The air rippled, trembling with a psychic distortion, and a twisted mix of mental and mystic energy. 'Emotions' flooded the air, as 'Illusions' and 'Dictations' mixed with unseen 'Curses' and poisoned the surroundings!
As this unfolded, Elena flared her spiritual energy in an attempt to block it for herself, and as many of the people behind her as possible. The battle quickly changed from beat to beat, and Elena and the forward frontline did their best to protect the backline as they continued to retreat.
The Ant Queen's scream finally ended…
But—
The ringing in their ears had yet to fade when the battle immediately resumed!
-
Hooong!
With a thunderous shudder that rolled through the entire cavern, the Ant Queen began to move.
Elena turned her head, her eyelids drooping…
The Ant Queen's massive body was ancient and brittle after the countless years of imprisonment, yet the vast will within her had never died. With a low, grinding groan, she exerted force. With a deep, resonating roar that echoed like a world was about to collapse, she forced her body to rise, and the cavern seemed to strain under her mere existence.
Hoooooong!
Her six legs pressed down against the shattering platform, each movement exploding with a terrifying momentum. The ground splintered beneath her weight, with runes flaring and dying in rapid succession, as the ancient queen forced her body up.
Hoooooooooooong!
The massive Supreme Grade Spirit Stone that pinned her in place trembled violently. The ancient apparatuses surrounding the platform groaned, their runes flickering, then condensing, and strained to contain the creature that had once been subdued by their creators.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
She continued to rise, her body shaking!
Hoooooooooooooooooong! Ka-ka-ka-ka—! Bang!
But—
Nothing gave…
BOOM!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Again and again, the Queen pushed and pulled. Each desperate motion shook the platform, sending shockwaves through the air and land alike. The colossal root that connected the corrupted World Tree above to the Crystal Core began to shake!
Hooong!
A thunderous creaking rolled through the chamber, echoing like an approaching avalanche.
Then—
Came the sound of cracking crystal! Ka-ka-ka-ka—KA! Cnk!
Thin fractures spread across the Spirit Stone, glowing faintly as a blinding light began to bleed through the cracks, spilling out in trembling streams of molten light.
The Ant Queen screamed again—!
Bang!!
Her legs trembled violently as she struggled against her 'bindings'. The Spiritual Energy that poured from her body carried the weight of countless centuries of Rage and Despair. It pressed down on everyone, manifesting so thickly that it almost had substance.
Hooong!
Yet—
No matter how violently she fought…
She could not break free! BOOM! She collapsed! BOOM! Screeeeeeeeeeeeee—!
The Spirit Stone above her head fell again, slamming down onto her carapace with the weight of a mountain, crushing her back into place.
BOOOOOOOM—!
The explosive sound echoed through the chamber.
Elena, who had been fighting with the frontline army, was caught off guard. A powerful mental shockwave erupted from the Ant Queen's body, slamming into her consciousness. The impact forced a stream of fragmented memories into her mind.
This time, they were sharper, clearer, and painfully real.
They were not attacks. They were uncontrolled cries, blooming from 'her' pain.
Desperation poured into 'her', unrestrained and breaking. Elena saw flashes of the Ant Queen struggling to escape, her legs clawing against the glowing restraints again and again, each attempt ending in pain and suffering. Hundreds, no, maybe thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of times...
Every attempt was 'punished'.
Sometimes by the High Elves themselves, and sometimes by the automated systems that remained long after their disappearance.
It was torture.
Each punishment was the same, unbearable pain, followed by silence, emptiness, and isolation.
They viewed her as a simple monster, no, a mere ant...
It was an endless cycle of agony and struggle.
Why did this happen to me?
Its not fair!
Please!
Elena winced, clutching her chest.
Her feet didn't stop.
Her eyes darkened, a brief flicker of pity crossing her face before she forced it away. There was no time for sympathy, she knew this a long time ago, and she had prepared herself for it.
'She had already tried…'
It was impossible...
-
With the direction of the battle changing, the advance had already begun.
The United Army used the shifting roots and broken architecture to advance towards the central platform. Elena ran with them and crossed from artificial platform to platform, cutting through the chaos in an attempt to reach the heart of the battle. The distance was immense, so only the swiftest among them moved forward, those capable of moving faster than the roots could follow or catch.
They darted through collapsing terrain, sliced through the ants that swarmed the air, dodged the roots that fell from above, and weaved between boulders flung by the colossal arms of the World Tree.
Every step was fatal, and a single mistake meant death.
Elena had already suffered several wounds, cuts and burns that glowed faintly along her arms, but she pushed onwards, refusing to give up even a second.
Then—
Suddenly, a light flared!
Elena's gaze snapped forward, and her eyes widened!
The Ant Queen's carapace had begun to 'glow'.
Lines of runic inscriptions pulsed beneath her shell, appearing as ancient runes that wove together like natural veins, forming some kind of matrix within her body. She had been modified by the High Elves, Elena was told this, but… Her form was part mechanical, part organic, and undoubtedly an attempt to better integrate her into the World Tree of that time…
But that was not what caught Elena's attention!
So—
What was happening now?
Elena focused her eyes on the Ant Queen's 'core'.
Something was happening inside her body, something 'dangerous'. The Ant Queen was retracting her aura, compressing her 'influence'. She was pulling in her energy, refining it, and using it to wrap her most important parts in a cocoon of mental energy. This came at the cost of control.
The transformation was happening internally, invisible from the outside, but Elena could feel it clearly.
Her heart sank.
She knew that this signaled the beginning of the end.
There was a time limit.
In her previous lives, Elena had never seen what this creature could become. But in her second life, she had heard a story from one of the old masters, and that was that the Warlord Forge Ant Queen was never meant to evolve.
Her evolution, the one happening right now, was a corruption-born mutation. As a last resort, the Queen was choosing to fully give in, walk into the abyss, and try to find that last light of hope.
Elena knew that it could already tell that no matter what, it would not end up as the winner in this fight.
Up till now, the Ant Queen had resisted that mutation with everything she had. Her Will was monstrous, and her Mind was unbreakable, so it wasn't difficult.
But now, surrounded by many enemies, she was torn between the assault of the United Army and the oppressive aura of the World Tree. Her resistance had reached a breaking point, and she had been forced into a corner, so her instincts were taking over.
She was no longer fighting to escape…
She was evolving!
She intended to find 'it', the final path forward! No matter the cost!
-
Elena's steps quickened.
The battlefield continued to condense.
The swarm shifted its focus, slowly redirecting everything towards protecting the Ant Queen, who they could feel was becoming more anxious by the minute.
The High Elven defenses had now begun to treat the entire ant swarm, as well as the Ant Queen herself, as enemies. This had never happened before, only because the Ant Queen had been mostly idle, and the World Tree above their heads had been dormant.
But now, everything had changed.
Elena and the elite members of each unit used this opportunity to close the distance.
They advanced at an incredible speed.
The road ahead was covered in countless ants, so they used agile movements to jump from shell to shell, treating the swarm itself as a moving bridge. As they moved, they had to avoid every attack that lunged at them from every angle.
Woosh!
Elena shot through thousands of figures.
She landed quietly on top of a pointed leg, then leapt away, using another ant's shell as a foothold to propel herself forward once again.
Woosh!
She slipped beneath another ant, grabbing its leg to spin herself around before landing on a different figure's head. After dodging an attack that swept from the side, she dropped backwards to create distance, then used the momentum from a second lunging attack to propel herself upwards.
Woosh!
She shot into the air.
Elena landed on a massive root stretching through the air.
Her daggers dug into its bark, anchoring her in place.
She then used them to pull herself forward, then ran along the underside of the root with her spiritual energy gripping the bottom of her feet.
Woosh!
She shot forward while upside down, grabbed an extending branch-like root that curved out like a tributary, swung herself around it, then flung herself back into the swarm below.
Woosh!
She landed on a shell and continued forward without slowing down.
Those who followed her attempted their own variations of the same movement, but each one who fell behind was lost or killed. Many realized they were too weak to continue and retreated, but many others were too stubborn, and they died in the rampage.
Blood splattered as bodies dropped in droves.
Human corpses mixed with the broken shells of the ant army.
As Elena advanced, a massive spear-like leg shot from an unseen angle—Bang! It scraped across her ribs, launching her sideways with an explosive force, and almost knocking her down.
Elena groaned, quickly grasping onto an extending root to keep herself from falling into the abyss.
She checked the injury.
It was severe…
Her entire body convulsed with a wave of pain—!
She gritted her teeth, swung her body around the root, and rejoined the advance.
There was no time to heal.
Elena scanned the United Army, or what remained of it…
Very few were following her now, and their numbers had been whittled down to only a few dozen.
She felt a flicker of sadness.
Her gaze hardened.
She stepped forward again—Swoosh! This time, she moved even faster!
-
Far ahead, the center platform was engulfed in a chaotic conflict.
The Ant Queen lashed out with torrents of mental and spiritual energy in wide waves. Each eruption distorted the surroundings, creating storms of pressure that forced enemies back behind the magical barriers created by the Crystal Core, covering the central platform.
There was a sense of something 'ending' in the air.
Not just Elena, or the United Army, but even the Ant Army felt it. Everything inside the chamber was reaching some unseen limit.
Elena dodged another attack, only to be struck by a shockwave of mental energy that rippled out from the central platform.
She grimaced.
Once again, a memory was forced into her head.
She staggered for a mere moment, before recovering and continuing. These memories were uncontroled, unblockable, and undirected, everything was hit at the same time. (Everything with a 'Mind')
There was a sense of 'reminiscence' in the air.
This time, the memory began during the Ant Queen's 'youth'.
Elena was thrust into the consciousness of a small creature trapped inside a glass jar. Claustrophobia suffocated her as strange figures with pointed ears spoke in a language she didn't understand.
The scene twisted as time passed in an instant.
One day, the pointy-eared figures gained interest in the small creature, in 'her'.
She was dragged out and experimented on.
The memory ended in an ocean of pain.
Elena's mind snapped back into the present.
Her eyes darkened as she continued forward.