The ones at the front were giant soldier ants, almost reaching Lin Jue’s knees as they waved their antennae around like cavalry units from hell. The petrol had obviously reduced their speed; a huge field of ants had been blocked at the opposite side of the river as the soldier ants stepped through the slippery gasoline to begin the first charge.

Standing at the very front, Lin Jue easily sweeped the first soldier ant to arrive in front of him into the river. The ant flopped a little in the water before sinking down.

Thankfully, they couldn’t swim.

Before Lin Jue had time to take a breath though, more and more ants swarmed at him.

A dark shadow of soldiers rushed forwards with a destructive force!

One, two, three…

This colony of terrifying hunters had hyper-developed mandibles, their brown-black bodies glinting with the special luster of shelled insects, so nimble that Lin Jue was unable to stab them and could only sweep them into the water.

Just judging from their attacking power, they were far weaker than the zombies, but… there were just too many of them.

Lin Wei used his machete to slash through the monsters. Limbs littered the floor, insect blood flying across the sky, but even when their arms were sore from lifting their weapons, the ants in front of them still appeared as endless as before, as if there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

The huge wave of even smaller worker ants were more frightening than the soldiers. Barely the size of a basketball, they were able to nimbly evade attacks while opening their pincered mouths to bite into their ankles.

An endless colony of ants swarmed towards them.

In the danger, Lin Jue’s focus had completely concentrated onto the area spreading to around two metres in front of him. Once an ant entered his territory, his body would instinctively stab out with the polearm. If the first move missed, the ants would face a sweep attack!

The speed of the ants, their path forwards, how they would evade his attacks- his brain was working overtime, outlining a map of the ants’ movements with almost no mistake.

With the advantage of a long weapon, he defended half of the bridge by himself. Lin Wei and Qin Hanwen were responsible for the other half while Shentu Ming and Dan Liang defended the back, killing any ants that managed to get through the first line of defense and Song Hanzhang flanked the river side, responsible for any ants that managed to climb onto the shore.

He didn’t know how long this mechanical slaughter continued for. Lin Jue’s arms were already too heavy to lift up, sweat dripping down his face. The most painful part was that it felt like there was a saw being dragged across his brain, tearing into his rationality. He forced himself to enter a state of complete oblivion, using sheer willpower to maintain a delicate balance of hyperfocus. Even with just a momentary loss of concentration, he would have to face thousands of ants!

Despair covered everyone’s hearts. Facing these endless enemies, if they showed even the slightest weakness, they would be swarmed in no time.

What broke this precarious equilibrium was a yell from Qin Hanwen: a worker ant had climbed up his leg. He shook his leg in a violent struggle to get it off, but it only allowed more ants to climb up his ankles.

Next to him, Shentu Ming pulled him off the frontline and sprayed insecticide at his feet. It took a solid seven or eight sprays before the ants slowly released his pants and were stepped to death.

In that short ten seconds of absence, ten or more ants crossed the bridge and held tightly onto Lin Wei’s pants, trying to climb up one after the other. Lin Wei screamed and tried to swing the ants off while stepping on the others coming towards him.

It was a mess. The already precarious line of defense completely collapsed as the ants marched forwards and encircled them.

Lin Jue was almost unable to see from his intense headache. His last remaining shreds of judgement told him that the defense line had been broken and that it was time to retreat. He took a few sudden steps back and escaped the encirclement.

A huge wave of ants had crossed the bridge!

They scattered in panic, only Song Hanzhang running to the bridge and igniting the petrol.

A single moment- then the entire night sky became dyed red by fire. It swallowed the bridge in seconds and the ants which had been doused in petrol started to burn, the colony’s attack stopping. There was a huge black shadow struggling in the flames, fireballs constantly rolling off the bridge and into the water before being washed away.

Lin Jue forced himself to regather, raising his sore arms to stab every ant that managed to run across the bridge. The others were able to slowly come back and collapse onto the ground, panting.

In ten or so short minutes, the highly concentrated fighting had depleted almost everyone’s stamina. A look of relief and terror lay across everyone’s faces.

Lin Jue rubbed his temples, his headache easing slightly. At least now, he no longer wanted to slam his head into a tree.

His body had always been good and headaches had almost never happened to him. His massage skills used to be solely for his parents; and now he had to use them on himself. What an experience…

“Headache?” Song Hanzhang asked.

“I think it’s because I was too concentrated just then; it’s better now that I can relax.” Lin Jue released his hands and let out a long breath.

He didn’t know what the highly concentrated condition he was in during his fight with the ants was; it was as if he had forgotten all that surrounded him and had entered a frenzy state, the Lin Jue in his subconscious calculating the paths of their enemies, letting him attack them accurately. He had felt something similar last round when he was battling for the anti-virus, but it wasn’t as strong that time.

It was like a battle instinct that was borne within him.

Lin Jue stared at the flames, the fire already devouring the army ants and the wooden bridge that had been completely taken over by them. In the blazing light, the writhing shadows burned into ash.

Such a bright light…

Song Hanzhang looked at the others lying on the ground with no sense of danger and frowned. “If you don’t get up now, you’ll be fighting soon against many, many moths.”

The light-loving enemies were already plunging towards the flame.

They fled.

“Where should we go next?” Shentu Ming asked after they had gotten a distance away, not having any plans of his own.

The crisis had finally made him realize the dangerous nature of the game, and he instinctively sought advice from his classmate.

“The fire won’t be able to stop the army ants, they’ll find another bridge to cross the water soon. We’ll have to try our luck now. Go!”

They followed Song Hanzhang in their exhausted run towards the south, going down along the water system and turning left at the student recreation center, entering the southern plaza. The way there was overrun by trees; even the concrete road had been overtaken by greenery, making it extremely difficult for them to run through.

“Is it safe here?” Shentu Ming asked, looking around him as they stopped near the fountain in the southern plaza.

“There is no such thing as a safe place,” Song Hanzhang replied after catching his breath.

The plaza along the area had yet to be grown over entirely, but the surrounding buildings were already covered by vines; even the fountain in the middle of the plaza had been completely dried, the water replaced by all sorts of vegetation like an unmoving fountain of greenery. The concrete and ceramic tiles on the outer wall of the fountain had peeled off and shattered, the entire structure looking like it had been abandoned for at least half a century.

Dan Liang jumped down from the edge of the fountain before strolling around the flower bed, as if unfazed from the near-death experience just then. He asked curiously, “What are we going to do next? Find a place to wait in until daybreak?”

Lin Wei spat and sat down onto the ground, guzzling water. “If it wasn’t for the idiot fatty, we wouldn’t have had to run with our tails between our legs. Oi, shitty fatty, what use do you have for all that fat except to feed the ants with? If I were you, I would have killed myself from shame a long time ago.”

Qin Hanwen’s face was completely red as he lowered his head in silence.

“That was not Qin Hanwen’s fault,” Shentu Ming objected, his face one of righteousness. “There were too many ants just then, one of us would have made a mistake eventually and we would have had to run away anyways.”

Qin Hanwen looked at Shentu Ming in gratitude and Shentu Ming returned a smile. “We’re a team. It’s only natural for us to help each other out.”

Dan Liang blinked his big eyes and assented. “Shentu is right. If you didn’t pull me up at the gym, I might have died already.”

Lin Wei rolled his eyes, dismissing the ‘team theory’ completely. He still possessed basic intelligence1 and, knowing that it was pointless to try and survive by himself in this kind of situation, could only continue with his temporary teammates.

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Song Hanzhang pushed his glasses up, not responding to Shentu Ming’s words. Shentu Ming lost his parents at a young age and was raised by his paternal grandparents, yet he was somehow a completely idealist whose dream was to become a borderless doctor. Song Hanzhang admired his values and aspiration- in a world that was not this game.

The evening wind was damp and hot from the rainforest, a sticky humidity left behind when it stopped. Lin Jue listened to Shentu Ming and Dan Liang chat, and was suddenly reminded that Song Hanzhang had once said that Dan Liang was not as simple as he let on.

Lin Jue couldn’t help but pay special attention to him, but unfortunately, was unable to see anything wrong with the boy.

From next to his ears, he heard the sound of rustling and shuffling. Lin Jue turned in alarm. The sound came from the dense vegetation within the fountain that obscured his view of whatever was inside.

“I think that there’s…” Lin Jue was about to warn everyone of the noise when his eyes, which were staring at the fountain, suddenly widened.

A spider! A giant spider!

It climbed out of the fountain, its eight limbs dragging its rotund abdomen up as it slowly appeared from the bushes. Its first chela2 reached onto the tiled edge, its leg as thick as an adult’s thigh and covered in black fur. Its head reached out, shining like it was covered in black lights, watching them ominously.

Even though it was just a normal spider, it was as hideous and terrifying as a monster due to its sheer size

More shuffling sounds came from the bushes. A second, and a third spider crawled out!

Lin Wei yelled and spirited away. Not just him, everyone started running towards different buildings.

Lin Jue and Song Hanzhang ran into the lecture building of the medicine department, the webs on its gate destroyed by Lin Jue’s polearm. The spiders behind them didn’t continue their pursuit; they paced slowly in place before slowly crawling back into the fountain.

“Why aren’t they chasing after us?” Lin Jue asked from behind the door.

“Spiders are not active hunters; their actions from before were more for intimidation. They may have another mission, such as laying eggs.” Song Hanzhang stared at the worn-out fountain.

Lin Jue shivered. “Are you saying that spiders will crawl out of there like from in the plaza?”

“Perhaps, but…” The corners of Song Hanzhang’s mouth suddenly quirked up and he said in a strangely joyful voice, “They most likely won’t get the chance to.”

Xuezhang was smiling?

Lin Jue stared dumbly at his side profile until that momentary smile vanished.

He then understood what Song Hanzhang had meant by ‘very soon’. A few lone soldier ants arrived at the plaza. The giant spiders keenly felt that their territory had been impeded upon and they slowly revealed their hideous bodies from that dried fountain.

The battle had begun.

The soldier ants surrounded the spiders who sprung the pincers on their forelimbs out onto them, stabbing hard into the ants. More ants advanced towards the center of the fountain, only to be trapped by spider webs, struggling violently and pointlessly.

The giant spiders injected every ant with venom one by one. The battle was finished.

The number of ants hadn’t been enough and they were unable to put up a fight against the spiders.

“There’s not much left to see. With those monsters guarding here, and the countless spiders in the buildings, it won’t be that easy for the ants to take this place down. We can rest here temporarily and recover some stamina. First, we’ll go find a safer place than here.” After watching the scene unfold, Song Hanzhang walked towards the dark corridor.

Lin Jue followed him hurriedly.

Because of the rainforest effect, the building had a desolate feeling permeating throughout it. The fungi and shade-loving plants growing in the corners of the stairs; the cracks in the walls; the water stains and moss that marred the once-clean, white cement…

Even the moonlight was unable to pass through the vine-covered windows.

It was already a land of death; the entire building exuded sorrow and a thick smell of abandonment. After men left, the things that represented civilization were so easily destroyed by nature, returning to the first color of green. How long could man’s footprints remain? Just like the dead players, they were destined to be forgotten by the world.

A palm-sized spider crawled away from the two into the dark along the moss-covered railings.

“Above you,” Song Hanzhang warned.

Lin Jue immediately lifted his head. A fist-sized spider descended from the ceiling, its abdomen spitting out a silk thread it hung by as it aimed straight for Lin Jue’s head. Lin Jue was stunned for a moment.

Close- the spider was extremely close to him. His eyes were able to capture every minute detail of its body under the dim light:

The abdomen covered in eerie patterns, the legs covered in fur, the sharp pincers on its front legs and the tidy row of black eyes in its head. Its gross mouth, closing and opening.

Lin Jue felt a sense of disgust that could not be described and took an instinctive step backwards to avoid it.

The spider slowly lowered itself down. When it was around the height of Lin Jue’s chest, something unexpected happened.

The spider suddenly sprung up, landing on his chest before Lin Jue was able to react. Out of instinct, Lin Jue used his spare left hand to swat it away, but he felt a stinging pain on his finger.

The spider was immediately squashed into a splatter, a dark green liquid squirting out from its body like a terrible omen.

“Are the spiders venomous?” Lin Jue raised his left hand.

There was a small cut on the second joint of his middle finger, the blood underneath the skin an uneasy bluish purple. The wound had already begun to swell up.

1Oo, shade…

2Just an insect claw guys, I just didn’t want to repeat or contradict myself for the following sentence

Vera’s Notes:

Sebastian didn’t respond to us… :((

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