Victory Is Inevitable

Though called a city wall, the only structure truly worthy of the name was the lord's manor itself.

What the humans relied on for defense now was nothing more than a high wall built to ward off bandits and magical beasts.

For the ant colony, which naturally excelled at navigating complex terrain, a wall of this height was no different from a small dirt mound.

Thus, they opted for the simplest and most brutal tactic: using their bodies to ram, break through, and scale the barrier.

“My Lord, look! Among those monsters, there are some that are exceptionally large and different in color! They must possess magic resistance.”

Bagis roared at his panicked subordinate, “Is this the time to be talking about that?! They are already about to scale the wall!”

The soldier ant, even when struck by magic, merely paused for a brief moment before quickly dragging its massive body forward to continue its advance.

Though the humans fought back desperately, their resistance was completely negligible against the ant colony charging forward with reckless abandon.

“Damn it, are these the rumored monsters from the abyss?”

They went so far as to let houses burn and their belongings go up in flames, pouring oil to ignite a blazing wall of fire.

They thrust their spears desperately, determined to show the ant colony that scaling this wall would come at a devastating cost.

But the ant colony didn't even blink.

When one ant caught fire and burned to death, two or three more behind it would trample over their companion's corpse, pass through the flames, and begin climbing the wall.

Even when their bodies were pierced by spears and arrows, they never stopped for a single second.

It was as if they had no concept of fear or pain, driven only to charge blindly forward.

There were no morale-boosting war cries, nor any blowing horns.

There was only the endless rustling sound of countless bodies scraping against one another.

“Stay back! Get away, please!”

By this point, fear spread among Bagis's men at an even faster rate.

An ant that had scaled the wall clamped its mandibles onto a soldier and dragged him straight down.

Watching their companion's body get torn apart as blood sprayed everywhere, Bagis's men descended into absolute panic, their faces turning deathly pale.

Bagis barely managed to steady his nerves and roared, “Overcome your fear! Look closely, plenty of those monsters are dying too!”

From his vantage point as the commander, he could clearly see that the ant colony was also suffering significant casualties.

He even felt that if everyone could overcome their fear and hold the line, they might still stand a chance of winning.

Swinging his sword himself, Bagis split the head of an ant climbing the wall in two, cursing through gritted teeth.

If only he had a bit more time to prepare, if only he had more troops on hand, he could have easily won this battle.

But reality always ran counter to expectations.

“The—the wall collapsed!”

Finally, a section of the wall collapsed under sheer, brutal force.

And the culprit was none other than the soldier ant that had completed its Tier 1 evolution.

Relying on instinct, the soldier ant had located the weakest point of the wall. Launching a heavy assault alongside the other worker ants, it ultimately shattered the wall with raw strength, rumbling inside like a chariot.

“My Lord, we must evacuate immediately!”

The defensive line retreated from the walls into the city streets.

In the end, Bagis and his inner circle had no choice but to abandon the walls, engaging in street combat with the invading ant colony.

“Are you joking?! If we flee from here, where else can we go? The outside is crawling with enemies no different from these monsters!”

Hearing his subordinate urge him to retreat first, Bagis gritted his teeth so hard they nearly shattered.

This place was the culmination of all the blood, sweat, and tears he had poured in since he started.

Even if he escaped with a small force, making a comeback would require far too much time, energy, and luck.

To force him back to that humble, weak past—he would rather die than accept it.

“I was born here, and I will die here!”

Bagis charged toward the soldier ant that had just crushed one of his men and bitten his head off.

He channeled all his magic power into his sword, but his downward slash was firmly blocked by the soldier ant's massive mandibles.

Bagis's arms trembled uncontrollably, and his eyes widened in an instant.

Having personally killed dozens of people and absorbed their strength, he had always believed there was no stronger knight than him in this region.

The sight before him was undoubtedly a massive shock.

“But this little trick isn't enough!”

In the next instant, his sword glowed with a blue light, sliding along the soldier ant's mandibles. With a twist of his wrist, he sliced its head clean open.

After all, the soldier ant's tactics consisted entirely of crushing opponents with raw strength. For a battle-hardened warrior like Bagis, it was easy to spot a flaw and turn it to his advantage.

“Ha...”

Yet even though he had slain a giant soldier ant single-handedly, Bagis could only let out a hollow chuckle at the sight before him.

A total of three soldier ants were currently closing in on him.

The battle raged on.

The ant colony prioritized attacking and hunting down Bagis's men who, despite the panicking crowd, continued to launch attacks against them.

With the stronghold they once thought impregnable now fallen, the people who had been forcibly detained here by Bagis's forces seized the opportunity and began fleeing in all directions.

Under normal circumstances, capturing escapees was the primary duty of Bagis's subordinates. But now, they had absolutely no spare energy to worry about these fleeing captives.

“Flee, flee... Argh!”

“No! Ron!”

Those who, on normal days, treated hunting down refugees as a form of entertainment and relished the superiority of being strong, had now become the hunted prey instead, rapidly collapsing under the pressure.

They were no longer the hunters, nor the predators.

Before these irrational monsters that slaughtered solely to satisfy their survival needs, they were nothing but prey to be hunted, helplessly torn to shreds.

If they wanted to live, the only way was to win this war.

“A disaster... This is a disaster! Doomsday is coming!”

In the end, even some of Bagis's inner circle could no longer withstand the terror, deserting one by one.

“A bunch of fools.”

Watching the mages throw down their weapons and flee, Bagis clicked his tongue, staring ahead with cold, unyielding eyes.

Before he knew it, dozens of ants had completely surrounded him.

With expressionless faces, the giant ants merely twitched their antennae, closing in on him step by step.

Had it been an ordinary person, their heart likely would have stopped from sheer terror.

“...Are you really the harbingers of doom?”

Even in this hopeless situation, Bagis raised his sword, muttering blankly to himself.

“Then again, it's not like you can answer me.”

Naturally, the surrounding ant colony offered no reply, charging at him in unison.

◆◆◆

“?”

The commotion above ground could be heard loud and clear, even within the underground dungeon.

And as time passed, the chaotic sounds drew closer and closer.

The moment the screams and wails of the people clearly reached her ears, she realized something terrible had happened.

“Lady Celia!”

Just then, with a loud crash, the dungeon door was smashed open, and a man rushed inside.

“Sebas?!”

At the sight of his face, Celia's eyes widened instantly. It was her family's former butler, a man she had long assumed to be dead.

“Sebas, you're alive?”

“That night, those bastards didn't have time to finish me off, so I managed to escape by a stroke of luck. Forgive my incompetence for failing to come to your rescue until now.”

Holding an axe, Sebas kicked open the cell door and shattered the iron chains that had kept her suspended for days with a single strike.

“Sebas, what on earth is happening?”

“Lady Celia, there's no time to explain! We must escape immediately! Countless monsters have appeared outside!”

Celia's legs were still weak, and she could only stand with Sebas's support. She couldn't comprehend his words, her mind in utter disarray.

But there was no need for further explanation.

The moment they climbed up to the surface and witnessed the hellish scene before them, she understood exactly what had transpired.

“...”

Staring at the sight, Celia was deeply shaken, letting out a blank, breathless sigh.

Her homeland, the home trampled by Bagis and his band of thugs, had now been overrun by these ferocious monsters.

The faction of Bagis, which had acted like demons to them by stripping away everything through the right of the victor, was nothing but helpless prey before these monsters, currently being brutally devoured alive.

Before these creatures, Bagis's once-mighty forces were reduced to defenseless prey, being brutally torn apart.

To the invading ant colony, however, anything that moved was simply food.

The complex power dynamics, conflicts of interest, and social hierarchies among humans were things they had no need to understand, nor could they.

At most, they would show a bit more persistence toward specific prey that possessed higher concentrations of magic power.

“We have to run! These monsters are the harbingers of doom—they kill everyone in sight without distinction!”

Sebas spoke in a trembling voice, dragging her by the arm as they ran.

But Celia's feet refused to move.

The residents who had failed to escape in time were mercilessly slaughtered, ending up as piles of shredded flesh just like Bagis's men.

In this brief span of time, she had witnessed far too many horrific sights, freezing her completely in place.

A mother wailed, begging the beastly monsters that could not understand human speech to spare her child, only to have her neck snapped by a worker ant's mandibles. The infant in her arms was devoured without mercy.

Those hiding in the basements were dragged out one by one, torn apart alive by the small ants waiting outside, their severed body parts carried away to some unknown location.

She couldn't fathom what the ant colony could possibly want with so much human flesh.

What these terrifying monsters were doing was definitely far more complex than simply filling their bellies.

At the very least, looking at the scene before her, she felt Sebas's words were not exaggerated in the slightest.

They were fundamentally different from Bagis's forces, who had conquered this place and enslaved them.

Here, there was only destruction and slaughter.

Celia instinctively imagined the worst-case scenario, her body trembling uncontrollably.

It was a vision of monsters tens or hundreds of times more numerous than now, sweeping across the land like a tidal wave, advancing relentlessly.

Even as Sebas dragged her along in a desperate bid to escape, Celia's eyes remained transfixed by the shocking devastation before her.

“Let us seek refuge with Lord Raymond first. He will surely take us in.”

Having finally escaped the town, Sebas and Celia ran for their lives before the ants could catch up.

Their minds were deeply seared with the memories of what had happened here, never to be erased.

【Your servants have secured victory】

“Quite a few people escaped. Giving chase will probably be difficult.”

Aside from Celia, there was another person watching the ant colony as they completely crushed Bagis's resistance and began their slaughter—through a screen.

Far removed from the living hell of the scene, he watched quietly, a mix of complex emotions welling up within him as he stared at Bagis's dismembered corpse.

Bagis had indeed been powerful, which was why the ant colony took special care in handling his body.

Of course, this was not out of respect for a warrior; it was simply because his remains were premium, precious food containing high amounts of magic power.

“System, let me ask you something. Didn't that guy just say that all of this was a trial granted to him by a god? I'm just curious, are there other existences like me in this world? Other gods who use this system?”

【You may use the Divine Net forum to contact other deities】

“I already told you the functions are restricted, so I can't use it?!”

Lin Miao had asked, carefully probing his theory, only to end up gritting his teeth in frustration at the response.

If Bagis truly was the servant of another god as he suspected, then what the ant colony did today was practically a formal declaration of war.

But even if that were the case, there was nothing he could do about it.

Lin Miao shook his head, brushing aside the complex thoughts cluttering his mind.

If only for his own safety, he had to make the ant colony continue to grow stronger!