Eight ants, including the one he threw, were rapidly approaching Mitch with vengeance in their eyes. The corpses of their family members were lying at the feet of the oversized bug, both with their heads burst open.
Phew
The pain Mitch felt was slowly decreasing. He could feel the explosive amounts of power stored in his body building. He just needed to last two minutes or so, and he would be fully healed.
"Hold ON!"
What followed was carnage. The ants were shoving each other, trying to reach Mitch before their buddies.
Mitch backed up behind the two ant corpses and took a defensive stance.
One ant pulled ahead of the rest, jumping over the carcass-turned-barrier, and rushed towards Mitch, mandible wide open and ready to snuff out the life of the fiend invading their home.
Clang
The jaw snapped onto Mitch's dagger, making a metallic sound before rebounding off.
That's when the second ant came.
Clang
And the third.
Clang
All the ants eventually got close to Mitch but had difficulties all fitting inside the tunnel. It did not help him either, since it limited how much he could move.
The ants were unrelenting, making attempt after attempt at biting Mitch.
He blocked every one of their attacks, but the other ants would prevent him from counter-attacking.
The ants slowly pushed him far enough away from his barrier that they could surround him. He could have backed off, but he didn't want the sounds to reach that bigger queen's room, so he held his ground.
"Rule one is broken, huh? Fine, I'll still whoop your asses!"
Attacks rained in from every direction. He blocked a bite from the right just for an ant to attack him from the left. His brain was working overtime just to keep track of all the ants' movements.
He dodged every attack he could while blocking the rest with his four arms. Some of the ants still succeeded in taking a nibble out of his legs, further affecting his mobility.
One of them was especially difficult to handle. It would coordinate its attacks with the other ants, not leaving Mitch any breathing room.
Despite the situation, his thoughts were clear of any distractions. All he did was focus on reading his opponents' pattern. He was calm, eerily so.
Suddenly, something happened. Even after Mitch defended against the problematic ant's attack, it still latched onto his dagger. It then curled its body and revealed a stinger, intending to sting Mitch's hand.
This was precisely what Mitch had been waiting for: an opportunity to wound the most dangerous of the ants.
All this time, he had been doing just enough to block the ants' attacks. The wounds he suffered were scratches at worst. All this for the purpose of tricking his opponents into making a mistake.
He instantaneously shifted into a higher gear, moving with explosive speeds, which resulted in the air producing whipping sounds.
He released the dagger that was compromised and turned his entire body. This time the ants behind him finally got proper bites in, but he didn't care. He just needed to kill that one ant.
The ant in question didn't even register what was happening. It thought that it had secured victory with its scheme. It had been careful to not reveal its stinger beforehand in order to catch the opponent off guard.
Alas, it fought against Mitch, someone who had experienced every type of trick, scheme, and hidden weapon imaginable in the VR games he played.
Although the ant was smarter than the norm, it was not nearly as covert as it thought it was. Mitch had long realized it was scheming something.
That would be its downfall.
"Rule number four: always keep your wits."
Swoosh
Crrrrack
Mitch had finally started using his full strength. He split the ant in half, shattering his dagger in the process of doing so.
With the greatest obstacle out of the way, Mitch could finally move a little bit more freely.
He crouched down and put all the force he could muster into his legs, jumping out of the encirclement.
Reaching a wall, he softened the landing by bending his knees and used that spot as his new jumping pad. With the speed of a bullet, he reached an ant and grabbed it by the mandible, ripping it out as he flew past it.
Boomcrack
Swoosh
Ricocheting off another wall, he reached another ant before they could even realize that one of them had lost part of its mount. He sliced with his dagger, bisecting the ant in front of him, then—like clockwork—kicked off the ground once more.
This kept happening for all the remaining ants.
In the end, what remained was Mitch standing above the butchered corpses of ten ants, green blood staining his entire body.
"Are you sure you have time to be this leisurely? What if more reinforcements come?"
Mitch was trying to get rid of the icky feeling he got from being stained with so much blood. "If they were coming, they already would have. Most likely, they scampered off to try gathering more reinforcements."
Even then, Mitch was as calm as a lake. It was not unfounded confidence; he had grown a lot stronger from transforming.
The only reason he didn't finish the fight sooner was because the metamorphosis had left him in a profoundly exhausted state. Even now, he was barely able to stand because of how hungry he was.
"Then what's the plan? Leave and recover before returning to finish the job?" From her connection, Katherine was able to tell that Mitch could faint at any moment. Nevertheless, his response shocked her.
"No, I need to kill the small queen now. You saw those eggs that the big queen had laid, right? Any more delay and the situation could turn for the worse. I need to complete my objective right here, right now. Let's just hope that one queen is enough for Madeline to evolve…"
He was already picking up the two halves of the smarter ant, intending on eating it. Not only was it smarter, it also had a stinger, suggesting that its body was more developed. Just one of them might be enough for Mitch to fully recover.
Stuffing his mouth with as much ant meat as he could fit, he slowly made his way towards the queen's chamber.