I Became an Ant Lord, So I Built a Hive Full of Beauties-Chapter 487: Defence and Buy time part three
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Vorak’s front line there shuddered. One man’s spear dipped just enough that the drone opposite him stopped seeing a weapon and started seeing a man who did not want to die in this place. Friendly shields straightened as if someone had reminded the arms behind them why they were holding.
"Now," Kai said.
Shadeclaw felt the pulse without needing the word. "Push right," he barked.
The drones leaned. Not a charge. A correction. Their line flattened, then reasserted the bend at a healthier angle. Vexor’s voice came back over the Net, a grin in it again. "Right hinge holds. No crack. One nice little shriek when your scent went out. I liked it."
"Do not like it too much," Kai warned. "We need them resenting me tomorrow so they do not forget what side they are on."
The Phenomenon thinned, then vanished. The world’s flavor returned to ordinary steel and sweat.
The fight ground on.
Vorak’s five-star captains signaled with quick hand-flashes — no shouted orders, no waste. They switched tactics: instead of leaning for a breach, they began to hunt for individual shields that looked unsteady and targeted those drones in triplets. One high, one mid, one low. Kill one. Rattle three.
"Ring Two," Kai said. "When you see triples, you feed them a fourth. No more. Do not crowd."
Flint’s voice answered, clipped but eager. "Yes, Lord."
He watched the change: a drone rattled by triple thrusts suddenly finding a comrade’s shield-edge sliding into place beside his, taking one of the three spears. The pattern turned from a death sentence into a hard test.
"Good," Kai said.
The enemy cast again. This time the bolts came lower, aimed not at bodies but at stone, trying to chew the grooves that held the drones’ stability. Skyweaver saw it and shifted her wind to catch the bolts just after they left the staves, dragging them short so they scorched closer to their own lines. Two front-rank soldiers went down with hollow screams, armor slagging around their legs.
"Commander learns," Akayoroi murmured, eyes narrowed.
"So do we," Kai said.
The first hour passed like that: impact, adjustment, impact, adjustment. The drones did not break. They bent, bowed, bled, but the line remained a line.
Casualty reports ticked in along the Net and in Luna’s hands.
"Ring One: thirty-seven injured, five dead, pulled back. Replacements in from reserve."
"Ring Two: twelve minor, four serious. No deaths."
Luna’s actual voice cut through once, sharp. "Do not send me any man who can still hold his plate upright," she told the Net. "You patch him on the wall or he dies walking."
The second hour was worse.
Vorak’s commander, seeing that simple push and bolt would not do it, signaled a change. The front ranks split at the base of the ramp and began to climb not up the groove of the main path but along the side ravines Silvershadow had warned about — narrow, shoulder-tight gullies that led to the smaller mouths farther along the mountain’s face.
"Side throats," Silvershadow snapped. "He will try to make you guard everything."
"Let him try," Kai said. "We prepared."
Those side mouths did not open wide. They bit. Lirien’s crews had carved teeth into their ceilings — stone spikes that looked decorative until Skyweaver’s wind hit them just right and shook loose a sleet of razor chips. Any squad that tried to force those gullies found themselves under a deadly rain.
But it cost them, too.
Every drone posted in those tight cuts did not stand on the main ramp. Shadeclaw had to peel away ranks in careful handfuls, sending them sideways to hold the new lines. The central ramp thinned.
"Ring One, center," came a terse pulse from a captain. "We are five deep instead of ten."
Vorak’s commander saw that too. He pushed the center then, sending his best shields into that narrow point, hoping to crack stone through absence rather than force.
Kai dropped into the Net deeper.
"Ring Two," he said. "Slide back from the second bend into the gaps. No full collapse. Just sponge the center. Shadeclaw, do not be proud. You accept their weight, you do not envy it."
Shadeclaw’s reply came with a grim edge. "Understood. I will not be greedy with glory."
The drones at the second bend stepped down, not in a panicked flood but in two clean, staggered layers, like shutters folding closed. The holes in the first rank’s center filled. The line grew shallower, but it did not lose its teeth.
The six-star commander finally stepped onto the ramp himself.
Kai felt the man’s aura like a second sun rising low on the horizon — hot, steady, confident. He carried a long spear with a black haft and an odd, double-headed point, one side blade, one side hook. His armor was scored from older fights and polished afterward instead of replaced. He walked like someone who trusted his feet.
"Host," the system said in his ear, dry as ever. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
[Ding! Target lock:
Name: Not registered.
Rank: 6★
Threat level relative to host: Manageable.
Caution: multiple 5★ anchors in proximity improve enemy line stability.]
He did not go down to meet the man. Not yet. This day was not about honor duels. It was about minutes.
The six-star moved along the front until he found a place where one of Vorak’s men had fallen and the gap had not closed quickly. He stepped into that space, slammed his spear-butt down, and shouted — a short, hard bark in his own language.
His aura surged. The men around him straightened as if some invisible hand had shoved their spines up between their shoulder blades. Their push improved. The drone line there began to creak.
"Shadeclaw," Kai warned.
"I feel him," Shadeclaw growled. "He thinks he is the only one with a spine."
Kai considered the cost of stepping down there himself. One clash would likely end with the commander wounded or dead. It would also likely draw Vorak’s attention before Kai had eaten enough of the man’s army to make that attention expensive.
