I arrived to see a small army of bug monsters breaking out. They were all ants. Or at least, that was what they reminded me of. The main difference was that they were the size of small cars and possessed things like wings, stingers, and huge mandibles that were probably powerful enough to crush steel girders.

  The nearest ones lunged at me, but I just jumped over them, aided by Gravity to extend the arc of my leap. One look at the situation, and I had almost instantly realized the oversized ants were a symptom, not the disease itself.

  That honour would go to the house-sized hole in the ground.

  The giant white shot from the airborne bomber-bug-monster hadn’t been just any old missile. It had also been a capsule to throw down relatively smaller monsters into the city after bypassing its physical defences. Worse yet, it had also held what had to have been a vat of acid that ate through the earth to create an enormous pit in the ground.

  A pit that was spitting out more and more of the Blight Swarm insects. That hole was the real disease here. If I didn’t block or destroy it somehow, I’d be dealing with bugs forever.

  The other monsters were rushing at me from behind, but I ignored them for just a second as I tackled the one right ahead of me. It must have felt awful to climb out of that bottomless pit just to get bashed in the face by a mace. The oversized ant’s screech as it plummeted back into the hole certainly proved it hadn’t enjoyed that.

  I didn’t care about the ones at my back because Field Manipulation was locking them in place. It wouldn’t last long, but it would suffice for long enough.

  That didn’t mean I could focus solely on taking care of the hole, much as I might have wanted to. More monsters were rising all around the hole. It was almost like this whole trick had been pre-planned. Just how smart were these monstrous bugs? Or whoever led them, I supposed.

  Plus, I didn’t exactly have a way of dealing with the hole. I could try and destroy it with Gravity, but I wasn’t sure I had that kind of firepower. Besides, what if that just made the pit even wider for more insects to crawl out?

  I’d have to worry about that later because the new squad of the Swarm had started targeting me.

  They screeched out warbling cries, mandibles clicking and pincers swishing as they rushed me down. The easiest way to deal with them was by extending Field Manipulation, increasing the gravitational force acting on them to hold them in place with Infusion, if momentarily. They’d be brute-forcing their way forward soon enough.

  But the few instants they were locked down were all I needed. I yelled and leaped at them, modifying my weight first with Siphon to get high, then crashing down on them with Infusion turning me into a living boulder.

  When my weighted mace crashed down on the nearest ant from above, its chitin shattered and its innards splattered out in a gory mess. Black liquid blanketed the gore.

  I was going to need a long, long shower after this.

  The monsters screeched at seeing one of their own get killed like that. I wasn’t resting on my laurels. A quick dash towards the nearest one and another swing with my mace had it staggering off to one side, its mandible crushed. I just cursed. What I needed were killing blows.

  Of course, the monsters weren’t just going to sit there and let themselves be killed. One of the ants hovered over the hole, where Field Manipulation didn’t reach, and fired a glob of acid.

  Dodging was easy, but also annoying because I was now no longer in range. The acid had also splattered all over so I couldn’t just run back and strike at the grounded insects. But my Gravity was ensuring that the bugs weren’t going to rush me down just yet either.

  Which meant I could focus a little on the flying annoyance.

  More globs of acidic spit splattered nearby as I continued dodging. I thrust my gauntleted palm at the monster, using Field Manipulation and Siphon to create a repulsive field. The flying ant was distant enough that I wasn’t even sure my Aspect would reach it, but it did. I was able to push the monster back just enough that the next acid shots didn’t quite reach me.

  It was trying to push back against the repulsive force emanating from my hand, trying to get close enough to hit me with its ranged attacks. Why it didn’t bother trying for longer arcs was beyond me. Maybe it realized that it would be even easier to dodge those.

  Whatever the case, I reversed the pull instantaneously. I switched up Siphon to Infusion, turning Field Manipulation’s effects into a powerful drag. The sudden switch combined with the monster’s own forward thrust combined to make the flying ant jerk towards me, with the monster too shocked to try to check its momentum. Something that would have been pretty difficult when airborne anyway.

  I grinned. All I needed was another leap at the monster. My mace swung in hard, crushing its entire head and making it plummet back into the pit.

  Obviously, with the help of Gravity, I didn’t fall too. My new position afforded me a little bit of time to look straight down the huge hole. I thought I would see nothing but yawning darkness, but to my surprise—and dread—a pair of strange orbs gleamed far beneath. What in the world—

  With a screech, one of the ants rammed straight up at me.

  It rocketed off the ground with a lot more force than those spindly insect legs would suggest. I was too distracted to react in time, especially because it was a variant of ant I hadn’t faced yet. Instead of a giant, car-crushing mandibles, this one had a literal rocky shield for a head. Perfect for ramming into unsuspecting airborne folks.

  I barely managed to bring my mace around to prevent a direct hit. With my weight lowered to maintain my hovering state, I was easily bashed backwards onto the other side of the pit.

  Worse, the ground started shaking. Cracking. I was trembling along with everything else. It normally wouldn’t have been a problem since I could have just taken to the air again, but the way the earth was shattering apart near the hole meant two things. One, my Field Manipulation was getting wrecked. The ants weighted down were able to free themselves easier.

  Two, the hole was about to get even bigger. I could already see chunks of the earth at the edges breaking off and falling into the pit. So much for finding a way to plug it up.

  Field Manipulation wasn’t going to work now because the ground was too uneven. Even if it could continue to keep attempting to lock down the monsters, I would need to concentrate harder to send the threads to the overly uneven ground. Cracks that went too deep, spiking chunks of rocks that jutted out, broken surfaces. It just wasn’t worth it.

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  Not with the bugs experiencing renewed vigour for some reason that made them attack me ferociously. I was reminded of the centipede monster targeting me like killing me was its one and only goal.

  It didn’t matter. I took a deep breath, then continued fighting. All my Aspects were already coming into play. I was channelling my two Flare Affixes to turn the area sweltering. My Illumination Affix blinded the shield-headed ant that tried to bash me again, which opened it up for several powerful blows that finally cracked its head wide open. Bless my Gold-ranked Power.

  Reflexive Mana was always ready and active to whisk me out of danger whenever a group of bugs tried to gang up on me. I continued trapping bugs with littler casts of Field Manipulation before jumping down with heavy, smashing mace hits.

  My heat bombs were ready a few moments later. The subsequent set of explosions didn’t kill the bugs, though the scorching wounds debilitating them definitely put most out of commission. I took full advantage of that by crashing into them with my mace, crushing legs and abdomens, breaking apart thoraxes, making the monsters regret ever coming to Ring Four.

  This was going fine. I was starting to feel the drag on my capacity to channel magical energy, the hollowness that suggested I was slowly approaching mana exhaustion. But it was distant still. I had more than enough gas in the tank to take care of this problem.

  My mana core was stop-starting too as more corpses let out more of the blackness. Those had to be Netherthreads, as the Councillor had called them, though they certainly didn’t look like any threads.

  The real problem was the constant shaking that was tearing apart the ground. Or rather, the creature that was causing the shaking.

  Throughout the little battle against the horde of ants, the trembling had intensified. The battlefield itself had grown smaller thanks to the hole widening. It was going to reach the surrounding houses soon at this rate. Abandoned though they might be, this endless growing pit was starting to get really concerning.

  And all that was before the real monster joined the battle.

  I was just finishing taking care of several nearby ants when a low growl emanated from deep within the pit. It grew louder in seconds. My heart thudded in anticipation.

  With a screech that rent the air, a humongous worm-ant-thing burst out of the hole, spraying a short meteor shower of rocks everywhere. I didn’t have to dodge away from any, which was good because my entire attention was locked onto the new threat.

  Worm really did capture the essence of it. The beast was shaped like the centipede-monster I had killed the other day, but covered with a lot thicker and shinier chitinous armour. I was thankful there were no giant claws or anything, just those stubby little millipede legs—still enormous compared to me, with each almost as tall as I was.

  But it was the head that made me stare. A normal enough head for the bug itself, just with a few too many fangs and mandibles and drooling acidic spit.

  Problem was, it had a rider.

  Another, almost-humanoid ant was sitting atop the monstrosity, armoured in white and carrying a weapon somewhere between an axe and a club. The rider was screeching along with its mount. Even louder, in fact. My ears were starting to die a little.

  I pulled out my shield, figuring I’d be needing extra protection against this thing.

  Then the monsters attacked. Despite the worm-ant’s huge size, it and its rider thrust themselves at me like they had been launched from a crossbow.

  They targeted me like I had insulted their mother, like killing me had been their original goal to begin with and everything else was secondary. The sheer ferocity would have made my heart thrum, if I hadn’t already been facing it from the other bugs.

  I was just able to leap back in time. The street around me exploded, spraying me with dust, rocks, and the remains of the comparatively smaller ants. Everything had happened so fast, I didn’t even get to send out more Gravity threads to try and trap it or at least slow it down like I had done the others.

  Looked like I would need to depend on my Power Augmentation. On the one I had, that was.

  The next attack was a huge swipe with the worm-ant’s whole body. I jumped, recognizing what was going to happen a few seconds before it did. Which was why I channelled Siphon as I had thrown myself upwards, my leap taking me significantly higher than normal.

  Dodging the worm-ant’s swipe—not another backwards retreat because it had extended itself too far and was destroying the neighbourhood—would have gotten me in range of its rider and that huge, bony axe-club. But its follow-up swing missed because I had unexpectedly risen even higher.

  My grin at seemingly outsmarting my enemy didn’t even last a second. With impossible control, the monster jerked back towards the hole it now entirely occupied, all while I was still in the air, then rammed itself in my airborne direction.

  A quick reversal of Siphon into Infusion barely saved me from getting blasted by that onrushing charge.

  But I was reversing Gravity’s effect yet again as soon as I was safe. I didn’t even let myself fully touch down. This was the first real chance I had gotten, and I was going to take it.

  So, I turned Gravity into Siphon and powering myself straight up once again. The monster was trying to quickly jerk away from me once more, but I was just fast enough to reach it. Just quick enough to smash in my mace without holding anything back, leaving a gory, crushed wound at the bottom of its head, runny, green blood splattering everywhere.

  The monster reared back. I might have dealt a good wound, but it was nowhere near debilitating. Nowhere near effective enough to ensure my victory.

  This thing, with its as-yet-unharmed rider, was at least low-Gold if not higher. I wasn’t going to win so easily.

  The monster reared back. Another worm-ant screech went up, both my ears and my brain protesting. I was seriously starting to bemoan the lack of noise-cancelling earphones on Ephemeroth.

  Then it fired acid globs. Of course.

  I dodged to my right, trying to focus on Reflexive Mana via my Agility to help me evade. The globs it fired were larger and more intense than the ones I had faced from the smaller ants so far. These ones ate through the ground, sending up choking smoke to flood the area.

  The monster hesitated for a second. Its mouth visibly swelled. Then it vomited out a veritable tsunami of the acidic spit. A tidal wave easily big enough to drown a city block.

  My heart clenched hard in my chest. I had been about to retreat backwards but there was a shack at my back. The monster had cornered me. Shit. The blast was coming in too fast, covering such an enormous area that trying to dodge left, right, probably backwards, or even upwards would have been impossible.

  I just channelled Gravity instead. It was an instinctive reaction. Field Manipulation with a patchwork of Infusion and Siphon made the earth at my feet break up and rise. A patchwork use of Field Manipulation for a patchwork defence.

  It blocked a good chunk of the acidic tidal wave, and using more repelling Field Manipulation on my shield helped protect my head and most of my torso. But a good splash made it through and splattered on me, immediately setting the few areas of exposed skin I had on fire with burning, dissolving agony.

  I bit through the torturous pain and tried to maintain my focus. Especially because my shield was melting away too, which revealed the monster wasn’t just content to just sit back and let the acid do all the hard work.

  It was charging at me with bullet-train speed almost before its huge wave of spit had fully landed everywhere.

  I didn’t even have time to react properly, much less dodge. The blow-deflecting Power Augmentation that I was trying to train up would have come in real handy now.

  All I managed to do was get my melting shield and my mace up in time to block the rush. I got hit massively, which sent me flying into and through the ramshackle house that had been trapping me, debris crashing on and around me in a storm of pain.

  My shoulder hurt like someone had inserted burning coals inside my body and an aching throb made my entire right side numb. But I was alive. Alive, and conscious.

  I gasped in a shocked breath as the worm-ant reared tall over me. The glare from its rider felt derisive, but I couldn’t care just then. Another blob of acid was coming. I recognized it in the way its body was widening, a stretch making its way towards its mouth.

  It wasn’t going to bother killing me directly, just dissolve me alive.

  I growled, then channelled Gravity with Granular Control. The remainder of my half-molten shield crumbled under the molecular stress of deep purple threads, turning into a misshapen ball. One that I chucked as hard as I could just as it opened its mouth to spew its stupid acid.

  Granular Control turned the amorphous blob of metal spiky. Hooking. As soon as the metal ball caught onto its target, I focused all my concentration on Infusion.