Almost immediately, 15 of the 30 or so ants charged at Kyle.
’Retreat!’ Kyle thought as he vanished behind the hill again.
The ants also ran over the hill and chased him.
“If you would have been a bit less conspicuous, you would only have to deal with a couple of them,” Theodor said.
“My idea is great!” Kyle shouted back.
Theodor didn’t answer.
Sadly, despite having a greater reach with the stilts, Kyle was not faster than before.
Sure, he made bigger steps, but every step needed a lot more energy.
’I should invent a bicycle!’ Kyle thought. ’That would make me faster!’
’But not now!’
Kyle looked back at the charging ants.
Well, his stilts had one advantage, and that was that it was much easier to see the horde of ants.
And what he saw was not nice.
They were gaining ground on him.
However, Kyle just kept running.
After running for a while, he noticed something.
Some of the ants were turning back.
By now, there were only ten ants charging at Kyle.
CRACK!
That was when the first ant clamped down on one of Kyle’s stilts.
The ant stopped moving in preparation to stop Kyle from fleeing.
However, Kyle’s leg just disconnected from the stilt and buried the pick of his hammer in the ant’s head.
It was a bit awkward to swing his hammer in this position, but thanks to Air Current, Kyle didn’t need to use all of his power to kill one of these ants.
Kyle connected his foot to the stilt again and extended his other stilt over the corpse.
The ants behind the corpse immediately charged at the stilt to grab it.
Kyle grinned when he saw that.
He jumped down from his stilts and landed on the corpse.
Then, he swung his hammer.
BOOOOOM!
Pincers and bodies flew into the distance as Kyle unleashed a devastating strike.
“You could’ve just done that from the very beginning,” Theodor commented.
“Shut up! I’m busy!” Kyle shouted as he jumped back to avoid the horde of ants.
BANG!
Kyle swung his hammer again, destroying more pincers and throwing ant bodies at each other.
Then, he jumped back again before unleashing another strike.
That was when Kyle noticed how easy it actually was to deal with the ants in this way.
Sure, the ants were faster, but they all charged at him in a line.
The ant behind the first ant needed to clear more distance to get to Kyle, and that was enough time for Kyle to swing his hammer again.
As long as he jumped backward, he would have enough time to swing his hammer again before the next ant arrived.
“That’s what I had in mind,” Theodor said. “If you had done that from the very beginning, you would have cleared the nest by now.”
Kyle couldn’t answer.
Sure, this seemed to work, but every single swing was still incredibly risky.
If he messed up even one of the swings, one of the ants would clamp down on him or his weapon, and he would be done for.
It sounded super easy, but it required perfect execution.
This felt much more dangerous than running from the ants on stilts.
Kyle couldn’t mess up!
He couldn’t lose his focus!
BANG!
Kyle destroyed another set of pincers.
More and more pincers stretched to him, and he destroyed all of them as quickly as he could.
When an ant with one or no pincers charged at him, he directly struck its head with his hammer.
The battle was intense.
Kyle swung his hammer again, but he missed.
His mind nearly stopped.
He had messed up!
Kyle immediately jumped back.
But there was no ant.
There were only a bunch of corpses in front of him.
Kyle breathed heavily as he waited for another attack.
But it never came.
After some time, he jumped on one of the corpses to look around.
He saw two fleeing ants in the distance and thirteen corpses.
As Kyle looked at the bunch of corpses, he almost couldn’t believe it.
Sure, he had killed a couple of beasts before, but he had never seen so many corpses at once.
The corpses were broken and smashed, which showed the violent nature of their deaths.
For a while, Kyle remained silent as he just looked at the corpses.
No new ants were coming.
“You know,” Kyle said. “This actually feels pretty good.”
“I did this.”
“You are an imbecile and made it much harder than it needed to be,” Theodor said.
“But yes, you did this.”
“Inheritor, look at the scene in front of you.”
Kyle looked at the corpses.
“This is power.”
“This is the culmination of your training.”
“You are no longer a random nobody who lives in one of the Cradles.”
“You traveled through the outside world, and you have killed tens of beasts outside.”
“Less than 0.1% of people who live in a Cradle can do what you have done.”
“You are beyond stupid. You have stupid ideas. You fight like an idiot…”
“But you are not weak.”
“At least, for somebody in the First Realm.”
“You might not win against a Late Squire, but when you’re fighting beasts, you’re not inexperienced.”
“Make use of that experience.”
Kyle listened to Theodor.
He remembered the different video games he had played on Earth.
As he looked at the corpses, he felt a bit like he was in a video game.
But this was real.
These were real beasts.
He could feel his own power.
He could feel the Ether coursing through his body.
He could feel the heft and weight of his hammer.
Power.
While he had been fighting the ants, Kyle had been scared.
What if he messed up?
But at the same time, he had also felt excited.
He remembered his fight against the Sparkly Bear.
The excitement during that fight had been similar.
Power.
Strength.
Kyle was not an insect that scurried through the wilderness.
No, he was part of the wilderness.
He was one of the many predators.
Sure, there were many more powerful predators, but he was also not helpless.
He was not a nobody.
As Kyle looked at the hill in front of the ant nest, the Wind Ether on his hammer vanished, replaced by Fire Ether.
He didn’t do that on purpose.
“Is there something valuable in the nest?” Kyle asked.
“Ant eggs have a lot of Ether,” Theodor said. “There might also be useful ore in the nest.”
Kyle narrowed his eyes.
“Theodor, mind if I clear the nest?”
“Go ahead,” Theodor answered calmly. “Finally, you are thinking like a Warrior.”