Chapter 18: Queen’s Intelligence
Passing through the tunnels, Ethan’s eyes remained fixed on the system screen ahead.
---
[Current Progress:]
■ Blood Ants:
└ 905 / 955
■ Blood Ant Queen:
└ 0 / 1
---
"The total number of the blood ants has been reduced by over 400. That’s the amount I killed." Ethan’s voice came out normal. Although he couldn’t infect those ants, their deaths had brought an even greater benefit to him.
"The number of zombies has taken a steep jump. With this number, I can probably injure the blood ant queen gravely, if not kill her." Letting out a turbid breath, he shook his head.
Despite having an extreme number of zombies under his wing, Ethan had to fight the blood ant queen head-on.
To infect the blood ant queen and to take her under his rule—this was a requirement to complete the ongoing quest of conquering the ant colony.
After Ethan’s body mutated into that of a zombie, he had felt many changes occurring within him. His senses became dull to the point where he hardly felt anything; his body grew tolerant to an even greater amount of pain and many more.
But it was an undeniable truth that his body was initially that of a human.
"Although I possess a near-infinite amount of stamina, my body does not. Just like a human body, muscles and fibers may actively get damaged if they’re overused. While my regeneration skill can continuously heal the incurred damage, it puts a slight strain on the body and can affect my movements." Analyzing his body, he remarked inwardly.
This was a conclusion he had come to while silently observing his own body since the start.
Thus, to avoid messing up in his final battle, Ethan had no choice but to conserve his strength throughout the first battle.
"Theoretically, I could easily jump into the battle and use the flesh assimilation to heal the injuries on my body rapidly. But the number of corpses then would’ve been drastically more. That would put me at risk of increasing my evolution progress. And who knows if it’ll be a rapid process or one that renders my body useless?" Ethan’s concerns traced back to the blood ant queen’s intelligence.
Even now, he was taking heavy caution while moving through tunnels to avoid stepping into her trap. Ethan knew that if the queen were to sense anything wrong, she would definitely take advantage of that situation.
Hence, he decided to simply be a masochist for the day. This way, his body would be too harmed to invest anything into his evolution, rendering his concerns useless.
At this moment, Ethan casually walked into a small cavity. In front of him, his zombie ants gathered all around the tunnel hole. A while ago, the tunnels were getting shorter and narrower.
To pass through them conveniently, Ethan got his zombies to work. Hundreds of ants scraped at the walls, creating an even bigger entrance for him in an instant.
’System, show me my status.’ Ethan spoke in his mind.
*Ding!*
With a familiar sound ringing in his mind, a system window materialized before him.
---
———————————————————
[#/Status/#]
———————————————————
Name - [Ethan Graves]
Race - [Zombie]
Class - [Zombie Overlord (SSS)]
Rank - [E-Rank]
Level - [15]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Vitality - [25]
Strength - [30]
Agility - [11]
Endurance - [27]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[EXP]
└ ■ 250 / 7,500
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Unallocated Attribute Points:]
└ ■ 12
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Racial Traits]
■ Undead Physiology (D)
■ Temperature Resistance (D)
■ Regeneration (C)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Class Traits]
■ Zombie Sovereignty (SSS)
■ Infinite Evolution (SSS)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Class Skills]
■ Undead Command (SSS)
■ Flesh Assimilation (SSS)
■ Dormant Infection (E)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Evolution Progress - [21%]
Zombies Under Command - [905]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[System Functions]
└ ■ Information
└ ■ Undead Registry
---
With several taps, Ethan emptied his unallocated points.
[Your stats have been updated!]
└ Strength - [42] (↑12)
[Unallocated Attribute Points:]
└ ■ 0
"Great, we’re almost there."
At a distance, Ethan spotted a room deep inside the tunnel. Unlike any other rooms that he had seen here, he could see rays of light extending out of the room, painting the cave walls in a faint yellow hue.
***
On the other side, the blood ant queen stared into the air with a blank mind. One after another, she had lost contact with nearly all of her forces.
As it turned out, she had completely underestimated her enemy.
"This... How did it come to be?" Mumbling to herself, she couldn’t help but look at her own hands.
At first, she believed the betrayal of her kind was the result of a mage’s hypnosis. Thus, to defeat the mage, she ordered the ants to attack the mage altogether.
However, the queen did not realize that by doing this, she had only helped Ethan further.
’Are they dead? Or did they become his soldiers instead? No... Am I going to die today as well?’ All sorts of thoughts were emerging in the queen’s mind.
The remaining fifty soldiers standing before her exchanged gazes in concern. Making up its mind, one of the blood ants bravely stepped forward.
"My queen," he called out, his voice neither gentle nor caressing. "The intruder will be here any time now. Our brother died cruelly at his hand. We have nothing but hatred for his existence. Although it may be presumptuous of me to ask, please permit us to fight until the end."
Upon hearing the request, the other ants bowed their heads in agreement. The queen, on the other hand, was stunned as she stared at the ants with her eyes wide open.
Her vision flickered. Memories of the past, where she raised countless of her children, overlapped her eyes.
In front of her, rather than the courageous, unwavering ants, she saw the image of small children who cared for each other and vowed to protect her upon growing up.
’What was I thinking?’ Tears welled in her eyes, slowly trickling down her face.
’I... How could I accept defeat when the murderer of my children is before my eyes...’
The blood ants noticed the queen’s condition. They wanted to console her; however, it was necessary.
For her to cry, for her to wake up, and for her to continue fighting—it was necessary.
Coming to her senses, the queen wiped the tears from her face before coldly facing the ants with a newfound resolution.
"I have a plan..."