"Ants?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Like, normal small ants? The type that are pretty easy to kill hopefully?"
"I'm afraid to disappoint you, but… these seem pretty non-standard," Rui murmured. "Come on, I found a pathway to it. We don't need to break through a bunch of tunnels this time."
The two of them quickly moved and followed a particular tunnel path that Rui guided him through before they eventually ran into an open wide space, yet it wasn't entirely unoccupied.
"Woah," Kane did a double take. "Is that… an anthill?!"
Even he could perceive the gigantic structure.
"It's an ant mountain, actually," Rui murmured as he sized up the gigantic structure. "It wouldn't be the first time a floor has contained a mountain-sized structure."
He recalled the sixteenth floor with the tree.
"So how many ants are there in the colony?" Kane gulped.
"Tens of thousands," Rui murmured. "On the low side as far as ant colonies go."
Rui could feel the various ants trickling in and out of the holes in the ant mountain, he could roughly gauge their number as he swept through them counting them in groups.
"You're telling me we have to deal with tens of thousands of Squire-level monsters?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "We're not Martial Seniors, just in case you weren't aware."
"Relax Kane," Rui replied, smirking. "We don't need to be Martial Seniors to take on Squire-level monsters. Monsters are not equivalent to Martial Artists. Otherwise, we would be completely doomed since monsters outnumber Martial Artists immensely. Martial Art techniques are what make the battle fair. Monsters do not possess techniques, and they cannot leverage our physicality the way we do ours."
Martial Art techniques were essentially trained routines that allowed for hyper-efficient and effective applications of energy and power to produce superhuman results. This was why even as a Martial Apprentice whose body was identical to a human, aside from the brain, he could perform feats such as shattering rocks.
"So even if these ants possess the equivalent of a grade-five body, they're basically as strong as a grade-two Martial Squire," Rui explained. "On top of that, they're usually stupid as hell, and so when you include our strategic and tactical prowess, it's even more overwhelming."
"Still, that's not always necessarily true, look at the Shionel taipans, a single bite from them is ending you even if they are much weaker," Kane pointed out.
"That's true," Rui nodded. "It is a nuanced matter, still, I'm pointing out a general trend. Regardless, I think we'll be fine."
It was why Rui was more afraid of the predator that hunted the Earthen Basilisk, which he evaluated to be on par with grade-ten Martial Squires due to its vastly greater physique. That was a monster he did not want to fight it.
In comparison, despite their numbers, he didn't feel much threat from the ants.
('Part of it also has to do with how easy they are to predict,')
Rui felt like he could predict them even without building a predictive model around the ants. Their movements and courses of action were so rigid, that he didn't even need to employ his Martial Art to understand what they were going to do.
Instead of even building predictive models, he was more interested in understanding how the colony worked.
"Ants generally have a sophisticated system," Rui murmured. "I wonder if that's true for them even when they're monsterified."
"I couldn't care less about the science lessons," Kane scoffed. "Where is the bounty at?"
"They're deep within the ant mountain," Rui threw disapproving look at Kane's materialism. "We'll get them alright, but I am curious as to what's going on here. They don't ever leave the dungeon considering we haven't run into one before, nor have there been any reports of ant monsters before."
Rui curiously observed what the ants were doing.
A good portion of the ants was on the ant mountain, working on the walls, seemingly gathering dirt from the floor while piling it on the walls with some adhesive-like substance from their mouth.
Another proportion of ants was gathering esoteric ore deposits from the rest of the floor.
This was what Rui found to be the most interesting. The ants were able to detect and mineral and organic ore deposits, before proceeding to extract them.
Then they would scurry into the ant mountain deep into a complex array of tunnels, heading into the innermost compartment of the mountain.
Rui's eyes widened as he laid discovered a giant room at the center of the mountain with an especially giant and more developed ant.
"Is that… the queen ant?!" Rui's eyes lit up in interest. "So the ants are gathering esoteric ore deposits instead of normal food? That's an interesting development."
He wondered if perhaps the monsterification was what led to this change.
"Maybe they evolved to be that way," Rui wondered.
He could imagine multiple strains of ants undergoing different kinds of monsterification, only the queen ants that developed an innate hunger to consume esoteric ore deposits would produce offspring that inherited that genetic proclivity, while the ones that sought food instead of esoteric ore deposits would remain more normal.
"Just how many times its original weight did the queen ant worth of esoteric ore deposits did the queen ant have to consume in order to become that big?" Rui murmured as he focused on the building-sized insect. "I bet that the moment all the esoteric ore deposits are completed, the ants will immediately leave the floor in search of more esoteric ore deposits."
Kane shuddered in horror at the thought while Rui marveled at how fascinating it all was.
"The tunnels being overrun with monster ants sounds like a nightmare,"
"I wonder if there would be inter-floor wars between multiple floors, fighting for esoteric ores if that did happen," Rui wondered. "That would actually be incredibly entertaining. Imagine of these ants faced off against bloodfury rabbits, or Shionel Taipans, or that Earthen Basilisk, or that giant tree!"
Kane just threw an odd look at Rui who grew fascinated by what he saw.
