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The powerful restorative ran through my body and spirit, and my mana surged and boiled. It rushed from the elixir and into my garden, rapidly filling it back up to normal. The excess power tried to compress and rush into my beastcore and restore my soul mana, but it was horrifically inefficient, only restoring around a tenth of what I could hold. 

The mana toxin flushed through my body, since both the elixir and the titan shield that I’d used to forcibly advance my defensive spells had been potent. A small headache began to pound against the front of my head, between my eyebrows, almost like a hayfever headache. It wasn’t as bad as the largest instance I’d ever had, but it was enough that I sent a trickle of mana through my pain reliever spell, then glanced up at Mallory’s mom. 

“The myrmekes queen is interested in joining us for a counteroffensive,” I told her. “Presumably her and her soldiers, since her magic is mostly enhancing them.” 

“I… Can you communicate with insects?” 

“It’s rough and unstable, but I’d definitely put them on the semi-sapient list,” I said with a shrug. “And it’s harder for me to speak to them than it is to listen, but I can speak slowly.” 

“I see,” she said, frowning. “Well. Kris and I will be launching a direct assault on the desolant queen, who is usually a mental-focused arcanist with a legacy to command and draw power from her lesser ants. You will join the rest of the team in sweeping the hive and burning them out.” 

I wasn’t sure if hive was technically the correct terminology for ants, but I also wasn’t an ant expert, or even a bug expert. I actually didn’t think I was much of an expert at anything. 

“Alright,” I said, patting my belt to see if I could find any other flight potions. I only had one left that had an hour duration – I’d have to make more. 

“Wait. I am not finished. Your job will be escorting and guarding the myrmekes team and queen. We need to set up a natural perimeter of their territory and establish gold trade with them in exchange for food and training materials. If you mess up, and the queen ends up killed, I’ll see that it comes out of your hide.” 

I glanced at the queen. She was stronger than I was, and even if she was a support mage, between Dusk, the soldier ants, and myself, I was confident that I could protect her. More importantly, I was fairly certain that if I tried to rush off on my own, there was a good chance that she and the other ants would follow me, thinking we were going into battle. 

“I understand.” 

“Do you actually know where their hive is?” she asked. 

“Nope, but I would assume that the ants do,” I said. Mrs. Cromwell’s eyebrow twitched, and she nodded, then her carpet floated up. 

“We’ll meet here, then launch the counterattack.” 

I turned to Dusk as she shot out of sight and clapped. 

“You advanced! That’s amazing!” 

Dusk pointed at me and said that I was two fifths of the way into mid-third gate myself. She’d thought it would take another couple of weeks!

“I’m not that slow,” I pouted. Dawn slithered out, and my eyes shot to her. 

“You’re further along too!” 

Dusk agreed, explaining how Dawn could enter people’s spirits now, and I frowned. 

“That’s what the full-gate spell does? I mean, a potion could do that. If you’d like, I can bu–” 

I was cut off by Dawn diving into my chest. She fused into my body, sparking her dominion to run through my body, while at the same time, she materialized within my spirit. She withdrew her dominion from my body and began channeling it inside of my mana-garden, striking at Foxarmor. Using the pill to force the breakthrough had given it several unneeded limbs, and I’d neither had the time for standard removal nor the spare soul mana to cleanse it. 

Her dominion shattered the parts of the spell that weren’t intended to be there, and I felt the ingrained effect grow even stronger, the control over my body it granted raising a level. 

Then Dawn stopped and shot over to my time gate and started channeling her dominion into herself while digging at the dirt of my soil. It wasn’t as quick or strong as when I did it myself, but Dawn was also a being of spiritual existence and enhancement. I suspected that if she worked alongside me, it would be multiplicative, rather than additive. 

She rematerialized and thrashed wildly as I praised her, and Dusk as well. Both of them were incredible, and they’d come just in time to help me. 

Despite the timeline that Mallory’s mom told me, it took the better part of an hour before she returned with more forces. There were fourteen spellbinders, ten of whom were human, while the rest were familiars, and several of the people were members of Phantom Hand. All of them were fourth gaters, with several at the peak. 

Their guild leader was here, his arcanist spirit a solid match for Mrs. Cromwell’s, but a shade behind how Liz’ grandfather felt. Then again, Liz’s grandpa was also a decade and a half older, so I supposed that it wasn’t an entirely fair contest. 

He was tall and handsome, for a man who looked to be about fifty, with gray hair and stubble. One of his arms was human, but the other had been replaced with his sect’s technique, giving him a massive, draconic arm. It was ridiculously oversized for him, almost like he’d cut the leg off an Arcanist level dragon and stuck it on himself. It glowed with a complex matrix of creation spells that were imitating several forest dragon spells, including dragon’s breath, a claw spell, and more. 

“A phantom fox,” the guildmaster said, breathing out slowly. “I thought… Well…” 

He shook his head. 

“I’ll have to hear your story sometime. For now, are we ready to go?” 

I put my hand on the myrmekes queen and spritzed the symbiote pheromone twice, then one for yes. She extended one of her forelegs, and the tide of fifteen soldiers, twenty scouts, and my eight remaining ghost ants began marching forwards. 

Dusk laughed and said she guessed that was a yes. 

We began moving, and before too terribly long, I caught an ant at the edge of my senses. It was a myrmekes, but it had a long, thin spike of forged desolation mana in its thorax. I felt my stomach churn. The practice was far simpler and cruder than the loyalty spark that the Storm King had offered me, and it didn’t have the incredible depth that I associated with deep mana, but it was still similar enough. The desolants had effectively implanted bombs into the stolen myrmekes children to get them to work. 

I ground my teeth together and we pushed on. As we did, I caught something familiar in my mana senses – the anchor that the scout team had left. 

Huh. 

I’d gone to the east, since that was the direction I figured they were moving in, but the team must have actually pushed north. It would explain why they’d run into the myrmekes as well as the desolants – they were heading in the direction of the desolant nest, and had run into these, then the desolants. 

“I hate desolants,” Mrs. Cromwell muttered. I didn’t think she’d intended for me to be able to hear that, but with Sky Dragon’s Senses bringing me information on the winds, it was easy to hear. I glanced over, and she turned a touch pink. 

“You’ve faced them before?” I asked. 

“Once,” she said. “Elementants, which are similar, at least have more of an understanding of stability. Desolants are like a poorly managed government, constantly working to expand itself with no understanding of stability or internal structure.” 

I wasn’t sure that someone who had been sent to prison for embezzling government funds should be passing judgement on how poorly or well managed a government was. Then again, if not her, who would? 

I just nodded. 

When we encountered the first desolant, it was wiped out almost immediately by a wave of fire that one of the spellbinders launched. She smirked at us. 

“These bugs will have nothing on me.”

I shrugged, not wanting to break her illusion. 

When we arrived at the anthive, I noted several things that were markedly different from the myrmekes nest. For one thing, it was far less stable, reinforced with much more sporadic uses of myrmekes magic, but none of the constant order that the colony I’d defended had possessed. 

More pressingly, it was swarming with desolants. There were at least a few hundred of them.

I was sure that if they’d been the size of ordinary ants, the number would have been in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, but hundreds of dog sized ants, each radiating the power of desolation mana at peak third gate… 

Armor exploded around me as we launched into battle.

Kris, the leader of the Phantom Hand guild, kicked us off. The instant that the fight began, he shot into the air on conjured wings radiating fifth gate mana, and held out his draconic hand. Dragon’s breath exploded from him, cutting down ants anywhere it touched. 

The desolants were launching their waves of spellcraft, but Mallory’s mom took it, rising into the air and conjuring a pair of massive, glowing green shields. Each one was only an inch thick, but covered hundreds of feet of area, blocking all of us. 

Then she exploded into motion, shooting forwards on her carpet. Giant shovels started to manifest around her and rip through the anthill, and I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of seeing twenty-foot-long shovels tearing through the earth, while a human with a dragon arm burnt dog-sized ants, defended from their attacks by swirling green shields. 

The group began unleashing our own attacks into the desolants, and the green bubble defending us opened thin gaps to let our attacks pass through. I raised my eyebrows as I shot out Pinpoint Boneshards and wondered why I even needed to defend the ant queen. My boneshards didn’t do much, not when compared to the attacks of the fourth gate guilders, so I aimed to harass and annoy, rather than kill.

Then the desolant queen emerged from the hive, supported by four fourth gate ants of her own, and the shield over us flickered out. Cromwell and Kris dove into battle with the ant queen, flashing across the sky, blasting magic out around them, exchanging quick lances of power and psychic attacks. 

I turned back to the battle and began cycling my mantle dragon’s breath, while using a suite of spells to defend the myrmekes queen. The soldier ants seemed totally on board with this, calling up short platforms of stone to block attacks, thin walls, and other defenses. 

Around me, the fourth gate mages began making themselves useful as well. The girl with the fire magic conjured a whirling ball of fire that sucked everything in around it and began skipping it from ant to ant while tossing fireballs out like they were free, burning any ant that got in close with a flamethrower spell, and casting huge walls of flame that cut off swatches of the army from the rest. 

A water mage with blue hair that seemed to float in an invisible current waved his hand, merging together a flat barrier of water, a water bubble, and water armor, then charged the ants. They released force, lightning, wind, flame, and ice at the mage, but their trifold defenses took a beating without cracking, and they were drowning ants around them in moments. 

A woman with long dreadlocks that went past her waist forged a massive suit of stone armor around herself, growing until she was almost fifteen feet tall, and began wading through the desolants, crushing them with her feet, slamming fists into the ground, and swinging arcs of sand that blasted apart ants. 

And that was only three of them. There were several more rushing their way through the ants, and while they weren’t all quite as visibly impressive, none of them were weak. 

Even the mental and knowledge mage who I had assumed was just a scout began directing us, lighting up specific ants in our vision to target, sending mental pings when one got too close, and holding off the mental assaults of the others. 

I made myself useful as best I could, using spears of blademoss, blasts of Mantle Dragonfire, and teleporting myself near a particularly meddlesome ant to layer my curse and Fungal Lock over it before returning to the queen. My ghost ants ran interference, and I teleported my Pinpoint Boneshards around the battlefield to throw ants off balance. 

It wasn’t a one sided slaughter. They might have been less intelligent, but they had enough numbers on us to wear us down through numbers alone. Some of their attacks left wounds, and even with the guilder life mage sending surges of healing into us, I knew that some of the team members would need to spend time with a real healer.

But even still, when fighting against what I was guessing were four elite guild teams, and my own ragtag group of ants and spirits, the ants could resist, but they couldn’t win. Their destruction was slow, but it was certain.