Deadworld Isekai

Matt paused in his path. The behavior of the huge guard-ants in their role as bouncers was important to Matt. If his current pheromone coating was good enough to get him through the door, his best choice was probably hurrying through. He didn’t know if the queen was even combat-capable, so that might be all it took. If they let him in, he might be able to shank her, get a plinth, and escape before the guards could do anything about it.

If they wouldn’t let him in, though, he was digging into a world of problems. Suddenly, he’d be dealing with ten big guards, a possibly combat-capable or even boss-level queen, and presumably the rest of the colony rushing back as soon as the guard ants had time to get some alarm-scent in the air. Matt probably wouldn’t be able to even run, let alone win.

And that was if the dungeon system counted a queen-assassination as a win. If it didn’t, it was the same problem minus one queen, which was still plenty to kill him. Or if the bodyguards let him in, but the queen could fight. Or any more of a dozen horrifying scenarios Matt could think of. Squeezing past the guards was only worthwhile if the risk of assassinating the queen was less dangerous than a slow mana-starvation. This didn’t seem like it was, and he talked through his thoughts with Lucy.

“So… crazy Matt-plan time?” Lucy asked after hearing everything.

“Yup, looks like it. I just have to make one first.”

—

Mapping even a small percentage of the tunnels was taking a lot of time. Now that Matt more or less knew his way into the queen's chamber, he was able to leave, snag another ant, re-up his don’t-eat-me cologne, and run back in for more mapping. In the process, he eventually found closer, better-hidden entrances that cut his overall travel time down, but it was still a time-consuming process.

Eventually, Matt gained a certain appreciation of the ants' semi-logic when making their tunnels. Were they planned? Nope. Were they efficient? Nope. But no two trash rooms were very near each other, either. The same was true for other rooms. Once a room was far enough from the work the ants needed it for, they’d establish a new one. Over time, they’d compensate for poor tunnel planning by just cutting more tunnels, meaning the entire place was traversable in an efficient way for the ants who knew it, but a horrifying labyrinth for everyone else.

After experimenting to make sure the ants didn’t freak out about people carving stuff on their colony walls, Matt started drawing arrows.

The trick to his victory was going to be a route he could consistently run that was just the right length between “long enough that a lap is significant” and “short enough that Matt can run it without running out of STAM.” It took the better part of an entire stress-filled day and two mana malfunctions to find the route. But the momentary lack of skills didn’t end up mattering except as a reminder of how much trouble Matt was potentially in.

—

“Are you sure you don’t want to get some sleep first?”

“I’m sure. It’s not like there’s day or night down here.”

“You could kill some more ants. See if you can’t get more achievements first.”

“It’s not worth the risk. One or two DEX points aren’t going to make the difference here. We’ve already talked about this.”

“Well, yeah, but…”

Lucy was noticeably worried about the plan. And, Matt thought, she wasn’t wrong to be. Having a plan didn’t mean that nothing could go wrong, it just meant a bigger possibility of things going right. And the smallest of errors here meant almost instant death. It wasn’t a comforting situation to be in.

“I get it.” Matt sat down by her, so he could make close eye contact. “I’m afraid too.”

“I just feel like I’ve made a mistake letting you do this. What if you die, because of me being a bad guardian? We should have stayed in safer dungeons.”

“That’s dangerous in its own way, you know? This is the choice we have. It’s not great. But you are doing your best.” Matt looked as serious as he could, hoping his words would sink in better that way. “Just, to pre-empt if something went wrong, This is my choice too. I wouldn’t blame you a bit. You are good help, Lucy. The best.”

Lucy reddened a little and turned away. “Thanks, Matt.”

You always know it worked with her when she gets embarrassed. Mission accomplished.

“Plus, don’t you mean if we die? We take these risks together.”

Lucy got quiet for a moment. “That’s never been for sure.”

“It hasn’t? When we first met, you wanted me to die so you could go home, or something. Right?”

“Kind of.”

“Lucy… explain.”

Lucy stood up and walked away. “Later. We can talk about it later.”

“Lucy. If something’s going on, I need to know.”

“Later, OK? We have things to focus on. Ants. Near-certain death. Lots of things, Matt.”

She wasn’t wrong, but something was wrong here. Lucy had never been very open about the whole where-guardians-come-from topic, but Matt had thought it was one more subject that she was metaphysically restricted from discussing. If this was something she was just keeping from him rather than something she literally couldn’t talk about, it was a very different story.

“Okay. But we ARE talking about this later, Lucy.”

Lucy nodded reluctantly, and Matt let the matter drop for now. They had bigger ants to fry.

—

The first step to the plan was drawing off as many normal ants as they could. Luckily, they already had a solution for that, and had long since worked out that there were standard ant guards posted at almost every hill entrance. Matt fought with one just long enough to get it spraying alarm scent, set up a few simple traps to re-up the alarm as other ants drew near, and moved into the tunnels with a fresh coat of “don’t bite me, I’m a friend” pheromone paint.

As he approached the uber-guard squad, there was a small chance things would go really, really well for him in a couple of ways. The first would be that the guard ants would just let him through. He doubted it, as he had seen them turn away standard-issue ants from the entrance several times by now. The throne room seemed to be for those with a particular status, and Matt just didn’t have any way to get that.

It was still worth a shot. He and Lucy had already decided that if the guard ants let him through, he’d try to assassinate the queen. It was high risk, since once he was in there, he’d be trapped. But it was also high reward. If things went well, they’d just win without having to go through a whole sequence of still-risky-but-less-risky chances.

The other way things could go well was if the guard ants just turned out to not be able to leave their posts at all. If they were tethered by duty to the door to the extent they couldn’t chase him, Matt could probably figure out a way to cheese them over the next several hours or days, whittle the guards down, and just stroll right in.

Neither of the two good scenarios ended up being real. As Matt strolled towards the throne room door looking as ant-like as he could manage, all ten ants assumed a more aggressive stance. When he took the chance to push forward a bit more, one of the ants furthest from the door roughly turned him around with its mandibles, drawing a bit of blood, even though it didn’t appear to intend to do him harm. Any question that these ants were fightable was erased from Matt’s mind immediately. Those mandibles were incredibly powerful, and even in a calm situation, the guard ant was moving quicker than the normal ants.

That left the real plan, and there was no use waiting on it. Matt walked up, drew his knife, and hit one of the guard ants with a blow deliberately aimed at the most-lethal weak spot in their physiology. Matt also assumed that they wouldn’t just let themselves be cut down. Even by someone slathered in I'm-an-ant pheromones.

As he sprinted away, the sound of nine huge ants skittering after him confirmed he was right.

There had always been a chance these ants wouldn’t be that fast running around. When they were still guarding the door, there was no way to confirm it. Now it was confirmed that these ants were faster. As he sprinted away, they were catching up fast. He couldn’t run fast enough to complete his route, even juiced up with Spring-Fighter. Within several seconds, the ants had closed about half the head start he had put between them.

Then the traps started going off. Matt knew that these traps would fail to hurt the ants. And he was unfortunately correct. But they still did their job. Matt heard tripwires firing almost immediately after he crossed each one, and then felt the satisfaction of hearing the ants pile up behind the now-delayed leader.

Between the surprise, the traps, and using almost all of his stamina, Matt managed to stay uneaten just long enough to make it through his loop of tunnels that ultimately led back to the same place he had started. As he approached the door to the royal throne room with ants on his tail, he leapt into the air and caught a piece of rope he had carefully staked into the ceiling.

It’s all or nothing now. Please keep going.

When Matt was much younger, an entomologist had visited his school science classroom to teach Matt and the other children about insects. He had brought a lot of them with him, but one had stood out to Matt more than the others. Using what Matt assumed was an enormous amount of time and patience, the entomologist had managed to get an ant set up a loop of “I found food” pheromones at the bottom of a bottle. Without something to shake it out of its behavior, he explained, the ant in the bottle would gladly and without thinking travel the loop again and again, never giving up until they literally starved to death.

Matt didn’t think these ants would keep going forever, and he didn’t have the time to wait for them if they did. But he did think he could get them to travel in a loop following a combination of his scent on the ground and an ever-intensifying trail of alarm pheromone, at least for a while. If they didn’t, if they were smart enough to stand and wait at the entrance again, he’d be stuck on the roof without any viable options except to sprint away.

The ants were below him now, rumbling through the tunnel like a death-train.

“Come on. Come on.” Lucy was off to the side of the tunnel, wringing her hands.

The ants didn’t even slow down. They rumbled away on Matt’s exact original route.

Once the ants were far enough off that he was sure they couldn’t sense him directly, Matt dropped down and burned a tiny bit of his recovered STAM to fuel a jump from the path through the door. He didn’t have long, but he had at least a few minutes.

It was time to take the queen.