Grey had thought, initially, that an Ant nest would be boring, a long span sitting there working alongside the two blast-oriented allies as they worked through legions of ants, pouring them into a hole like a meatgrinder. Instead…. When he parked the truck atop a nearby hill, looking down at the target nest a quarter mile away….

  He felt a bit… excited.

  There were two of them; towering edifices of ant nests, each of them about ten yards tall, and maybe half a mile apart…. And a constant, ongoing fight somewhere in the middle.

  To his left was a nest covered with more fire-ants; and from the smoke and bright flashes, more genuine fire once again. He focused on one of the Soldier ants amidst the mass.

  More detail? Was his Examine skill getting better, or was it because he’d killed so many ants?

  He focused on one of the Soldiers on the other side.

  That… was nasty. Five meters? It might only be level 4, but there were hundreds of them… and they were bigger than the last batch.

  There were scattered piles of corpses; some on fire, some torn apart; across the open desert between the two nests. He could feel a slow but steady build-up of mana just being there…. And then heard the engine behind him…. Sledge had arrived.

  He looked at the van as the crew emerged; Sledge’s riot gear replaced by a suit of heavy red-black leather, though he still held the shield… and the hammer. Shockwave and Star wearing the same red-black leather; though Shockwave had somehow emblazoned his own with blue lightning bolts down the arms and legs…Stacktopus seemed almost as if he were wearing a bag of the stuff, all of his tentacles poking through.

  For Grey, he’d forgone the boots; retaining the Uncommon-grade combat-boots he already had; and still wore the armored vest… over the leather, at the moment… and just bore a suit of dull red-black. Fire resistant. Exactly what he needed.

  He glanced his allies over, and nodded. “The Fire ants are here again. Weaker than the regular ones, though. I suspect we would have been better off with Acid-proof armor today.”

  Sledge looked down over the carnage thoughtfully, as did his allies… and slowly nodded. “Well then. What are we thinking?”

  Grey looked at each nest, then at Sledge. “We don’t have to kill things ourselves to get levels from them… just be close enough. If Stacktopus digs a trench between the two nests, and we rile them up a bit… we can just stand near the fighting until one side wins… then finish off the winner. All hit level ten before we go check out whatever it is out there.”

  Sledge gave a slow nod. “That works. Though….if there’s enough of them, the nests themselves might level up. And if we’ve got hundred-pound ants now, imagine what the Queen is gonna look like.”

  After a few seconds, Stack floated up off the ground…. And started a very different version of his usual routine. He was faster than before; must have upgraded his earth-shaping abilities; and made a 3-foot deep trench between the two nests at a steady rate, pushing up walls on either side that made it effectively deeper….. Before turning around and starting it over, adding another couple feet…. Then again.

  It took about ten minutes… but there was a fifteen-foot deep trench between the two ant nests, and rather than hundreds of scattered battles… there were now two solid armies, converging on one spot.

  As the group gathered near the trench edge, they could feel their own gains… Grey looked them over thoughtfully. “I’m going to be taking a new job. They want someone to run a new government department, one helping to understand and deal with Necromancers, and Undead. You folks might not be Necromancers, but I strongly suspect you might be of use; especially Stacktopus, for helping setup some nice inescapable tombs for masses of Undead.”

  Sledge nodded. “Well. Depending on the pay, and the work, I’d be down. I want to keep gaining levels, and once we’ve got the desert cleared, handing rogue necromancers sounds like fun.”

  A severed ant-limb flew over the edge and dropped atop them. Grey shook his head. At this rate, he’d have to piece the fire ants back together before animating them; the body needed to be reasonably intact to make a zombie. Most of the ones he’d animated before were either killed by his venom, or Shockwave’s lightning blasts, which cooked the internal organs but left the exoskeleton mostly intact.

  He started looting them as they piled up; getting nothing but more Chitin and the rare mandible; to ensure the mound of corpses didn’t overcome the sides of the trench. These weren’t going to be worth saving to re-animate, unfortunately.

  Still. He could feel himself on the cusp of level ten… and none of them but Stacktopus had put in much real effort. It was….

  There we go. The Fire Ant Soldiers had started to grow in size… just a bit bigger… and now matched up to the opposition.

  All of them, leveling up at once. The real reason swarms were a problem; they weren’t really individuals; just the feelers and mandibles of a single massive organism. The group’s presence was slowing the process down, but every ant nest that had to fight others would slowly grow stronger… they’d just been lucky, or unlucky, enough to witness the process.

  As a jet of flame burned through the front ranks of the Acid-ants, Grey gave a slow nod… the trench was starting to move, advancing from the Fire-ant side; it appeared they weren’t just longer, but more intense, and the black-chitin ants were starting catch aflame more easily. “Should we help the regular ones?”

  Sledge looked carefully at the two onrushing mobs of ants, and the steady fighting… then at the others. “Well. We know the black ants were winning. The fire ants are winning now. Any way to know how many are left?”

  A stray band of the Fire-ants started in towards the group; Stack visibly shifted, twisting the earth; forming a wall, redirecting them back into the trench, and the ongoing melee.

  Shockwave shrugged. “Does it matter? Whichever one wins, we kill the survivor.”

  Grey glanced at him, then at Star. “The Fire-ants are resistant to Star. If they win, it’ll be harder for us to wipe them out. Also…. I could use the fire-ant bodies for my future work. Flame-resistant undead could have a use. So long as we let them wipe out a good number of the black ants first, I think it’d be a good idea for Stack to start dropping venom jars down into the fire-ant nest. Push the odds a bit, and leave more intact corpses.”

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  Sledge smiled. “Well then.” He looked up at the sky… and at the tentacled ally. “Hey, Stack!”

  The betentacled hero started floating their way… as Grey started setting out stacks of jars, putting them in a cheap backpack; he produced it a bit faster, and in slightly more intense dosages, as he gained levels; but he should seriously consider upgrading the remaining three half-point skills, see what upgraded venom got him.

  “Got a delivery for the mouth of the fire-ant nest, mind dropping it off for us?”

  The floating squid-like creature gave a burbling laugh. “Not at all.” And started floating up into the sky… and then over the red nest… and started taking the bottles out, dropping them in, one by one.

  ***

  Killing giant ants; even if they were bigger than what they were used to; had become an old familiar process. Thanks to the two massive nests, Grey had received the notification for his tenth level before they’d finished off the surviving Fire-Ant queen… and the group stood over the enormous mound of corpses, most of them broken apart.

  Grey looked them over, giving a slow nod. He hadn’t needed to bring any of the ones he had out of storage, just started animating the broken ants scattered across the field… this was truly the easiest thing he’d been involved with short of handling the school full of zombies.

  “Well then. Stack… would you mind helping me dig a hole… or even just use one of these nests… and bury the intact fire-ant and the black soldier corpses? I could really use these later.”

  Stacktopus bobbed up and down in a nod. “Not at all. Are we concerned at all about the split of loot? The fire ant chitin is actually still worth something.”

  Grey looked at the pile of bodies for a few seconds. “Less than a third of them are intact enough to be a useful zombie. If its missing more than two legs, or the head, its going to be almost helpless. I’ll sort through and loot them, and pass on all of the chitin, mandibles, fire sacks, everything from these fire-ants?”

  Sledge chuckled. “We always agreed that whoever actually had a use for the stuff had first dibs. Lets rest for a bit… I think all of us hit level ten there, so we can level up, too…. And then sure.”

  Stacktopus floated over the fire ant nest… and started to burrow a hole straight down. Grey watched for a moment… and then started looting. There were hundreds of the things. Having to pick out the intact ones would make it slow; but it was less than a second per ant once he got into the swing of things; and when it came to the final battle, a swarm of fire-resistant ants would be of untold value against Nightfire.

  He’d been using the venom so incredibly often, gathering jars of it for the most part… that it was silly he hadn’t upgraded it yet. Especially since he could Empower his zombies with whatever venom he had.

  It was finally time to actually upgrade the rest of the way; and get all of the base abilities of both classes. He sent the mental command to upgrade; interested in what Venom magic -should- have been for a level one member of a poison-using class.

  …Ahh. So. Default level 1 Venom Magic was what he already had… but with a damage-over-time venom. Could he mix the two together? Most likely more tiers of Venom Magic would unlock more potent venom, or new varieties. That could be useful. Especially in an Empowered Undead.

  He slapped the free points into Agility, Mind, and Power, as they’d likely be the most useful going forward, and checked his stats as he kept working through the dead, leaving Chitin plates on the ground rather than sending them to his storage.

  He thought about his abilities, his upgrades, as he worked. It seemed a bit odd the way it was all organized and setup. If these were upgrades of himself, why didn’t he have more control of the way it worked? Why couldn’t he forego the attribute upgrades and upgrade his Abilities more? Or vice versa, the way he’d gained more attribute points before hitting level five?

  He had some more reading to do.

  It took over an hour to get everything organized and cleaned up; the intact Fire Ant corpses all neatly packed in a mass grave that was once their own nest, a pack of Level 4 Soldier Ant corpses stuffed into his storage for later use; with everyone sorted out and ready, it was time to go hunt the first genuine mystery he would encounter; he was curious. Would it be a human nightmare? A monster from another world?

  Only one way to find out.