The swarm did not rush.
It closed.
From every tunnel mouth, from fractures in the walls, from openings too narrow for a human shoulder, ants poured into the chamber in disciplined streams. Their bodies struck the stone in coordinated rhythm, legs moving in identical cycles, mandibles opening and closing with mechanical precision.
Victoria and Ryun adjusted positions without speaking.
They stood back to back, shoulders nearly touching, forming a single rotating axis of defense.
Not just because it was optimal, but because every other formation had already been denied to them.
The chamber no longer belonged to empty space. It belonged to mass. Each wave of ants reinforced the next, a constantly replenishing wall of coordinated movement that sought to box them in.
Victoria's spear moved in tight, efficient arcs. Thrust. Withdraw. Redirect. Each motion consumed minimal distance and minimal time.
She did not aim to kill cleanly. She aimed to stop motion. Pierced joints. Shattered heads when necessary. Used bodies as barriers when possible.
Her eyes scanned constantly for openings, for angles where the swarm was weaker, for any hint of overextension.
Ryun mirrored her pace.
His blade flashed low and fast, cutting legs, severing mandibles, collapsing attacks before they completed.
He did not overextend.
He did not chase.
Every strike returned to guard.
Every step re-centered his balance.
He studied their formations the way a tactician would read a board of pieces, exploiting every tiny misalignment.
Even without speaking, their synchronization was complete. One moved, the other adjusted. One struck, the other redirected. Perfect flow, back to back, shoulder to shoulder.
Ants climbed over their dead.
The floor disappeared beneath layers of chitin and leaking ichor. Traction vanished. Stone became slick, uneven, treacherous.
Victoria shortened her stance instinctively, compensating for the unstable surface. Ryun adjusted his footwork, planting only when necessary, keeping his weight mobile.
Each movement was evaluated before execution. Small slips could mean death. Not hypothetical.
Immediate.
They rotated slowly, maintaining orientation, the rotation itself a microcosm of the battle. Pivot to left, block an incoming strike. Slide forward to avoid a mandible, spin back to intercept another.
The choreography of survival.
An ant lunged from the wall. Victoria deflected it with the shaft of her spear and crushed it underfoot.
Another leapt immediately after, biting toward her calf. Ryun intercepted, blade slicing clean through its head before the mandibles closed.
She twisted again, blocking a strike that sought her throat, redirecting the attacker into Ryun's path where he snapped the thorax clean.
Momentum passed between them like a living circuit. One motion enabled the next.
They were a single organism fighting two bodies.
No pause followed.
There was no gap.
More came.
Victoria registered the pattern within seconds.
The ants did not surge all at once. They layered pressure. One line attacked while another repositioned. When a path opened, it was immediately filled. When one group thinned, another replaced it.
Every movement was anticipated by the next wave. Every retreat exploited.
Every kill compensated.
They were trapped in a system designed for endurance, precision, and attrition.
They're not trying to overwhelm us, she realized.
They're fixing us in place.
She twisted, impaling two ants in a single thrust, then ripped the spear free and swung the bodies outward, buying space.
That space closed before she could exploit it.
Fatigue was the hidden enemy.
Ryun's breathing remained steady, but the margin was shrinking. His cuts grew slightly wider now, prioritizing clearance over efficiency. A necessary adjustment. A costly one. He could not fight forever, and neither could she.
Victoria scanned the chamber during a brief rotation.
The walls crawled.
The ceiling moved.
Every surface was alive. Even the faint cracks in stone seemed to twitch as if the ants anticipated gravity's pull.
Then she saw the princess.
She stood at the far end of the chamber, elevated on a natural stone platform.
Her antennae moved with deliberate precision, issuing commands the swarm obeyed instantly.
Soldier ants formed shifting layers around her, adjusting constantly, maintaining distance and control.
Every movement of her appendages created ripples of motion, ants repositioning to reinforce coverage, to block paths, to prevent exposure.
The queen was not here.
This was worse.
A regulator, Victoria thought.
As long as the princess remained alive, the swarm would not destabilize. There would be no panic. No retreat. No thinning. This was not only battle of endurance.
It was a system with a single failure point.
The had to kill her.
Victoria calculated the distance.
Too far.
She calculated the density.
Too thick.
A direct push would fail. They would be pinned, buried, immobilized long before reaching the platform. Attempting it would be a mathematical error.
She considered an aerial approach. But it was dismissed immediately.
Jumping meant exposure.
Trajectory was predictable.
Landing would leave her surrounded, cut off, vulnerable.
Even if she reached the princess, she would be destroyed seconds later. The swarm would exploit the moment, tighten around her like a vice, and suffocate both space and options.
Her mind explored hundred of options.
Another ant pierced through her guard and sank its mandibles into her forearm.
Victoria reacted instantly. She twisted, grabbed the creature by the head, and smashed it against the wall hard enough to crack stone. Pain flared, sharp and immediate.
She ignored it. The wound was shallow.
But it was another addition.
The fatigue accumulated quietly.
Heat built beneath her armor.
Her arms felt heavier.
Her movements lost microscopic fractions of speed.
Ryun took a hit to the shoulder, shallow but real. He adjusted his stance, compensating without comment. His eyes flicked toward Victoria for a fraction of a second.
She understood immediately. Even Ryun, flawless as he seemed, was reaching the limit. Coordination, precision, timing—all under strain.
They were approaching the end of sustainable effort.
Victoria made the decision.
Not out of frustration.
Out of necessity.
—To hell with this.
Ryun heard it immediately.
—What are you doing?
She shifted her stance, forcing space with a violent sweep of her spear.
—You're alone for one minute.
He did not argue.
Ryun adjusted, ready.
Victoria activated physical ether enhancement.
The effect was immediate. Muscle fibers reinforced. Neural transmission accelerated. Perception sharpened, time stretching just enough to matter.
The cost followed instantly—strain, internal resistance, the warning ache of overuse. Her body screamed in silent recognition of the sudden power, but she ignored it.
She sprinted.
Not toward the princess.
Up.
Victoria pushed off from her position, feet planted firmly on the uneven stone, muscles tense, calculating every angle, every trajectory. The ants leapt toward her, ready to bite. But their movements had been anticipated. With a measured thrust, she launched herself toward the chamber ceiling.
As she approached, she drove her spear into the solid rock. A sharp metallic crack echoed through the chamber as the tip sank deeply, securing her weight.
Victoria swung, using the spear as a pivot, her body rotating with the precision of a lethal pendulum.
At the exact moment of the swing, her body changed.
Her height expanded to 3.70 meters. The golden helmet covered her face, while her long blonde hair fell freely down her back. Golden bracers and breastplate gleamed as they caught the scattered light of the chamber, and her red cape billowed as she adjusted her body weight for the impact. Every movement was calculated; the monstrous form was not brute strength, but absolute control of mass and power.
Victoria oriented herself toward the ant. Her spear, already infused with ether, vibrated with concentrated energy.
She activated the Impale technique, channeling all her power into the tip. The combination of the jump, the swing, and the enhanced strength of her monstrous form turned the attack into a living projectile.
She launched herself toward the ant's head with absolute precision. Her spear pierced the reinforced skull, slicing through tissue and neural structures.
The concentrated ether amplified the force, ensuring the blade reached all the way to the floor. And the ant convulsed once, a burst of uncontrolled motion, before going completely still, the spear embedded from its head down into the stone supporting its body.
Victoria landed in front of the corpse, knees bent to absorb the impact, controlling the rebound with her mass manipulation.
Her red cape spread behind her, her blonde hair draped over her golden shoulders, and the helmet caught the light in a brilliant flash. The chamber trembled with the shock, ether energy pulsing along the spear's tip, and the remaining ants froze, disoriented by the sudden loss of their chain of command.