HC: Pacifist | Ch. 277 - A New Ruler (Patreon)

It was night in the greenhouse. Flowers had closed and drooped, hiding away from the darkness, and moisture crept into every nook and cranny of the oak tree, waiting for the cold to help it congeal into dew droplets.

An adult praying mantis lay still, poised to strike whatever prey approached its lair. The praying mantis wondered what the menu was for tonight. Once, its scythes had tasted the hemolymph of one of the yellow and dark-winged hunters that lived far above in the heavens. Twice, it had tasted its own kind. It was uncertain what hemolymph it would taste tonight, but its sharp scythes were ready to reap it.

The praying mantis heard a gnawing sound. It rotated its head, looking up and down, but its vision caught nothing. He could feel the faint vibrations in its thorax, though. It was the sound of clicking and scraping. The hunter lay perfectly still. Whatever was approaching would be a much-needed meal, and a lack of preparation could spell the difference between life and death.

Nothing in sight. The scraping, however, sounded remarkably similar to a mantis’ scythes scraping wood. It could be a rival, then. A fellow hunter who had gone long without prey and, out of despair, sought out its kind as food. It well knew that kind of hunger.

The vibrations grew stronger and stronger; however, no matter how hard it looked, it could not find anything. Where was the movement coming from? The scraping stopped. Now, all it heard was skittering. Many tiny legs, moving, close. The praying mantis couldn’t understand what was happening. Here it was, with its head off the nook, scythes stretched, hearing a sound even though nothing was outside.

Poisonous Bite!

Bite!

Poisonous Bite!

Its scythes twitched uncontrollably. Such pain. Such terrible pain. Its wounds ached and burned as poison entered its body, eating at his strength. The pain was coming from his legs. But how? They were safely ensconced into the nook of the tree. How could anyone sneak past its scythes and attack it from behind?

It tried to turn, but something clamped its legs and held it in place. It squirmed and fought but could do nothing with half its body outside and the other half inside its burrow. It kept suffering bite after bite, and its vision faded until life left it.

The Leafies have hunted an adult praying mantis.

+430xp

“Success.” The Lord of the Acorn watched as its many attack squads stormed the enemy’s nests. The colony was now three thousand strong, and the Field of Fallen Fortresses was under its complete control. Once there were enough of them into the grid, yet another memory had returned to the Lord, a memory coded deep into his genes.

Black, large ants scraped their sharp mandibles into the wood, digging through the tree's bark. They felt their antennae spots filled with bioenergy and connected them, allowing them to fuse and gain momentum like trickles of water that come together into a powerful river.

The [Carpenter Ant] genes within the Leafies have awakened.

Leafies have learned [Wood Burrowing].

Wood Burrowing (Pet Skill)

Description: The treeants begin understanding how to work wood, and can dig tunnels into trees.

Effects:

Your pet colony can now live in trees and special seeds. Speed of tunneling scales with strength.

As the memories of its carpenter ancestors resurfaced, the Lord hatched an efficient plan for invasion. Step one, dig a tunnel. Step two, clean the trunk. One by one, its many soldiers broke out of the tunnels they had been digging for the past week through the tree and caught the praying mantises from behind. In many cases, they could do so without a single casualty.

Down in the Field of Fallen Fortresses, praying mantis adults were rare. They would have been fearsome opponents out in the open, each dragging a hundred brave treeant warriors into their graves. But here, they were sheep for the slaughter. With each kill, the colony grew stronger.

The Leafies have hunted an adult praying mantis.

+430xp

The Leafies have hunted an adult praying mantis.

+430xp

The Leafies have hunted an adult praying mantis.

+430xp

[Level up!]

The sun would rise over a tree free of any praying mantises. But that wouldn’t be the most challenging part of this operation. Their biggest foe lay beyond them, up on the trees. Hundreds upon hundreds of treeants emerged from the topmost holes in the tree trunk and headed toward their destination.

The yellow hunters would never fall for such a petty trick or drive themselves into a corner like the praying mantises. They were on a whole new level. Not only did they have armored bodies and razor-sharp mandibles, but they had powerful wings and deadly stings. However, despite their terrifying strength, they had weaknesses the Lord could exploit.

The treeant army followed the memory of the lone scout through the tangle of labyrinthine branches until they could see the dungeons of the yellow hunters. The structure was built at the intersection of two branches. Its paper tubes drooped from the tree at a sad, ominous angle.

The nest was quiet. There was no buzz of wings. The ant troops split. Two squads of five hundred infantry ants and the mandibladers division climbed the branches that led into the palace, together with a small engineering team. 

Most of the engineering and shield divisions stayed behind and started working. Ant workers interlocked their legs, climbing on each other, like amino acids bound into a protein, like bricks in a castle. The living structure grew taller and larger until they formed an imposing pyramid with one long living arm. Some ants climbed onto green baby fortresses and tied silk threads around them. Other ants used praying mantis’ blades to saw through the woody stem that linked the fortress to the tree.

Two large structures were assembled in minutes, two acorns were linked to the structures through strong silk thread, and the woody stem linking the acorns to the tree was cut dangerously thin. Preparations were finished. 

Meanwhile, the assault team reached the nest and commenced the attack. They swarmed the wasp nest. For now, they ignored the juicy, squishy larvae and headed for their priority targets. They were significantly larger than the workers and had large abdomens to store the eggs—wasp queens. Their large chambers were easy to find.

Even though praying mantises had to be killed individually, wasps had queens. The colony would soon follow as long as their queens were all killed. The wasp nest sounded the alarm as the queens were attacked. The treeants hurried, covering the large queens in the nest, striking them with their mandiblades. But the wasp queens’ armor was thick, and they were large and strong. 

The yellow jacket workers weren’t few either. This nest had hundreds of wasps. It took twenty ants to overwhelm an individual wasp. It would have required ten times more soldiers to overwhelm all the yellow jackets, but the Lord of the Acorn didn’t care about the workers. All it cared about was the queens. 

The yellow jackets rallied and fought desperately to reach the mothers of the nest. The Lord had already finished counting how many there were—eight queens. Three had already fallen, and three were under attack. Two feisty queens sleeping in the same chamber combined forces and held the assault.

The treeants fought brilliantly, fending off the workers while they finished the queens, but wasps were too strong and deadly, and the ants started losing ground. 

The Leafies have hunted a yellow jacket queen.

+2000xp

The Leafies have hunted a yellow jacket queen.

+2000xp

One by one, the queens fell until only two were left. Together, both managed to fight their way out of the swarmed corridors of the nest and took flight. They would fly away to safety and come back once the workers killed the attackers.

The Lord of the Acorn ignored the pain of the thousand sacrificial lambs, even now being butchered by the wasps, and focused on the queens’ flight trajectory instead.

“Fire!” he commanded. 

The engineering division cut the tied acorns, and they plummeted toward the ground, silken thread in tow. The living treeant structure groaned under the strain of its falling counterweight, and its arm was sent swinging, sending one ball of treeants toward the queens. It was a hit. Several treeants were sent flying, but others managed to grab hold of the queen.

Hit by the impact, the queen fell and, separated from her ally, succumbed to the assault of the treeants. The other queen, desperate, flew away, but the second living projectile was already midair. Another ball of interlocked treeants flew through the night and landed on the last wasp queen. They all tumbled and fell, skirmishing amidst the leaves until the last wasp queen was no more.

The Leafies have hunted a yellow jacket queen.

+2000xp

The Leafies have hunted a yellow jacket queen.

+2000xp

The siege division retreated down the tree trunk and into its burrows, heading to the Field of Fallen Fortresses, where the rest of the army awaited. Back in the nest, the thousand brave treeant warriors had fallen under the frenzied assault of the wasp workers. They had taken all the queens and larvae they could and several workers, too, but the war was finally over.

The wasp workers set out to search the queens that had gotten away, bringing them back to the colony's safety when the whole nest shook. There was a clicking and scraping sound. The nest shook again. Before they could figure out what was going on, the dungeon of the yellow hunters was in free fall, heading toward the ground, where all other treeants were ready to receive them. The engineering treeant team had managed to saw the nest off the tree.

Most of the surviving wasps died when the nest hit the ground. Those who didn’t were too stunned to put up a fight against the squad of ants that had been waiting for them. The sun rose on a new greenhouse, one with a new ruler. The tree had been conquered, and the enemy exterminated. This greenhouse was now the property of the Lord of the Oak.

*

Every animal in the Green Woods was partying—well, every animal except for the ants. An ant never stopped working. Although treeants weren’t party animals, they surely weren’t party poopers either, and they allowed for the festivities to take place in their backyard.

Aramis had taken out a violin, and Prince Piglet had revealed a heavy drum. The rhythmic beat and the catchy violin riffs were enough to get even the Fox Baroness dancing. Count Crow had even started a conga line.

Even though Roth was surrounded by music and dancing, his eyes were set on the notifications he had just received—not the ones from the Leafies. What had him worried was the patch. It was the first time he saw a patch in the game. Not even the [Rise of the Alien King] event had triggered such a change. What would that mean for him? After all, every player was going to be forcefully logged out. Would he be logged out, too? 

“Roth, we’ll log out now. We’ll see you in a moment,” Nathan said reassuringly.

Roth forced a smile and started operating the gaming menu before him. “In case I’m not here when you get back, grab these flags and the recipe for the [Neuralizing Chair] and give them to Drake. I’ve already transferred all the recommendation letters I could to you. Once you return, we can discuss how to split our trade routes.”

Nathan eyed him worryingly. “Don’t think anything funny. It’s just a patch, Roth. We’ll see you in just a moment.”

“I know. I know.”

A system clock began counting down, and his two brothers disappeared.

Ten, nine, eight.

Roth’s heart raced. Could there be a small chance that the patch would fix his bugged capsule and he would be allowed out?

Seven, six, five, four.

What if the boobytrap that Loki had made for his capsule set off when the patch was installed? Maybe his trapped capsule would perceive it as tampering and would explode. Was the system countdown also counting down the seconds until he exploded?

Three, two, one, zero.

Nothing happened. Roth opened one eye and then the other. He was floating in a black, boundless space. He recognized this place. When Sarg confronted a game admin, he had been sent here for several hours when he first started the game. He took a deep breath and tried to open the menu. Nothing. He was in a digital limbo. The only thing that he could do was wait.

He closed his eyes and saw Mel smiling. Roth smiled, too. He lay back and relaxed, napping in the nothingness of space.

Ch. 276 - Patch

INDEX

Ch. 278 - One Week Later