Chapter 642 - Tough Battle
At the back of the human group, the weaver ants were also doing their business. Using the ground as their domain and taking over the trees, falling from the sky like rain.
It could be said that the group of just over 650 was completely surrounded and there was no place to retreat. The only way they could get out of there was to open up a path of blood by slaughtering the weaver ants but it didn"t seem to be possible in the short term.
Huang Tian carried a s.h.i.+eld as big as he was at the front and together with approximately 120 soul evolvers took it upon himself to keep the weaver ants at bay. The performance of the Black Tortoise guild members was excellent, to say the least.
On the other hand, in addition to a team of 50 soldiers armed with light machine guns and a.s.sault rifles that fired intermittent bursts giving their comrades time to change magazines, there was only one soul evolver present to slaughter all the weaver ants. However, even though there were only 51 attackers, the mountains of corpses belonging to the weaver ants began to grow slowly and the number of slaughtered insects had risen to more than two hundred thousand in less than fifteen minutes.
The blue bow in the hands of Chen He had turned into the scythe of the reaper and the mana arrows kept flying in all directions. The power behind each arrow was not affected at all even after turning the body of a mutant weaver ant into a b.l.o.o.d.y mess and continued to advance hundreds of meters, piercing at least several hundred and even thousands when the ants piled up too much.
"Explosive Arrow!"
Swoos.h.!.+
A blazing red arrow shot skyward before losing its strength and plummeting straight into the center of the army of weaver ants. A second after the arrow stuck into the sh.e.l.l of one of the ants, it exploded like a bomb and everything within 50 meters was completely wiped out.
"Hahahaha!" Huang Tian laughed out loud and looked really happy as he shouted at the top of his voice, "Fighting like this really is satisfying! To think that even after fighting for all this time against an army of terrifying ants we didn"t even lose a single man!"
The battle was going so smoothly that the leader of the Blue Dragon guild had yet to step forward and was only killing the odd First Order mutant ant to dull the boredom.
In the center of the troops, Shangguan Bing Xue and Wu Yijun had been reduced to nothing more than supporting roles at this point. While Wu Yijun used her skill to boost and communicate with the plants to restrict the movements of any weaver ants that managed to advance too close to the human troops, Shangguan Bing Xue was the firefighter who put down the fires set by Feng Hong, Feng Tian Wu, and other soul evolvers with fire skills.
On the left flank, Feng Hong looked to the front and couldn"t help but be stunned for several seconds before bursting out laughing.
"Team Leader Bai, now I understand the reason why Mayor Wu is willing to hand over all his leaders.h.i.+p power so easily!"
The words of Feng Hong caught the attention of several people so some of them couldn"t help that split second of breath to look sideways to the front area only to gasp in amazement at the astonis.h.i.+ng sight that awaited them there.
Bai Zemin rested with both hands behind his back and his posture was as firm as the confidence flas.h.i.+ng in his black eyes. In front of him, hundreds of thousands of weaver ants stopped after stepping inside the 200-meter range and no matter how furiously they shrieked, they failed to even take a step forward.
In front of him, Meng Qi and Little Snow casually wandered amidst the terrifying mutant ants that were staring at them with murderous intent br.i.m.m.i.n.g but could do nothing about it. A young human beauty and a giant white dog were very selective in killing a weaver ant instead of simply ending the lives of all of them despite the fact that their heads were served on silver platters.
Each and every one of the weaver ants that died under the edge of Meng Qi"s sword or under Little Snow"s fierce claws were all mutant ants of level twenty or above.
The leveling speed of the human woman and the giant dog was slower than it could have been if they just killed at will but they were clearly focusing on improving the quality of their Soul Power. Even then, Little Snow soon rose to level 25 and it didn"t take long for her to start looking for different targets as if her instinct was guiding her to accomplish a certain goal.
While Bai Zemin wanted to know what cla.s.s or job Little Snow had chosen, he had no way of knowing. The only thing he knew was that mutant beasts always chose what was best for them based on natural instinct so at least he wasn"t too worried.
"All soul evolvers below level 15, come to the front and start hunting!" Bai Zemin bellowed without looking back.
His voice was absolute just like his existence on the battlefield. The soul evolvers who saw the opportunity to become stronger in front of them did not hesitate to raise their weapons and immediately began to decapitate the weaver ants with ease and their levels soon began to rise.
For every weaver ant that died within the 200-meter range in front of Bai Zemin, another new one would replace it only to immediately freeze after taking several steps forward.
"This... Little brother Zemin?"
"Mm?"
Bai Zemin looked back over his right shoulder and calmly asked, "Aunt Sun, is something wrong?"
Usually, Bai Zemin and Sun Ling called each other by their respective positions as a sign of respect for each other in front of the troops. However, since she was referring to him so closely then Bai Zemin did not need to feign unnecessary distance.
"W- What kind of skill is this...?" Sun Ling whispered with wide eyes as she watched the biggest ma.s.sacre of her entire life being carried out with such ease that even she couldn"t help but shudder in fear and feel pity for the mutant ants.
Bai Zemin looked straight ahead and said without being too specific, "It"s a skill that allows me to control the movements of my enemies to a certain extent."
"Control the movement of enemies..." Sun Ling muttered with wide eyes before gasping in shock. She couldn"t help but stare at the young man"s back less than two meters ahead of her as if she was looking at a scary and terrifying monster.
For the first time, Sun Ling felt relieved that the Chinese Renaissance faction had decided to go the easy path instead of making things difficult, and at the same time she finally understood the reason why her ever filial daughter begged her father to surrender with tears in her eyes. Regardless of Wu Yijun"s feelings, Bai Zemin"s ability was truly dreadful!
Even if Bai Zemin"s skill had limits, being able to freeze more than five First Order existences along with tens of thousands of Uncla.s.sified existences among which there was no lack of existences above level 20 was simply terrifying; the natural enemy of any army!
Actually, Bai Zemin had brought his Blood Manipulation skill to the maximum level of the Second Order a couple of days ago, and when it reached level 5 he finally gained the ability to stall enemies that stepped within a certain range near him. Although this ability was limited as it depended on the level difference and Magic disparity between Bai Zemin and his enemies, the Mana consumption was practically ignorable.
In fact, Bai Zemin had evolved one more skill besides Blood Manipulation. However, he would not use the maximum of that skill unless he really had no other choice since its previous version was already frightening enough so if possible Bai Zemin would prefer not to know how frightening its evolved version was.
Several seconds later, Sun Ling finally managed to snap out of the shock she was feeling. She smiled charmingly and said in a seductive voice, "Little brother Zemin, this big sister really loves you to death!"
Bai Zemin raised an eyebrow and was about to say that he was not too appreciative of people who spoke of love so easily when a silhouette flashed beyond him. A body as seductive as the whisper of an enchanting demon was reflected in his dark pupils and the next thing he saw was a shower of blood splattering everywhere.
The body of Sun Ling wrapped in tight leather armor that tightly hugged her curves blinked between the several weaver ants that stood motionless, not going too far in and only remaining in the two hundred meter domain in front of Bai Zemin. His slaughtering speed was countless times faster than that of Meng Qi, Little Snow, or any other soul evolver defending the front of the group.
Just as Bai Zemin was amazed by her Agility, he noticed something and couldn"t help but exclaim in surprise, "Ah! What"s that?"
From Sun Ling"s body, a light cloud of golden color that s.h.i.+mmered like stardust began to spread around, and when the weaver ants inhaled that golden smoke the struggling in their eyes wavered to the point where even if Bai Zemin stopped freezing their movements they probably wouldn"t move.
"Oh?"
A slight exclamation of surprise sounded beside Bai Zemin even though there was no one there. He didn"t need to see the person to know who it was for while it was true that Lilith was not visible to the naked eye Bai Zemin could still feel her natural essence filling his senses.
"What a surprise," Lilith said as she watched Sun Ling"s movements in admiration. "That woman surnamed Sun actually seems to have an a.s.sa.s.sin type cla.s.s but at the same time charm type... Can you see? Her every move seems to be designed to seduce men, emphasizing the curves of her body as if she"s doing it on purpose. That golden smoke is probably some sort of aphrodisiac meant to confuse the senses and it seems to work on the mutant beasts as well."
Bai Zemin nodded and looked at Wu Yijun"s mother in surprise. He didn"t expect her to be so strong or have such a good cla.s.s as she even managed to catch Lilith"s attention a bit.
Sun Ling looked like she was really enjoying the moment as she occasionally let out charming giggles as she hacked to pieces all the weaver ants that crossed her path. With the help of Bai Zemin and making use of her fluid movements, as well as her high Agility, the Soul Power within her began to grow rapidly.
Time pa.s.sed quickly and in an instant, more than 100 minutes had flown by since the battle against the weaver ants began.
The mountains of corpses several times had to be cleaned by Feng Hong or Feng Tian Wu as they were both the two most powerful soul evolvers with fire-type skills among those present. The number of weaver ants that had been killed definitely exceeded five million at this point but even then there was still no end in sight.
Like an endless sea with no sh.o.r.e to dock at, the flares and blazes that illuminated everything more than 1500 meters around the human group revealed the seemingly infinite number of heads charging their way with resolve to fight to the bitter end.
Finally, what Bai Zemin and everyone else knew would happen but hoped would not, happened.
"I- I"m out of ammunition!" shouted the first soldier with trembling hands and pain in his shoulder after enduring the recoil of his gun for nearly two hours without rest.
As if the first shout triggered something, the other soldiers also began to exclaim about the lack of ammunition.
The armed soldiers were the ones keeping the weaver ants at bay for the most part except for a few mages as the soul evolvers focused on close combat had to be wary of the corrosive blood. Therefore, once the terrifying storm of bullets abruptly stopped, the weaver ants began to advance with new resolve and with ever stronger murderous intent in search of revenge.
The pressure on the team increased immediately now that the weaver ants stopped falling at alarming speeds, so it was inevitable that in the midst of some distraction or lack of ability to react to so many attacks, casualties would appear; it was only a matter of time.
Indeed, it was only a matter of seconds before a soul evolver carrying a bone s.h.i.+eld was sent flying spitting blood after being rammed by two weaver ants attacking together. The soul evolver fell to the ground after flying more than a dozen meters and did not get up again, life or death was unknown.
The weaver ants were mostly weak and except for their terrifying Strength they were not much of anything as they were not only relatively slow but their defenses were pitifully weak.
However, the terror of this type of creature did not consist of their individual strength.... The real terror of this type of creature was that they attacked in ma.s.sive numbers!